THE AWAKENING

Being the Transcript of a lecture delivered by Baba Ayi Kwei Armah

“Finally, there is plain mental laziness, the distinguishing characteristic made famous by Fanon's
critique of the Western educated non Western elite. In Africa, the latter prefers consumption to
production as a fixed principle of life. He prefers imitation to innovation. The normal member of this
class admires products readymade, purchased, bottled or packaged in the West—homogenized,
precooked and predigested if possible.”
Ayi Kwei Armah

“It is astonishing how disloyal and selfish is the average Negro "intellectual" of the passing generation
to his race. The Negro who has had the benefit of an education... is the greatest fraud and stumbling
block to the real progress of the race. He was educated with the wrong psychology and perspective. He
indulged the belief, and carried out the practice, that to be a man, and be great, is to exploit the less
fortunate members of his race, barter their rights economically and politically, and then with the
attendant personal success, seek to escape the race through an underground current of miscegenation.”
Marcus Garvey

Introduction by Moderator:
...to others, our special guest for today, our speaker; a brother whom most of us in the community and
others perhaps, through other means, have come to be acquainted with him through his writings. Two
Thousand Seasons in particular. But Brother Ayi kwei Armah has written other books: The Beautiful
Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments, Why Are We So Blessed?,The Healers, in addition to Two Thousand
Seasons. I want to share with you that Brother Armah, when we met with him a couple of weeks ago,
he said, “Brother, I don’t write religious materials....I’m not a writer of religious things.”

Well Brother Armah, when most of or many of the so called religious writings in the world today were
written, they were not written with that thought, that purpose in mind. It particularly brings to my mind
the writings of the New testament and the Holy Bible; they were letters communicated to people of
certain attitudes, certain set of values, a certain struggle. And it was how the people used those writings
and what they came to mean to the people that made them sacred writings. And so our expression to
him was, “We’ve found so much of our struggle, so much of our values, so much of what we are about
in your writings and we have made the decision – we have been led to make the decision to use them in
ways to help guide ourselves and stabilize ourselves and receive message from on high.”

We will not put you on any pedestal that you don’t wanna be on; we won’t treat you as the sole
incarnation of the holy one on this earth and that we should kiss your feet, but we do sit at your feet, to
share wisdom with you, to share love with you, to share struggle with you. Brother Armah is in the US,
as many of you know to do some work; lecture at University of California Berkeley. He has his
children with him, who he tells us when they came here they didn’t know any English or not much
English, but they were put into English-speaking schools in Berkley and I imagine they probably know
a little more English than they knew when they started. He’s a beautiful, humble, sincere brother. We
were impressed with him in that way when we met him and so it is with great joy, with great pride,
with great happiness, with great love, that I introduce him to you and allow him to come in his own
way to share with us concerns from his heart, from his mind, by the spirit and power of God working in
and through him ...our brother Ayi Kwei Armah.
Ayi Kwei Armah: I hope you can hear me in the back. Can you hear me now? Okay. Can you hear me
now? Okay. First of all I’d like to thank all of you for this invitation to come and meet with you and to
share a few ideas. As brother Nkolisi has said, I did point out that I have no prophetic gifts. I write
books because I tried to do something more useful and failed and since I have been trained to write, I
do that as a defence against total despair and seeing people like you who are actively engaged in trying
to salvage pieces of our wrecked lives, gives me some hope that after all we are not alone. It’s a
pleasure then to be here; to come and observe, and to the extent that it’s possible, to participate with
you in the work that you are doing. I have been told that your focus today is on the theme of “The
Awakening”. I hope to contribute a little bit to your deliberations and I shall do so by concentrating on
the work of an African intellectual who worked for our awakening. His name was Cheikh Anta Diop.

The Awakening
Now if we are concerned with our awakening, it is because we’ve been asleep. Now we were put to
sleep by historical catastrophes. And you know when people get into an accident; they need to go to
sleep in order to survive the accident. If you are totally conscious when it happens, you won’t survive.
So sleep is sometimes useful. But after sleep we have to wake. Now since these catastrophes began, our
minds have been kept in a sleepy state of ignorance through a series of cultural and intellectual
anaesthetics. Dope. Now sometimes the dope is called religion and we go to it looking for relief. I
mean people don’t take dope because they are evil, they take it because they are suffering and they
think that it will ease their suffering. Now, whatever the different names of the dope that we fill
ourselves with, the effect is the same; to make us think we are nothing. Now the awakening means for
us that we need to regain knowledge of ourselves, the something that we are. To do that we have first of
all to end our addiction to the poisons that put us to sleep.

