AFRICAN HISTORIANS SPEAK ON BLACK-WHITE RELATIONSHIPS AND THEIR MIXED RACE OFFSPRING

Taharqa Nubian leader who ascended the throne in Kemet in 689 BC, was betrayed by the mixed-raced Libyan alien feudal lords causing Kemet to become a become an Assyrian province.

There has been a lot of discussion and debate about black-white interracial marriages, much of it divisive and devoid of a historical analysis of the effect of this phenomenon on non-white people. One of the main consequential aspects of such relationships, are the mixed-race offspring that are produced. Throughout history, such mixed- race offspring become “buffers” between the dominant and dominated cultures and have shown that collectively, they aspire to the dominant race’s culture. Thus, under the system of white supremacy, collectively, mixed race people will wittingly and unwittingly aspire to and support the white culture making the white culture the greatest beneficiaries of black-white interracial marriages. Though there are examples of individuals that reject the position and privilege of being closer to the dominant white culture than their non-mixed black counterparts, history shows that overall, these interracial relationships, as a COLLECTIVE PHENOMENON, have had a negative influence on the struggle for black liberation. So I offer examples from this excerpt from Volume 1 of Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain.

My father taught me that if you want to solve a problem, you must go to the root of the problem. So we are going to go to the very beginning of black-white interracial relationships.

The Mulatto Problem

“Greeks unwittingly applied the second name of the City of Menes (Memphis), ‘Aigyptos’ to the whole country. For Memphis was also called Hikuptah, or the “Mansion of the Soul of Ptah,’ the god-protector of the city. From the Greek ‘Aigyptos’ Memphis became Egypt, and Egypt became the name of the ‘Two Lands,’ extending from the Mediterranean to the First Cataract.

There was no ‘Egypt’ before the black king from whose name it was indirectly derived. Before that the country was called Chem or Chemi, another name indicating its black inhabitants, and not the color of the soil . . . It was the whites, not the Blacks, who called Africa the ‘Land of the Blacks’ until Asian and European invasions made it expedient to change this to mean ‘African countries not yet taken over by Caucasians’; and later to ‘Africa South of the Sahara.’

Since the first to be called Egyptians exclusively were half-African and half-Asian, their general hostility to their mothers’ race was a social phenomenon that should not be passed over lightly . . . . Its nature is essentially opportunist, a quest for security, recognition and advancement by identifying with and becoming a part of the new power elite of the conquerors. . . .

Blacks who did not choose to flee south but remained under Asian rule, even if enslaved, worked harder to gain recognition and acceptance than any other group. [Siphiwe note: think of the Civil Rights movement in the United States]. Indeed, so anxious were some of these early Black for ‘integration’ with the Asians that they themselves did most in creating the new breed of Egyptians who were to become their mortal enemies. For in an all-out effort to appease the invaders, they freely gave their daughters and other desirable females as gifts to become concubines, thus speeding up the reproduction processes on an ever-widening scale. . . . The direct result was that more and more Egyptians became lighter and near-white in complexion. In short, they did, in fact, become more Asian in blood than African.

But what has been referred to as a ‘social phenomenon’ was in fact a development among the half-breeds everywhere that ran counter to what would be normally expected, if not contrary to nature itself. This was the outright rejection of one’s mother and her people and a cleaving to the father and his people. . . .

First of all, they were mainly the sons and daughters of white European-Asian fathers. These fathers recognized them as such and, in general, proudly. And since they claimed superiority over the Africans, their half-African offsprings considered themselves to be a superior breed also. These Afro- Asian offsprings were given preferential treatment, positions of authority, wealth according to the status of their patrilineal family, and an education that could draw on Asian cultures as well as the highly advanced African civilization in Upper Egypt and southwards to the ‘Land of the Gods’.

Another situation that was a most potent factor in the half-breed’s attitude towards their mothers’ race was that, more often than not, their mothers were concubinary slaves.

This meant that the half-breed was introduced into the lowest level of African life even from birth. . . . But since most of the ‘new Egyptians’ were originally sons and daughters of slave mothers and ‘upper class’ fathers, they tended to be ashamed of their mothers and sought self-realization on their father’s side. Furthermore, the slave mother had no claim on the children she bore. They belonged to the Asian father who could and generally did consider them as free-born due to their Asian blood.

To prove how truly Asian they were, the mixed Egyptians made hatred of Africans a ritual, and tried to surpass the whites in raiding for the slaves in all-African areas. Various Afro-Eurasians who became Egyptian kings declared ‘eternal warfare’ against the Blacks and vowed to enslave the entire race.

Relying wholly on the emerging concept of innate superiority of Europeans and Asians, these people everywhere created a class system that made their bastard offsprings superior to all Blacks, and in status next below themselves.”

Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race From 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.

My sons, this very same problem will repeat itself again 4,500 years later when the Portuguese come to the west coast of Africa where our Balanta ancestors lived. According to A History of The Upper Guinea Coast 1545 to 1800 by Walter Rodney,

“The lancado was almost invariably a Portuguese, but he is best regarded as a phenomenon – the private European trader living among African tribesmen – and as such he could be of any nationality. Allied to the lancado was the grumete, another Portuguese term best left untranslated, being loosely applied to a large category of African helpers of European traders. Some were purchased as slaves, some were paid what amounted to a wage, and others were virtually affined relatives of the white merchants. The grumete were at all times a significant part of the resident trading community led by the lancados. The main business of the lancados and grumetes was slaving.

Following Rodney, Boubacar Barry writes in Senegambia and The Atlantic Slave Trade,

“Miscegenation soon produced a category of Afro-Portuguese known as Lancados or Tangomaos, who carved out a niche for themselves in Senegambia’s interregional trade as indispensable middle men between European traders and the Senegambian kingdoms. . . . The lancados, like Afro-Europeans at all European trading posts in the area, henceforth made up a class of compradors in this proto-colonial situation. They exploited the Senegambian population to the maximum for their personal profit, their key role being to serve the major interests of European commercial capitalism.

Apart from the effective control exercised by French and British chartered companies in the Senegal and Gambia River valleys, the remainder of Senegambia was dominated by a disparate crowd of slaving privateers who crisscrossed the seaboard from north to south. Worse still, around the forts and at most of the trading posts full-scale trading communities sprang into being, made up of Europeans from various national backgrounds, with even larger numbers of new Euro-Africans adding to the numbers of Afro-Europeans left behind from the heyday of Portuguese commerce.

