IN the last episode of this series on reclaiming our African identity, I called on Africa to exorcise the European ghosts haunting our schools, farms, bridges and suburbs in the form of foreign names.
I said this could be done by removing the numerous British place names found all over Zimbabwe.
These English names should be replaced with names in the African language which should be enduring symbols of our African identity.
And yet there appears to be preference for foreign colonial names by many African people, institutions and even national Governments. Adoption and retention of European names by formerly colonised Africans indicate a disturbing reluctance to reclaim their true identity.
Colonial names are a shameful colonial legacy that we must not bequeath to the ‘born free’ generation of this great country.
Universal practice across all cultures says, ‘If it is yours, you name it’. And so let our names tell the world who we are.
Our country, our locality, our school and our children.
As I wrote last week’s article, two students walked into my office.
I asked for their names.
One was called Maidei and the other Rodger.
Rodger?
What does that mean, I inquired.
The young man, a first year student at the University of Zimbabwe, professed ignorance as to the meaning of his name.
I was disturbed.
I had no problems with Maidei.
I could almost guess as to the circumstances that led her parents to name their child ‘Maidei’.
It is a typical African name; full of meaning and symbolism.
Rodger?
What Rodger?
Perhaps I will have to ‘google’ that one on the internet.
I will get a long list of white people’s ancestors, none of them black. And none of these white Rodgers would ever relate to the young black Rodger.
No connection to the roots, to the ancestral line.
And so Rodger is totally disconnected from his lineage, lost.
An unidentified moving object with human features.
All his ancestors would not identify him as their own.
That is the first step: Assuming a foreign name, however romantic, totally isolates the African from his roots, his culture.
That is what the Western Christian missionaries did and very deliberately too.
They baptised their converts to Biblical or European names. They even boasted then as they do today, that the baptised were now new people, totally divorced from their African culture.
The new foreign names symbolised their total divorce from their African past.
Total isolation, total subjugation mentally and spiritually.
What hope is there that these disconnected people can ever lead Africans in reclaiming their place in the family of nations?
Their names say they are no longer Africans.
And the black Christian converts made strenuous efforts to show their white mentors that they were born again.
They went out of their way then and even now, to demonstrate that they were, and still are, good and faithful servants.
They went out of their way to loudly and visibly denigrate their African roots.
But for their black skins, one could mistake them for Europeans.
Well not quite, but they are now cut off from their African origins. They can hardly contribute to the betterment of Africans.
Many African-Americans, at the height of their civil rights struggle in the 1960s and 1970s in the US, changed their names from those of their European slave masters to African ones.
They correctly realised that their European names were meant to erase their African identity.
By assuming African names they reclaimed their African identity. That struggle still continues.
All the achievements of real Africans with real African names will forever be attributed to Africans.
On the other hand all the achievements of black former slaves who were labelled with European names, are attributed to white people based on the names.
Numerous great inventions by black former slaves are not recognised as the products of black brain-power.
This is because the black inventors of many sophisticated scientific gadgets have European names.
Black History Month celebrated every year in the US, highlights the achievements of Afro-Americans whose European names hide their African identities.
Human beings generally derive inspiration from the achievements of their fellowmen whom they easily identify with by name.
African youths growing up in countries that are former European colonies such as Zimbabwe, look for African heroes to emulate, but alas, all they can find in school textbooks and websites are white heroes and black villains.
The writers of the books are whites bent on masking black achievements and promoting the racist white supremacy.
We know them by their names.
So the challenge is for pan-African authors to correct the record.
In the Diaspora, African achievers with European names are not recognised as black heroes because they have lost their identity.
And so the young African generations grow up with low self-esteem born of a false, but deliberately cultivated impression that blacks have not achieved anything significant in history.
African historians have a mammoth task to identify and chronicle the great achievements of their fellowmen.
That will strengthen African self-confidence and self-belief, rare social commodities in colonised Africa, but essential ingredients for reclaiming the African identity.
If we look for heroes in our pre-colonial history written by Europeans, we find no heroes but savages.
The strategy is to depict our black forefathers as savages and cruel warmongers.
The great Zulu King and military strategist, Tshaka, is depicted in various history books as a cruel bloodthirsty dictator.
His strength as a military strategist and visionary monarch are suppressed.
And so what’s in a name we ask again?
The answer is everything!
Our honour, our dignity, our African identity!