Africa’s Hidden History: The reptilian agenda 

By Credo Mutwa

THE Shona proverb: ‘Ziva kwaunobva kwaunoenda husiku’, serves as a constant reminder that a person’s history informs and shapes the future.

A person’s history is like what an umbilical cord is to a foetus; it is a link to the source of energy and nutrients that promote growth and development.

Once that link is cut off before birth, the unborn baby dies and if it is disrupted the growth of the foetus is negatively affected.

As white settlers invaded Africa, they were well aware of this important fact and in order to break down the blackman, they ensured he was detached from his history.

Their first move was to denigrate African culture, religion and knowledge systems.

Africans were made to forget who they truly were.

African history was no longer to be celebrated.

South African writer Credo Mutwa discusses how whites deliberately destroyed African culture and history in his book Africa’s Hidden History.

“Years of careful investigation had taught me the European powers that had colonised Africa had done more than just beat our people into submission with artillery and rifles,” writes Mutwa.

“They had done more than simply sown confusion amongst ourselves by introducing many conflicting versions of the Christian religion.

They…deliberately brainwashed our people, that Africans…lost all self-knowledge, self-love, self-respect, self-pride and self-dependency.

If you rob a people of all these things you turn them into a race of robots forever dependent upon you.”

Mutwa’s upbringing was affected by the conflicts brought about by the introduction of Christianity in Africa.

His father was a Catholic and missionaries forbade him to marry Mutwa’s mother who had not converted to Christianity.

He was raised by his father and step-mother.

During his childhood days, Mutwa fell ill.

Western medicine and prayers by missionaries did not help him recover.

His maternal grandfather took him in when he heard he was ill.

“My grandfather, a man whom my father despised as a heathen and a demon worshipper helped me and brought me back to health, where Christian doctors had failed,” writes Mutwa.

“I, still a Christian and a confessing Catholic, had not believed at all that my grandfather would be able to help me.

And I was greatly surprised when he did, and I began to wonder, were the missionaries not wrong when they called people such as my grandfather ungodly heathens.

If my grandfather had been a stupid heathen savage, as white missionaries loved to call people like him, how is it that he had been able to help me?”

This was Mutwa’s turning point.

His interest in Zulu culture was birthed.

When he recovered, he was told he had to become a traditional healer, a role he gladly took, resulting in his father disowning him.

Mutwa then began travelling to African countries to learn more about different cultures and traditions.

“I found myself amongst amazing and strange people,” he writes, adding, “I found myself amongst men and women possessing knowledge.”

Mutwa, facing the sad reality that Africa’s culture was being eroded by Western cultures decided to contribute to its preservation by writing books.

In 1975, he managed to secure funds and permission to set up a museum in Soweto.

“ I realized how rapidly Africa was changing,” writes Mutwa.

“I realised to my shock and sorrow that the culture of my people, a culture that I had thought immortal was actually dying.

Very, very soon the Africa that I knew would become a forgotten thing.

A thing of the past and I decided to try and preserve it somehow.”

Mutwa highlights how Europeans had destroyed African youths by making them despise their culture and traditions.

“I weep even now when Eurocentric education is being fed to our children,” he writes.

“Fed in order to make them Afrofobes, creatures that hate and despise their motherland, which look down in contempt upon their own land, because this is what all European educated black people do.”

Mutwa warns youths against being used by whites to do their dirty work of destroying African culture.

“ They (youths) despise Africa and all she stands for,” he writes.

“ And they are in contempt of the culture of her people.

They are still even now doing the colonialists dirty work for them, because if you want to destroy the culture of a nation you must brainwash the youth of that nation and make them do your dirty work.”

As Africa continues in its path to develop and grow, as Mutwa suggests, preserving culture and celebrating African history will contribute immensely.