Dr. Baba Buntu speaks on building stronger relations within family structures and returning to ancient African. Dr. Buntu is an Activist Scholar and Founding Director of eBukhosini Solutions; a community-based company in Johannesburg, specializing in Afrikan-Centered Education. Dr. Buntu has founded a number of community interventions based on practical approaches to Black Consciousness and decolonial methods.
Transcript
Speaker 1:
The African family is supposed to be a place of strength. We say that African culture is built under African family. But what happens when the African family is so affected by its history and its lack of cultural strength, that it reproduces some of the oppressive effects that we have enjoyed for centuries on this continent?
Rhiki:
Welcome to Radical Futures Now. On this podcast, we connect with social justice leaders around the world to talk about how to organize, how to be in movement, and how to build Radical Futures Now. Typically, when people think of colonization, we think about the invading, and the taking over of land, and usually land is always present in our minds. But colonization is so much more than that and we’re going to talk about that today, how colonization actually separates people from their roots, separates them from parts of their identity, separates them from their culture and their traditions, and also breaks down their relationship structures and how they’re in community with one another.
Rhiki:
When we think about Radical Futures Now and how to get towards a post colonial world, we have to understand that we need to look within ourselves for the answers because we have them, we were just separated from them through the process of colonization. I’m really excited to talk to Baba Buntu, about this concept and how we can get back to our roots. Baba, we’re so excited to have you with us today. To start us off, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Baba Buntu:
Thank you so much. I’m super excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me in. My full name is Baba Amani Olubanjo Buntu and I am an African man who’s trying to make … I think I’ve lived a long life to try to make sense out of the world with that we live in. Also be very intentional and practical about things that I think is worthwhile and meaningful to do, to change the situation because I’m not happy with this world. I’m absolutely not happy in this world and I don’t want to have lived my life and come out of it, and not have done the best that I can to add some change to this well. That’s really my whole purpose in life, to hope that I’m part of change that’s going to last and lead to substantial changes for our future.
Rhiki:
Yeah. I’m really interested. Can you talk with us about your journey and how you found your way into the work that you’re doing today?
Baba Buntu:
Yes. I’m trying to think of the longest version of the story because it has many details to it. But I think … My family is from Anguilla in the Caribbean. I have lived for a very long time as I grew up, in Europe, Norway, Scandinavia. Then I moved to South Africa in the ’90s and I’ve lived here ever since. This is home but I have many definitions of home. I think that has played an instrumental role in how I’ve navigated this world. I think from a very early age, in my life, I have been particularly drawn as an African myself and somebody of African descent and somebody who has really immerse myself into the African worldview.
Baba Buntu:
How similarly, we have been treated and been marked by our history as members of them, Global African Family, as most will know. We live in all over the world and we are by no way one homogeneous people, but we have a number of things in common. As I’ve walked my journey, I have found out that we are not the people whose history is not told, it’s just that the world doesn’t really want to listen to it and accept it. I have immersed myself a lot in books. I have read a lot and that doe not make me more clever important than anyone, but it has given me some insights into what has happened to us and also why the world operates the way that it does.
Baba Buntu:
Why oppression is so [life 00:04:32], why there’s so many imbalances and that has motivated me to be very practical. From the Caribbean, to Europe, to Africa, it’s been a journey, step by step immersing myself deeper and deeper into what I have learned and come to know as my purpose, which really is to focus on wisdom and educational programs. Let me say it like that because I think by learning and by being immersed in educational … Let me call it journeys. Educational or learning journeys. It also, at least in my opinion and in my experience, it then also pushes me to act.
Baba Buntu:
The more I know, the question becomes, what am I doing about it? Okay, fine. I know things, but what am I doing about it and how important is it just to sit here and know something and not really doing something about it. I think that has really informed my journey, my choices, who I spend time with, what I’ve built. I’ve built a number of programs and projects. Right now, the most important to me, over the last 20 years has been Ebukhosini Solutions, a company that we run here in South Africa. Me, my wife, Mama Tebogo, and a number of our extended family members that we have gotten to know along the way and the journey of this work.
Gilbert:
That’s powerful Baba. It’s really beautiful to hear that you’ve immersed … Your history is in all definitely different parts of the world. In the Caribbean, in Europe, and definitely in the continent, and how you’ve been able to also create all these educational services and community programs. But could you tell us or dive into a little bit about the Ebukhosini Solutions and how you’re using it to definitely serve your purpose in different parts of the world.
Baba Buntu:
Right. Ebukhosini means house of royalty. It actually means the royal family. Culturally, we are setting ourselves a very high task in that this is a name that you can’t just joke with or just use as a fancy buzzword. It really means and we have claimed it in the sense of … Because we are not necessarily royal family by blood lineage or that we belong to a royal family in the way that it’s sometimes spoken about on the continent, but we see ourselves as descendants of a royal people who have in many ways been crushed, very many ways been pushed to the periphery, and we want to bring ourselves back to the center. Instead of just complaining about that and feeling sad that this situation has gotten so bad, we want to action ourselves there.
Baba Buntu:
Ebukhosini Solution has a tagline, ancient traditions, modern solutions. In that tagline fits our … It articulates our purpose. We want to draw from Africa’s rich and broad wisdoms. I am saying it plurally because it means many things. It means technology, means science, it means spirituality, it means culture, it means humanity, means so many different things. We want to position that as what we draw from when we find solutions to navigate the lives we now live in a world that is very marked by so called modernization, which always mean westernization, means in the experience of Africa, being invaded and being spoken for, and being made decisions on behalf of, and very rarely to speak for ourselves.
