SRDC International

STIMULATE YOURSELF .. INSPIRE YOURSELF .. EMPOWER YOURSELF .. READ!!

Establish PAN AFRICAN READING CLUBS!

SRDC Facilitators, Representatives, Observers, Council of Elders and Members  should familiarize themselves with the texts listed below.  As a suggestion, devote portions of your regular meetings  to a Pan African Reading Club involving discussion/analysis of the lessons and wisdom contained in the listed books.

BEGINNING READING LIST

•The Mis Education of the Negro – Carter G. Woodson

•Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah – Kwame Nkrumah
Note: First published in 1957.  Re-published in 1971 with author’s note to new edition.

•Meeting Maat: The African-Centered Handbook for Conducting Meetings – David Horne

•Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey – Edited by Amy Jacques Garvey.

•More Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey – Essien-Udom, E.U., and Amy Jacques Garvey.
London: Frank Cass & Comp. Ltd., 1977.

•Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggle of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association – Tony Martin

•The Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond – Tony Martin
Cambridge, MA. Schenkman Publishing Co., 1983

•Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion to the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers – Marcus Garvey (Author), Robert A. Hill (Editor), Barbara Bair (Editor)

•Africa for the Africans – Edward W. Blyden. Washington, D.C. 1872; reprinted, London, 1903

•African Life & Customs – Edward W. Blyden. Baltimore, MD. Black Classic Press, 1994
(First published in 1908. Reprinted from The Sierra Leone Weekly News)

•SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind – Asa G. Hilliard, III. Gainesville, FL. Makare Publishing Co., 1997

•Black Inventors: Crafting Over 200 Years of Success – Keith C. Holmes. Brooklyn, NY Global Black Inventor Research Projects, Inc., 2008

INTERMEDIATE & ADVANCED READING LIST

•The Cultural Unity of Black Africa – Cheikh Anta Diop, Chicago: Third World Press, 1959, 1978.

•The African Origin of Civilization – Cheikh Anta Diop, Lawrence Hill Books, 1974.

•The Destruction of Black Civilization – Chancellor Williams

•Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonisation – Kwame Nkrumah

•Neo -Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism – Kwame Nkrumah

•Africa Must Unite – Kwame Nkrumah

•African Centered Consciousness vs. The New World Order – Amos Wilson

•The Falsification of the African Consciousness – Amos Wilson

•How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – Walter Rodney. Washington, D.C.  Howard University Press, 1981.

•African and Caribbean Politics: From Kwame Nkrumah to Maurice Bishop – Manning Marable.
London. Verso Press, 1987.

CHILDREN BOOKS

•Moja means One: Swahili Counting Book  – Muriel Feelings (Author), Tom Feelings (Illustrator)

•A is for Africa – Ifeoma Onyefulu.

NOVELS

•Two Thousand Seasons – Ayi Kwei Armah
(First published by East African Publishing House 1973)

•The Healers: An Historical Novel – Ayi Kwei Armah
(First published by East African Publishing House 1978)

PAN AFRICAN LIFESTYLE

•Lifelines:  The Black Book of Proverbs – Askhari Johnson Hodari, Yvonne McCalla Sobers

•The Adinkra Dictionary: A Visual Primer on the Language of ADINKRA – W. Bruce Willis
Washington, DC. The Pyramid Complex, 1998

“Africans need to re-learn to rely on Africans to solve African problems rather than to continue being dependent on non-African answers to everything.” ~DLH

More to come….

Understanding  How African Consensus Works

featuring excerpts from “Meeting Ma’at” by David Horne, Ph.D.

Meeting Ma’at: The African-Centered Handbook for Conducting Meetings

“For centuries, most African societies practiced a form of “participatory democracy” based upon consensus under their traditional rulers.  African chiefs did not generally impose themselves on their people, nor did they declare their villages to be one-party states and themselves “presidents-for-life.”  The people were not excluded form the decision-making process.  Village meetings, where decisions were taken by consensus, wee not only open but also antithetical to the precepts of a dictatorship.”
~George B. N. Ayittey, President, The Free Africa Foundation

“African Consensus is really about two things: getting to a collective agreement honorably, and handling participant opposition to such an agreement with dignity, patience and respect.  Getting everyone’s voice heard who has anything to say or contribute to the discussion is one principal characteristic of the African consensus process, and coming to a general agreement on how to handle impasses in such verbal exchanges is another.”

