Page 52 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 7

AFRIKA IS GOD'S

BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS AND

RADICAL RESPONSIBILITY:
CONTEXTUALIZING THE ‘BLACK LIVES

MATTER’ SOCIAL MOVEMENT

Ronald Elly Wanda
The author is the director of Grundtvig Africa House
(GAHO) based in Nairobi, Kenya.

ver the past few its predictable familiarity. In this brief piece I want to
weeks, societies Floyd’s tragic death, as Mala- transgress the on-going unrests
across the world wian historian Paul Zeleza has across the world that have
have been given argued, echoes accumulated been characterized not by the
Oan opportunity to anger, pain, tiredness, frustra- Covid-19 menace that has kept
scratch their conscious about tion, and sadness at the African the world’s communities caged
their paramount values. This American condition following indoors, but by the acute racial
follows the death of George over four centuries of slavery, crisis in America that is seeing
Floyd, an unarmed black man lynching, racial segregation, the communities across the globe
who was murdered while in cus- new Jim Crow of mass black united in protesting not only
tody of the Minneapolis police in incarceration, and a litany of mi- racial but also other forms of
the United States. What some cro aggressions seared into the oppression.
of us find so sad and tragic collective memories of African
about Floyd’s brutal murder is Americans over generations. One thing made clear by

52 | heal . restore . rebirth . Afrika HAPPY ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY