Why This Site!

This site is an initiative by Mr. Mukazo Mukazo Vunda, founder of the company Burning Bush Solutions! the designing power behind this site. The aim of this site is to present the salient features of books by Mr. Mukazo Mukazo Vunda. It is both a promotional tool for the books, as the opinions of Mr. Vunda presented on this website are to be found in full in his books, as well as an opinion exchange point for people interested in knowing more, or contributing to the idea of an African renaissance.

Knowledge of the need for a renaissance like process in Africa, or in the Diaspora, is not new. As far back as the beginning of this century, many Africans, in the Diaspora and on the continent, have realized that, to become independent, to be free, and, more importantly, to be capable of sustaining the won independence, Africans had to start thinking properly, meaning that they, as a group, had to become aware of the "ways of this world", to be able to react to it appropriately. The poem below, by Countee Cullen, sums it up perfectly.

The west holds me in fee
I shall not hope for full release
While to its alien gods
I bend my knee

The goal has always been the overthrow of an oppressive system. This process is called a revolution. The route to this is not simple revolutionary struggle, as many are led to believe. Prior to this should come an enlightenment that enables the people to see a true image of themselves, the need for change, and how properly to bring this change about. Without this process, which, for lack of a better term, in view of the need to redeem in the case of present day Africans, I call a renaissance, a victory will be won, but the aftermath will be wrought with confusions, degeneracy, mediocrity, and, obviously, the return to a former, enslaved state will be the next step.

This is the reason many first positive moves to free the African from the chains of imperialism by the very first positive minded African leaders like Kwame Nkhruma, or Patrice Lumumba failed. The fact that Africans themselves participated in dooming their own hard won independence is testimony to this fact.

The creation of a culture through revolutionary struggle without a process where people are enlightened enough to see the state they are in, and how to free themselves from the chains that keep bringing them down, is bound to end up a total failure, or a disaster, even if, through armed struggle, they remove the oppressive system. A national conscious, a national identity, a culture, and the like, are products of contributions from enlightened individual members of the concerned community or society, and cannot be achieved by a group only fighting to end oppression and the visible effects of this. As Ralph Ellison aptly put it, you do not create a culture by creating the un-created features of the race, but by the individual members creating the un-created features of their own individual faces, and to this end they must receive incentives.

Articles and activities presented on this site are a contribution to that incentive. Articles on this site that may seem to be against such an incentive allow for democratic examination of their points of view.

Those who wish to contribute are invited to do so by sending their views to this site, by giving their opinions in the forums, or participating in the projects started by Burning Bush Solutions! or other sites and organizations listed on the projects page. The link to the project page is listed in the site navigation.

Mukazo Vunda has a university degree in economics and psychology, is a writer, and an activist. He can be contacted at: vunda@mukazo.com for information about his availability for official, public, and personal engagements.

Please feel free to take articles from this site, and edit them in the way you see fit for publication on your sites, or journals. Don't forget to add a link back to this site. All of Mukazo Vunda's articles presented on this WebSite are linked from one page. Click here for the page.