Baba Buntu:
That’s what Ebukhosini really is for to create platforms for our voices to speak, to put our knowledge at the center and sometimes imagine the world as if that’s the only thing that exists. When I say that, what I mean is that part of the decolonial journey for us who have been marked by colonialism is to sometimes put ourselves at the very center and imagine that we have the best solutions we are, our knowledge is the most important, not from a point of arrogance and to blank out other knowledges, but because it has been taken away from us, because it has been so marginalized. To bring it back you need to focus so strongly on it over time and consistently.
Baba Buntu:
What does that mean? In practical terms, that means that we create … When I say learning journeys, it means we set our platforms for learning. I’m saying it very deliberately that way instead of saying classrooms or school books or curriculums, because when I say that people will see images that relate to their own school experience and this is not necessarily that. This is to sit with elders. This is to sit under a tree. This is to go and work with children. This is to make young people get up out of their chairs and get immersed into life in different ways. Ask questions, understand who we are, understand our history, but also build foundations, build businesses, build communities, build families.
Baba Buntu:
When I say family, family sits at the center of Ebukhosini Solutions where … Because we believe that a very fundamental breaking point in our history is when the African family was broken, or the ability to understand what family means, apart from just mother, father, child but to understand that family is actually an economic unit, is the power unit, is a learning center, it’s a grounding place. It’s a platform to really set yourself up to engage with the world and the many challenges that it comes with, when you one day leave the nest of your family and start on your own. We position that as our center. That also means that we are a community of practice. The way we live if seamless with what we do. We don’t really have … We don’t go off work ever. We are always on duty, we are always incorporating what we believe in, in our everyday life practice.
Rhiki:
I have a question. What are some of the programs that are coming out of Ebukhosini right now?
Baba Buntu:
Okay. I said that family fits very strongly within our understanding of our work. We have the Kandaka program that focuses on African women. That’s workshops, it’s learning programs, it’s sometimes individual processes, and sometimes it’s collective and family related processes. When I say processes, it could be healing, it could be learning how to overcome a certain trauma, it could be understanding the African woman’s journey since antiquity, and a number of other forms of engagements. Women coming together to really support each other and find solutions to the challenges they face.
Baba Buntu:
We have Shabaka, which is a similar equivalent to Kandaka, but for men, where we also create similar platforms for men. Young men, old men, married men, single men, like many types of African men in many different life situations. Since being a protector and somebody who generates resources … I’m saying resources deliberately, because it doesn’t just mean money. We also engage men in ways that they can start businesses, that they can start income generating programs for sustainability of themselves and the families that they contribute towards. We work with children, we work with youth. We do workshops, we do dialogues.
Baba Buntu:
Dialogues is actually something that we do very intentionally. We believe that more than just setting up a space where we have a speaker coming in to go through a particular topic, many of the things we need to relearn, especially in the space of family and community, respect, dignity, taking care of each other, support each other, liking ourselves, taking an invested interest in each other’s futures and finding solutions to common problems. Actually processes we need to do, not talk about. Dialoguing gives that ability to work while you are talking. You’re not just talking and then you say, “Okay, let’s go and do the work.” You work as you talk. You realize, you understand, you comment.
Baba Buntu:
You realize, “Yo, this is really my problem. I need to share this. I need to ask for some guidance on this. I don’t know how to handle this.” Then we deal with that in that session. Then of course, the real practice is the journeys that you then decide to walk based on that. We want to be very practical and we want to engage both young people, old people, people who have a degree, people who have always been unemployed and often are cast to the side because they’re not seen as being able to contribute something, they can contribute the most incredible things. This is not about hierarchical structures based on your educational level or your income or who you are socially in society. It’s for everyone.
Gilbert:
Baba, earlier you just spoke a lot about spirituality which just reminded me, there is another podcast that you were also interviewed about African spirituality. While you’re in your statement you said, separating black people from spiritual roots make us easy to oppress. We find that a very, very, very powerful statement. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Baba Buntu:
Yeah. Now, thank you for picking that out. My understanding of spirituality … I think you can only understand spirituality when it’s an experience, not just a theoretical thought about what it could possibly be. My experience of spirituality is to find a balance between the physical world we live in and the metaphysical realities that we represent our history, our ancestry, our spirit guides, and many of the other new aspects of spiritual life. It is to be in a duality of existence almost permanently. I mean, in different ways at different times, but it is to walk in the world with that duality.
Baba Buntu:
Not just check into it on a Sunday, or because somebody reminds you, or because you longing for it so much that you go and seek it. Wherever you are, you walk with that and that is your truth and that is your being and that’s your existence. My argument then, is that when spirituality has been that for thousands of years for African people, when people come to oppress and degrade and maim and kill and torture people and at the very root of that oppression, also make sure that the spiritual power is denounced, is demonized, is taken away to such an extent that many of us now relate to our own spiritual history as somewhat mistake or dangerous or demonic or not really the way we supposed to be.
Baba Buntu:
Like we a bit ashamed of it and we don’t really want to say that we go and consult with certain practitioners, or we hide it and we feel it’s not really who we are supposed to be. When it has gotten to that level, it means that a very fundamental aspect of our existence is not just tampered with or a little bit broken. It might be to mean to quite an extent, actually be gone or be void or be just a huge gap. When that gap has been internalized and normalized on our part, it is easy to be gullible, it is easy to look for solutions everywhere, but within. Because you have decided that, “I don’t represent any solutions, I don’t come from anywhere important, what I represent, I should try to get away from.”
Baba Buntu:
Anything else, anything that appears foreign and new and in a language that I didn’t even grow up speaking, becomes more desirable, but then actually to go back and reclaim my own. When that becomes a position, it’s almost like, as an African unwillingly walking into my own oppression. I’m seeking to be oppressed, I’m seeking to lose myself, I’m seeking to not really love and reclaim and stand in my own self. Oppression doesn’t even have to be such a costly project for those who want to oppress me, because I’m almost effectuating and doing it myself.
