Distorted History Lessons

First Nations in Canada and U.S. navigated rivers in transport they made with their bare hands: canoes.

The elite women warriors called Dora Milaje, led by Okoye (Danai Gurira) in Black Panther took me back to school, where teachers told me Egypt has the pyramids and Cleopatra.  We also learnt about Joan of Arc, Helen of Troy and Anne Boleyn.

History books did not have Mkabayi ka Jama, the Zulu princess who was born a twin.  Her father King Jama had one wife, something unheard of in ancient times. 

The king had no male child something that worried her because she believed that she and her twin sister were somehow responsible for that.  She took the matter into her own hands.  She convinced her father to marry Mthaniya, who gave birth to Senzangakhona, who had a son Shaka.

What is history?  Let us avoid the dictionary meaning because it is subjective.  It depends on who wrote the book, in what language and the intention of teaching kids that history.  The Queen of England could not speak the languages of all the countries she conquered so English was enforced in schools through the cane and twisting ears.

When you live in Canada, it is inconceivable that you don’t know Harriet Tubman the slave liberator and what is known as the Underground Railroad.  She and her Dora Milaje, braved dogs trained to kill only black people and guided slaves over the border to freedom in Canada.  It is treated as an important part of Canadian history.

Not somewhere else.  From where I was, we learnt about Africans literally stolen from Africa.  Some were sold to slave traders by greedy chiefs, but there was no mention of Harriet Tubman, which goes to show that history is not fact, because of the editing, pruning, cutting and pasting, and intentional distortion. 

Language also determines the level of understanding.  Kids born and raised in Europe and North America have an easier time in history classes because they have the command of the language.  Children born somewhere else find it difficult and consequently resort to memorising names and places without fully understanding the context of history, however flawed it is.

I did.

By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.