Africa

"The first municipal reference to a free black man dates from 1539, when the municipal council acknowledged "Juan de Ordáz, negro" as a ', a title... with... civic rights. Acquiring ', the status and privileges of formally acknowledged residency, carried great significance... [V]ecinos could petition the council for plots... to erect... residences or cultivate orchards.... what Juan de Ordáz did. He... twice in the historical record... selling the urban plots... he had been granted... In 1546, Francisco Díaz, a black freedman, was also included on the city’s list of registered residents. Two other black men, Juan de Montalvo and Diego Monte, had their vecindad[s]... in 1550 and 1571, respectively."

"What... allowed these men... vecino status? ...freedom and a wife. Ordáz received a 200-peso dowry from his wife, Catalina Díaz. Montalvo... Puebla’s towncrier... [b]y 1555... had... enough money to send... Pedro de Padilla... to Guatemala... to bring his wife back... Montalvo’s standing as a free black vecino with connections to elite Poblanos distinguished him in a city where the overwhelming majority of people of African descent were enslaved."

"Other notable black men undoubtedly spent time in Puebla... but Pedro López de Villaseñor’s listing suggests... few were able to claim vecindad.[T]he black was... [b]orn on the African mainland around 1505... purchased by Hernan Cortés's cousin and... conquistador, ... [who] took Juan Valiente to Puebla... in 1532. ...In an emerging settlement defined for its anti-conquistador stance, it is not... clear that he benefited from his owner's social standing. ...Valiente asked his owner to grant him four years "to seek opportunity" as a conquistador in 's expedition to Guatemala. ...By 1534 ...[he] had made his way to Guatemala and Northern Peru. He would fight for in Chile the following year. Over the next two decades, Juan Valiente received an estate near de Chile, married Juana de Valdivia, and... received an for his military feats."

"In her 2017 book Black Tudors: The Untold Story has written a seminal work..."

"Africans were already known to have been living in Roman Britain as soldiers, slaves or even free men and women. Kaufmann shows that, by Tudor times, some were... present at the royal courts... and ...in households of courtiers ..."

"William Shakespeare... wrote several black parts... two of his greatest characters are black... [T]hat he put them into mainstream entertainment reflects... that they were a significant element in the population of London."

"[T]hey were employed... as domestic servants, professional businessmen, musicians, dancers and entertainers. ...[T]hey were not slaves."

"[I]n Elizabeth's reign, the black people of London... were free; some... married native English people."

"n... Dederi Jaquoah... circumnavigated half the globe with Sir Francis Drake."

"[I]n the reign of Queen Mary... 'there was a Negro made fine spanish needles in but would never teach his Art to any'. ...'Spanish needles' ...fine sewing needles ...of steel, were new to England ...the black man in Cheapside ...first brought the art of steel needle-making to England."

"Black Tudors were socially no worse off than white ones. ...[T]hey were acknowledged as citizens ..."

"[...] Marsile has taken flight, Yet there remains his uncle Marganice, That governs Carthage, Alfrere and Garamile, And Ethiope, a land accursed and vile. In his command are all the Negro tribes; Thick are their noses, their ears are very wide; Full fifty thousand are gathered in their lines, Boldly and fast and furiously they ride, Yelling aloud the Paynim battle-cry."

"The distinctiveness of consists in the “sanctification” of work, which plays an equally, if not more important, role than meditation and prayer. Through this spirituality of work, [Ahmadou Bamba Mbacké (1853–1927)] inserted an authentically African element into Sufism, and at the same time exposed himself to criticism and reservations especially from circles."

"In Europe, the church had long held a monopoly over schooling from feudal times right into the capitalist era. By the late nineteenth century, that situation was changing in Europe; but, as far as the European colonizers were concerned, the church was free to handle the colonial educational system in Africa. The strengths and weaknesses of that schooling were very much to be attributed to the church. [...] The church's role was primarily to preserve the social relations of colonialism, as an extension of the role it played in preserving the social relations of capitalism in Europe. Therefore, the Christian church stressed humility, docility, and acceptance. Ever since the days of slavery in the West Indies, the church had been brought in on condition that it should not excite the African slaves with doctrines of equality before God. In those days, they taught slaves to sing that all things were bright and beautiful, and that the slavemaster in his castle was to be accepted as God's work just like the slave living in a miserable hovel and working twenty hours per day under the whip. Similarly, in colonial Africa, churches could be relied upon to preach turning the other cheek in the face of exploitation, and they drove home the message that everything would be right in the next world. Only the Dutch Reformed church of South Africa was openly racist, but all others were racist in so far as their European personnel were no different from other whites who had imbibed racism and cultural imperialism as a consequence of the previous centuries of contact between Europeans and the rest of the world."