Baba Buntu:
I think it’s through that lens we can see how education has become very problematic on the African continent, leadership is very problematic on this continent. Religion is very problematic, economy. A number of these things have happened over many generations. I’m not trying to say that this just happened overnight, this is an after effect. Is a trauma, a lived trauma that comes at after many, many, many designs of oppressions. When that becomes normal, many of us struggle with just being an existing and wanting better.
Rhiki:
Wow, thank you for sharing that because I can definitely see the parallels between what’s happening on the continent with this dynamic and also what’s happening in the US with African Americans. There’s like this shift where-
Baba Buntu:
Absolutely.
Rhiki:
… people are really trying to figure out who they are, but it’s hard because we’re so disconnected from our spiritual roots, or just our roots in general. There’s this gap in our identity and I think that-
Baba Buntu:
True.
Rhiki:
… gap keeps us from really being secure in who we are. [crosstalk 00:19:01] Like you said, when we see something new or see something foreign, we are attracted to it. We see it as better because we don’t really have a good baseline for who we are.
Baba Buntu:
Exactly. It’s so true. I think around the continent, African people are very inspired by the African American branch of the family because African Americans are seen to be standing on the barricades and not accepting the violence that are being pushed down their throat. We see many proud African Americans, and that’s a great inspiration. But I think it’s very telling when we as a people even have to say, black lives matter, not black lives exist, black lives are important. They matter. Things that matter are not necessarily that important. See us like …
Baba Buntu:
Accept that we human beings and when we need to even start there, we understand that we are not just here to complain, we’re not trying to make up our oppression, we actually don’t want it in the first place. We wish that we didn’t even have to have conversations like the one we’re having right now. But our reality tells us different and it becomes a must to insist on being alive, fighting to exist, fighting to be somebody, fighting to know and remember that we were so much more than what we appear to be right now.
Gilbert:
Oh, no, no. I just wanted to come in real quick before we move ahead just still about that spiritual experience. When Baba, you mentioned about the foreign spiritual experience when it becomes much more desirable. I just wanted to get a quick comment about this, the African spiritual experience versus the foreign religions, or the foreign new emerging religions that appeal much more desirable to the people right now and how you use see people experience the African spirituality.
Baba Buntu:
Right. What I see when I connect with the broader continent, and I think the Diaspora to a large extent as well, is that there is a pronounced search for spiritual truth right now. It comes out, as you said, in search of identity. Who am I? Who are we? Where do I come from? But it also comes in questioning the religious templates that have been given to us through our home. Because it’s people who love us who have told us that this is the religion you should choose, this is what is best for you. It’s not our preference that directly tell us that, now we have lived with it for so many generations that this is given to us and maybe sometimes even forced to us by people who actually love us.
Baba Buntu:
It’s difficult to then make up your mind, “Should I believe what my parents told me? Is it really true? Am I too rebellious if I stand up to it, or choose not to follow it? Who is my enemy or who am I fighting even if I’m rebellious in that space?” But I think it’s a very healthy thing that we are beginning to go through as a people. I think we haven’t even seen how difficult it will be. Because when we start to undo some of them colonial matrices that were forced on us, we are also starting to unshackle some of the bondage that other people plan for us to be in forever.
Baba Buntu:
They didn’t plan that we would get out of this. The future of the world takes it into account that we will continue to be this people that we were designed to be so that we are cheap labor, so that we are protesting on the street, a couple of times a year, that we are angry, that we are gangster rappers, that we are … It’s a design. That’s what the world expects us to be. But when we stand up, especially in the spaces of questioning fundamental questions around spirituality, spiritual awareness, we are starting to shake a certain ground that it now we don’t … I think this is why those within our communities who have accepted and started to identify very strongly with those religious templates get very scared.
Baba Buntu:
That’s why there are conflicts between parent and child, because the child seems so ridiculously rebellious and asking questions that you’re not supposed to. Even from a spiritual point, this is wrong, this is sinful. You are tempering with things that we’re not supposed to tamper with. Now it becomes dangerous. Now a parent and a child is fighting. How can that be good? Because aren’t we saying that we want to bring the family together? Now if it disunites us, isn’t that a sign that it’s bad? But I don’t think it is, I think it is a conflict we need to be more mature at handling.
Baba Buntu:
Because young people have done that for us for a while. They have been the ones on the barricade, they have been the ones daring to ask the questions, they have been the one thing that, “I’m not going to just going to follow something just because you tell me, I want to understand 1,2,3,4 and a whole number of other questions.” Those of us who now have then accepted that you shouldn’t ask questions, we become provoked by that. But that’s the maturity that, especially my generation, needs to take on much, much more and take a step back and not be threatened that some of the things that maybe we now have gotten used to thinking must stand and must never be questioned. It is actually going to be better when some of those things fall.
Baba Buntu:
We actually walking towards a better power, a better grounding, when we are able to unravel some of the things that have been very oppressive for us. I like to have the conversation that way. You will notice that I’m not naming the religion, I’m not naming templates within the religion, because I feel we need to go there a little bit slow, because these are sensitive questions to many of us. Many of us, if we don’t handle this well, we will get out from the room and leave and never come back. I feel then we have lost the plot even before we started. We need to learn how to deal with conflicting undoing of our pain.
Rhiki:
I want to switch the conversation just a little bit and talk about the work that you mentioned a little bit earlier about this idea of masculinity. In the West, like we’re now in this time of people are really talking about what toxic masculinity is over here and really, it’s just the ways in which we were that men were taught to display their masculinity and how it’s actually problematic. I think we’re in a time of redefining what masculinity looks like over here. But I understand that you’re also tackling that same issue on the continent. Can you talk about your work with that and how you’re going about redefining masculinity?
