Short Story and Writers’ Forum

To Be An Afrikan Woman

By Marimba Ani

 

 

To Be An Afrikan Woman is to:

 

- be life affirming

- be in partnership with an Afrikan man

- be a political organizer

- function as part of a collective

- exert influence

- speak for the Ancestors

- be an advocate for Afrika

- be a mother who does whatever is necessary to protect her child

- teach

- be a healer

- represent the continuity of Afrikan people

- represent the stability of theAfrikan family

- maintain and pass on Afrikan culture

- organize and direct the Afrikan market, enabling our people to understand the spirit of economic exchange and distribution of our resources

- be a scientist of the sacred

- be a spiritual leader

- be an intellectual

- be Divine

 

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First published by  MAAT, Inc. (Mbongi Association for Afrikan Transformation)

 

Dr. Marimba Ani is professor emeritus of Anthropology and Africana Studies at Hunter College in New York. She has participated in the creation of highly successful Rites of Passage Programs for girls. She is the author of ‘Let the Circle Be Unbroken and Yurugu: An African– Centred Critique

Of European Cultural Thought and Behaviour’

 

Marimba Ani was brought to the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican Studies by Dr. John Henrik Clarke (1915-1998) in 1974 as she was completing her PhD dissertation at the Graduate Faculty of New School University. She had worked as a field organizer for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi from 1963 to 1966, and had acted as Director of Freedom Registration for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 which challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City that summer. Dr. Clarke became her Jegna ("warrior- teacher, intellectual father, ideological influence") as she moved back to New York and into graduate school. It was through his influence that she became committed to Pan Afrikan liberation. 

Her most recent work has been the development of the Maat/Maafa/Sankofa paradigm as an analytical tool for understanding and explaining the Afrikan experience in the Diaspora and to suggest modalities for cultural reconstruction. Dr. Ani has been lecturing throughout the United States, the Caribbean and Afrika on this new theoretical construct which is part of her endeavor to develop a pragmatic Afrikan Cultural Science. This new science becomes the basis for the creation of Afrikan institutions and Nation-Building in the Diaspora. 

Having taught at Hunter College for the past 25 years, Dr. Marimba Ani has had the opportunity to develop a number of courses on various aspects of the Pan-Afrikan experience. She teaches Afrikan Civilization, Afrikan Spirituality in the Diaspora, The Afrikan World View, Theories of White Racism, Afrikan Traditional Healing Systems, Nile Valley Civilization, Afrikan-centered theory, Women in Afrika, Men in the Afrikan Diaspora, and a number of other courses

 

 

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STARVING

 

By Gantuah K. Harry

 

 

In the midst of plenty

 

I have none to eat.

 

While I see them eat

 

I stretch forth my hand

 

It dangles like a pendulum

 

I summon strength to steady it

 

Yet I am so drained.

 

 

My hand will not stand still

 

The joints as if loosened by a screw-driver

 

The food dropped in at last

 

Heavier than the hand it was

 

Like a weight in my hands

 

Yet weightless

 

For the sake of the heartless

 

I starve.

 

I need to live

 

 

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Gantuah K. Harry, born in Liberia, West Africa, became a Refugee, during his country’s civil. He is currently living in the Netherlands, Western Europe. Gantuah  and his young family travelled on foot for days without food and drink, during their escape of the civil war. Gantuah witnessed many of his escaping colleagues dying on the way from gun shots and starvation.  His poem, “Starving”, was written based on his experiences as a refugee.

 

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THIS IS THE DARK TIME MY LOVE

 

By Marin Carter

 

This is the dark time, my love.

All round the land brown beetles crawl about.

The shining sun is hidden in the sky.

Red flowers bend their heads in awful sorrow.

 

This is the dark time, my love.

It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears.

It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.

Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.

 

Who comes walking in the dark night time ?

Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass?

It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader watching you sleep and aiming at your dream.