What came into being was nothing less than a diaspora of European or Afro-European traders of French, British and Portuguese origin. They were later joined by Americans…. The Euro-Africans thus ended up creating their own trading diaspora along the coast from the forts of Saint-Louis, Goree and Fort Saint James all the way to the Southern Rivers as well as along the Senegal and Gambia River valleys. This complex network of European or Euro-African traders, some linked to chartered companies, others tied directly to European trading houses, teamed up with the Soninke, Manding and Peul network of Juula traders coming from the Senegambian hinterland. . . . It was the Euro-African families of LeJuge, Blondin, Pellegrin, or Charles Cornier (1780-90) who dominated political and commercial life . . . . The rise of this powerful class of Euro-Africans was greatly facilitated by marriage arrangements in vogue in the region at the time. This was the system that produced the famed signares. These were wives of company personnel who accumulated colossal personal fortunes and rose to play important roles in the economic and social lives of such colonial enclaves. . . . In the Southern Rivers area, particularly in Rio Cacheu and Bissao, it was the old Lancados and Tangomaos of Portuguese descent who, from the sixteenth century onward, dominated trading circuits from Casamance to Rio Grande. They were active as far as Gambia in the north and Rio Pongo in the south. Throughout their history these Euro-Africans maintained close social and economic ties with the Cape Verde islands. The Afro-Portuguese frequently employed members of the local Papel, Beafada, and Bainuk communities . . . . Despite the hostility of the Joola, Balanta, and Bisago, the Portuguese and Afro-Portuguese had a much greater impact on the societies of the Southern Rivers area of Guinea Bissao than did the Manding of Kaabu and the Peul of Futa Jallon, isolated in their hinterland homelands and reduced to supplying slaves for the coastal slave trade.”

My sons, you now understand the problem that we have with the descendants of Baba Amuntu Abamhlope (“human beings who are white”) and the mixed breed, mulatto children that are produced when we marry and have children with them. This led to our mass migration from our homeland in Ta-Nihisi and it has been a problem ever since and resulted in our enslavement in America 4,500 years later. I’ll discuss the Euro-African more in Volume III.

For now, my sons, the easiest way to explain how it all started, in my own words, is this: some of our family, descendants of Baba Amuntu Abansundu left Ta-Nihisi and went to the north, northwest and northeast. The further north they went, the more difficult it was to survive because of the weather. To eat, these ancestors had to do more hunting. To stay warm, these ancestors had to wear animal skins and live in caves. Nothing was easy for them, and they did not have the ability to grow food and pursue intellectual pursuits. It’s like they stopped going to school and stopped learning for tens of thousands of years. This caused them to change physically, mentally and spiritually, becoming Baba Amuntu Abamhlope. They became the Caucasoid white people and the yellow people that are called Semites.

Cheik Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism

Meanwhile, the rest of our ancestors stayed home in Ta-Nihisi and Ta-Meri. Our family known as the Anu during this period of history, was the earliest to develop a sedentary lifestyle and never stopped learning and so they created what is called civilization – they had a calendar, writing, science, math, astronomy, astrology, arts and crafts, music and social institutions, and because of their Great Belief, they lacked any abnormal aggression. Our family built Nekhen, the first city, and others. The descendants of Baba Amuntu Abamhlope (“human beings who are white”) began to settle in our cities. Then, one day, around 2500 BC or 1600 BC depending on which chronology you refer to, after tens of thousands of years, a group of descendants of Baba Amuntu Abamhlope called “Semites” came back into the land of Ta-Meri. When they saw the civilization that we built, they were in awe. We welcomed them back home and allowed them to live with us. Our accomplishments caused them to feel inferior and insecure and they became envious and jealous. Because they had become a vicious people, a people without our original Great Belief, they became violent and this caused the original conflict. [See Michael Bradley’s The Iceman Inheritance: Prehistotic Sources of Western Man’s Racism, Sexim and Aggression.]

According to Diop,

“The history of humanity will remain confused as long as we fail to distinguish between the two early cradles in which Nature fashioned the instincts, temperament, habits, and ethical concepts of the two subdivisions before they met each other after a long separation dating back to prehistoric times. The first of those cradles . . . is the valley of the Nile, from the Great Lakes to the Delta, across the so-called ‘Anglo-Egyptian’ Sudan. The abundance of vital resources, its sedentary, agricultural character, the specific conditions of the valley, will engender in man, that is, in the Negro, a gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature, endowed with a spirit of justice and gaiety. All these virtues were more or less indispensable for daily coexistence. . . .

By contrast, the ferocity of nature in the Eurasian steppes, the barrenness of those regions, the overall circumstances of material conditions, were to create instincts necessary for survival in such an environment. Here, Nature left no illusion of kindliness: it was implacable and permitted no negligence; man must obtain his bread by the sweat of his brow. Above all, in the course of a long, painful existence, he must learn to rely on himself alone, on his own possibilities. He could not indulge in the luxury of believing in a beneficent God who would shower down abundant means of gaining a livelihood; instead, he would conjure up deities maleficent and cruel, jealous and spiteful: Zeus, Yahweh, among others.

In the unrewarding activity that the physical environment imposed on man, there was already implied materialism, anthropomorphism (which is but one of its aspects), and the secular spirit. This is how the environment gradually molded these instincts in the men of that region, the Indo-Europeans in particular. All the peoples of the area, whether white or yellow, were instinctively to love conquest, because of a desire to escape from those hostile surroundings. The milieu chased them away; they had to leave it or succumb, try to conquer a place in the sun in a more clement nature. Invasions would not cease, once an initial contact with the Black world to the south had taught them the existence of a land where the living was easy, riches abundant, technique flourishing. Thus, from 1450 B.C. until Hitler, from the Barbarians of the fourth and fifth centuries to Ghenghis Khan and the Turks, those invasions from east to west or from north to south continued uninterrupted.

Man in those regions remained a nomad. He was cruel. . . . “

A group of Semites, called Hyksos, attacked Ta-Meri, but by this time, the civilization that we created had become corrupt because some, like the Mesintu, abandoned our Great Belief and created kings and Pharaohs. Our Balanta ancestors had already started leaving Ta-Nihisi and TaMeri long before this, and the last phase of our ancestral migrations started in the XVIIIth Egyptian Dynasty.

Themehu: Libya

My sons, around 1500 B.C., descendants of Baba Amuntu Abamhlope (human beings who are white), mostly Greeks, started to migrate from the North (Europe) into Ta-Meri and the lands west of Ta-Meri which the Bible called “Put” and today is called Libya. In Introduction to African Civilizations, John Jackson writes,

“These Libyans are referred to in ancient (Indo-European) records often by the names of their various tribes, such as Atalantans, Getulians, Maurusians, Nasamonians, and Tehennu. . . . Herodotus. . . The Father of History first tells us that ‘the Nasamonians are a Libyan race’; . . . . The coast of Libya along the sea which washes it to the north, throughout its entire length from Egypt to Cape Soloeis, which is its furthest point, is inhabited by Libyans of many distinct tribes who possess the whole tract except certain portions which belong to the Phoenicians and the Greeks. Above the coast line and the country inhabited by the maritime tribes, Libya is full of wild beasts; while beyond the wild beast region there is a tract which is wholly sand, very scant of water, and utterly and entirely a dessert.’ . . . The ancient Libyan inhabitants of this region, originally a branch of the western Ethiopians, became intermixed with the Phoenician, Greek, and Roman immigrants. . . . the various ethnic groups intermarried freely. . . .The Romans called the indigenous dwellers of North Africa Barbari (barbarians), from whence we get the name ‘Berber’. So, in medieval and even modern times the North Africans have generally been known as Berbers. The Romans dubbed these Africans ‘barbarians’, not because of any cultural inferiority, but merely because they had certain social customs that were different form those of the Romans. The Libyans or Berbers possessed a matriarchal type of social organization, which was common to all African societies, but which seemed quite odd and strange to the Romans of Europe.”