Baba Buntu:
Okay. I didn’t really want to start particular projects for men. It wasn’t really a desire of mine. I was much more drawn to spaces where both men and women were interacting and learning to listen better to each other. But over the years, I realized that even places I was invited to speak, and we’re not necessarily talking about gender issues or masculinity, a number of men would come up to me afterwards and asked very similar questions. “What does it mean to be an African men today? Don’t you think feminism have gotten too far? Why are we not able to be there for our families? Why is fatherhood such an issue in our community?” Thing like that.
Baba Buntu:
At one point, I thought, you know what? There are a number of men’s organizations out there, but they don’t seem to address these fundamental questions that a lot of African men or men of African descent ask. Then I started the idea of Shabaka, which is the name of a pharaoh, an African pharaoh lived in around 700 BC and did incredibly great things for his nation. We wanted to use that as a template for, what should we do for our nation, the Africa that is before us. When I say Africa, I’m talking about the African diaspora, I’m talking about the African continent. Then we decided also …
Baba Buntu:
This is something that I have been led to and realize is the way for me to open up new spaces that I haven’t done before, because I haven’t hadn’t started a men’s project before and I knew a lot about what I didn’t want to do, but I didn’t know so much about how to define it and what do we do. We started with dialogues, and we started asking men, “What are you missing? What would you like this to be? What spaces do you feel you don’t have access to? When you are in your most shameful moment, what would be a good way to find a channel to share that with somebody that you’re not judged by?” Then we realized that dialoguing was very important spaces where only black men come together, regardless of the language you speak, regardless of how well you speak the …
Baba Buntu:
Africanness is also very complex. Because if you don’t speak in African language, some will question that. “What do you mean your African and you don’t even speak an African language?” But then you could find another African who speaks fluently his or her language, but maybe just talk about things that have nothing to do with African knowledge or African history. It’s complex what constitutes Africanness. I think we’re still grappling a bit with that. For me it starts very simply, it’s people of African descent. It’s people who descend from the people that were once inhabiting this continent and started to populate the world that we can see with certain phenotypes and we can see by certain physical denominators like hair and in tone and things like that. It starts there.
Baba Buntu:
I think it’s important and this has been very important for me to say, because some people feel that the question of who’s African and creating a line of who is and who is not, is divisive and conflicting and counter racist. I don’t think it is. Just as I think when women need to meet exclusively, that doesn’t mean they hate men, it means they want to have a private conversation. When we as black people feel that we want to meet alone and we have our own house issues or family issues that we want to address, it doesn’t mean we hate anyone. It’s based on the love that we need to exercise better for ourselves. That has been a guideline for the men’s project that it’s for men of African descent.
Baba Buntu:
We hold it in the language that is relevant to the different conversations. Sometimes it may be English because there’s people who do not speak the same language. Sometimes it is in Izuru, sometimes it will be in Buganda, sometimes it will be in whatever language suits the occasion. It is really about bringing the voice of the African man raw, brutal, and honest. We don’t really use the word masculinity that much, but I get what you mean by the question that masculinity means a certain expectations in society of role a man should play. Because we have … Remember how I traced part of the toxic learning process that we’ve had as a colonized continent and people, woven into that is also many new insights around gender roles.
Baba Buntu:
Although maybe this conversation doesn’t allow us the full time to go into the details of it, I just want to say that we understood gender very differently than what we have forced to articulate it as now. That means that Western and Arab cultures have been very busy with what is masculine and what is feminine and there must be a separation. Western and Arab masculinity has been built, I feel, in a very strong fear of the feminine. A lot of the power structure or the power dynamics is about containing, oppressing, keeping down the feminine energy. When that is represented as a woman, but also when it represented maybe in the form of art, in the form of softer values, in the form of care, those are things and dynamics that should be suppressed and kept down and controlled.
Baba Buntu:
Because there is this underlying notion that if the feminine is allowed to blossom, something wrong will happen. That is not the original and worldview of African people. We had present femininity and matriarchal power constructs, much more stronger right at the center and we were not afraid of it. In the colonial experience, we as African men, first of all we were infantilized, meaning we were reduced to become boys. What do boys do? They complain, they moan, they cry, they are cheeky, they try to do things in way they’re not supposed to so that in kind of get away with stuff.
Baba Buntu:
When we are reduced to that, boy is ness, and that becomes normal and almost the definition of what an African man is, we do not expect from ourselves and the society we live in, do no longer expect men to be upright, men to have deep values, men to be truthful, men’s word to mean anything. Many of us we realize as men that we can get away with stuff. There’s not that high expectations to us anyway. When this becomes a norm, I’m very concerned about that and I want us to remember who we once were. When I say that we for instance, have the Shabaka project, you will remember also talked about Kandaka which is the female counterpart.
Baba Buntu:
Shabaka is not so much agenda project … sorry, it’s not so much agenda project, as it is a very necessary conversation we need to have now. We’re not planning for … Hopefully, Shabaka doesn’t have to exist 500 years, maybe 50. But what I’m trying to say is that as we go part of the … This is a way to articulate what Shabaka is really about. It is for every African man to ask himself, “Am I the best African man I could possibly be? If I’m not, what is stopping me from it? Within the reasons that I find, what am I willing to take some accountability for and improve on and change.” Of course, it’s not a process that I can do completely in isolation, because part of realizing that I’m a man is also realizing that I cannot be a man without mirroring my experience with my counterpart, who is the woman.