Secondly, we need to cultivate healing values that will help us remove—remake ourselves and then
remake the universe. Now such work requires careful preparation aimed at analyzing and seeing
through the false values directed against us. After that, we also need to identify the regenerative values
and put them at the center of our own conversations, our behaviour and our institutions. You see, I am
not talking about speeches, I mean conversations. Because speeches are wonderful events but they’re
just events, they’re not processes. They happen and then they can be forgotten. Conversations, we
always have—everyday and things we do everyday are more important than the fantastic things we do
once in a while and forget, because it is possible for us to know what is right to do and even to say it –
to utter it – but if cannot integrate it into our behaviour, it is worse than useless, because it serves only
as a mask for the wrong things that we do.

Now somebody who does evil and doesn’t know how to hide it is less dangerous than somebody who
does evil but is smart enough and knows the words with which to cover it. Institutions, because our
behaviour, our words, everything we do right, is ephemeral as long as it’s not anchored in something
lasting. Cause institutions help us maintain the good that we have and weed out the evil that is
bothering us. In other words, the meaning of our awakening is that we aspire to create a new way of
life. But awakening is not a simple process. An awakening that is hasty or brutal is bound to be
incomplete. A deep, thorough, lasting awakening has to be well thought out, unhurried, slow and
gentle, like good rain, like good lovemaking. Slow. Gentle. Well thought out.

Now there is a danger in incomplete, hurried awakenings because the body gets shaken, it’s hustled into
action, while the mind is really still asleep. The result is sleepwalking; physical action without mental,
intellectual, spiritual clarity. And the outcome of such action is predictable; it’s a massacre of
courageous but poorly prepared souls. A complete awakening, on the other hand, is well prepared. It’s a
process in which the body is not rushed into rising until the mind has woken, until the mind has taken
stock of the situation, until the mind has planned the most effective routes to action and made room for
contingencies. So that if a chosen route happens to be blocked, alternative routes stay open. Because
motion is important, but it is the path followed that gives motion its meaning. And the path is important
but it is the goal that gives the path its meaning.

Now there is a form of incomplete awakening which looks complete on the surface. It is blindness
masquerading as sight. Now when we waken, we have healthy bodies inhabited by thinking minds.
Now when many such people with able bodies and thinking minds are united by a shared goal,
consciously chosen and embraced, the resulting interaction is powerful, purposeful and loving. Now
that interaction of minds moving towards a shared goal is the closest thing I know to religious power.
Sometimes though, able bodies can be directed, not by thinking minds of their own, but by a believing
heart which in its blind generosity, in its confused trust, allows the body to follow someone else’s
thinking mind. Now when that happens, we get a community made up of a leader and a crowd of
followers. Such a community can often look awake. Sometimes it can look dynamically, excitingly,
sensationally alive. In reality though, it is still sleepwalking. Because the awakened soul does not need
to follow a leader and the awakened guide does not need to be followed. Awakened souls are
companions working together, moving together towards a common chosen goal.

Of Heroes, Saviours and Leaders

Now, we think leaders are important because they have knowledge and experience of the paths we all
need to travel on. If they do their work well, they will have no followers left. There will only be friends
to work with in mutual respect. Now to awaken souls, experienced guides share knowledge which
brings them to the same level as their followers. Now when each soul in the community knows the way
home, the entire community advances along the way together and it has a great deal more energy than
if it was following a seeing eye dog called the leader. Now, the problem with a community made up of
followers and a leader, is that once the leader goes the community becomes acephalic. It has no head. It
just wanders around. It’s a pitiful sight. What is needed is a community where the leadership runs
throughout the entire body.

For too many centuries, Africans in our sleep have formed communities dependent on leaders. We have
had heroes, leaders, saviours. They’ve been wonderful people and we’ve been right to love them but
what happens when they go? Our problems remain. It’s therefore time to change the structures of our
communities so they don’t depend so fatally on leaders; so that they can have such good leaders that
they abolish themselves.... Time to find ways to open all eyes in the community... time to find methods
for sharing knowledge of goals and paths with all in the community. One of the terrible weaknesses of
Africa has been the hoarding of power; the keeping of knowledge as secrets. Now, some of the keepers
have done it because they saw knowledge as sources of power and in that they were right. But in using
it as sources of power for themselves and their families instead of for the whole community, they were
wrong and we are paying for the problems they caused. The recent history of Africa is full of leaders
who failed to create thinking self-sustaining communities. Some failed because they didn’t have
enough time, they were killed. Some failed for lack of opportunity. But some also failed because they
didn’t have any real desire to empower the powerless; because they saw in the powerlessness of those
who raised them to power, a source, and they were afraid that if they empowered the powerless there
would be nobody beneath them bearing them up.