Cheikh Ana Diop also explains in The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality:

“Fontanes next considers the claim that Egypt was probably civilized by Berbers or Libyans coming from Europe, via the west:

‘. . . . It is to the influence of the European race, to the immigration of the ‘men of the north’, that we should attribute this description of the Tamhou, Libyans of the Nineteenth Dynasty, ‘with pale face, white or russet, and blue eyes’! These Whites, hired as mercenaries by the Pharaohs, strongly hybridized the Egyptian and also the Libyan. . . . according to this theory, the African Berber from the west, the brown Libyan, settled in the valley of the new Nile; but almost immediately, or shortly afterwards, an invasion of Europeans hybridized the North African Libyan. This Libyan mixed-blood ‘with white skin and blue eyes’ may have modified the early Egyptian. By his European blood, this Egyptian could be related to the Indo-European race and to the Aryan.’

Now consider Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, who further describes our conflict with white people in her book, The Isis Papers: The Keys To The Colors:

“Impressed that the concept of a ‘system’ of white domination over the world’s ‘non-white’ peoples could explain the seeming predicament and dilemma of ‘non-white’ social reality, I tended to focus, as a psychiatrist, on what possible motivational force, operative at both the individual and group levels, could account for the evolution of these patterns of social behavioral practice that apparently function in all areas of human activity (economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war). . . .

The Color-Confrontation theory states that the white or color-deficient Europeans responded psychologically, with a profound sense of numerical inadequacy and color inferiority, in their confrontations with the majority of the world’s people – all of whom possessed varying degrees of color-producing capacity. This psychological response, whether conscious or unconscious, revealed an inadequacy based on the most obvious and fundamental part of their being, their external appearance. As might be anticipated in terms of modern psychological theories, whites defensively developed an uncontrollable sense of hostility and aggression. This attitude has continued to manifest itself throughout the history of mass confrontations between whites and people of color. . . .

The experience of numerical inadequacy and genetic color inferiority led whites to implement a number of interesting, although devastating (to non-white peoples), psychological defense mechanisms. The initial psychological defense maneuver was the repression of the initial painful awareness of inadequacy. This primary ego defense was reinforced by a host of other defense mechanisms.”

If it is legitimate to study the motivational force operating at the individual and group level when it comes to white people, it is equally legitimate to study the same when it comes to ALL people, including mixed-race people as a group, and specific mixed races such as European-African or white-black. Again, such an analysis shows that under a system of white supremacy, the collective behavior expresses itself as a desire or ambition to attain the privilege and power of the dominant white culture at the expense of the non-dominant black culture. This poses serious conflicts of interest for people in black-white interracial relationships who want to simultaneously maintain those relationships and not betray their black ancestors. The only possible outcomes are 1) maintain the relationship with the cumulative benefit accruing to the dominant white culture; 2) achieve such a high level of black nationalist and Pan African achievement that the results outweigh the benefit to the white culture (for example, Bob Marley); or 3) terminate the relationship in order to preserve the cumulative benefit accruing to the non-dominant black culture.

Dr John Henrik Clarke - The African World Under Seige start video at 27:00 mark

Homosexuality Contemplated From African Spirituality

To understand the phenomenon and meaning of homosexuality in the black community, it is necessary to begin from the original spiritual beliefs of “African” people. These beliefs have been researched and documented by numerous scholars and are summarized here as 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors.

In Volume 1 of Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain, and in a subsequent article ON QUESTIONS OF RACE, ETHNICITY AND NATIONALITY I wrote,

“YOU ARE ALL YOUR ANCESTORS – You (every single person reading this) is the union of your mother and father. That’s how you got here. Your father planted his seed in your mother’s womb, she nurtured it for nine months, and then you were born. Every human being that has ever lived was born from the union of male and female. The very BLOOD that circulates in your body was given to you from your mother and father. The very LIFE FORCE energy, the BREATH OF LIFE, and the GENETIC INSTRUCTIONS that are responsible for the life that you have – you received all of it from your mother and father. Therefore, your mother and father live inside of you. Because this is also true of your mother and father – that their mother and father live inside of them – then it is also true that your grandparents – their blood, their life force energy, their breath of life, and their genetic instructions, also live inside of you. From this it follows, that ALL your ancestors live inside of you. Your blood, your life force energy, your breath and your genetic makeup are shared by all the ancestors living inside of you. Therefore, your life is not your own. ALL your ancestors depend on you for their existence.”

It follows from this that every human being is both male and female since no one can deny that they are the union of their mother and father. This union of mother and father expresses itself physically through various features - you may have the hair color and texture of your mother and the nasal structure of your father. Your eye color comes from one parent and your cheekbone structure comes from the other parent. Likewise, you can have the genitalia of one of your parents and the sexual orientation of the other parent. The combinations are infinite and thus, it is not difficult to understand how it is possible how one person who expresses the physical appearance and genitalia of one parent can have the sexual orientation of the other. That said, regardless of one’s sexual orientation, there is both a spiritual and theoretical basis for understanding homosexuality and respecting the humanity of each and every person as energetic beings that are the union of their mother and father.

That said, from the point of view of African spirituality, there was a reason that ritual initiation ceremonies featuring circumcision were among the first spiritual rituals ever invented. Albert Churchward explains this in his book, The Origin and Evolution of Religion:

“The next stage of Religion and Religious ideas was evolved by the Nilotic Negroes. We find as man advanced up the ladder in evolution, so his Religious ideas progressed and advanced to a higher plane. All humans in the pre-totemic stage were in the state of a gregarious horde with its general promiscuity.

The earliest form of human society was brought into existence by the Nilotic Negro under what may be termed Totemic Sociology, which in one phase distinguishes it from the pre-totemic people.

For reasons unnecessary to be dilated upon in this book, they first divided themselves into two halves, or tribes; afterwards, these divided again into four; later a further subdivision took place into eight, and then further subdivisions, each tribe having its own distinguishing Totem. It became necessary to distinguish the blood relationship of these various tribes - the one from the other, as the Father of a child was never known - because all Women, of, say, “A” tribe, were common to men of “B” tribe, and vice versa, only the Mother blood could be traced. To ascertain this and keep it true they introduced ‘Totems’ and performed Sacred Ceremonies called Totemic Ceremonies. Whilst some of the Nilotic Negroes carried out the primitive wisdom from the same central birthplace in Africa (at the head of the Nile and around the Great Lakes), to the islands of the Southern Seas and other parts of the world . . . those that remained carried it down the Nile to take living root and grow, flourish and expand as their Mythology and Astro-Mythology, finally ending in the development by evolution in the Eschatology of Ancient Egypt.