Baba Buntu:
There’s also a complementarity that we need to relearn because we have become very much into a boxing match type of relationship. Women have learned from us that they shouldn’t smile back when we greet them. When they don’t, we then learned that, “Oh, so you think you’re better. We’re going to talk back to you, we’re going to make you feel small, because how dare you not greet me and smile to me.” Already there before we even had any conversation, we are already starting a fight. We are already starting a process to put the other person down. Because frankly we have become quite afraid of each other. We might not admit it, we might not say it that way, but we are actually fearful of each other. Because what I’ve learned about the African woman is that she’s probably going to hurt me.
Baba Buntu:
What the African woman has learnt about me is that I’m probably going to hurt her. Let me hurt you before you hurt me. Let me do something to you before you do something to me. That’s not a good position for people who’s trying to remember the family construct and the coexistence. What we do within Shabaka, we do men of the mountain where we go to a space and we prepare men for marriage and for understanding their role in the family. We have dialogues, we have teen talks for young teenage men, where they get to explore their own thoughts and values and how they want to shape themselves as young men. We talk to young fathers.
Baba Buntu:
We have support groups for young fathers, especially those who are in relationships where custody of the baby has become very conflicting, coexisting when the relationship is gone, but the children are there, to guide the journeys. I think this is our ethos. When I said Ebukhosini is doing our etho or our tagline is ancient traditions, modern solutions, it is to reinstate that guiding nature that used to exist in ancient society. When you get married, you are guided into marriage. When you become a woman, you become a [inaudible 00:36:08] you are guided into that process. Not forced, not being defined and told that this, this, this, this, this, you are guided.
Baba Buntu:
Guided in the African sense means that reading your personality and your purpose. Because your purpose might be slightly different from the next person’s purpose. It is also about diversity. But there is a journey that you are allowed to hold somebody else’s hand and lean on somebody so that not every first experience is super rough and difficult. Then by the time you really face conflict, you should then have gathered the strength to be able to face it and take responsibility for what you need to do.
Gilbert:
Thank you, Baba. But I got a follow up reaction about that. I felt like I was having a Shabaka moment exactly over here. But I remember the very first time [crosstalk 00:37:03] you came to Uganda and we had very first Shabaka sessions, and how the reactions were in the room. Some of the Shabaka sessions we’ve been able to have, especially when you come here, of course you see development with the people especially the young men that we usually bring about them getting to be open about [crosstalk 00:37:29] their feelings and experiences that they go through because in most African cultures there are no spaces for men to explore that those places. I just wanted you to take us through some of the things or the traits you’ve experienced over time organizing Shabaka. How people have been talking about the things that are hurting them or some of the things they triumph about, accountability and leadership, and how you see that developing over time?
Baba Buntu:
Right? Now, thank you for the question. What I now know, after 12 years of doing Shabaka, and I did some work with men before we also formalized the platform, is that at the root of all of us as African men, at least to some extent sits fear, shame, insecurity. Yeah, let me just dwell on those three. Fear, insecurity and shame, for often in relation to things that we had no control over. We feel that we’re not men enough because somebody told us something or somebody dismissed us or somebody didn’t give us an opportunity, so we now think there’s something wrong with us.
Baba Buntu:
We are fearful because we’re not sure if we can really speak our truth, we are fearful because we’re not sure if I’m living up to the expectation that society has of me as an African man. I’m not going to really talk because I’m probably going to be laughed at or called a joke, or told that there’s something wrong with me. I’m insecure because many of us … When you sit men down and ask them, “Who’s your role model?” They might come up with a few names. But then you go deeper in like, “What was the role modelship about that man about?” Then maybe it was because that man had money and he could feed his family. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Baba Buntu:
But that doesn’t necessarily speak to values that you can really carry a family through with, it speaks to job opportunities, or income opportunities. Many men do not feel that they have been guided into an understanding of what it practically means to be an African man. I find this in the diaspora and on the continent with differences, but also with many similarities. What that does is that you mentioned toxic masculinity a little bit earlier, I wanted to say that, I do not really use that expression much. I think I know what it means, but in our history as African men and men of African descent, our masculinity has been broken more than just toxified.
Baba Buntu:
Meaning, it’s not just a few toxic elements that have come in, it means that we come from a place where our role as men and role as women actually worked quite well. I’m not trying to say perfect and that every instant there was absolutely no problem, I’m not saying that. But I’m saying, we had a pretty good template for family life and community life and governance, which we struggle a lot with right now. That was crushed and taken away and uprooted in such a way that we have come back to it as African women and men not trusting each other, not trusting ourselves. In the space of men then it has been extremely interesting and I’m very humbled by the many men who have allowed me and the team that I work with, to get insight into the many things that men never talk about.
Baba Buntu:
I think this is so important to say to women who have gotten used to us being quiet, not talking, not really answering the question. “What is on your mind? What are you thinking?” Because many women have experienced us as [inaudible 00:41:17]saying, “No, I’m not thinking about anything. Why are you asking so many questions.” But actually, I experienced that we, as African men, we are so ready to talk. But we need to know that we’re not going to be laughed at, we need to know that we’re going to be believed and we need to know that yes, we can be criticized or being told that maybe we are expressing certain things wrongly, but we must be dismissed, Because the moment that we are, we normally just go back to silence again.
Baba Buntu:
We are very fragile. I think it’s very difficult for us to accept and admit that because there is an expectation that we should be unbreakable. We’re not unbreakable. We have feelings, we have emotions, we have our doubts, we have our own stuff that is going on in our own head that we rarely talk about. To give men the surety and the assurance that they can actually find channels and it doesn’t make them less men, you can actually break down, and it doesn’t make you less of a man, you can admit that you don’t know what to do in the family that you’ve been trying to guide for 15 years but you are failing dismally.