"Learning to read and write, and do simple maths, is a basic requirement to be able to navigate in today’s increasingly globalized and competitive world. Providing children with quality education opens the door for them to a lifetime of better opportunities. These translate not only in terms of the jobs that they will be able to have and how much they will earn, but it also has an impact on their physical and mental health. Although many countries in Africa are taking significant steps to ensure quality education for all, too many children are still being left behind. One in five primary school age children are not in the classroom. And almost six in ten adolescents are out of school. This is due to several interlinking factors such as geographical location, gender, extreme poverty, disability, crises, conflict, and displacement."

"Education is crucial in any type of society for the preservation of the lives of its members and the maintenance of the social structure. Under certain circumstances, education also promotes social change. The greater portion of that education is informal, being acquired by the young from the example and behavior of elders in the society. Under normal circumstances, education grows out of the environment; the learning process being directly related to the pattern of work in the society. [...] Indeed, the most crucial aspect of pre-colonial African education was its relevance to Africans, in sharp contrast with what was later introduced. The following features of indigenous African education can be considered outstanding: its close links with social life, both in a material and spiritual sense; its collective nature; its many-sidedness; and its progressive development in conformity with the successive stages of physical, emotional, and mental development of the child. There was no separation of education and productive activity or any division between manual and intellectual education. Altogether, through mainly informal means, pre-colonial African education matched the realities of pre-colonial African society and produced well-rounded personalities to fit into that society."

"The colonizers did not introduce education into Africa: they introduced a new set of formal educational institutions which partly supplemented and partly replaced those which were there before. The colonial system also stimulated values and practices which amounted to new informal education. The main purpose of the colonial school system was to train Africans to help man the local administration at the lowest ranks and to staff the private capitalist firms owned by Europeans. In effect, that meant selecting a few Africans to participate in the domination and exploitation of the continent as a whole. It was not an educational system that grew out of the African environment or one that was designed to promote the most rational use of material and social resources. It was not an educational system designed to give young people confidence and pride as members of African societies, but one which sought to instill a sense of deference towards all that was European and capitalist. Education in Europe was dominated by the capitalist class. The same class bias was automatically transferred to Africa; and to make matters worse the racism and cultural boastfulness harbored by capitalism were also included in the package of colonial education. Colonial schooling was education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion, and the development of underdevelopment."

"Some of the contradictions between the content of colonial education and the reality of Africa were really incongruous. On a hot afternoon in some tropical African school, a class of black shining faces would listen to their geography lesson on the seasons of the year—spring, summer, autumn, and winter. They would learn about the and the river Rhine but nothing about the of or the river . If those students were in a British colony, they would dutifully write that "we defeated the in 1588"—at a time when Hawkins was stealing Africans and being knighted by Queen Elizabeth I for so doing. If they were in a French colony, they would learn that "the , our ancestors, had blue eyes," and they would be convinced that "Napoleon was our greatest general"—the same Napoleon who reinstituted slavery in the Caribbean island of , and was only prevented from doing the same in Haiti because his forces were defeated by an even greater strategist and tactician, the African Toussaint L'Ouverture."

"Africa is the continent of drums and percussion. African peoples reached the pinnacle of achievement in that sphere."

"Since this man, like all Tanzanians, spoke Swahili, I did not fail to ask the interlocutor about the intricacies of his language. The term "mzungu" is well known not only to me, but to everyone who has visited at least one of the equatorial countries of the African continent. Black children, and sometimes even adults, shout this word on the streets of African settlements, referring to a person of European appearance. The opponent replied that there was nothing offensive in this, and cited a fictitious dialogue as an example: “Mom, can I invite my friend to the holiday? — Yes, but who is he? — Mzungu. — Oh, mzungu, let him come.” — “So be it, — objected in response, — but why sometimes in the villages the children run after me, shouting “this” with such an intonation, as if they saw a madman?”— “Any word can have a negative connotation,” — the man replied."