The name Totem [is} . . . from the Egyptian Tem-t. The hieroglyphic is the figure of a total composed of two halves. The Egyptian Tem or Tem-t has various applications in Egyptian. It signifies Man, Mankind, Mortals, also to unite, to be entire or perfect; it is the name for those who are created persons, as in making young men and young women in Totemic Ceremonies. . . . To understand this definition, take the case of two different classes of one clan or class; the whole clan or tribe we will call A. This is subdivided into A and B. All A can marry all B, or all B can marry all A, but A must not marry A nor B marry B. These again can be (and are in some cases) re-divided again as regards their children and come under either C or D, and these again into two other sub-classes. Yet all are totaled into the one tribe. It is also a place name, as well as a personal name for the social unit or division of persons.

Among the Nilotic Negroes the Totem first represented two phases- primarily it was given to the girl when she was made a woman, as her badge or banner by which she, as the Mother, and all her children would be known; and, secondly, it included that of food districts, and the special food of certain districts was represented by the Totem of the family or Tribe. The Totem was first eaten by members of the group as their own special food; later this was altered, and the Totemic food was only very sparingly eaten by the Tribe with that Totem; it became Tabu, or sacred, to them. The Tribe was appointed its preserver and cultivator and was named after it.

Regarded as the climax of the Dip rituals, the blessing of the sacred stone takes place in a special grove of trees on the outskirts of the town. Tekpete refers to a legendary stone that the Krobo carried down from Krobo mountain in their original hoomeland. . . . Still revered as a focus for worship, the stone plays a special role for the initiates, who are brought to it for a test of their virginity. Wearing pure white strips of calico around their heads and crisscrossed over their chests, the initiates must remain silent during this most sacred of rituals. Each girl has a leaf placed in her mouth to turn her thoughts inward and to remind her of the obligation not to speak until the ceremony is over. As the girls proceed to the sacred grove accompanied by their ritual mothers, they carry long sticks called dimanchu, which literally means, “to make you a woman.”

The Totem primarily, then, was given to a girl when she became pubescent, as her badge or banner, by which she and all her children were always known. Thus, if her Totem was a Lizard, all her children would be Lizards, or, if a Crocodile, all her children would be young Crocodiles; and when we read in books, as we do, of women bringing forth Snakes, Crocodiles, or any other Zootype, we know that the Totem of the Mother was a Snake or Crocodile, or some other Zootype which was the name of her Totem, and her children obviously were named accordingly. The Totem, then, represented the Maternal Ancestor, the Mother who gave herself up for food to the tribe, and was eaten absolutely alive after she had ceased to bear children, because she should never die, but always be alive. This was the primitive Eucharist, and was the foundation of all such rites. The body and blood were veritably eaten whilst alive, and no morsel, however small, was allowed to remain uneaten. It was a sacred feast to be equally partaken of by each member of the tribe. . . . .In Totemism, the Mother and Motherhood, the Sister and Sisterhood, the Brother and Brotherhood, the girl who transformed at puberty, the Mother who was eaten as a sacrifice, the two women who were Ancestresses, were all of them human, all of them actual, in the domain of natural fact. But when the same characters have been continued in Mythology, they are superhuman. The Mother and Motherhoods, the Sister and Sisterhoods, the Brother and Brotherhoods, have been divinized. The realities of Totemism have supplied the types to Mythology as Goddesses and Gods who wear the heads and skins of beasts, to denote their character. The Mother, as human in Totemism, was known by her Totem, as the Water-Cow, and this became the type of the Great Mother in Mythology. But it is the Type that was continued, not the Human Mother. The Mother as first person in the human family was the first person in Totemic Sociology. Hence came the Great Mother in Mythology . . . .

The Totem afterwards, in its religious phase, was as much the sign of the Goddesses and Gods as it had been for the Motherhoods and Brotherhoods from whence it took its origin. The Zootype became and was the image of the superhuman power; for example, the Mother-Earth as a giver of water was imaged as a Water-Cow. Seb, the Father of Food, was imaged by the Goose that laid the eggs. The primary seven elemental powers were looked upon Mythically as children of the Great Earth-Mother, who were all born as Males; they were begetters as transformers. The two primary were twin-brothers, Set and Horus, representing as powers, Night and Day, or Darkness and Light, assigned as Set, God of the South, and Horus, God of the North. Shu was the third, representing the breath of life, breathing force; the winds, represented at the Equinox by the Lion; and these formed the primary Trinity, or the God in a triune form, or with three attributes. The cult of the primary Mythology was founded in invocation and propitiation of the Great Mother-Earth, the giver of life and birth, of food and water, as the primary power who brought forth the seven elemental powers, called her children. Many and various Zootypes have been used by the Nilotic Negroes all over the world as representative images, by the later Lunar and Stellar Cult people who came after. The powers of nature had been represented by pre-totemic people by sign language only. It was the Hero Cult Nilotic Negro who first represented these nature powers by means of Zootype forms. . . . . It was these Nilotic Negroes who first used Zootypes to distinguish the human Motherhoods and Brotherhoods. . . .

It is only by studying primitive man, his thoughts and his Totemic Ceremonies, and all that these represented to his mind in Sign Language, following and tracing them through the evolution of the human race, that one can arrive at a definite and true knowledge of the origin and meaning of our present-day beliefs. . . .

Ceremonial rites were established as the means of memorizing facts in Sign Language when there were no written records of the human past. In these, the Knowledge was acted, the Ritual was exhibited and kept in ever-living memory by continual repetition. The Mysteries, Totemic or Religious, were founded on the basis of action, Thus, the Sign to the Eye and the Sound to the Ear were continued, side by side, on equal footing, in the dual development of Sign Language that was visual and vocal at the same time. The brothers and sisters were identifying themselves, not with, or as, animals, but by means of them, and by making use of them as Zootypes for their Totems.

The secrets of the most primitive form of the Myths and Symbols for thousands of years existed in human memory alone. In the absence of written records the oral method of communication was held all the more sacred, as was exemplified in the ancient Priesthood, whose ritual and gnosis depended on living memory for its truth, purity, and sanctity. It was the mode of communicating from mouth to ear; it continued in all the Mysteries . . . . The earlier religions thus had their Mysteries interpreted.

WE HAVE OURS MIS-INTERPRETED.

Now, what does this have to do with Homosexuality? Churchward continues,

“The change of the human descent from the Mother-blood to the Father-blood is obviously commemorated in the Mysteries or ceremonial rites . . . . In the operation of young-man making, two modes of cutting are performed upon the boy by which he becomes a man and a tribal Father. The first of these is commonly known as circumcision . . . ; the other ceremony of initiation, which comes later, is the rite of subincision . . . The second cutting is necessary for the completion of the perfect man. With this trial test the youth becomes a man; fathership is founded, and, as certain customs show, the Motherhood is in a measure cast off at the time, or typically superseded by the Fatherhood.”

