The
Legend
of Azania
Thoughts
and Reflections
~
From
beyond the rivers
of Ethiopia
My
worshippers,
The
daughters of My dispersed
ones,
Shall
bring My offering.
(Zephaniah
3:10)
Unde
etiam vulagre Graeciae dictum
'semper aliquid novi Africam adferre'
(Pliny
23-79AD)
Terra
Incognito
(Ptolemy
150AD)
A
Deep, unfathomed, dark and dumb,
Is
left in Africa to plumb.
(Gerald
Massey)
Africa, the "Dark Continent", is
deeply mysterious. Herodotus in the 5th Century BC wrote: "Where the
meridian declines toward the setting sun the Ethiopian territory reaches, being
the extreme part of the habitable world...It produces much gold, huge elephants,
wild beasts of every kind, ebony, and men of large stature, very handsome and
long-lived" (III:114).
~ EGYPT ~
Egypt! How I have
dwelt with you in dreams,
So long, so
intimately, that it seems
As if you had borne
me; thought I could not know
It was so many
thousands years ago!
And in
my gropings darkly underground
The long-lost memory
at last is found
Of motherhood - you
Mother of us all!
And to my fellow-men
I must recall
The memory too; that
common motherhood
May help to make the
common brotherhood.
Egypt!
It lies there in the far-off past,
Opening with depths
profound and growths as vast
As the great valley
of Yosemite;
The birthplace out of
darkness into day;
The shaping matrix of
the human mind;
The Cradle and the
Nursery of our kind.
This was
the land created from the flood,
The land of Atum,
made of the red mud,
Where Num sat in his
Teba throned on high,
And saw the deluge
once a year go by,
Each brimming with
the blessing that it brought,
And by that
water-way, in Egypt’s thought,
The gods descended;
but they never hurled
The Deluge that
should desolate the world.
There
the vast hewers of the early time
Built, as if that way
they would surely climb
The heavens, and left
their labours without name -
Colossal as their
carelessness of fame -
Sole likeness of
themselves - that heavenward
For ever look with
statuesque regard,
As if some Vision of
the Eternal grown
Petrific, was for
ever fixed in stone!
They
watch the Moon re-orb, the Stars go round,
And drew the Circle;
Thought’s primordial bound.
The Heavens looked
into them with living eyes
To kindle starry
thoughts in other skies,
For us reflected in
the image-scroll,
That night by night
the stars for aye unroll.
The Royal Heads of
Language bow them down
To lay in
Egypt’s lap each borrowed crown.
The
glory of Greece was but the After-glow
Of her forgotten
greatness lying low;
Her hieroglyphics
buried dark as night,
Or coal-deposits
filled with future light,
Are mines of meaning;
by their light we see
Thro’ many
an overshadowing mystery.
The nursing Nile is
living Egypt still,
And as her low-lands
with its freshness fill,
And heave with
double-breasted bounteousness,
So doth the old
Hidden Source of mind yet bless
The nations; secretly
she brought to birth,
And Egypt still
enriches all the earth.
(Gerald
Massey, 1881)
ETYMOLOGY
OF THE WORD "AZANIA"
Colin Muller of the "Dictionary Unit of South African English"
at Rhodes University, responding
to a newsgroup query summarises the origin and meaning of the name:
It seems that 'Azania' was at
first a Greek word, probably derived from the Arabic Adzan (transliterated),
a name for East Africa (zan
also appears as a prefix in Zanzibar, and as an
infix in Tanzania); cf.
Arabic Zanj a dark-skinned African.
The Greeks used the name 'Azania' for the
region defined by W.B. Donne as follows: 1854 W.B. Donne in W. Smith Dict.
of Gk & Roman Geogr. I. 354 Azania, ...
Another name for the maritime region of eastern Africa ... from
the promontory of Aromata, lat. 11xN, to that of Rhaptum, lat. 2xS. The Mare
Azanium ... skirted this whole region.
The earliest known occurrence of the name is in the Periplus of the
Erythraean Sea, written circa a.d. 60 by an unknown author: 1912 W.H.
Schoff, translation of Periplus of Erythraean Sea in B. Davidson Old
Afr. Rediscovered (1959) 133 Two days sail beyond, there lies the very last
market town of the continent of Azania, which is called Rhapta.
Evelyn Waugh's 'Azania' is a fictitious island off the east coast of
Africa: 1932 E. Waugh Black Mischief (1952) p.12 He proclaimed the
island a single territory and himself its ruler...Until now it had been scored
on the maps as Sakuyu Island; Amurath renamed it the Empire of Azania. [p.39]
Guards, Chiefs and tribesmen of the Azanian Empire. The war is over.
