The Minister of Culture and Tourism, Filipe Zau, today suggested to UNESCO, in Luanda, the introduction of the Kimbundo national dialect into the Brazilian education system, as a way for this country to better highlight its Africanity and historical ties with Angola.
When speaking at the presentation ceremony of a volume of three books focused on Africa, the minister said that there are already some applications about Kimbundo and that, as Rector of the Independent University of Angola, he lived this experience through Rádio Unia.
“I leave you with a challenge here, because I don’t like talking without producing results. I received and am available to provide UNESCO, in the first phase, with a teacher to teach, via video conference, Kimbundo classes for UNESCO”, he expressed.
So, he highlighted, if you are interested, “just as we do our conferences, we are going to transform this great ocean of ours into a smaller river, passing on the Kimbundu language for learning and greater affirmation of your Africanity”.
The minister was addressing a small group of Brazilian and Angolan teachers and writers, as well as members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) and students at the Union of Angolan Writers (UEA).
On the occasion, Filipe Zau said that the aforementioned initiative is a very important philosophical and not doctrinal reason so that together we can effectively build a better future for future generations, particularly in Angola and Brazil.
“It is in this spirit that the National Archives is open to us working together; for us to work on sources on one side and the other so that we can also conserve and digitize these sources with the view that technologies can give us in both directions”, he said.
The governor said it was necessary to change the curricula and for objective and social realities to be put up, nowadays, for study and not disposable knowledge that we only theorize and certify, but in the end are of absolutely no use.
“And we will lend our goodwill and practices from the past and present, to one side and the other, taking into account that we are the sixth region of Africa and this region is the diaspora. And today the African Union already talks about the diaspora and everyone already recognizes the diaspora”, he argued.
Just like the information they carry about Queen Njinga, considered the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Angolans also want to know who Teresa Benguela is, whose history is very beautiful, and that is the best that the discovery of knowledge can provide.
For Filipe Zau, this is what gives this permanent sense of curiosity and of chasing after knowledge and the desire to place ourselves in the search for the objective reality of truth and not for demagogy or the doctrinal meaning of life, for which religion is enough.
“I hope that on the 31st, when they leave here, they will take with them a set of things, teachings and experiences that they can consider useful to pave the way for our future”, said the retired teacher and musician.
The intention, he continued, is to transform the Atlantic into a river where you can see the shore more easily, on the other side, without major worries, knowing the compatriots who left in the caravels, with half of these ending up remaining at sea.
“Therefore, many are ours through an identity that we do not know and they arrived on the other side with all African ancestry, so there is an urgent need for them to get to know us better too”, he said.
For the ruler, this will allow us to reach a unique trait of mutual knowledge of the same identity, without necessarily losing the sense of authority that makes this multicultural and intercultural education process in favor of knowledge.
As for the works presented, they are three different books, all with approaches focused on the African reality and Africans, namely “The Lies of the West”, “Black Woman and Ancestry” and Racism, in a total of three thousand copies, published by Black Seal.
All have more than 100 pages and were produced under the coordination of Dagoberto Fonseca, professor at Universidade Estadual Paulista. They were launched in Brazil last quarter and, in Angola, they are being sold at 17,000 kz; 34,000 kz and 43 thousand kwanzas.
Angop/Mds