Kwanzaa and the Nguzo Saba
By Kenneth Winfrey, in viewpoints
Wednesday, December 26 2007, 1:01PM
Kenneth Winfrey Reports
As I think over the past year, I am glad to say that I feel that I’ve had a wonderful year. Despite the disappointments, there were many precious moments of realization and countless others where I feel that I was blessed with the gifts that life on Earth has to offer. I feel that I have learned a great deal during this year, especially from writing on this site. And while I fancy myself as a writer, I am not able to describe fully my gratitude for the experience this site has provided for me. My life has come so much closer to being a testimony of my faith and beliefs. I feel affirmed and yet, I also look forward to learning more, experiencing more, meeting more of the wonderful people with whom I share this life and this fascinating planet, and becoming more of the person I was created to become.
As we close the year and this site, I encourage everyone to take time to look back for a brief moment. In the tradition of the sankofa, it's taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress through the benevolent use of knowledge. I encourage everyone to say goodbye to yesterday so that you can sincerely say “Hello!” to tomorrow and the rest of your God-given life. One of the ways I do this is by looking at my past year, as well as planning for the new year, with respect to the Nguzo Saba, the seven principles of Kwanzaa. Here are the seven principles and the definitions provided by Maulana Karenga. Happy Kwanzaa everyone!
Principle I: Umoja (Unity)
Meaning: To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
Principle II: Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
Meaning: To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
Principle III:Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
Meaning: To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and to solve them together.
Principle IV: Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)
Meaning: To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
Principle V: Nia (Purpose)
Meaning: To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Principle VI: Kuumba (Creativity)
Meaning: To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
Principle VII: Imani (Faith)
Meaning: To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
Comments conceal
ramsueno
December 26 2007, 1:48PM
Please be sure to send out any information on where you will be posting your writings next. I have thoroughly enjoyed you...thanks...
Billy
December 26 2007, 4:28PM
I second that.
Dean
December 26 2007, 8:59PM
I wholeheartedly agree with that notion. Thank you for your thoughful writings.
TR
December 27 2007, 4:09AM
KW, As I look back on 2007 one of the highlights is definitely having met you and having the opportunity to experience a little bit of that extraordinary life you manifest and nurture so beautifully. You seem to embody all seven of those principles of Kwanzaa each and every day. You are one of the most exemplary human beings I have met and the impact you have on your community is awesome and endless. I admire your maturity and wisdom and the ability to celebrate a humanity that transcends racial and sexual boundaries. I miss being close to you, but with distance -- I always look forward to seeing you here. I wish you a spectacular 2008. Much love, TR
DAdvo
December 28 2007, 1:12AM
While I can respect Keith and Kenneth's good intentions by providing entertaining and informative background to the substance of Kwanzaa, I find the patchwork of sloppy - if not outright racist - principles created by its founder to be insulting to anyone of African decent.
Swahili is not a language common to the peoples that we were taken from in Africa, i.e., those countries currently known as Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Benin, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo. Swahili is a language that is a dialect of Arabic and spoken in east Africa - far from the slave trade.
And further, 5 of the 7 principles above have been labeled with Adinkra symbols from the Ashanti in Ghana. These symbols are sacred and used in royal/religious ceremonies. To slap them together incorrectly with Swahili names, and fabricated and incorrect proverbs is an insult. It's as insulting as a Native American head dress being used as the logo for an American baseball team.
Shame on all of us for not knowing our history.
lovejones
December 28 2007, 10:25AM
Happy Holidayz To All. Just wanted Kenneth to know that I too have enjoyed his writings, and would like to know where he'll be writing after this site closes down. I must say you too are an inspiration to me and I don't won't to be alone out here, I look forward to Keith's site everyday, so now look please e-mail me and let me know where you are ok and how I can keep up with your writings. Happy New Year To All. I've already said good-bye to yesterday and eagerly awaiting for my tomorrow, while in a state of gratefulness on today, I'm grateful for this site and having come up on people like you, I'm grateful to now be affirmed and very comfortable with who I am. I'm grateful because my mind has been freed from the bondage that's had me bound for years. This was my year of release. Now I enter a year of new beginnings with high hopes.
Kenneth Winfrey
December 28 2007, 11:49AM
DAdvo,
I am well-aware of the origins of Kwanzaa and the political beliefs of its originator, Maulana Karenga. While your perception of him as a racist is perhpas a more subjective one... (As is your characterization of his work as "fabricated and incorrect proverbs")...I don't think that neither he nor I would disagree with your description of Kwanzaa as a “patchwork.”
However, fortunately, it was not sloppy at all.
Karenga's intentions were to create a pan-African system in lieu of the more specific knowledge many other Americans have about their own specific origins. He diligently traveled Africa and learned the cultures whose beliefs are the basis of Kwanzaa. See African Intellectual Heritage, Asante Abarry).
Furthermore, to suggest that Kwanzaa or anything about it can be reduced to a metaphor about a baseball team using a head dress undervalues the intentions of those who practice Kwanzaa. We do so--in ceremony--with a spirit of atonement for our lives, as well as the entirety of the continent of Africa. We know that the slave trade affected not only Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Benin, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo, but all of Africa.
John Hobson
January 1 2008, 7:56PM
Keep up the good work. Excellence in writing is hard to come by.
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