Metaphysics of the Melanin of Thari
Mocholoko (Dr), Zulumathabo Zulu © 2020
The Preamble
The Structure of the Economy
The structure of the economy of the beautiful land of Azania (South Africa) is built upon seven pillars namely (1) land; (2) occean; (3) people; (4) animals; (5) technology; (6) services and (7) industry. Although ranked second to Nigeria in terms of GDP size, Azania boasts the best infrastructure on the African continent and one of the best on the planet. Even great countries like Canada and America will have trouble competing with Azania with regards to her sophisticated road networks. The banks of Azania are well capitalised and highly regulated to an extent that they did not require government intervention by way of massive bailouts in the 2008 economic crisis as was the case with respect to the North American banks.
Notwithstanding, the economic structure of the Azanian society is characterised by vertical relations of power that require ordinary citizens to relate to the rich on the basis of the asymmetry of social sublimation with the result that the economically disenfranchised must eat humble pie and be oblivious to the antagonistic contradictions of the economic relations. Thus, they have to believe the unbelievable and accept the unacceptable.
Under the circumstences, the African descendant on the Motherland and the Diaspora has been highly miseducated by the Church and the neolonial school. Moreover, the Azanian is brutalised by the daily aggressions of three phenomena namely (1) the ideology of White Supremacy; (2) the immorality of corrupt practices and (3) the moral decay that is tearing apart the social fabric.
The Moment of Truth
In the light of the auspicious and dangerous Covid-19 phenomenon and the subsequent stock market crash that ensued as a result of veto by Russia to cut oil production of OPEC+, the fallout of which is evidenced by a petrolium company like Sasol losing more than 85% of its market capitalisation, the critical moment of truth has arrived in the land of Azania. The axiological masks of social decorum; benevolence and pretence are being peeled away as confirmed by the privileged few over-purchasing and hoarding food items; masks; toiletries, medicines, among others, without an iota of afterthought for the poor of society. It is for this reason that the chain supermarkets like Checkers; Pick n Pay; Spar and others intervened by imposing quota limits on items purchased per family to avoid disaster in the making.
The book Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823, (Da Costa, 1994), describes the moment of truth thus:
“Crises are moments of truth. They bring to light the conflicts that in daily life are buried beneath the rules and routines of social protocol, behind the gestures that people make automatically, without thinking of their meanings and purposes. In such moments the contradictions that lay behind the rhetoric of social harmony, consensus, hegemony, or control are exposed“.
In this article, we turn our rigorous attention to the metaphysics of the melanin.
The Genesis of the Melanin
The Urban Dictionary describes the melanin thus:
“Melanin is ubiquitous in every entity on Planet Earth that has hue/color. Melanin is the root of what gives color to skin, hair, eyes, plants, oil, animals, volcanoes and everything imaginable that is creative and colorful”.
Albeit described as a colour pigment, the story of the melanin far surpasses its status as a mere pigment. The melanin, from melanocytes, is a polymerous molecule with functional groups making it the most powerful molecular structure in its own right. Unlike ordinary cells, a melanocyte is a brain cell that originates in the neural crest of the ectoderm. Moreover, a melanocyte is higher than a brain cell since it shares the neural ancestry with the glia of Schwann cells making a melanocyte a glial cell that plays more of a strategic function than a mere operational task. One of the functions of a glial cell, like Schwann, is to provide a lightening speed to the electrical-chemical conductance of stimulus. The melanin has this glial feature as demonstrated by its ability to process a stimulus like a lightening speed.
Melanin is in the body and also in the brain where it is referred to as neuromelanin. The melanin is responsible for the black centers of the brain like the substantia niagra.
The story of the melanin is very profound because the blackness of the skin is not just a skin pigment. The implication herein is that blackness is essentially an external manifestation of the brain.
The physical prowess of Black athletes is linked to the catalytic prowess of the functional groups of the molecular system of the melanin. Instead of relying on distal processing of the stimulus, the melanin delegates the processing to the local functional groups so that by the time the stimulus reaches the brain, only the output is processed instead of the latent processing of the raw input. This exhibits a novel feature of a cybernetic design wherein the output is transformed into the correct input for a lightening fast processing.
The Urban Dictionary further says this about the melanin:
“Usually people with Melanin have better eye sight, natural muscle physique, and better, youthful and beautifully elastic skin“.
Fearful of the melanin prowess, the English architects of the British Imperial system sought to inhibit the melanin by introducing the concept of Whiteness and racial slavery to circumscribe the African descendants. The Roman Empire which practised slavery and preceded the British Empire did not institutionalise the practice of racial slavery. The English institutionalised the practice of racialisation in the 1600s in Virginia and Barbados.
