Reflections on Vusi Mavimbela's book The Africa in Brazil

IOL News

6 days ago

Author Vusi Mavimbela
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The national dialogue has long started, not only with Lt Mkhanazi explosive and important revelations exclusively on South Africa, but much earlier in the year with Vusi Mavimbela revealing global genesis of the 'whitening' project which sheds light on Trumpism. The wise will visit 'The Africa in Brazil.'
In his book titled, The Africa in Brazil, the author Vusi Mavimbela, a former director general of South Africa's National Intelligence Agency, has proved to be more than a national spook. Through his pen Mavimbela is not only physically ambidextrous, but he is also a cranially ambidextrous global intellectual and a deep thinker and contributor to how a better world is possible. In his earlier title, Time is not a measure, Mavimbela's book explored South Africa's contemporary post-apartheid rapture, which in the main characterised two presidents he served under, namely President Thabo Mbeki and President Jacob Zuma.
The Africa in Brazil
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In this book 'The Africa in Brazil' Mavimbela explodes on to the global stage. The title conceals the profoundness of how in a 150 or so pages of this book he unravels the paradoxes of the contemporary and continuing practice of Embraquencimento or 'whitening the population' as a deep rooted and relentless struggle to seek and maintain dominance through brute force that is not limited to but includes slavery, genocidal acts, colonialism, apartheid, distortion and extortion of not only history, but of knowledge and science through deception and continuing 'whitening' not only of the population but of systems of thought in the pursuit to expand capital at the expense of indigenous populations.
This book the more fitting title of which according to me is buried in the filename of Mavimbela's manuscript - Odyssey Across the Atlantic – is a further deep dive and paradoxical exploration of the meaning of why 'Time is not a measure.' Thus, to appreciate The Africa in Brazil title as a total immersion by Mavimbela, you need to read his other book, Time is not a Measure. Mavimbela's immersion into 250 million years of enquiry into the complex universe and successful compression of this discovery into a hundred and fifty-one pages of explosive yet accessible and comprehensible rendition is nothing short of extraordinary. To suggest that this is an enquiry and discovery of an intriguing motion and interplay of multiple intersections of evolution of layers on layers of geological, environmental, botanical, zoological, anthropological, sociological, and economic outcomes is to put it but mildly and robs the book of its essence.
The book is a contemporised tapestry of history and mythology, an endeavour that unravels racial prejudices that have shaped and defined about seven centuries of humanity that have directed modern day world order that we find ourselves in – the endeavour of whitening the population for plunder. A heart wrenching revelation.
Spooked by Brazilian President's Lula da Silva's address on, Why the Country (Brazil) Owes Africa a Debt of Fraternity, You know that Brazil owes much of its culture to Africa. It is a debt that cannot be paid in cash. It is Brazil's historic and humanitarian obligation to maintain a beautiful relationship with the African continent' (Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – Washington, February 10, 2023)' , Mavimbela was spurred into action and dug deep into millions of years to excavate the evidence of the oneness of Africa and Brazil disputing the shallow whitening theory.
In this regard Mavimbela makes many references attesting to Africa's oneness with Brazil in evolution and writes, 'One fossil common to the two coastlines is that of the reptile Mesosaurus, which is thought to have lived between 286-million and 258-million years ago. This fossil is found only in eastern South America and South Africa. It was a coastal animal and could not have swum across the vast Atlantic Ocean. Another common reptile was Cynognathus, which lived between 250-million and 240-million years ago.'
How prejudice has been bolstered to pass as science and condemn nations and peoples. The depth of research in this book is mind boggling. Connecting billions of years to contemporary 2023 realities and the role of Biko's Black Consciousness held in the mirror in which the struggle of Brazil is deeply located should refract light on South Africa makes the book special.
In a 151 pages Mavimbela links Lula's struggles to the Black Consciousness Movement and the significance of Steve Biko in our forward march against the whitening project. His book is a universal contribution to a better and different world.
By so doing Mavimbela defines for me an imagery of a three-legged pot with its handle raised and rested. With the handle raised we trace the journey northwards from Africa into Eurassia and finally back into Brazil and with its handle rested on its spherical body we define the tesselational contentment driven by a millennial unity traceable in common founa, fora, and sculpture that defines the once enjoined landmass of Brazil and Africa whose geometric distance cannot separate the oneness of its people. The Sesotho saying asserts in idioms this oneness (Bana ba monna ba llelana letseetsee, Bana Ba Khoana Ba tsebana ka Mereto etsoe Bana Ba Khoale Ba Bitsana ka mololi.
Mavimbela in this book has now conclusively dismissed the at all cost isolationists whitening lie and its associated abracadabra that seek to assert that 'these similarities is that the human mind thinks and invents in a similar way in similar surroundings and challenges, even if isolated by oceans. In other words, the human mind evolved along the same lines even in the isolation occasioned by the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.'
Therefore, Mavimbela concludes correctly that, 'The moral and political agency of the African people and that of the African Diaspora rest, in part, on their ability to integrate into a common human heritage that contributes meaningfully to the evolution of a rich, equitable and a shared human civilisation.'
I visited Bahia leading 60 teachers to an International Conference on the Teaching of Statistics (ICOTS6) in 2006. Although Brazil had just lost the World Cup and in Rio the mood was sombre, in Bahia, Salvador, the carnival mood was oozing with an Africanness I could relate to. Little did I know I would be immersed in a lecture about being African and relieve the Bahia experience 18 years later with an overdose of intellectual rigour. Both Mavimbela and I served in the government of South Africa as senior bureaucrats. His book is South Africa's long walk to freedom.
Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, among other hats.
Image: Supplied
Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.
*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL
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