S.A.M - Strong Afrocentric Mindsets

In my African Philosophy lecture today I was made aware of something that I never thought I suffered from. Our lecturer gave us an exercise to do. She asked to take a piece of paper and write down , without thinking, the first 5 things that came to mind about Africa; and the first 5 things that came to mind about Europe.  The results were a big surprise! In a class of about 6 students doing their Masters in African Studies, we were all guilty of seeing Africa in a negative light. Some of the words that came up were ones you would expect from people outside of Africa, who have only been exposed to Africa through media accounts about the continent. This made me realize that even though as Africans we know better, the way in which Africa is constantly portrayed has led to our minds being colonized and in us looking at Africa through western viewpoint. What was even more amazing to me was that I had this white Afrikaans woman, telling me, no correction, showing me that my mi...

Limpopo Boy Initiates Initiation is one of the widely practiced practices in Africa. It is a rite of passage that both boys and girls go through. Rites of passage are an important part of a person's life because they mark the transition from one stage of life to the next. They exist because of the four main stages we go through namely birth, maturation (transition into adulthood), reproduction (marriage and procreation) and death. They help young people navigate the dangerous period between childhood and adulthood and have been proven to have a positive psychological effect on the individual going through it. The absence of rites of passage in some societies have led to the youth creating their own badges of adulthood which vary from obtaining drivers licence, 21st birthday celebrations, experimentation with drugs and alcohol and other dangerous ceremonies. It is apparent that rites of passage are an important and integral part of the human psyche and that in their absence, hu...

I was present at the Daily Dispatch indaba where Professor Vilakazi presented his model and introduced his book and I must admit that what he said made a lot of sense. Reading the note below he outlines his ideas but goes deeper in terms of the reasons for the economic disparities in South Africa. This is definitely worth the read and would recommend it. At the indaba agriculture was not the only sector he said we need to focus on, the manufacturing sector was another sector he highlighted. In his speech he emphasised the fact that South Africans need to move away from office based ventures that are part of the tertiary economic sector and only provide employment to the middle to upper class. We should focus on primary and secondary economic sector ventures so as to create employment that is needed by labour workers. To get a better understanding of the what Prof Vilakazi refers to I have included some notes on the economic sectors. And a lot of our industries like mining industry ...