WeeklySA_AdminHERITAGE: Propagators of a most noble declaration of May 8th as a future South African “Ancestral Day”, should be supported, says cleric Njabulo P Vilakazi in this article…
By Paul Njabulo Vilakazi
Who came first, my people or the bible? There are many innocent Biblicists and even Emperor Constantine Biblical Version students who think the Bible came before any Mother Continent’s “His/Herstory” for most just because it is called Holy, while the word ‘Holy’ assigned to these scriptures, simply means -the set aside and dedicated canonical books- and has nothing to do with a deity they call God(which word ,is also just a derivation of the word Good) never came at creation hour nor flowed down directly from the Creator’s Hand…
Now some Christians have come out to assert that Yeshua/Jesus ascended to heaven on May the 8th a Gregorian Calendar date that has nothing to do with the Son of Man and the Ascension itself cannot pass today’s empirical muster let alone the scientific -and I love Yeshua/Jesus to bits as the most wondrous Son of Man, just as I equally love Moshoeshoe.
I theologically stay at the feet of Makhanda ka Ncele, aka Makana, the left-handed – just as Yeshua and Saul of Tarsus sat at the feet of Gamaliel and the Mythological Bible Version would have you not having knowledge of this in order to bewitch and capture your mind. Makhanda asserted to the colonial powers that our understanding of the Creator/MdaliDiphu is far more superior to their understanding and the three hundred and thirty three (333) Saints of Timbuktu would concur.
This had earned Makhanda imprisonment on the Robben Island and he died defying its great waters as he drowned in the sea, while amaXhosa people had deeply believed he would come back (uzuboya uNcele). And the day of our ancestors should indeed bring back the spirit of Ncele, never to die at sea again…
Now that you are free to access knowledge and can express yourself free of fear, get yourself more knowledge of your ancestors by way of modern tools and books for searching and come to contribute to the advancement of the May 8th Project, to which I am personally offering myself.
I worship at the feet of Makanda, “the Messiah Warrior of Wisdom and Mental Liberation” just as I sit at the feet of Yeshua, “the Messiah of Peace and Healing”…
By the way, the more we disabuse folk of believing mythology of others as wholly true and just genuflect to our own fables as the by the way, other ways of moral and nation’s foundational pedagogy outside of the spiritual and supernatural, the more we miss the point. And, by the way, the word sin, simply means missing a point…
That Moses received the 10 Commandments on May the 8th, while these commandments were just a brief attempted summary of more in the indigenous history and culture and long been practised in Kemet where Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s Royal House….
That also Inkosi Albert Luthuli, a devout Christian preacher had declared a more emphatically non-violence approach to our struggle for liberation on May 8 1963.
And, thanks to God, we will soon get to have an idea as to who pushed him under the train wheels as the inquest into his mystery death starts soon. Was it for his peaceful approach to the liberation struggle going almost against the grain of the then armed-struggle convictions of “the Young Lions”, or from the hand of the powers-that-be then, or even of some agent provocateur?
The weight of the late ANC stalwart’s cause celebre inquest will no doubt begin to once more than whet our deserving historical appetite to investigate even deaths shrouded in mystery, like whether Nat Nakasa commited suicide or was he pushed through the New York hotel window. Whether, while David Stuurman, a Khoi and San revolutionary leader safely crossed the sea to escape from the Robben Island; Makhanda, another revolutionary leader who incidentally had Khoi -San, Xhosa and Malay blood coursing in his veins, really self-drowned in the same sea or whether he was actually pushed?
Even before the propagators of a most noble declaration of May 8th as a future South African “Ancestral Day”, should no doubt be welcome, it should nevertheless disabuse us of aligning this to colonial biblical history, despite the Noble Prize laureate Albert Luthuli having used this day very nobly indeed.
The two episodes of May 8th in the Bible are – no doubt – both mythological, whether they have Old Testament , New Testament alleged story behind them and an Artificial Intelligence, world and South Africa cannot continue to be led by this colonial biblical nose, even if for grander intentions.
For me, welcome is the beer company abetting this noblest enterprise on the Motherland, whose “his/herstory” has for centuries suffered so humongous abuse, such as the carrying of monikers Alkebulan and Africa, while our indigenous people had been just comfortable being called in regions of their origins and settlements, the people of Khem, the people of Timbuktu, the people of Abyssinia, the people of Abia the people of Azania and then Lesotho, the Gaza of Mozambique, Kenya, Kwa-Zulu, Botswana and Ghana etc…
I support the guts of the beer company to jump into the struggle of decolonization, while I myself don’t drink Milk Stout on doctor’s recommendations, otherwise its grit to take the centre stage even as a come-lately beverage centuries after uMqombothi (sorghum beer), I also salute.
Our ethno-identities and histories were there, before was known the Codex Sinaitus, the Bolgna Torah Scroll, the Orthodox Tewahedo Biblical Canons and the Leningrad Codex, the King James Version followed by many American versions that continue to confound our more gullible, highly tweaked in the vein of the ‘Super Powers’ ethos.
Soon I will be able to share with you, how some of the histories of especially Morena Moshoeshoe wa Pele, surpass by far some of the stories in any of the so-called Canonical Books and the religious elsewhere…
I hope to do that as part of emboldening many with the resolve to revolutionise the ballot box one more time, as indeed most profanely Sizilibele Ukuba Sizalwa Ngobani na? (Have we viciously ostracised ourselves from our roots?)
The seizure of Congress of Traditional Leaders of SA (Contralesa) rightfully of this project gives us hope that there are some among them who can still be trusted with our heritage, despite the largely pervasive corruption of their cohorts of Wabenzi comforts and other trappings. Let us trust “May 8 Ancestral Day” in our beloved country will happen in 2025 under the aegis of better-organised, people-centered governance that would have gravity and dignity.
Let’s hope and trust that newness in governance will birth a politically non-partisan milestone in our history, devoid of a normative narrative.
But, first and foremost, let us haul out of bed and from cellphone everyone, young and old, to go register a more revolutionary vote, since those damp squib ones that followed the 1994 Mandela vote, just before we enter a monumental era of self-recovery, ushered in, to a great extent by the oncoming 2025 May the Eighth Ancestral Day.
As never emboldened before, like our own working expats in London, came out in thousands to vote out the most puffed up power of whoever betrayed the vision of Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko , Chris Hani and Ruth First for sheer greed and the ugliest flat-footedness…
* Rev Vilakazi is a pastor, commentator
