Part of the genius of the Nguzo Saba is the necessity of each of its principles to the attainment of African liberation. From a foundational point of view, liberation in any meaningful sense is unattainable without umoja, unity. Furthermore, any people striving for freedom must, on every level, practice kujichagula, self-determination.
Kujichagula is a practice evident throughout our history. When Nubians under the leadership of Piankhi pushed into Kemet, expelling the Assyrians and initiating the so-called 25th Dynasty, they restored Kemetic sovereignty and affirmed the spirit of umoja between the two nations—Kemet and Nubia. Their actions evidence a spirit of kujichagulia.
When Nzingha rejected Portuguese hegemony and raised the people to resist their rule, she committed herself to a decades-long struggle for African sovereignty. Her actions provide a potent example of a people engaged in a deep practice of kujichagulia.
When Africans stole away from the plantations of Brazil, and fled into the hinterland, creating the quilombo (maroon society) of Palmares, a community that stood for a century, they resolved that their freedom was insufficient so long as other African people remained oppressed. As a result, they fought tirelessly against that system, and in their struggle immortalized Zumbi—one of their leaders—as an icon of African kujichagula.
And when the ancestors of our movement in this country—in formations as diverse as the Shule ya Watoto, The East, The Republic of New Africa, the Congress of African People, the Institute of Positive Education, NationHouse, the Organization Us, and others—declared that we were an African people, and began to struggle towards the reclamation of our culture and the restoration of our sovereignty, they were engaged in the practice of Kujichagulia.
We stand on the shoulders of all of these ancestors. Their practice of Kujichagulia continues to inform ours, because no people can fully express their humanity when it is defined by their oppressors. No people can choose and fulfill their destiny under the tyranny of alien ideas.