INTRODUCTION

People tell us we should forget. They tell us we should forget about our homeland and our ancestors and our traditions because we are much better off here than in any place we were before. Many even tell us that being brought to this place saved us from ourselves by giving us religion and reason. This, of course, implies that for tens of thousands of years of advanced civilization our ancestors wandered about the continent and around the world without intimate knowledge of spirit or answers to fundamental scientific questions.
They would have us believe that the brutalities we face here are no worse than those faced by any other people before. They say that our oppression is not unique. And, because it is not unique, we should not overburden ourselves or bother others with feeling either betrayed (except by our own) or dehumanized. They say digging up these lost memories is truly a waste of time and energy.
We are also told that there is no reason to look back because that would distract us from seeing the beauty and promise of this time and place. We are warned that diving into the past creates unnecessary pain and suffering and instigates a range better off left dead. They say we must be European society and culture. They repeat this over and over again as if to convince themselves of this lie. And we hear it so much that many of us believe and lovingly affirm it in return. Those Negroes and lost souls among us who agree that the Afrikan past is irrelevant act as if the desire to be in the company of our oppressors is as natural as night and day.
As taught by yurugu and their black skinned disciples, we learn that eurosupremancy (cultural and social domination by Europeans) and its main weapon against Afrikans, racism is, if not simply our oversensitive, misguided perception, a relic carried away by overzealous, ignorant white ancestors who took it with them to their graves. Now, we, as deracialized advocates of colorlessness, can finally bury its remnants through sacrificial acts of assimilation, amalgamation and unqualified devotion to whiteness.
They tell us that if race cannot be see racism does not exist. They give us the delusion-inducing obstacle of a one-way racial integration into them to distract us from nation building. Yet, they still ramble on telling us that if we want to remove race as “our” problem we must remove all those acceptable “Black First” which make Africans only darker Europeans (by singularly applauding those individuals who helped make our sub integration into European society and culture appear more desirable and probable) and or show our humanity solely as a function of European contact.
However, none of that really makes any sense because there is no Afrikan power in a minority mentality. More importantly, if an Afrikan becomes culturally, intellectually, religiously and socially European, she or he has to have been turned away from being Afrikan. Something has caused individuals to forget who she or he is. To be Afrikan, now or in the time of our ancestors, requires that knowledge and practice of Afrikan traditions.
This is a universal truth: A people must know their origins and practice their traditions in order to be themselves. If not, they lose themselves in another’s vision of reality. If that reality is the creation of their enemy, then they fall deeply asleep in someone else’s nightmare.
You cannot know yourself while being someone else. If you forget who you are, you cannot be yourself. You will be whomever you have been instructed to be by those who you allow to exercise power over you.
We have been told that the best way for Afrikans to be at peace with themselves in this cultural wasteland is to forget the past and build a new future as subjects of European society. We are further informed that, given the imperfection of reality by saying that if we just become more “open-minded” (I.e., open to their mind/interpretation) we will see that they have become multicultural, bringing the best of all worlds together under their impartial and colorblind protection. In order to become part of this new world order, though we must relinquish the past. We must forget both what they have done to us and who we are.
This, too, is nonsensical for those of us who know that we are culmination of our people. For we are our people. To destroy the true memory of our people is to destroy ourselves. It is to condemn our children to a chaos that will leave them desperately searching for their deceased genius.
We are not them. We cannot be them without losing sanity. No one can be Afrikan and European. The Afrikan and European ways are irreconcilably incompatible. Not even amalgamation can change that. Our ways is, has been and always will be Afrikan.
So, we cannot ask of ourselves the mentacidal questions they put in our minds. We cannot seriously ask ourselves irrelevant questions or believe answers which lead to forgetfulness. Our questions must always lead us home. For, how can you find your way home by forgetting your way unless you see home as some backward, barbaric, pagan outland or limit it to a place your stolen ancestors were brought to, you must look further than the deception of white lies to find our truth.
Those who have made it this far in this book obviously have struggled to overcome a socialized ignorance of Afrikan tradition and ourstory. They have found it impossible to live with the glaring contradictions that make life so difficult for Afrikan thinkers in this anti-Afrikan reality. They have rightly concluded that every thought and action of their ancestors is a viable and necessary means for them to return to their roots in our motherland.
They do not wee remembrance as regression. They see it as progress because they know that indisputable connection enables us to create a future for our children in the spiritual and cultural likeness of they people and their truth. Progress for Afrikans deciding to be Afrikan under the proselytizing assault of European culture, is engaged through the process of Sankofa. It is looking and moving back to what we become independently Afrikan. It is a Sakofa movement which takes us back fore this place to the continent of our origin and the way of our people.
We must move “backward” into this knowing to gain remembrance. This movement begins as we walk with our ancestors as they crossed the tempestuous waters that separate this place from home. That movement is what this book is all about.
The title, kebuka (pronounced Kay-boo-kah), is Kikongo word meaning, in simplest terms, “remember.” It is so say that we must struggle to remember the most deeply hidden intricacies of what we have been made to lose and use that memory to rebuild our future in line with those ancestral traditions. Baba Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki fukiau, who is my primary source for understanding this concept, has definite it as to “look back both physically, (with your eyes) and mentally with your mind; to draw from the past experience ( both positive and negative); to rely on one’s ground; {and} to link the past to the present reality before creaming for tomorrow.” He says that Kebuka “is both a physical and material and spiritual word” and indicates that “kebuka is the equivalent of Sankofa” in Kikongo. He states, however, that “…Kebuka as a verb is more powerful and more active and has more regenerating power itself than Sankifa.”
Of course we know that there is no competition between Afrikan Languages. All afrikan tongus are rich. And the more words we have that speaks to the necessity of remembrance to our contemporary sanity the better we are spiritually, intellectually, emotionally and physically able to engage our past, present and future as empowered Afrikans.
Kebuka is simply a choice reflecting the need to have an additive Afrikan voice in the repertoire we use to speak a re-Afrikanized reality into our nation building efforts.
And in this effort, we must not hedge on ourstory. We are fully entitled to it, in its rawness truth. If others are offended because their barbarities are exposed, so be it. If we feel guilty over their exposure, we should question our concern, not their culpability; we should question our concern, not their culpability. Kebukal