By derivation, this explains why a White guy is particularly fearful of a very dark Black man while a White woman gravitates towards a Black man as described by Frantz Fanon in his book Black Skin, White Masks. Fanon further says that a White guy perceives a Black man as a biological threat. Moreover, the reason for so much antipathy towards the Melanin is because the Melanin is an impressive intellectual threat to the White establishment of the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). As a consequence, it is not possible for the White establishment to bamboozle the Melanin because the historically deflowered Melanin has lost all fear and naivete.
The evidence of the melanin as an intellectual threat is demonstrated in the brilliant military strategists like the African descendant of the West African country of Benin Jean-Jacques Dessalines who defeated the French Imperial army of Napoleon Bonaparte on November 18, 1803 at the Battle of Vertieres at St. Domingo in the present day country of Haiti. The celebrated French General Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau was forced to negotiate a surrender under the terms of the Black man as a result of an outright military victory.
The most brilliant military strategist General Jean-Jacques Dessalines who was born in the West African country of Benin defeated the French Imperial army of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803 in the Western Hemisphere. His people became the first in the World in the Western Hemisphere to defeat a European army and to win permanent liberation from the shackles of the White man. Picture Credit: Wikipedia.
The celebrated French General Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau surrendered to the Black man after his White army was defeated in an outright military victory by the Black army of General Jean-Jacques Dessalines at the Battle of Vertieres. Picture Credit: Wikipedia.
For this reason, the melanin needs to be unboxed in order to vibrate as the inalienable architect of destiny. The melanin must leverage its special gifts to enhance survivability and to build infrastructural systems to beneft the melanated people. The great Marcus Garvey said something about special gifts when he declared in the book Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey as follows:
“Except the individual, the race or the nation has POWER that is exclusive; it means that that individual, race or nation will be bound by the will of the other who possesses this great qualification“.
The perpetual legend Marcus Garvey with his beautiful and erudite wife Amy Ashwood Garvey. Picture Credit: Wikipedia.
The melanocyte of the melanin distinguishes itself with special gifts as a brain cell that possesses metascience (strategic knowledge of science). It is the metascience that gives the melanin a strategic view to chart an independent trajectory to enhance survivability.
The Melanin must be inspired by the gutsy spirit and the intellectual achievements of those who have gone before us.
Without further ado, we venerate the Melanin in the literary piece Metaphysics of the Melanin of Thari.
afraid, like agoraphobic,
to foreground blackness with limbic.
The adverse allowed to define
Unaware, it seeks to confine
The Melanin agrees to appease
The White establishment that kills
Whereas, it must assert to insert
to heed the urgent metaphysic,
like limbic feeling intrinsic.
Metaphysics of the Melanin of Thari!
The Melanin, must undefine
To transform, like flawless affine
Metaphysical commitment
To transcend the predicament
Contextual Commentary
The badass Melanin of Thari (uMbeleko) must not allow himself to be defined and defeated by the adverse conditions in the terrestrial space. Like the great Nkwe (the African leopard), that recovers from setback after being bullied and tackled to the hard; harsh and rough battleground of the Savannah by the killing machines of the mighty lions, the melanated legend of Thari must dust himself off to produce an exit strategy to recover from setback. There are no alternatives to the imperative of survivability, reality and resonance. The fallen but unconquered Nkwe with athletic superiority springs a brand new vicious swipe with his paw like a powerful thunderbolt and gracefully; flawlessly and concurrently rises to his educated feet forcing the mighty lions to back away for the exit of the legend of the great Nkwe so that he can vibrate as he was intended to vibrate and to get on with his life as the unbought and the unsold architect of destiny as it was meant to be.
The indefatigable and tenacious African leopard defending aggressively against the mighty lions in the African jungle teaching us to shake off the shackles in spite of the asymmetry of the power relations in order to retake our inalienable position as the unbought and the unsold architects of destiny. Picture Credit: Roaring Earth.
Thus, the indefatigable; the tenacious and the phenomenal Melanin of Thari must take a page from the exit strategy of the unconquerable Nkwe of the African grasslands so that he can vibrate as he was intended to vibrate in accordance with the vibration of the erudite ancestors who have gone before us. Arise the ancestors arise! Raboka Baholo! Siyathokoza Makhosi!
La lucha continua! (the struggle continues); No rendirse! (No surrender); Nunca jamas (Never, never); El destino es nuestro (The destiny is ours). Tsamaroko! Ezamathongo! Thokoza Makhosi! High veneration to the ancestors!
References
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Donaldson, A. (2012). Peasant and Slave Rebellions in the Roman Republic. Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation, In the Graduate College, The University of Arizona.
Fanon, F. (1952). Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press.
Garvey, A., Ed (2006). Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey.
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Kennedy, A. (2008). Can the Weak Defeat the Strong? Mao’s Evolving Approach to Asymmetric Warfare in Yan’an. The China Quarterly, 2008 doi:10.1017/S0305741008001173.
MelanicteesCoolection (2013). The Urban Dictionary. URL: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=melanin (accessed March 17, 2020).
Popkin, J. (2012). A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution. Willey-Blackwell: London.
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Madisebo University 