By Nthungo yaAfrika
THE home and the environment are the kitchen where all human philosophies are cooked for a people to consume and are also a compass to guide future generations.
One of the stories in the Holy Bible, that many are afraid to openly scrutinise and question is the creation story of Genesis 2 Verses 18-24.
Has this story unified or divided Yaweh’s creation, especially us black Africans — ‘the conquered’?
I will try to thread through the maze of this story which has had devastating and retrogressive effects on the womenfolk since time immemorial and has benefitted none but semjaza, satan or the devil.
Yaweh is the author of order not confusion.
Historically, let’s look at the situation of womenfolk in Africa, Asia and Europe.
I will quote verbatim from the Book of Cheik Anta Diop, The Cultural Unity Of Black Africa, The Domains of Patriarchy and Matriachy in Classical Antiquity:
“…In Africa
‘Including Egypt and Ethiopia, the woman enjoyed a liberty equal to that of a man, had a legal individuality and could occupy any function (Candance, Queen of Ethiopia and commander of her army). She was already emancipated and no public act was alien to her.
…In Asia
By tradition, she was nothing. Her whole fortune came from adventure and a courtesan’s (mistress or high-class prostitute) life-at least in the region to which we have limited this study. Here the ideas of concubine and harem assume their proper meanings.
…In Europe
During the classical (traditional and standard) age (Rome and Greece) no courtesan’s adventures, no go-between and no accident could lead a woman to reign. She occupied a position similar to that of a slave, to the extent that, having no juridicial (having no power to administer justice) individuality she was unable to serve as a witness, was cloistered (sheltered) in the gynaeceum, was unable to take part in any public deliberation, her husband had the right of life and death over her, and had the right to sell her and her children, whom he could also abadon. However the ‘prostitutes’ were the only women who enjoyed esteem and the consideration of intellectual elite, without, nevertheless, having the possibility of becoming ‘courtesan queens’ as in Asia. Such a mistress was Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, who dismissed his lawful wife to live with her, inspite of public out cry; such were also the Greek courtesan Agathocles, with Ptolemy IV Philopator, who killed his father and his sister-wife Arsinoe, and other Greek women, the most celebrated of whom was Rhodophis.”
The European woman was not even emancipated by the Code Napoleon, as has been stressed by Engels; it was not until after the end of the last war that French women obtained the vote.
Returning to Asia, it can be said that, as in Byzantium, the succession to the throne was only regulated by violence and intrigue, to the exclusion of every idea of matriarchy.
The abandonment of children and the burial of infant girls, considered as useless mouths to feed, were common practices throughout the whole of the patriarchal Eurasian world.
This practice remained customary among Greeks, even after their settling down, and they were stupefied to see the Egyptians raise all their children without distinction of sex.’
“The Greeks noticed, almost with stupefaction, that in Egypt it was the practice to ‘raise’ all the children: by this is meant that it was not the practice there, as in Greece, to ‘expose’, that is to say, to abandon, the wailing new born children among the refuse of everyday.” (A. Aymard and J. Auboyer, L’Orient et la Grece Antique, op. cit., p. 49.
The above was the environment the Holy Bible was translated from original black African Traditional Religion by our conquerers — first the Persians (525 BC), then the Greeks (322 BC) and the Romans (84 BC); even the Arabs revised our religion when they conquered the Romans in Africa in the 6th Century.
Did the black African woman stand a chance?
No, she was totally stripped of her Yaweh free-given humanity even to this day and age.
Black African males think they are educated and enlightened — yes educated and enlightened to be ignorant of their history.
Males always quote 1 Corinthians Chapter 11 and 14 Verses 34-35 to silence women voices in Christian churches and it is the same in all religions on earth.
Here is a short history of illustrious African women from ancient 1500 BC to as late as 1900.
Hypatia, a philosopher, astronomer and mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire, a prominent thinker who taught philosophy and astronomy, played a major role in the formative years of Christianity.
She appeared in history at the time when European opposition to Christianity was waning.
Stripped naked in the street, she was dragged into a church and, there, killed by the club of Peter the Reader at the hands of monks.
The corpse was cut to pieces, the flesh scraped from the bones with shells and the remains cast into fire; the sins of the white Church.
Queen Dahia-al Kahina fought the Arabs and drove their army northwards into Tripolitania.
The fierce counter attacks of the Africans under the leadership of Kahina made some of the Arab governors doubt that Africa could be conquered.
She was of Hebrew faith and her opposition was purely nationalistic, since she favoured neither the Christians nor the Moslems.
Her death ended one of the most violent and vigorous attempts to save Africa for Africans.
She stood in the path of Islam and prevented it’s southward spread into the Western Sudan.
After her death, the Arabs changed their strategy and started partnering Africans.
Queen Candance of Ethiopia was also famous for her governing and war exploits.
Queen Nzinga of Angola, born in 1583, became Queen in 1623 at the age of 41 and resisted the Portuguese invasion of her country Angola.
She died on December 17 1663 and, with her death, the Portuguese occupation of the interior of South West Africa began.
These are some of the notable outstanding women who resisted the whites; Madame Tinbu of Nigeria, Nandi the mother of Chaka, Ambuya Nehanda of Zimbabwe, Kaipkire of the Herero people of South West Africa, the female army that followed the great Dahomian King, Behanzin Bwelle and not forgetting the Ghanian Queen who rallied Ghanian men against the British in 1900.
This gospel of reliberation of womenfolk was started by Yaweh’s having Yeshua born of a virgin mother.
The cry of the womenfolk is now on the altar of Yaweh. The race that will suffer most will be us, the Africans, because we are afraid of the truth, although we like quoting John 8: Verse 32: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Christianity and Islam have shed a lot of innocent black African blood although many black Africans are spiritually and physically attached to them.
The tradition and culture we boast is alien because our undiluted ancestors never treated the womenfolk as chattels.
Currently, African black churches are on the moon because of miracles they are performing; these won’t lift our race from the bottom of the pit where we sit because of the cries of the womenfolk, past, present and maybe future because as a race we are thickheaded and, unfortunately, are led by blind religious leaders.
Ibn Batuta, an Arabic traveller, was shocked by a traquil and vice-free Africa in the 13th Century and how free women were.
Enter Christianity and Islam, we are now a race of educated men with thuggery instincts coated by barbaric hypocrisy against our womenfolk.
A race is deemed civilised by the way men and womenfolk relate to each other.
Every time Yeshau hears the word Christian being uttered, He sheds tears because we are associating him with a religion dripping with old and fresh blood.
Yeshua, does not want to be associated with Christians, but friends. (John 15: Verses 13-16)
Let’s stop performing miracles and, first of all, preach the gospel of re-liberating our womenfolk, started by The Master Mind himself, Yeshua.
Are the black African womenfolk ready to be re-liberated?
Are men ready to be involved?
And are religious leaders ready to remove their blinkers and preach undiluted and uncorrupted truth about Yaweh and the Son of Man?
That truth is: Yaweh is love, is not vengeful, that kind of thinking is not original, it’s Eurocentric
The first gospel of the risen Yeshua was preached by women, like Mary Magdalene (Matthew 28) and the other Mary, Mary Magdalene (Mark 16), Mary the mother of James and Salome (Luke 24), Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women, while John 20 mentions only Mary Magdalene.
Where were the apostles representing men?
Hiding, in a locked house!