The name 'Azanian' has also been used by archaeologists and historians
for another African civilization of the past (I've transliterated ''Azania' and
:'a'zaino' in this quotation from Greek characters into keyboard-friendly
ones): 1933 G.W.B. Huntingford in Antiquity VII. p.153 At
some period between the Stone Age and medieval times a civilization ... left
traces over a large part of East Africa ... This civilization I propose to call
'Azanian' ... From 'Azania, the name given by classical geographers to East
Africa from Cape Guardafui to the southern limit of the known world (about lat.
10xS)...The word may mean 'the dried-up country', from a'zaino, 'I am dry'. cf.
azaniae nuces, 'dried-up pine-cones', Pliny, Nat. Hist. XVI, 44.
The earliest source which I have found in which the name is used to refer
to South Africa is the following: 1968 Afr. Research Bulletin Vol.5
No.6, 1102 A member of the revolutionary command of the PAC ... had been killed
... by Portuguese forces in Mozambique ... The [PAC] statement described his
death as 'a tragic loss ... to the Azanian Revolution.' ... 'His heroic death
... will always inspire the revolutionary youth of Azania.'
But it was probably in use earlier, perhaps as early as 1959: 1990 F.A.
Van Jaarsveld in Sunday Times 20 May 14 In 1959 Peter Rabor[o]ko of the
Pan Africanist Congress proposed the name Azania. While the
PAC has never officially accepted the name, it has found wide favour among a
cross-section of black groups. (5-05-1994)
The complete etymology, in dense dictionary style, will be available in The
Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles, published by
Oxford University Press (available September 1996). (26-07-1996)
Colin Muller, Dictionary Unit for South African English, Rhodes University,
Grahamstown.
PEOPLE,
PROVIDER, MOTHER
Leswin
Laubscher relates a rather interesting incident with a mythological or
archetypal explanation for the name….
Breyten Breytenbach, during his first "free/allowed" visit to South
Africa was asked
in a public lecture at the University of the Western
Cape what he thought about the name Azania.
Breytenbach wasn't too impressed, saying that in his view it was Arabic in
origin and that we should look for something more indigenous.
At this point a learned friend of mine (who, however, has been known to
BS before in spite of, or maybe because of, his obvious intellect) jumped up
and told Mr Breytenbach that he was severely mistaken.
Azania, he said, is a conglomeration of
different meanings. "A... in Azania refers to
all the peoples of Africa; ...Zan...
refers to the earth that provides; and ...ia to mother Africa, the
supreme force that binds us all to the continent in a magical way - thus as in TanzaNIA, EthiopIA, KenYA".
Mr Breytenbach quite graciously acknowledged that he might be wrong. As I
said, I have no idea whatsoever how true this is or where references could be
obtained. (5-05-1994)
Leswin Laubscher, Northwestern University.
A
FOUNTAIN SACRED TO THE SUN
From
Jacob Bryant's A new System, or An Analysis of Ancient Mythology
(1774)......
".. if I should meet with a country called Azania, I may in
like manner derive it from Az-An, a fountain sacred to the Sun; from whence the
country was named. And I may suppose this fountain to have been sacred to the
God of light on account of some real, or imputed, quality in its waters... As
there was a region named Azania in Arcadia, the reader
may judge of my interpretation by the account given of the excellence of its waters..."
The
spirit of man is
nomad, his blood bedouin, and love is the aboriginal tracker on
the faded desert spoor of his lost self; and so I came to live
my life not by conscious plan or prearranged design but as someone
following the flight of a bird.
(Laurens
van der Post)
From Thabo
Mbeki's "I am an African" speech, 8th May 1996
I am an
African.
I owe my being to the
hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the
deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons
that define the face of our native land. My body has frozen in our
frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our
sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack and the
rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have
been a cause both of trembling and of hope. The fragrances of nature
have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild blooms of the
citizens of the veld. The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the
soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa, iGqili noThukela, and the sands of
the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on the natural stage on
which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our
day.…
I owe my being to the
Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the
beautiful Cape - they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide
our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their
lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they
who, as a people, perished in the result.… I am formed of
the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land.
Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. In my veins
courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their
proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence.
The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master
are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.
I am the
grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led,
the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers
Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of
freedom.… I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the
Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind's eye
and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death,
concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in
ruins.… I come of those who were transported from India and
China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to
provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home
and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that
freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.…
I have seen what happens when one person has superiority of force over
another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative
even to annul the injunction that God created all men and women in His
image.…
Other
Credits & Acknowledgements
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african, soc.culture.south-africa