At any rate, these leaders had tremendous responsibility thrust on them. They were too busy to address
certain fundamental questions regarding our awakening. That is why, although we have had such
wonderful leaders, many of us are still asleep. But we’ve also had thinkers who did address these
questions. One of them was Cheikh Anta Diop. Baba Cheikh Anta Diop. I went to Senegal ten years
ago because I wanted to find out more; not about him but about his work and the background to it. I
tried to get to see him. I knew a friend of his, Ousmane Sembene who is my elder brother, a writer. He
took me to Cheikh Anta Diop’s house several times. We did not meet him because he happened to be
out for one reason or the other. So I would say “Well, it wasn’t in the cards that we were to meet.” But I
would like it understood that I think, whatever he tried to do, it would be an honour for people like me
to continue that work.

Now the questions he addressed were the following: Who in fact are we? What is our situation? What is
our real history? What do our present prospects look like? And What are the resources, the natural and
material resources, the intellectual and spiritual resources we can use? How can we reclaim these
resources then use them to future prospects? Cheikh Anta Diop spent his life working to find answers
and the fruit of his research is contained in the work that he left behind. I have been following that
work for so many years now and it saddens me that he’s got so much work which is not known in the
English speaking part of the world, because he wrote in French.

When I arrived in Senegal, I contacted the University and I told them that I was capable of translating
all Cheikh Anta Diop’s books because I’ve been trained to do that work. They said no. So what is
available in English is usually bits and pieces from one book together with something else from another
and so forth. Now, that is okay but the better way to make his work available would be to translate all
of it. And there are people willing to do that work. There will not be time to go into details about what
is contained here. I shall try and make an outline. It will be inadequate but if there is an opportunity to
go deeper into the content of this work I hope we can take it one day.

Who Are We?

To the question “Who are we?”, Cheikh Anta Diop answered, “We are Africans”. Now that seems like
an obvious answer but I remember there was a time when if you said to some people “I think you are
an African”...”really uh?”...

Sometimes these losses of identity can be funny: When I was a boy, I met an African-American called
St. Clair Drake. He came to Ghana and there was some reason for me to meet him so I went meet him
and he told me a story. He’d just been to the Congo. He was in a hotel and an African waiter came to
him and said, “Where are you from sir?” and St. Clair Drake said “I’m from America.” He said “Ah!
You must be an American Negro. I have never met a negro.” So we have not always known ourselves
as Africans and to this day if you go to the continent of Africa and you meet somebody and ask him
“Who are you?” they are not likely to tell you “I’m an African”. They will say “I’m a Nigerian”, “I’m a
Ghanaian”, “I’m a Tanzanian”, “I’m a Mozambican”, you know. Anything but “I’m an African.”

They don’t know what it means to say “I’m a Nigerian”. What was Nigeria before white people met in
Berlin to decide that whoever could draw lines along the territory and put guns to defend those areas
owned the territory? So the identities that we have are fake identities. We have to remake our identities
and the best identity we can have for now is the African identity, the continental identity.

What Is Our Situation?

Now, “What is our situation?” Again to that question Cheikh Anta Diop would answer “Confusion,
division multiplied by ignorance”. But you see he did not say these things to condemn us, he said them
as a prelude to suggesting ways of ending our confusion, our ignorance.

What is Our History?

“What is our history?” He spent a lot of time answering the question because remember that there was
a time, not very long ago when the idea itself of African having a history was considered unsound,
academically wrong. You could not defend that in any thesis. Now, his answer was, “Not only do we
have a history but we are the root of humanity; we were there at the beginning. That is to say that all
human beings are kin to us, whether they recognize that or not. If they hate us, that is their problem.
Those who do not hate us; those who would work with us, we can work with them, no matter where
they come from, to find ways of remaking a universe destroyed by too much greed and too much hate.”

He also said that we are at the root of civilization. This is another area from which we had been pushed.
Now, we need to study seriously in order to understand what he was saying. He learned to read the
records of ancient Egypt before he was able to assert, “No, you people are lying.” That in effect was
what his thesis was saying. He was saying to his professors, “Your traditions are lying. This is the truth.
Look at it.” It was a courageous thing to say. But to the end of his life he suffered for it.

Now, it is not sufficient for us to just accept what Cheikh Anta Diop did and say “It’s done”. We need
to do the studying that will make us possess these resources. They are highly valuable intellectual
resources and you know, we should be teaching little children how to read and write hieroglyphic
characters, ideograms because the values are there. But we don’t do it. We don’t have any plans for
doing it. We don’t have the institutions for doing it. I’ve met plenty of people who know enough to take
names from Ancient Egypt. When I ask them “can you write?” they say “no”. They are waking up but
they are sort of stretching and enjoying just that early morning feeling of being awake again.

