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“If you know the beginning well, the end will not trouble you” – African Proverb, Wolof
Greetings, what is black and white and red all over? No it’s not a sun burnt zebra or an embarrassed penguin. The traditional answer to this old joke is a newspaper (the word read is being pronounced ‘read’ - get it).
As you may have noticed I’m not very good at telling jokes. But reading is no joke.
A few weeks ago I hosted a show on Nyansapo discussing the topic of Money Matters. It wasn’t a debate focusing on how to get rich quick by pimping our community or becoming hermits destined to a life of misery. Instead we focused on how to save money by living within our means, fulfilling purpose and still enjoying those occasional treats we deserve. Community feedback was fantastic with contributions ranging from stockpiling canned foods to joining an established pardner instead of investing in shares. You can listen again via http://www.ligali.org/nyansapo/drum.php. But it was only after one of the regular callers recommended a book called Enemies: The Clash of Races by Haki R. Madhubuti it reminded me how powerful books are. Madhubuti’s book was published over thirty years ago that still has information relevant today.
My copy of that book came through the post this morning and I have to admit that despite the passage of time meaning some topics require a little rethinking from the viewpoint of contemporary solutions, from the little I have read so far it is a classic.
It made me realise that my recommended reading list has now become so extensive I barely have any time to watch any frivolity on the tell-lie-vision as some of my friends refer to what I call the ‘brain draining’ box. And guess what… I don’t miss it. Through books we can chose to engage in our own personalised history channel, self-development channel, current affairs, drama, spiritual healing and so much more. The beauty of books is not only that we can carry them wherever we are and use them without batteries, it is also that we don’t need a license (yet!) to read them, nor need pay a media license tax to insult and ultimately oppress ourselves.
So what are some of the things I read over the last seven days.
[Eastenders fans please skip this section]
Well first, there is the news that the New Nation newspaper has been picked by a new organisation called the African Media Enterprises Ltd. Like most of us I don’t know much more than that so I guess we’ll have to watch this space….
Reading Matters
Last week, the British Police force used stop and search legislation to confiscate over 2000 ‘potentially harmful’ items from innocent people gathered at a climate change protest. Items seized included “balloons, crayons and a clown’s outfit”. We still have a national e-borders scheme, identity register, communications database, CCTV and automatic number plate recognition, ‘Contactpoint’ the governments children’s database, forced DNA sample recording and a parliament that is engaged in supporting torture, financial corruption, rendition, illegal wars and protecting fascist police officers whilst simultaneously announcing to the world they are no longer institutionally racist. All this is despite warnings from former MI5 heads, politicians, academics, journalists, people on the street dropping science and even African police officers who work on the inside promoting a boycott of the police force because ethnicity based bigotry is deeply rooted at the highest levels….
Reading Matters
Again last week, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Jacqui Smith were amongst a list of people identified as “the 10 enemies of freedom” in a report named “The Abolition of Freedom Act 2009” produced by the University College London Students’ Human Rights Programme. Meanwhile their opposition, the nasty Tory party are still promising to repeal the Human Rights Act when they come into power. These are scary developments and yet almost none of these issues make it onto the front pages despite this coming from a country that has no written constitution and is still governed using a dictatorial style faux-democracy that pledges its primary allegiance to the crown instead of the people...
Reading Matters
Three years ago I wrote an article for the Ligali website called Reclaiming Martin Luther King (http://www.ligali.org/review.php?id=28). With the mass hysteria caused by the election of President Obama I was grateful when a friend recently passed me a link to a story about the ‘Martin Luther King you don’t see on TV’. As you can see, history contains all the clues we need to find a solution to our current problems….
http://www.cpcml.ca/Tmld2009/D39043.htm#1
Reading Matters
[Eastenders fans please rejoin the editorial here]
Erm… Africa is the poorest continent in the world, President Mugabe is evil for picking on poor ‘white’ farmers, his crazy Zimbabwe ‘regime’ destroyed their own economy by printing more money, Bush cared deeply and was simply misunderstood, Bwankers do an important job and deserve good pensions, British general says “we will leave Iraq a better place” after murdering thousands of innocent civilians, immigrants are evil and are taking our jobs, the BNP are simply misunderstood, what do pensioners need with savings, Michelle Obama made ‘black’ history by being on the front page of Vogue, ‘New’ Labour is simply misunderstood, entertainers Rihana and Chris Brown may be back together, Stevie Wonder was awarded by Obama….
I could go on.
Don’t get me wrong, no one is saying you should only seek out bad news, but it is essential we get the right mix if we are to be able to make informed decisions about the world we live in. Reading the wrong literature also matters. Every time we purchase the Sun or Daily Mail we are harming ourselves.
However, even without making any conscientious effort to digest books (new and old), just reading graphic novels, scanning our emails or reading select online news sources often reveals a wealth of information that enriches our knowledge. But nothing compares to the immense rewards that are to be gained by actively choosing to expand our awareness of the world around us by pro-actively engaging with ideologically empowering and diverse cultural, political and spiritual literature. Modern technology has never been able to successfully compete with the advanced ancient African know-how of encoding thoughts, music and speech through the use of ancient African scripts imprinted on/through organic and sometimes extremely robust natural storage media.
Reading Matters
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
Martin Luther King
May the Ancestors guide and protect us.
Toyin Agbetu is a writer, film director, poet, and founder of Ligali, the pan African human rights based organisation.
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