Africography of Language – African Metaphysics, Mathematical Linguistics and Cosmology

By Mocholoko, Zulumathabo Zulu © 2018

Lecture to be delivered at the 7th Africa Century International African Writers Conference on November 6-7, 2018 at the University of South Africa, Pretoria. 

Abstract

This scholarly paper proposes a novel solution to the metaphysical problem wherein the African native is devoid of authenticity of knowledge. The advent of the ECC (Euro-Christian Colonial) system in South Africa has created a situation wherein the African native has trouble knowing what is indigenously African and what is not with respect to the authenticity of knowledge. This epistemic problem, herein described as cultural hegemony, poses an impressive threat to the long term survivability of the African natives in the land of their African ancients as attested for by the behaviour patterns of identity crisis; shapeshifting and moral decay that they are perpetually bedevilled by, resulting in separatist tendencies and lack of cohesion.

Like a naive defender on the ropes in the carnivorous grasslands, the default response of the African native is to double down on the onslaught of cultural hegemony by retreating from the post and handing over the African child to the wolves of the Arctic North to instruct the African child to internalise the ethics; the rules and the values of foreign occupation instead of the child learning about the cosmology of the erudite ancestors who have gone before us.

There are three gaps in this abdicative strategy namely (1) the African scholars learn more about others instead of themselves; (2) suffer more from identity crisis than before and (3) the newly acquired Eurocentric knowledge does not enhance their survival experience in the terrestrial space.

Using the disruptive metascience of Africography, our novel solution addresses the knowledge gaps and the problem of cultural hegemony through the invocation of African metaphysics; numerical logic and the knowledge of the cosmos that comes to us as a paradigm case on account of the sacred intellectual achievements of the erudite ancestors who have gone before us premised on an African language as a source of new knowledge.

The implication of our solution provides the intellectual fighting sticks that enable the African natives to retake their position as the architects of their sacrosanct destiny to enhance their survival experience in the terrestrial space as it was intended to be. Badimo ke bao! Thokoza Makhosi!