Baba Buntu:
It doesn’t mean that you’re not a man, it means that you were not guided. It means that you were not fathered, it means that you were not taken care of in the crucial age of your becoming a man. That’s where it went wrong. That is not supposed to, in a communal culture like us, to be your individual fault. You shouldn’t have to feel ashamed. You should just understand that it has become this way because of what has happened to us and now there are other tools that you can use to find your way back. I must say this, it’s extremely beautiful to see African men finding themselves, rewiring themselves, rooting themselves, connecting themselves.
Baba Buntu:
It’s beautiful to watch and be part of what maybe what I find even more beautiful is when we get phone calls and letters, from girlfriends, from mothers, from daughters who are in everyday relationships with these men and say, “My father has changed. My husband is a different man, my brother is my best support and we used to be enemies.” Just because men were led into a space where they were told that you don’t have to be afraid anymore, somebody’s got your back. You’re not the only one. You don’t have to be ashamed of what you were not able to do, you get a fresh start, you can start again and nobody’s expecting you to be perfect.
Baba Buntu:
What I’m learning through all of this is that, yes we need resources to do this much more. Because as Gilbert and everyone has been part of Shabaka knows is that it’s very limited what we can do, because we don’t have a lot of resources to do this work. But I want Africa and the African diaspora as well to make this a priority just in the same way that we have at least in a better way than before, understood the importance of women’s empowerment. That’s beautiful and that’s necessary and that should continue and be done even much more. But we mustn’t then also neglect and not pay attention to the boy child. I see it in classrooms right now. I see it in schools.
Baba Buntu:
Young sisters are sitting, there taking notes, they are … Even the lower grades, they’re starting to think about what they want to become. Many boys, and I’m not saying all, but many boys are still just playing, still not really knowing what … Because they have an insecurity even from a very early age. If we don’t do something about this, I don’t think we’ve seen the levels of violence that this could result in because that’s what often happens when we as men get very frustrated. We acted out in ways where we forced people to, in a very twisted way, respect us or see us or be fearful of us or take note of our existence and we force people. Because we’ve learned a lot about what colonial power can do.
Baba Buntu:
How I can suppress my woman, how I can put her down, how I can use my force as a man, how I can use my psychology to make her feel this small and it works. She actually becomes a smaller person. When we learn this, we are drifting away and that’s the broken masculinity that I’m talking about, when some of us gain our power from very destructive ways of dealing with ourselves and each other. Shabaka really is about that. To rise up as an African man of responsibility, of a softer side and that doesn’t take away the stronger side, it actually builds it.You need to be able to have a channel, to vent, to talk, to find a constructive way to let out your anger, because we are angry and we have very good reasons to be angry. But the problem is that when we don’t choose the channel, the channel chooses us and then we went out and we destroy people that we have said we want to love.
Rhiki:
I really appreciate you bringing up using the term brokenness, broken masculinity, and also the way in which you tie everything back to colonialism, because it is tied back to colonization. I was watching an interview, not too long ago and they were saying “One of the major …” I want to say, “Goals of oppressing black families or African families was the deconstruction of that family.” I really appreciate you bringing up what you said about like we had a way of existing, a familiar structure that worked in the past that was deconstructed and broken through the process of colonization and it was intentional. I think it was intentional to break that down in order to make it easier to oppress us.
Baba Buntu:
Absolutely. True. True. Now, I completely agree. Having said that, because I think what many people misunderstand about this conversation is that we are shifting blame. When we say it as African men, some systems will pick up, we are saying that we don’t want to take responsibility, we are just violent because of what happened in the past, so there’s nothing we can do about it really. Don’t come to us. That’s not the message. The message is one of a two fold message. One, we need to understand how we got to this place. What happened to us. Like you said, this is not how it used to be way back in the day. How did we become these people? Why do we act out in this way?
Baba Buntu:
That’s just one part of the question. Because the other part of the of that information is we are not sitting waiting for those who oppressed us to fix this. Because first of all, that wouldn’t work and secondly, they’re not going to do it and we have to fix this. That’s the second part and that’s what Shabaka really is about taking responsibility for a situation we didn’t create in the first place, but now are a part of, now have internalized, now have become agents of. Now we need to redefine our roles, now we need to think about what relationships are useful for us. What family structures can we encourage each other and support each other to build? What particularly is difficult in that process?
Baba Buntu:
That’s why we offer guidance to young men and to young couples. A lot of young couples are very alone just in the space of forming a relationship. Because think about it. Many young people today if you ask them, “What is the consistent relationship hopefully of marriage that you have seen, observed and that you have access to? Meaning you can go and visit these people, you can go and talk and ask for advice from these people. How many of those relationships do that you think, ‘Wow, this is one that I really want to have in my own experience.'” You find that young people say, “Maybe one or two, maybe by a stretch three,” and that’s like a lot.
Baba Buntu:
What that means is that you want to start something that you haven’t really seen a lot. When that is true, that probably also means that you need some guidance from people that can actually guide you into that place and create a support network for you as you enter and as you continue that experience. That’s not the experience that young couples have these days. We need to, as a community, rather than saying, “Oh, this one is so out of line, this one is just so strange,” we need to understand young people are telling us very clearly what’s happening in their lives right now.
Baba Buntu:
One thing they are saying is that, “Nobody’s guiding us. Nobody’s having time for us. Nobody’s sitting us down and listening to what we go through. Everybody’s busy telling us who we are. Everybody’s busy defining us. Everybody’s busy saying how useless we are in many spaces. But nobody is willing to listen to our version of the truth and then give advice after that. Because we want advice, but we also want to tell our story first.” I think that’s where our generation, my generation, has gone very wrong, that we are so busy defining and complaining and blaming the young generations, rather than listening. Even if your behavior, to me, may seem a bit ridiculous and out of character, at least let me have the interest in asking you, “Is there a reason why you do this? What does this mean? Could this possibly mean something else than what I think it is? Let me at least have that as an opening question, and then hopefully learn something. Then I can maybe give some advice.”
