This post is dedicated to an often over-looked but critical aspect of de-colonisation, the spelling of names and, more broadly, the names themselves.
An excellent article by Giramata in Rwanda's The New Times called Unlearning lessons of injustice: The conscious decision of spelling AfriKa with a "K" states very compelling reasons for everyone to be using a K in the name Afrika as very few Afrikan languages use a C and that pre-colonial spellings of names consistently used a K, for example Kongo and Akkra, capital of Ghana. The article continues:
"the conscious choice to spell Afrika in its original form, first off, is to acknowledge native Afrikan dialect in its purest form. To acknowledge the languages in which our ancestors used to ensure that our history and cultures survived generations after generations. Spelling Afrika with a "K" is acknowledging the existence of Afrika and its narrators before colonization."
Please read the whole of this excellent piece here and another great piece called Why I write Afrika with a K, by Tutaleni Asino from Namibia in his blog here.
Those who wish to dig deeper into this topic might want to look for a seminal book by Haki Madhubuti written in 1973 called From Plan to Planet Life Studies: The Need for Afrikan Minds and Institutions, in which he presents 4 main reasons for using a K in the name, which are summarised here by Dr. Kwame Nantambu in Nommo Magazine, The Afrikan Newsmagazine at UCLA.
Please also have a look at Shaka Ra's video on the same issue below:
Across Afrika, as well as other parts of the world that were formerly or are still currently colonised, the issue of names is far from resolved. Below are listed just a few examples with the current colonial name in brackets:
- Lake Nnalubaale / Nam Lolwe / Nyanza / Ukerewe (Lake Victoria, located between Uganda, Kenya & Tanzania)
- Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls, located between Zimbabwe and Zambia)
- Ndar Tout (St. Louis in Senegal)
- Lake Mwitanzige or Rutanzige (Lake Edward, located between Uganda and D.R. Congo)
Another contested name is for the country currently known as South Africa. During the Anti-Apartheid struggle, several Afrikanist groups, particularly the PAC (Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania) and AZAPO (Azanian People's Organisation) argued passionately for the name Azania to be used after liberation.
For further reading, please download One Azania, One Nation: The national question in South Africa, written in 1979 by No Sizwe (believed to be the pen name of struggle hero Neville Alexander). Please download the book below:
Finally, we leave you with a thought about the name Afrika (or Africa) itself... quoting from The Guardian Nigeria, "In Kemetic History of Afrika, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop writes, "The ancient name of Africa was Alkebulan. Alkebu-lan "mother of mankind" or "garden of Eden"." Alkebulan is the oldest and the only word of indigenous origin." Please read the full article about Africa's original name(s) and fascinating comments below it here.
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