Here we understand that the first ritual of circumcision, around the age of 12, was the first step in the process of initiation into manhood. Prior to this, the boy-child was identified with his mother. The circumcision began the transformation from the feminine to the masculine, spiritually. This unlocked the masculine creative powers - “begetters as transformers”. The second ritual of the subincision is literally “the creation of man”. From the point of view of African Spirituality, the quality of the boy’s being is forever changed. This is explained by principle 16 of 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors:

16. “The quality of ‘mfumu’ (chief) is added to the commonality of an individual neither by external nomination, nor by singling him out. He becomes and is ’mfumu’ by endowment therewith; he is a new higher vital force capable of strengthening and maintaining everything which falls ontologically within his cure. A man does not become chief of the clan and patriarch by natural succession through the deaths of other elders who had precedence and because he has become the oldest surviving member of the clan, but because primogeniture inherently supposes an inner secretion of vital power, raising the ‘muntu’ of the elder to the rank of intermediary and channel of forces between the clan ancestors on the one hand and posterity with all its clan patrimony on the other hand. It never takes one long to observe the transformation on becoming chief of a man whom one has formerly known as an ordinary member of the community. The qualitative change is made evident by an awakening of his being, by an immanent inspiration or even, sometimes, by a kind of ‘possession’. The ‘muntu’, in fact, becomes aware of, and is informed by, his whole conception of the world around, through all his modes of knowledge, that he is now a true ‘muntu’, endowed with a new power which did not belong to his former human status. He is no longer what he was. He has been changed in his very quality of being.”

In the same way that one becomes ‘mfumu’ through endowment, so too, the boy becomes a man through endowment that is begun with the circumcision ritual. By the second ritual of subincision, the boy, now made man, is endowed with a new, masculine power, which did not belong to his former boyhood status. He is no longer a boy, identified with his mother (feminine ancestor). He has been changed in his very quality of being into a “man”.

Returning to Churchward,

“Nature led the way for the opening rite performed upon the female, and therefore we conclude that this preceded the operation performed upon the men, which was a custom established in the course of commemorating the change from the Matriarchate to the Father-rite.

When we hear Nilotic Negroes say that ‘The Lizard first developed the sexes’ and also that it was the author of marriage, we must first know or ascertain what the Lizard signifies in Sign Language. we find that, like the Serpent of Frog, it denoted the female period, and we see how it distinguished or divided the sexes and in what sense it authorized, or was the author of, Totemic marriages, because of its being a sign or symbol of feminine pubescence. It is said of the Amazula: That when old women pass away they take the form of a kind of Lizard. The Lizard in the primitive system of Sign Language was a Zootype, the Ideographic value of which informs you that it appeared at puberty, but disappeared at the turn of life, and with the old woman went the disappearing lizard. . . .

When the Arunta perform the rite of subincision, which follows that of the primary operation (circumcision) a slit is cut in the penis right down to the root. It is performed as an assertion of manhood, and is a mode of ‘making the boy into a man,’ or ‘creating man.’ Now, at this time it was customary to cast the Motherhood aside by some significant action; that is, when the Fathership is established in the initiation ceremony. And in the Arunta rite of subincision, the operating Mura first of all cuts out an oval-shaped piece of skin from the male member which he flings away. The oval shape is an emblem of the female all the world over, and this is another mode of rejecting the Mother and of attributing begettal to the Father, as it was attributed in the creation by Atum-Ra, who was both male and female. (As the one “ALL PARENT”).

From the ‘cutting’ of the male member now attributed to Atum-Ra, we infer that the rite of circumcision and of subincision was a mode of showing the derivation from the human Father in supersession of the Motherhood, and that in the double cutting the figure of the female was added to the member of the male; not is this without corroboration. In his ethnological studies (p. 180) Dr. Roth explains that in the Pitta-Pitta and cognate Boulia dialects, the term Me-Ko Ma-ro denotes the man with a vulva, which shows that the oval slit was cut upon the penis as a figure of the female, and a mode of assuming the Fatherhood. In the Hebrew Book of Genesis this carving of the female on the person of the male, in the second creation, has been given the legendary form of cutting out the woman from the body of the male. Adam is thus imaged as a biune parent, Atume-Ra.

But when the custom of circumcision was transferred to the time of childhood, as it had been by the Jews and Arabs, to be performed on the infant of eight days old, then the natural (i.e. according to the Totemic religious condition) loses its sense and becomes cruel in its dotage.

The Mystery of the resurrection, which was originally instituted by these Totemic Nilotic Negroes, may be seen still performed symbolically by the Arunta Tribes in the quabarra inguriringa inkinga, or corroborree of the arisen bones, which bones image the dead body, whilst the performers represent the Ulthauna, or spirits of the dead. The bones were sacredly preserved by those who were yet unable to make the mummy as a type of permanence.

Every native has to pass through certain ceremonies before he is admitted to the secrets of the tribe. The first takes place at about the age of 12 years; the final and most impressive one is probably not passed throught until the native has reached the age of 30 years. These two initiations thus correspond to, or represent, the origin of those mysteries of the double Horus, or Jesus, at 12 years of age; the child Horus, or Jesus, makes his Transformation into the adult in his baptism or other kindred mysteries. Horus, or Christ, as the man of 30 years is initiated in the final mysteries of the resurrection. . . . The first act of initiation in these Mysteries is that of throwing the boy up into the air. This was a primitive mode of dedication to the Ancestral purity of the Totem or the tribe, whose voice is heard in the sound of the churinga or bull-roarers whirling around.

It is said by the natives ‘that the voice of the Great Spirit was heard when the resounding bull-roarer spoke.’ The Great Spirit was supposed to descend and enter the body of the boy and to make him a man, just as in the mystery of Tattu, the soul of Horus the adult, descends upon and unites with the soul of Hours the child, or the soul of Ra, the Holy Spirit, descends upon Osiris to quicken and transform and re-erct the Mummy, where risen Horus becomes bird-headed as the adult in Spirit; the Arunta youth is given the appearance of flight to signify the change resulting from the descent of the Spirit, as the cause of transformation. When one becomes a soul in the mysteries of the Ritual by assuming the form or image of Ra, the initiate exclaims: ‘Let mew wheel around in whirls, ler me revolve like the turning one’ (Ch. 83, Rit.) The ‘turning one’ is the sun God Kheper. . . as the soul fo ‘self-originating force,’ which was imaged under one type by the Bennu, a bird that ascends the air and flies to a great height whilst circling round and round in spiral whorls (Ch. 85, Rit.).

The doctine of soul-making at puberty originated amongst the Nilotic Negroes, as did many of the other Egyptian Mysteries. . . . “

Now consider the Balanta. In Volume 1 of Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain, I wrote,

“The Balanta had worked to maintain customs and traditions based on their ancestral histories; . . . After the harvest, the Balanta people have a celebration called the Kussundé, where non-initiated men compete in dances. As symbols of family and spiritual connection, the masks play an important role when the community comes together to celebrate with music and dance. The Balanta practice indigenous, spiritual customs and rites. In the Balanta society, God is believed to be far away, and communication with the Almighty is established through their spiritual practices and traditions. All important decisions amongst the Balanta are taken by a Council of Elders. To become a member of the Council of Elders, the person has to be initiated during the Fanado ceremony. In general, egalitarianism prevails amongst the Balanta.