“In African Society the traditional method of conducting affairs is by free discussion…The elders sit under big trees, and talk until they agree.”
–Julius K. Nyerere, Former President of Tanzania

“…African Consensus was a form of indigenous participatory or consensus democracy—a process in which the unanimity of community agreement was a conscious goal of discussion and debate, and in which the consent of the governed was seeb as acguevabke through a negotiation of discussion.  Dialogue and discussion within the process was to get those with opposite views to reconcile towards the center, and to prevail upon minority viewpoints to accept, rather than merely to tolerate or acquiesce to, the larger community perspective.”

“When a council, each member of which was representative of a lineage, met to discuss matters affecting the whole community, it had always to grapple with the problem of reconciling sectional and common interests.  In order to do this, the members had to talk things over: they had to listen to all the different points of view.  So strong was the value of solidarity that the chief aim of the councilors was to reach unanimity, and they talked till this was achieved.”
~K.A. Busia, “Africa in Search of Democracy”

Overall, the African Consensus process, no matter where on the continent it was used, always had the same basic five elements:

a. Everyone allowed to participate in the discussion of the issue or issues at hand got an opportunity to say his or her piece about that issue.

b. Either extensive discussion got everyone on the same page and there was general agreement on what to do about the issue or how to handle the issue for the community, or the participants voted on it and the majority decided how to handle the issue.

c. Once there was a vote or a general agreement, there was no dissenting opinion or minority report—the decision had been made by the group for the group and that was the end of it.  It was the custom for people to move on.

d. African Consensus was based on collective and cooperative decision-making rather than its opposite, competitive decision-making.  (That does not mean no egos, no selfishness and no personal manipulation; there was all of that, but such behavior was most often subordinated to the larger will of the particular African community.)

e. In order to work consistently, African Consensus had to be the prevailing principle of community decision-making and conflict resolution, i.e., the goal of the dialogue and discussion, not a secondary hope or desire.  African Consensus had to be accepted as achievable in order to achieve it.

“In our original societies we operated by consensus.  An issue was talked out in solemn conclave until such time as agreement could be achieved.”
–Kenneth Kaunda, Former President of Zambia

“In our original societies we operated by consensus.  An issue was talked out in solemn conclave until such time as agreement could be achieved.”
~Kenneth Kuanda, Former President of Zambia

MEETING MA’AT: THE AFRICAN CENTERED HANDBOOK FOR CONDUCTING MEETINGS ( David Horne, AuthorHouse, IN, 2004), is a handbook designed to replace a dependence on Robert’s Rules of Order with the Rules of African Consensus in our meetings and community decision making gatherings.  The former (Robert’s Rules) is based on a competitive,  adversarial model, while African Consensus decision-making model presented in Meeting Ma’at is based on cooperation, collaboration and participatory consent in group decision making.

Meeting facilitators and organizers will find this logical, historically based African-centered approach most useful for conducting meetings and gatherings.  It is conducive for solid group decision-making and for moving the agenda along to its conclusion.

Why Meeting Ma’at?

In ancient Egyptian society, Ma’at was the Goddess of physical and moral law. The seven ethical principles of Ma’at are:  Order, Truth, Justice, Balance, Harmony, Reciprocity and Righteousness.

“Ma’at exemplifies the universal existence and influence of the twin visions of RIGHT and TRUTH.  Ma’at represents the ideal toward which one aims a life of substance, accomplishment, and moral decency.  When led, there is a Ma’atian distinction between sins and transgressions.  The former are violations of the laws of worship and respect for the gods and goddesses.  The latter are offenses against one’s fellow men and women, and/or the earthly environment within which one lives.  Sins against the divine are always deep liabilities in the weighing of one’s balance of life.  Transgressions against other people and/or earth, particularly when accompanied by showing remorse and recanting, if often forgiven and not held as a liability.

In leadership, in followship, and in life overall, the seven ethical principles of Ma’at should be practiced, advocated and continually affirmed by those who want to be assessed as virtuous and morally upstanding citizens.”
~Excerpted from “Meeting Ma’at”