Gilbert:
Baba that’s powerful about guidance. You just mentioned about how young people, especially in Africa, they’re starting things where they don’t have guidance or they don’t have mentorship from and that is my question stems from that. When you usually hold workshops, there’s one powerful thing that we usually do and that is holding either bringing together old people in that community, with the young people to come together and have a dialogue, which is the intergenerational conversation. How have you seen that helping in the transfer of wisdom, knowledge and mentorship?
Gilbert:
Because just like you just said, young people right now they don’t really have places to go to and say, “Oh, I want to be like Baba. How did he grow up? How did he become this person? How can I walk in the footsteps of what he’s been able to be? Yeah, just talk to us a little bit about the importance of those intergenerational conversations.
Baba Buntu:
Now, thank you again for the question. I think this is very key to our healing and re-empowerment process to have intergenerational learning. It actually goes both ways. Young people are constantly told that they have nothing to teach and nothing to offer that you just be quiet and listen to the older generation. But young people have a lot of information about what is happening right now, what they see right now. The fact that many young people may be differently to us, when they are asked, “What do you think is going to happen 2030 years, into the future?” A lot of young people have a blank stare like, “2030 years? I’m trying to find out what I’m doing this year. I don’t know if I can even think 2030 years into the future.”
Baba Buntu:
What that means is that’s actually a burden. Because many of us in the older generation, even if we were equally oppressed and confused about many things, many of us had this idea that the future is still going to be great. “Even if my life is completely upside down right now, at least in the future it’s going to be fine.” I’m not saying one is right and one is wrong, it just means there’s a difference, generational difference in what has happened to us and how we see the world. That’s something that we need to learn as elders, because when I understand that, then I also understand that young people will want to do things much quicker.
Baba Buntu:
Jump into a relationship, have a baby, buy a car even on a loan. Do lots of things because maybe the mind frame is that, “I’m probably not going to live that long. Let me just do as much as I can in a short space of time.” Which is a different planning order than maybe what I got used to because I was still thinking that the future is still going to be great. I’m just singling out an example of what an intergenerational conversation can position and bring, especially from youth to elder and from the elder to youth. But for me, what is important when you … If not just to call older and younger people into a room and just say, “Okay, talk.” You also need to guide the conversation. Because as elders, some of us, are not for us to share and especially not share about things that we didn’t do so well.
Baba Buntu:
We want to brag and when we get to a certain age of our lives, we may look back and feel that, “I didn’t really contribute that greatly. Now I want to single out those two things that I did and I want everybody to know that. I don’t want to talk about anything that I did wrong.” But that’s why we also need to set a stage and allow elders to talk about things that they maybe regret or maybe that they learned or maybe that they didn’t do so well without losing face and without having to feel ashamed of it, but rather use it as a learning journey for the younger generation to also see that, “Now, our parents also went through extremely difficult problems and now I understand better why they were so hard on me, why they said education is the key, why they say all those things that at one point I just felt was oppressive and putting me in a certain light.”
Baba Buntu:
I’m saying all of this to say that you need some guidelines for the conversation. That means you need to have persons that both the elders and the younger generation have some respect for or can listen to and who understands the perimeters that you don’t talk to the elders in a certain way, you don’t talk down to young people in a certain way to keep that level of respect. I would like to say also to be able to do this … Because I find a lot of … It’s not just one particular kind of people who can do this, but how you practice this is that you don’t make it a workshop persona, it’s something that you do in your everyday life.
Baba Buntu:
As you get older, you take an interest in those young guys were hanging on the corner, constantly drinking beers and smoking, and you actually just irritated because you think, “You guys are making this neighborhood unsafe. I can’t take my five year old going down the street, because I’m scared that you’re going to recruit my five year old.” But instead of just having that judgmental talk, single a few people out and say, “Can I talk to you? Can I just hold that you? Can I just ask you some questions? How is life for you as a young person? I don’t see any of you going to work or going to school? Why is that? Just teach me. Let me see your world.”
Baba Buntu:
You will find if not everybody who’s going to respond maybe favorably. One, because they’re not used to elder people actually having an interest. If somebody who’s undercover for some authorities, “I’m probably going to end up in trouble. I’m not going to say anything.” You could meet that dynamic with some young people. But I’m just saying that very often young people also, in a surprising way, say, “Wow, you actually interested in me? You actually want to ask me questions. Wow. Okay, let me talk to you.” Through that a relationship can start. Let me tell you this, for those who don’t know, most young people who engage in behaviors that we know are dangerous, and at risk, and not the best, most of the time do not really want to, but do not feel that they have an option to choose otherwise.
Baba Buntu:
Because their family has not been there for them, they are in poverty, they have tried and failed that many, many other things of being excluded for many other opportunities. This is what they have found themselves doing. I just think it is so important to exercise this role of the elders that we need. I’m trying to call at my own age group, because I feel that we have really let the younger generation down. We have told you, “Don’t lean on us, figure this out on your own.” That’s what I feel many of us have said to you as a group of elders. I want to call us to order because we need to do much better. There’s a need for us. There’s a place for us. We should open up that by asking questions more than just pointing our fingers and tell you.
Rhiki:
Wow, thank you so much for talking with us. I do have one last question. When you are trying to learn more or get more involved in the type of work that you’re doing now, who do you go to for inspiration? Or who do you go to, to gain more knowledge? Who are your go to people?