"The tamarind tree is very delectable to behold, being likewise very full of spreading branches, the leaves growing like to the box tree in England, but are shaped something more longer, and not of that hardness with the forementioned, but more pliable. It shooteth out a white flower, which hath no grateful flavour, which falling off, produces its fruit in shape of a peascod, being filled with a row of stones, covered with a brittle shell, which incloseth the pulp, being of a pleasant acid quality, and is a good commodity in Europe."

"In the garden of the said Capuchins I saw for the first time on a tree a fruit which tickled my curiosity so much that I must describe it. It is called Giacca, or Taqua, as the Portuguese write it. The tree was of the size of a moderate oak and the fruit is of the size of a bag of middling size, about four palms long and proportionately thick, viz., a little than two palms in diameter; and because, if this fruit were to grow on the branches like other fruits, the branches would certainly not be able to bear its weight, Nature has wisely ordained that it should grow on the trunk...."

"…the Tamarind tree, which grows there, is so famous among the English that, when they return to London and speak of what they have seen, they make a special mention of the Tamarind tree of Golicatan [Calcutta]."

"One threat was emanating from the neighboring Suldaan Cali Yuusuf of Hoobya, and the other from the Darawiish headquarter in Beletweyne"

"... rhetorical idioms that entirely aligned with the story and the plot he wishes to convey to his followers (Dervish or Darawiish)"

"Meeting in various places, attacking at unpredictable times, the darawiish sustained their resistance in the Benaadir until 1910."

"Ma négritude n’est pas une pierre, sa surdité ruée contre la clameur du jour ma négritude n’est pas une taie d’eau morte sur l’oeil mort de la terre ma négritude n’est ni une tour ni une cathédrale elle plonge dans la chair rouge du sol elle plonge dans la chair ardente du ciel elle troue l’accablement opaque de sa droite patience."

"My negritude is not a stone nor deafness flung out against the clamor of the day my negritude is not a white speck of dead water on the dead eye of the earth my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral it plunges into the red flesh of the soil it plunges into the blazing flesh of the sky my negritude riddles with holes the dense affliction of its worthy patience."

"I bless the rains down in Africa!"

"We are in a global emergency, which affects all of us. But everyone is not suffering its Consequences equally... Africa is being disproportionately hit by the climate crisis, despite contributing to it among the least."

"Naturalization laws are hereby extended to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent."

"The African "nations" of today, created artificially by foreigners for their own purposes, neither originate from ancient African civilisation, nor do they fit in with our African way of life or habits of exchange. They are not even, for the most part, economically viable. Yet they continue to struggle on, each one separately, in a pathetic and hopeless attempt to make progress, while the real obstacle to their development, imperialism, mainly in its neo-colonialist stage, is operating on a Pan-African scale. Already, huge zones of Africa have been integrated economically in the exclusive interest of international finance capital."

"In unity lies strength. African states must unite or sell themselves out to imperialist and colonialist exploiters for a mess of pottage."

"Africa has everything from minerals, forest, oil and intellectual capacity that could make the continent great but one area that we need to strengthen is the ability to document and analyse historical information...will help guide the continent."

"Some regions are likely to be especially affected by climate change. The Arctic, because of the impacts of high rates of projected warming on natural systems and human communities; Africa, because of low adaptive capacity and projected climate change impacts, Small islands, where there is high exposure of population and infrastructure to projected climate change impacts Asian and African megadeltas, due to large populations and high exposure to sea level rise, storm surges, and river flooding. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report concludes that non-climate stresses can increase vulnerability to climate change by reducing resilience and can also reduce adaptive capacity because of resource deployment towards competing needs. Vulnerable regions face multiple stresses that affect their exposure and sensitivity to various impacts as well as their capacity to adapt. These stresses arise from, for example, current climate hazards, poverty, and unequal access to resources, food insecurity, trends in economic globalization, conflict, and incidence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS."