The Balanta have initiation rites at various states of the individual’s life. Each phase of life, from childhood to adulthood, is regulated by an initiation that marks the entrance into a new social category. From early childhood up to age 15, the child belongs to the category of Nwatch. Around age 18 to 20 the individual enters the Fuur and then enters the Nghaye around age 25. Around age 30, according to the rites of Kgnessa man will be authorized to take a woman. After the young Balanta man has become a landowner and taken on family responsibilities, he can then be chosen by his maternal uncle to participate in the Fanado initiation. Once chosen for the Fanado, a Balanta man cannot refuse the family’s wishes. The Fanado initiation ceremony takes place once every four years. The Fanado is a two-month process in the “sacred woods” which is the ultimate phase of initiation rites and social hierarchy. Initiation during the Fanado ritual opens the doors of maturity and wisdom in the Balanta community.”

Such age-grade initiation ceremonies of the Balanta are common among all people of Africa everywhere. And now we can begin to understand the phenomenon and meaning of homosexuality in the black community.

When people were kidnapped, captured and taken in chains from their homelands in Africa and brought to the America’s, they were prevented from practicing most of their spiritual and cultural traditions, including their traditional age-grade initiation ceremonies and rites of circumcision turning boys into men. After six or more generations without such transforming cultural practices, male children of the descendants of those who were enslaved had to find other means to make such transformations. Over the past twenty years or so, that alternative venue for establishing manhood came from “street” and “gang” culture. In my review of the Balanta novel 13 Bars of Iron, I discussed this, also:

“Similarly, another typical young black male hood behavior pattern can be re-examined and re-defined: dropping out of high school. Perhaps the book’s most brilliant passage occurs when Cal is explaining to his girl Kim why he and Black males like him drop out of high school. When Kim says, “You lost me; you love learning, but hated school?” Cal responds:

“Let’s take a subject, any subject, seventh-grade science, for example. In that textbook you gone cover Astronomy, Physical Science, Biology, Botany, Geology, etc. By the end of the year, you will have a solid foundation and understanding of the basic principles of each of these sciences. Then you go to high school and spend a whole year on Biology, a whole year on Physics, a whole year on Earth Science, essentially relearning the same shit you learned in the 7th grade. Now, that’s cool if you plan on becoming a Botanist or Biologist, but, if not, when you start relearning the same shit you learned when you was little, you gone eventually tune out. It’s the same for the other subjects. And tune out is what I did for four years of high school. I was barely there, and when I was there the shit they was hitting me with wasn’t stimulating me, because it wasn’t new and I wasn’t learning shit about myself there. I don’t think I learned shit the entire time I was there. I could have gone to college straight from the eight grade. . . .

You seen the minis-series ‘Roots,’ right? So you remember when Kunte Kinte was in Africa before he got caught by the slave catchers. He had just completed his manhood ritual, his rite of passage so that he could become a warrior in his tribe. This was customary in almost every West African society. The Fulani, the Wolof, Mandinka, they all had these rites of passage. In most West African cultures, by the time a boy is 15 or 16 he went through one of these rites. The learning during these rites was Socratic; the young man was tested, mentally, physically, emotionally. After demonstrating an in-depth understanding of certain principles, principles the elders deemed necessary to live, protect and govern, he was elevated from the status of boy to that of a man. That’s where we get the whole concept of pledging in our black Greek lettered organizational from. The new man then returned to the village and was given his own hut. He provided for his village. He was allowed to participate in governance. He was a man in every sense, and even his mother wasn’t allowed to question him. He didn’t know everything at that age and stage. He still had to utilize the counsel of his elders, but society recognized him as a man. Now, you contrast that with a 15-year-old boy of African descent growing up in the U.S. He’s forced to sit and be lectured at for eight hours straight, five days a week, lectured at about the same shit he been learning the last nine or ten years. We not even taking into account the bias and the structural racism in the U.S. education system. His nature is going to lead him to a different environment, one where he is stimulated, and one where he is able to test and prove his manhood. And where is that in most cases? Well, for many of us it’s the streets. That’s why you see so many cats leave school and turn to the streets right about that age. That’s the only place many young men can receive the stimulation their physical and mental maturity warrants.. At 15 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was at Morehouse, not in high school. At 15, Malcolm X was on the streets of Boston getting his education. Look at hip hop. Cats like Nas, Jay-Z, Tupac, by most measures these dudes are all considered geniuses, they also all abandoned our educational system about the same age. I know I am using anecdotal and historical evidence to prove my point, but I bet if you look at the data you’ll find that most black males who do drop out of high school do so at that very age, right about 15 or 16, right at the age where biologically and culturally, in African culture anyway, he was trained to become and eventually was treated as a man. In this culture, he is treated like anything but. Our nature and our pre-slave culture and tradition is completely incompatible with this Western education system. That’s why it fails so many of us. I read a book on this shit when I was a kid. Check out this cat named Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu. He lays a lot of this shit out in a book series he has called Countering the Conspiracy Against Black Boys.”

Lundy states that “The fanadu initiation is arguably the most important stage in the Balanta age progression because it represents manhood, adulthood, and the rights that are associated with this status. This ritual is some-times described as ‘opening the doors’ of maturity and wisdom in the Balanta community.” How could Cal and the millions of young black men like him, ever behave appropriately having never had the doors of maturity and wisdom opened for them?”

Denied the age-grade initiation ceremonies and having only street and gang culture, and I would add sports, as the only alternative for developing manhood, many young black men never had the spiritual, cultural and ontological opportunity to constructively develop their manhood. Meanwhile, the religion that was eventually open to them was Christianity. However, the version of Christianity that was presented was already corrupted and devoid of the gnosis of the Nilotic Negroes who originated its foundational spiritual concepts. This Europeanized version of Christianity was deliberately used to foster the spirit of “submissiveness” and subservient role in society that further mitigated against the development of traditional African manhood. Consequently, since all things proceed from “spirit”, lack of spiritual man-hood transformation has led to the physical manifestation of boys who never became men. They didn’t learn the secrets of their healthy, African society and never had the doors of maturity and wisdom of their FATHERHOOD and natural place in society opened to them. Living in the unnatural environment of white supremacy that denied and demonized black manhood, the result has been increased homosexuality. This was clearly articulated by Ras Jahaziel,

“When one looks at the first inspiration that came to I&I from His Majesty, it was an INSPIRATION through the establishment of IVINE ORDER. It was not an inspiration to create a mere RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT. Neither was it an inspiration to create a mere social movement nor a political movement. The vision was to create an IVINE ORDER OF LIVITY that encompassed ALL aspects of life. . . . Without a Pan-African vision that has as its goal the establishment of Black Nationhood with a restored concept of BLACK ROYALTY AND DIVINITY, the root of the problems that now face Black civilization cannot be rooted out. THE TRUTH MUST BE FACED THAT THE PROBLEMS ARE NOT ONLY ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL, but they are also SPIRITUAL in the sense of having been subjected to unnaturalness for so long that naturalness becomes an unwelcome stranger. TRAPPED, domesticated and tethered for centuries to the stake of unnaturalness the caged and domesticated creature is apt to lose its spiritual equilibrium and forget what is clean from what is unclean, what is right from what is wrong, and what is high from what is low. This is the condition of the ‘ex-slaves’ in this time, sorely in need of something more than a political movement, something that involves the reshaping of character in the similitude of ROYALTY. . . .”