 

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Martin Carter's, 1927-1997, ‘Caribbean’ Poet, earliest poetry was shaped by the turbulent days of anti-colonial radicalism and protest in Guyana (British Guiana) during the 1950s. During the thirty years since then, especially since the publication of his hallmark Poems of Resistance ( 1954), his has been the voice of radicalism in Anglophone Caribbean poetry. During his early twenties he joined the turbulent political movement for national independence, quickly becoming a leading spokesman for the more radical forces of the movement. This prominence inevitably led to his arrest and imprisonment by the British colonial administration in 1953. At the time of his detention Carter had already launched his career as a poet, having contributed works to A. J. Seymour literary magazine, Kyk-over-al, and to Seymour "Miniature Poet" series of poetry pamphlets ( Hill of Fire Glows Red). But it was during his imprisonment that he composed his most important collection, Poems of Resistance, which was eventually published in London, in 1954. Throughout this entire period he has maintained the dual roles of poet and activist, an appropriate choice in one whose most important writings have passionately advocated involvement and commitment.

 

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African Revolution

 

By Dr. Deng Dongrin Akuany

 

History tells us that anti-liberation, or counter-revolution and treachery are common to all national liberation movements or armed struggles. It is equally true to say that traitors, counter-revolutionary and espionage are also found in any country and under any political system. The causes for the existence of traitors, espionage, counter-revolutionary and treacherous elements in any movement are numerous and variant, with each movement or organization. And it is for this reason that laws are made not only to punish those who involve themselves in treacherous activities, but to protect the institutions of democracy, justice and freedom. Indeed a revolutionary movement is precisely a movement that calls for total change, or break with routine or bad past, that demands sacrifice, in the present for a better world in the future. And because the sacrifice is immediate, while the better world is in the distance and uncertain, it is always difficult for some elements, to tolerate suffering and other pressing problems that an average freedom fighter can patiently put up with, until D-Day. The Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/SPLA) likewise, had (and still have), similar experiences since its establishment, and the question, “who betrayed the Sudanese Revolution, on the ^[1]30^th July, 2005” has remained unanswered adequately until now. So all are suspects before the Sudanese people, until otherwise.

 

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^1] The date 30^th July 2005,  SPLM/SPLA Leader, Dr. John Garang de Mabior.

was killed mysteriously in a plane crash in the mountains of South Sudan.

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Deng Dongrin Akuany, BSc. LLB(Hons). CIHL. DDA. MA. PH.D, was born in 1955 at Majok village, Ngop Payam, Yirol Western County, Lakes State, formerly part of greater Bahr el Ghazel Region, South Sudan.  He is Jiang or Monyjang, by national group (commonly known as *Dinka), which consists of more than 30 tribes, speaking the same language and with population reaching  eight  million.  A majority of Dinka national group has rejected this name, and would like to be known as “Jiang”.

On 12^th March, 1965, young Deng Dongrin was arrested at the age of 12, in Rumbek town by Military Intelligence and charged as member of a rebel movement “the SSLM/SSLA”. He was  kept in jailed without trial for eleven months and 20 days. First in Rumbek Prison for 9 months and later transferred to Yirol Town Prison and remained there for 2 months and 20 days. He was found not guilty  by Magisterial Inquiry, in Yirol town, on 4^th March 1966, and released.

Deng Dongrin studied administration, politics and law in the UK and obtained a number of university degrees, including a Doctorate from Leeds University. In 1984 he joined the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). He has been the SPLM Deputy Representative for UK & Ireland.  He served as Acting Under Secretary for SPLM Cabinet Affairs and Acting Clerk of SPLM National Liberation Council.

Dr. Akuany, currently  Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) representative in the National Assembly in Khartoum, is a member of the National Assembly Legislation and Justice Committee, created by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Dr. Akuany is a prolific writer. One of his memorable articles was published by Pan African Journal in London, UK, on the subject of “Pan-Africanism, Self-Help and Community Development”,  which was based on MA’AT perspective.  .

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