"Slaves from Africa also started as prisoners of war. Black slave owners captured slaves from other tribes and sold them to white slave traders—a product of warfare between black tribes in Africa. White men didn’t go to Africa and run through the bush and grab men to be slaves; they simply went to the dock and said, “Do you have some slaves to buy? We’ll provide gold, rum, or other goods in exchange for the slaves.” When the slave owners had sold all the slaves they had, they went out and captured more. There was a change in the style of slavery when new world slavery appeared, because then it became commercialized and it wasn’t just for the sake of war. War prisoners were turned to commercialized slaves, sold for goods, and then shipped off."

"What about the other parts of the world? The criminologist Gary LaFree and the sociologist Orlando Patterson have shown that the relationship between crime and democratization is an inverted U. Established democracies are relatively safe places, as are established autocracies, but emerging democracies and semi-democracies (also called anocracies) are often plagued by violent crime and vulnerable to civil war, which sometimes shade into each other. The most crime-prone regions in the world today are Russia, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Latin America. Many of them have corrupt police forces and judicial systems which extort bribes out of criminals and victims alike and dole out protection to the highest bidder. Some, like Jamaica (33.7), Mexico (11.1), and Colombia (52.7), are racked by drug-funded militias that operate beyond the reach of the law. Over the past four decades, as drug trafficking has increased, their rates of homicide have soared. Others, like Russia (29.7) and South Africa (69), may have undergone decivilizing processes in the wake of the collapse of their former governments. The decivilizing process has also racked many of the countries that switched from tribal ways to colonial rule and then suddenly to independence, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea (15.2)."

"The 21 countries with the highest incidence of HIV infection are all in Africa, and in 10 of those countries, at least 10 percent of the population is infected."

"In the 1960s and early 1970s, South Africa's response to developing guerrilla movements and a changing regional security environment was to increase security-force cooperation with Portuguese forces who were fighting guerrilla insurgencies in the former colonies of Angola and Mozambique; Portuguese tactics influenced the South African military and police."

"The Portuguese military was the first to use chemical and biological warfare for counterinsurgency warfare in Africa, Portuguese troops poisoned wells and threw drugged prisoners out of aircraft. South African military officers were dispatched to Portuguese arms units in Angola to gain experience in counterinsurgency warfare. In general, South African military personnel were not impressed with the overall effectiveness of Portuguese counterinsurgency programs."

"Rediker says history has conveniently left out that there were many black pirates. His research of 15 pirate ships shows almost one-third of the pirates were, quote, "negroes or mulattoes." Some black pirates were runaway slaves. Some were sailors whose merchant ships were captured. And many blacks ended up on pirate ships when pirates grabbed slave ships as they traveled from West Africa through the middle passage."

"Our ties with Africa are rooted in the heritage of many Americans and in our historic commitment to self-determination. We respect the hard-earned sovereignty of Africa's new states and will continue to do our utmost to make a meaningful contribution to their development. We have no illusions that the United States can single-handedly solve the seemingly intractable problems of apartheid and minority rule, but we can and will encourage non-violent, evolutionary change by supporting international efforts peacefully to resolve the problems of southern Africa and by maintaining our contacts with all."

"The United States has always supported the process of self-determination in Africa. Our friendship for the African countries is expressed in support for continued peaceful economic development, expansion of trade, humanitarian relief efforts and our belief that the entire continent should be free from outside military intervention. Millions of Americans recognize their historical and cultural ties with Africa and express their desire that United States policy toward Africa is a matter of great importance. We support all forces which promote negotiated settlements and racial peace. We shall continue to deplore all violence and terrorism and to urge all concerned that the rights of tribal, ethnic, and racial minorities be guaranteed through workable safeguards. Our policy is to strengthen the forces of moderation recognizing that solutions to African problems will not come quickly. The peoples of Africa can coexist in security, work together in freedom and harmony, and strive together to secure their prosperity. We hope that the Organization of African Unity will be able to achieve mature and stable relationships within Africa and abroad. The interests of peace and security in Africa are best served by the absence of arms and greater concentration on peaceful development. We reserve the right to maintain the balance by extending our support to nations facing a threat."