From the Balanta and other African peoples point of view, once one understands and internalizes the 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors, then one understand that the greatest duty of a Balanta man is to bear children and to continue the customs which sustain the ancestors. This is totally incompatible with homosexuality. If you do not bear children to carry on the lineage of people who, through the original totemic rituals, sustained the life of the ancestors after they departed the earth, then what use, what WORTH do you have to the ancestors? The natural law justice in automatic operation is the fact that homosexual men would not reproduce themselves. However, the advent of technology and LGBT communities presents a new challenge since homosexual men are using surrogates and then raising children in non-traditional (African cultural) homosexual environments.

Finally, in concluding, I understand that many people will think that modern science and technology is a mark of progress and represents a greater level of human understanding and achievement. Such people, however, suffer from a Western bias that has proved to be the very thinking that is destroying the planet. Such people think that everything is material and they neither understand nor care to see the spiritual reality of all existence. Placide Temples, a white supremacist who studied the Bantu people, put it best when he wrote,

“In common with so many others, I used to think that we could get rid of Bantu “stupidities” by suitable talks on natural science, hygiene, etc., as if the natural sciences could subvert their traditional lore or their philosophy. We destroy in this way their Natural Sciences, but their fundamental concepts concerning the universe remain unchanged…. They have a different conception of the relationships between men, of causality and responsibility. What we regard as the illogical lucubrations of ‘gloomy Niggers’ . . . are for them logical deductions from facts as they seem them and become an ontological necessity. If thereafter we wish to convince Africans of the absurdity of their sizing up of the facts by making them see how this man came to fall sick and of what he died, that is to say, by showing them the physical causes of the death or of the illness, we are wasting our time. It would be in vain even to give them a course in microbiology to make them see with their own eyes, or even to discover for themselves through the microscope and by chemical reactions what the ‘cause’ of the death was. Even then we should not have settled their problem. We should have decided only the physiological or chemical problem connected with it. The true and underlying cause, the metaphysical cause, would none the less remain for them in terms of their thought, their traditional ontological wisdom.”

AN IGBO EXAMPLE:

DO YOU KNOW THAT IN TRADITION, SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS ALLOWED, BUT WITH A TANGIBLE REASON

NOW LISTEN,,,,,

The Igbo people have a culture that permits same-sex marriage but not same sex copulation.

In this kind of marriage, a widow who has past menopause but without a child or male child goes ahead to marry a younger woman of reproductive age,

So that she could bear sons to continue the lineage of her late husband.

The older woman informs the umunna (kinsmen) about her decision to marry a younger woman.

The umunna knowing that this is a great sacrifice,

Supports her and accompanies her to ask for the maidens hand in marriage.

She pays the bride price and automatically becomes the husband of the young maiden.

In most cases, such widows prefers to marry a woman whom has given birth to children outside wedlock( especially male children),

Because in Igbo land, only bride price validates father hood.

The aged widow, after marrying her wife is given a special honour and place amongst the men.

In some parts of Igbo land, such women are forbidden from having affairs; they must live the rest of their lives without feeling the warmth of a man.

It is also important to note that the marriage between these women are NON SEXUAL marriage.

Homosexuality is an abomination in Igbo land.

The younger maiden chooses a man of her choice among the ụmụnna for procreation.

Whatever child she bears is considered the legitimate child of the widow's husband and he or she bears the late husband's name.

This culture has helped in preserving and ensuring the continuity of different lineage.

YAGAZIE

Ezenwanyi mmiri obinna onatara chi Dibia igba AFA - Emeka Nwite Igbo Culture and Traditions“

Befera: The White Christian Witches of the Balanta Worldview

“Most considered those who profited at the expense of others to be what Balanta called befera . . . translated as ‘witches’ or ‘cannibals’ - people who consumed others’ health, souls, or bodies and undermined community coherence. Kidnappers who seized kin or neighbors in the night and sold them fell into this category, as did European and Eurafrican (mixed race) slavers and their middleman agents.” - Walter Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600-1830

To understand the Balanta view of colorless (white) people and “Christians” one must first see the world through Balanta ontology and the 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors. Only then will the following passage from Hawthorne’s book make sense:

“Across the [Guinea Bissau] coast, loyalty to and selfless hard work for family and community were virtues, deserving of praise. However, disloyalty, disobedience, and greed were ‘sins’ deserving of punishment. . . . .

Perhaps the most serious of transgressions in coastal areas was witchcraft. What witchcraft was and how it was dealt with in the Guinea-Bissau area was detailed by Philip Beaver, who launched a failed attempt to establish an English colony on the island of Bolama in the later eighteenth century. In his diary, he expressed shock at the degree to which people in the area believed in ‘witches,’ or people who attained unnatural wealth or fortune by entering into a contract with a spirit. The spirit aided the supplicant but demanded human souls in return. One evening, Beaver said, two or three of the colony’s African workers, who were known as grumetes (literally, ‘cabinboy’ but on the coast the word was applied to blacks laboring in any capacity for an employer), visited him to report that one of their colleagues named Francisco ‘was not a good man.’ Francisco, they said, ‘wanted to eat one of them (John Basse) who had been very ill.’

By ‘eating,’ the grumetes meant consuming the health, soul, or body of another, which resulted in the victim becoming sick, dying, or disappearing. The term has been used for centuries to describe witches’ actions; witches were thought to sacrifice others clandestinely at night, consuming them as part of their spirit contract. Some witches had the power to shift shapes, assuming the form of an animal and then devouring their prey. When people disappeared in the night - the victims of kidnappers who enslaved and sold them - they had been, in the coastal conception of things, ‘eaten’ by witches. That is, they had been consumed by someone who benefited from their demise..

For Europeans like Beaver, the notion of witches consuming others was ridiculous. Beaver, indeed, was struck by what he saw as the improbability of a man ‘eating’ another, so he sought explanation from a grumete. named Johnson, who was fluent in English. Johnson ‘said that the man accused of eating the other was a witch, and that he was the cause of John Basse’s illness, by sucking his blood with his infernal witchcraft.’ Although Beaver insisted, ‘that there is no such thing as a witch,’ Johnson had do doubt that there was, saying that Francisco ‘is well known to be a witch; that he has killed many people with his infernal art, and that this is the cause of his leaving his own country.’ Should he return to his people, Johnson said, Francisco ‘would be sold as a slave.’ Johnson also told Beaver of another witch among the grumetes named Corasmo. He ‘could turn himself into an alligator’ and ‘had killed many people by his witchcraft.’ Corasmo had also fled his country so as to avoid being sold to Atlantic merchants. Witchcraft, Johnson insisted again to Beaver, ‘was never forgiven, and its professors never suffered to remain in their own country when once found out’ because ‘they would either be killed or sold.’