Baba Buntu:
My wife, definitely. Number one is my wife. Mama Tebogo is an incredible source of information. I trust her judgment. She’s maybe one of the few people who speaks very, very honestly to me and say that, “That was not right. You didn’t do that well. You can do that much better.” I know, I’m going to get a very honest opinion and I know that it comes from a place of love and support. That’s definitely a number one go to. But I also have a couple of male friends who are my age or older, and who I do not necessarily see very frequently, but they know that when I’m calling them, there’s something serious going on.
Baba Buntu:
Because I would be a hypocrite if I stand on stages to young people and different audiences say that, “When you are down, don’t be afraid to seek help. When you are down and out, don’t be ashamed,” if I don’t do it myself. I need that a whole lot of time. I have some go to people that I go and I belt out. I even instruct like, “Don’t talk for the next half an hour, I’m just going to say what it is.” And I’m just laying on them. If they can still breathe after that, they will give me some advice. Sometimes it’s also just to be listened to, somebody who understands you, somebody who has that open air. That’s very important for me to do.
Baba Buntu:
Because I listen to a lot of people. I invite a lot of people in my space and I do this very honestly. If I’m not in an energetic space where I can honestly listen to you because I’m tired or I’m caught up in something, I will actually reschedule the appointment. I know how important it is for you to talk but I will say, “Don’t talk to me right now. I’m not going to give you a good ear, I’m not going to be … You shouldn’t trust me in this space because I’m so much all over. Give me until tomorrow. Let’s set up another day where we have this conversation.” I do that because I go out and seek it myself.
Baba Buntu:
In saying that, I’m just encouraging everyone out there who know that they are called to leadership. I think leadership is something you call to. If you have a choice you don’t want to choose leadership. It’s hard, it’s lonely, it’s finding your life away, literally. It’s not about popularity and Instagram followers or anything like, it true leadership at least in my definition. If you have an option, don’t choose [inaudible 01:00:40] But, of course, I’m saying that with a joke because I also believe that we are all called to some sense of leadership. I mean, responsibility and doing things for the betterment of our communities.
Baba Buntu:
But, I mean, when you play a leadership role in space of many people, I think you first need to check yourself. You first need to know that you have a support work around you, because very easily, these type of positions or these type of capacities, burns you out. You need to be in charge of that unit, take responsibility so that you don’t burn out. Make sure you have a support team around you, make sure you have people to go to, make sure you are very honest.
Baba Buntu:
I’m trying my best. I know sometimes I’m also weak to the fact that I think that I shouldn’t be bothered somebody right now, I know that this person has been through a lot, let me not come and make it even more difficult. I will also have those thoughts. But I become much better over the years to also push myself to say that this is ridiculous. I keep saying this to other people, if I don’t do it myself, I am a hypocrite. That’s one thing I never want to have charged against me to be a hypocrite. Let me be real, let me be honest, let me be.
Gilbert:
Powerful, powerful Baba. I think we are going to the close of our conversation. But before we do, I know between me and you, we have our own reach, and I wanted you to bless my team with it, to give them the harambee they need and to briefly just explain to them what harambee means and why we do it. Yes.
Baba Buntu:
Okay. Harambee is the Kiswahili word that means pulling together. It really speaks to the energy that we are able to build when we support each other and when I make your problem my problems and vice versa, so that we become part of the solution together. When we have physical gatherings, we normally stretch our hand in the air and say that we pulling down, or we drawing this energy down into the space called harambee. We do that by shouting it very loudly. If you’ve been to some of our workshops, you will know that I shout [inaudible 01:02:52]. The point of that is, we can’t just sit and intellectualize ourselves into the unknown because our freedom is unknown. We haven’t been free for a while.
Baba Buntu:
To liberate ourselves is a new thing. We haven’t been there. We need to use every capacity we have. We can use our intellect, we can use our voice, we can use our intelligent being, but we also need to use our spirit. As Gilbert is saying, he knows that it goes like, “Harambee!” It goes like a shout. When you shout, you actually feel a certain energy vibrate through your body. When you hit everybody around you shout at the top of lungs, however you relate to spirituality or out of body experiences or what, you cannot not feel that. I think it’s important to make our freedom journey also something we can feel and taste and hear. Harambee is an example of that. Harambee to all of you.
Rhiki:
Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Gilbert, what was something that you took away from the conversation today?
Gilbert:
One of the most important thing that I took from the conversation from Baba was how he was defining masculinity, away from gender, but also taking us through a journey, him defining it as a family structure and responsibility for the African youth and men to realigning themselves to responsibility and society. For me, that was really powerful because I’ve seen it in reality and through his conversation how that is shaping up conversations in Uganda. The other thing was through the intergenerational dialogues, what he spoke about of how elders and young people can be able to learn from each other. Where we see the elders can be able to sit and listen to the young people. Then the young people can be able to learn from the elders through their experiences and their knowledge. That was really powerful to me.
Rhiki:
Yeah. I think what you said about the intergenerational nature of being in community with each other is something that I also took away from the conversation. But another thing that I want to highlight is when he was talking about, there’s a two fold thing that we have to understand in order to create change. One is understanding that we have a problem. Understanding how we got here in the first place, I think is the language that he used.
Rhiki:
Then the next thing is what you said with the masculinity thing, Gilbert, is even though we may not be responsible for the situation that we’re in today, how can we take responsibility for that and do what we need to do individually and as a community to move forward, even if the reason why we’re here isn’t necessarily our fault. I think that’s something that I will always remember from today. That’s it for episode today. The Radical Futures Now Podcast is housed under the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College. Special thanks to Trevor Loduem-Jackson for music and Ellie and I [inaudible 01:06:29] for our graphics. Be sure to follow us on our Instagram at Arcus center. See you next week.
Speaker 5:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.