Well, time to get up. There’s work to do, you see. We need to work on the knowledge, you see. You can
have a certain kind of knowledge and it acts on you again like a drug, soothes you. Says, “Well, isn’t it
nice to know that we are descended from these fantastic people who invented this and that and that.”
No. Well they did their work and they’re gone. They did their work so well they left traces that people
have tried to wipe out and they didn’t succeed. It’s not for us to use their work as mattresses to lie on.
We ought to use their work as spring boards and move.

What Are Our Prospects?

“What are our prospects?” Now for centuries, we have been organized according to principles that are
completely alien to us; principles of profit and advantage. The greatest African values are principles of
justice, balance, reciprocity which the Ancient Egyptians called MA'AT. You will not find these
principles at work in any of the great institutions of the modern world. The great institutions are the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and so forth. And all our political leaders are going to
these people and saying “teach us what to do”. Well, all these banks and stuff can teach is destruction.
They can tell people, “cut down your forest, sell the wood cheap, then you will get some foreign
exchange. With the foreign exchange you can get some guns to defend your president against people
who are hungry and who may get angry at you”

Now, we’re going along with this because we don’t know our own values. Our values are opposed to
this kind of stuff.

What Resources do We Have?

The search for profit, the search for advantage...Well, we are people who have suffered from this search
for profit. People have come to Africa to buy people, human beings. There are certain resources that
should never be sold. If African values were on top of our existence, we would never sell land, we
would never sell water, we wouldn’t sell the air, the sun and we wouldn’t sell human beings. But we
did, and in order to recover our values we have to go back and know what they are and find ways of
affirming them against all the power of destroyers. Now, we shall not move out of our deprivation,
unless we recognize our resource bases and work out intelligent ways to reclaim them. This requires
precise knowledge of what these resources are. In a little book that was, I think, translated into English
– I have not read the English version – but it’s Les fondements économiques et culturels d’un Etat
Féderal d’Afrique Noire, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State. I think
it’s available in English translation. Cheikh Anta Diop laid out the resources we have if we look at the
entire African continent. Because you see, if you look at a country like the Gambia or Sierra Leone, if
you cut it off from Africa and you try to see, what resources do they have, you will come away thinking
“Well these are poor people.”

Look at the whole continent and you see that poverty is just nonsense on such a continent. That’s a
continent three times the size of the United States with a lot of wealth; so much wealth that people
come there to get the basis of their wellbeing. And it’s been happening for centuries and the continent is
still not exhausted. But we need to stop this pillage. We need to find ways to stop this pillage and that
starts with knowledge of ourselves and what our resources bases ought to be.

Hierachy of Values
There was a time when people- African people – people of African descent thought that we did not
have intellectual resource bases, that if we wanted to think, we had to go and borrow from other people.
We know better now. We know better now. And it is time for us to get a hold of these resources. But for
all that, we need to study. Unfortunately, we have been told that knowledge and study isn’t our bag. We
need to get out of that way of thinking because forward movement is not going to happen unless we
recognize that there is a hierarchy of values; that a human being, according to Ptah Hotep, is made up
of a head, a belly and sexual organs among other things but if you want to stand up as a human being
and work as a human being you have to recognize that the head is higher than the belly and both are
higher than the sex.

It is Ptah Hotep who says, “He who obeys his belly belongs to the enemy.” I happen to know of a vow
that healers make among my mother’s people. Before they can become certified healers, they have to
learn a number of things including discipline. And one of the vows they take is never to let their sexual
organs rise higher than their heads. It doesn’t say don’t let it rise. By all means...but not higher.

Now, it won’t be enough then to find these values and won’t be enough to absorb them. We need to
develop institutions of awareness to help maintain them; to help make them more permanent than they
have been so far. Knowledge of our spiritual and material inheritance to be given to our children from
an early age. If you wait till somebody gets to university before you teach them this, it’s too late. The
first day they come to school they ought to be learning these things. In Ancient Egypt, they began at
four.

Now, as far as institutions are concerned, we all know that the schools available to us are full of holes.
We want to build institutions. My suggestion is that we look at some old institutions but not to take
them like that because they too were full of holes. There was a wonderful institution in Ancient Egypt-
in Kemet – it was called the Per Ankh. Per means a house, Ankh – life. It was the house of life. That is
where kids were taken from the age of four and they could stay there and study. The first thing they was
taught was knowledge of their ancestors. That’s why it was called the House of Life. The Ancestors
were dead but their memory was kept alive in the House of Life. Now, these were schools where the
kids were taught and they ate there. There were adults whose job it was to look after them. There was
not this business of “this is my child and therefore I give that child quality time”. Quality time
belonged to all the children of the community and if adults were available, well that was all to be good.
We need to create modern versions of the oldest of African schools, the Per Ankh. Thank you