Johnson’s statement is strikingly similar to others recorded on the Upper Guinea coast over a period of several hundred years. . . .Although there were (and are) differences in how various coastal societies viewed witches, Beaver’s account makes clear, as do many studies, that in the Guinea Bissau area, selfish and self-serving behavior was evidence of witchcraft. Witches gained fortune and elevated themselves above their peers by harming those around them, and in societies that sought to equalize the distribution of wealth and power within gender and age groupings, this was unacceptable and dangerous. People of the Cacheu River region of Guinea Bissau, Eve Crowley writes, believe that witches focus ‘excessively on personal achievement and advancement even at the expense of others.’ Witches, then, defy sanctions against ‘immoderate greed,’ becoming ‘ruthless and dangerous and willing to sacrifice the lives of their kinspeople.’ Similarly, Eric Gable argues in a study of the Manjaco of the same region, ‘Excessive prosperity is evidence of a heinous crime’ - a pact with a spirit that could only be forged at the expense of others in the community. In small-scale, egalitarian communities, he argues, ‘wealth is evil,’ and the rich are thought to be ‘morally reprehensible’ witches.

Balanta, a group with whom I have spent many years, believe that to become wealthy and powerful requires striking a deal with a spirit. Such contracts are forged with the sacrifice of human lives, which is the price that spirits demand. For this, when people fall ill or die it is widely suspected that someone in a community must have acted nefariously. . . . An elder Baga put this in clear terms in an interview. ‘This is an egalitarian society,’ he said. ‘We all keep our heads at the same level; if someone wants to raise their head above the rest of us, they will have it chopped off.’

The frequency of raiding after the mid-eighteenth century offered some people increased access to wealth and introduced the possibility of widening social differentiation within egalitarian communities. Of Esulalu, Baum notes that slave raiders and their extended families managed to acquire more cattle and rice fields and took control of important religious shrines. However, because cattle holdings could be wiped out from disease, a rich man could quickly become poor. Further, slavers did not control all shrines, so they were forced to share some of their fortune with other shrine keepers. Similarly, those who reaped gains from slaving ‘had to be careful how they displayed their wealth or how they wielded power, let they be accused of using nefarious means to achieve their preeminence.’ Esulalu were, then able to limit the influence of those who realized gains from slave raiding and trading and to ‘preserve a structure of diffuse power.’ Here, as elsewhere on the coast, witchcraft trials served to maintain the status quo - to prevent some from rising too far above others. . . . Most communities remained free from rule by state’s elite. . . . Witchcraft and witchcraft trials were a means of perpetuating political and economic decentralization. Witchcraft accusations reflected tensions in society, but they did not necessarily intensify class distinctions. In Guinea Bissau, such accusations eradicated these distinctions. Witchcraft trials were the means through which common folk resisted the emergence of a political elite. . . .Those who failed to make connections within their communities - to foster friendships by acting generously rather than selfishly - were necessarily witches. No one came to their aid. Following a trial, community members, Alvares continued, ‘attack the household of the forsaken wretch and confiscate all his goods.’ In this way, wealth that should have been the community’s was distributed to the population at the moment of a witch’s elimination.

Although direct evidence is lacking, we might speculate that as the number of ships arriving in Bissau and Cacheu increased and as coastal groups stepped up the production of slaves to garner imports after 1750, the frequency of witchcraft accusations and trials increased as well. . . . Those who got too close to Europeans or, more likely, Eurafricans, who lived on the coast and served as intermediaries in trade relations, risked disrupting group cohesion by shirking their responsibilities in fields and by elevating themselves above their peers as they accumulated excessive wealth.

Thos who engaged too much with Europeans and Eurafricans risked becoming like them - risked becoming witches. And this is precisely how coastal people viewed whites and those associated with them - as witches. Beaver noted this when he wrote that ‘all white man witch’ is an article of general belief among these people.’ A few years earlier in Sierra Leone, John Matthews wrote something similar; Africans thought ‘the white man’ carried out the actions of witches with each slave he purchased, using the slave as ‘a sacrifice to his God, or to devour him as food.’ On the Upper Guinea coast from as early as the sixteenth century and through to today, many Africans called Christians (or people who professed Christian - or European-based identities) ‘white’ . . . .Given this, ‘white man’ - as in ‘all white man witch’ - likely applied to a broad spectrum of people associated with Atlantic commerce and Christianity, be they light skinned or not.

Whatever the case, it was clear to all that ‘whites’ often took possession of humans and robbed them of their strength by chaining them, marching them to ports, underfeeding them, and holding them in filthy barracoons where they awaited embarkation on ships. Moreover, ‘whites’ were motivated by selfishness and greed. They controlled great wealth, they sought ever more riches, and excessive personal affluence was evil. Europeans and Eurafricans turned people into profit - slaves into tobacco, alcohol, cloth, and other things - which was witchcraft par excellence.

Slaving and witchcraft, then, went hand in hand. . . . In the case of the Balanta, men who left their communities to meet with foreign merchants could be given the penalty of death. “

This passage from Hawthorne helps explain this further passage discussing the Balanta ancient ancestors from Credo Mutwa’s book, Indaba, My Children,

“The Ba-Ntu, or the Ba-Tu, were the founders of our culture and our religion. And being a solid, uniform nation they were at peace for thousands of years. They were not ruled by chiefs, but by a High Council of the Mothers of the People – that is, all the Witches and Sybils over the age of forty. At this time the Strange Ones, the Phoenicians, or Ma-Iti, who came some five to six hundred BC, and the slave-raiding Arabs were things of the distant future.

The Ba-Tu were at peace among themselves and because a High Curse was laid upon any person who stole as much as a single grain of corn from his neighbor, crime was totally unknown. There were warriors-elect who stationed themselves along trading routes at regular intervals, to protect travelers and traders against attack, not by human beings, but by wild animals. Man, in Africa at least, had not yet thought of offending a fellow man, physically or otherwise.

The ruling Council of the Mothers of the People used magic and naked intimidation to exercise control over all the people. These people had no fear of death; they knew it as something inevitable which had to come sooner or later, and capital punishment had no meaning whatsoever. The Mothers of the People also knew that corporal punishment infuriates, challenges and hardens the average criminally inclined human being and encourages him to become more cunning. Thus, they kept war and crime away from their land with the one medium that impresses the average human being – witchcraft.

Tribal historians today still sigh for those days when there was only one race of man and the Spirit of Peace walked the land – when every man woman and child, yea, every beast felt the soothing protection of the soft-eyed, infinitely wise Mothers of the People.

This was the first and last instance in the whole record of the Black People of Africa when pure witchcraft and black magic were used, not to terrorize people, but to keep peace in the land. For hundreds of years peace reigned in the land of the Ba-Ntu and in this atmosphere of peace the Great Belief was born. When eventually this nation broke up into the various tribes the Great Belief had taken such a strong hold on the souls and minds of people that they were completely lost without it.”