"We recognize that much is at stake in Africa and that the United States and the industrial west have vital interests there, economically, strategically, and politically. Working closely with our allies, a Republican administration will seek to assist the countries of Africa with our presence, our markets, our know-how, and our investment. We will work to create a climate of economic and political development and confidence. We will encourage and assist business to play a major role in support of regional industrial development programs, mineral complexes, and agricultural self-sufficiency. Republicans believe that African nations, if given a choice, will reject the Marxist, totalitarian model being forcibly imposed."

"The African peoples are convinced that the west is central to world stability and economic growth on which their own fortunes ultimately depend. A Republican administration will adhere to policies that reflect the complex origins of African conflicts, demonstrate that we know what U.S. interests are, and back those interests in meaningful ways. We will recognize the important role of economic and military assistance programs and will devote major resources to assisting African development and stability when such aid is given on a bilateral basis and contributes directly to American interests on the continent. In Southern Africa, American policies must be guided by commonsense and by our own humanitarian principles. Republicans believe that our history has meaning for Africa in demonstrating that a multiracial society with guarantees of individual rights is possible and can work. We must remain open and helpful to all parties, whether in the new Zimbabwe, in Namibia, or in the Republic of South Africa. A Republican administration will not endorse situations or constitutions, in whatever society, which are racist in purpose or in effect. It will not expect miracles, but will press for genuine progress in achieving goals consistent with American ideals."

"We are committed to democracy in Africa and to the economic development that will help it flourish. That is why we will foster free-market, growth-oriented, and liberalized trading policies. As part of reforming the policies of the International Development Association, we have assisted in directing a larger proportion of its resources to sub-Saharan Africa. To nurture the spirit of individual initiative in Africa, our newly created African Development Foundation will work with African entrepreneurs at the village level. In addition, through our rejection of the austerity programs of international organizations, we are bringing new hope to the people of Africa that they will join in the benefits of the growing, dynamic world economy. We will continue to provide necessary security and economic assistance to African nations with which we maintain good relations to help them develop the infrastructure of democratic capitalism so essential to economic growth and individual accomplishment. We will encourage our allies in Europe and east Asia to coordinate their assistance efforts so that the industrialized countries will be able to contribute effectively to the economic development of the continent. We believe that, if given the choice, the nations of Africa will reject the model of Marxist state-controlled economies in favor of the prosperity and quality of life that free economies and free people can achieve. We will continue to assist threatened African governments to protect themselves and will work with them to protect their continent from subversion and to safeguard their strategic minerals."

"We reaffirm our commitment to the rights of all South Africans. Apartheid is repugnant. In South Africa, as elsewhere on the continent, we support well-conceived efforts to foster peace, prosperity, and stability."

"Republicans have three priorities in our country' s relations with Africa. The first is to oppose the forces of Marxist imperialism, which sustain the march of tyranny in Africa. This priority includes giving strong assistance to groups which oppose Soviet and Cuban-sponsored oppression in Africa. Our second priority is the need to develop and sustain democracies in Africa. Democrats have often taken the view that democracy is unattainable because of Africa's economic condition, yet at the same time they refuse to promote the conditions in which democracies can flourish. Economic freedom and market-based economies are the key to the development of democracy throughout Africa. Our third area of concern is humanitarian assistance, especially food aid, to African nations. The Reagan-Bush Administration has always provided this assistance."

"I am an African. And that makes me who I am."

"On the other hand, the European authors of this article consider that they have a responsibility concerning the misdeeds of colonialism in Africa. Like Italy, Spain also resorted to a strategy of scorched earth in its colonies, including the use of poison gas (Kunz and Müller 1990). As in other Mediterranean countries, the Spanish massacres in Morocco and Equatorial Guinea (Pando Despierto 1999; Guerín 2008) have been deleted from cultural memory and replaced by nostalgic accounts of the empire. We have to help construct a critical memory that reviews the works of totalitarianism and racism in other continents, because our societies have to learn about a history that has been so often forgotten, sanitized or sweetened through popular films, books and magazines. ‘These new visual and textual formations... today shape the mental geography and the imaginary of people who travel blindly and unencumbered through geographic and historical space. As temporal distance increases, these popular constructions may even, one day, be regarded as factual truth and assimilated as knowledge by those who have only a remote inkling of colonial history’ (Norindr 1996: 158). By exposing colonialism, we may contribute to rethink its legacies in the present."