Maafa: Black Holocaust

Oct 14, 2011 Editorial

The term “Maafa” is Kiswahili for “great tragedy”, “terrible occurrence” or “reoccurring disaster” and has been used to describe the European slave trade or the Middle Passage. The term “Maafa” also references the “Black Holocaust” historically and presently: meaning millions died during the transfer across the Atlantic in slave ships but millions are still dying because of the structural conditions that have persisted from slavery into the present.
The Black Holocaust, however, is the most underreported major event in world history. The question has to be asked, “Why?” A major economic event for Europe and Asia, a near fatal event for Africa, the seminal event in the history of every African in the Diaspora – if not every citizen in the New World–and yet, most of us cannot answer the simplest questions about it. On Wednesday, a group of citizens, led by representatives of the African Cultural and Development Association, participated in a simple but moving ceremony at the Georgetown seawall on the Atlantic, to commemorate and raise consciousness about the Maafa.
While the event is observed on a variety of days at different locales across the Americas, it is entirely fitting that October 12th was chosen by the Guyanese organisers. For this day, the day Columbus landed on a little island in the Bahamas – Watling Island, serves as the beginning of a concatenation of events that was to culminate in the greatest act of inhumanity ever committed by man against man: African slavery.
The Spanish, who expropriated the New World as if it were vacant and simply awaiting their arrival, almost immediately decided that the “Indians” they stumbled over were incapable of providing the labour for the mining and agricultural endeavours they contemplated. That the poor, friendly natives were so judged might be related to their inconvenient proclivity to perish by the millions from the diseases the Europeans had bequeathed to them. They decided that Africa, whose inhabitants were adjudged by the Christian Church as not to be in possession of souls – and therefore not being quite human – but were in abundant possession of muscles and sinews – should provide the necessary labour.
So this is how the ancestors of Blacks brought to the Western Hemisphere didn’t come here on the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria, the famous ships of explorer Christopher Columbus. They came instead as cargo – shackled and chained in the hulls of ships during the trans-Atlantic slave trade which began circa 1500 and did not end until 1807 in the British colonies and much later in Brazil and the US.
The estimates of these “soulless” Africans shipped across the Atlantic as cargo vary from 20 million to 100 million. Who needed to keep count? And how many perished and were thrown overboard? There is the true story of one captain who threw the remainder of his African slave-cargo overboard because the insurance for the total shipped was more lucrative than if he had sold the survivors.
But we should not imagine that these Africans went meekly into the night. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Back on the coast of Africa, mothers fought slave traders fiercely to save their children. They offered their bodies to slavers [traders] if they would leave the children behind. On some slave-ships that are known, and many that will never be known, manacled Negroes crawled from the holds and fought unarmed against guns and knives. On slave plantations, parents fought, stole, sacrificed and died for their families.” The history of Africans in the New World is one of struggling to simply survive against odds that cannot even be calculated in the present.
And that struggle is not over. In declaring 2011, “International Year for people of African Descent”, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reminded us: “The international community has affirmed that the transatlantic slave trade was an appalling tragedy not only because of its barbarism but also because of its magnitude, organized nature and negation of the essential humanity of the victims. Even today, Africans and people of African descent continue to suffer the consequences of these acts.”
Never Forget.

6 thoughts on “Maafa: Black Holocaust”

ericphillips October 14, 2011 at 6:18 am

Simple powerful editorial
ericphillips October 14, 2011 at 6:51 am

Simple, short and well done
Gewt October 14, 2011 at 3:52 pm

Why use the word holocaust ? This already has a stigma. Whyou add black to it it gets ven more stigmatised.
sean herbert October 14, 2011 at 6:21 pm

What a piece.One cannot help but be moved by the message of the passage and even more so the connection (comparative anology) to the present day status quo.What I do profer is that unlike the slave trade era,the black society(throughout the world) is not suffering against a sudden alien force that has crept up on us like thieves in the night,but we are suffering in the most part from our own denial and lack of intellectual strength.while I agree and accept that there is a clear line of connectivity spanning from the present day deportment of the typical ‘black man” to the control theorems of Mr. WILLIE LYNCH,there is very very little doubt in my mind that the culture that we so much complain about and blame for our dilemna ,is the very cuture we embrace and hide behind.In other words we are using as a shield a system, that is by no means as affective and debilitating as it was in its design stage, to obfuscate and in some instances nurture our inate and pervasive ineptness.

Might I add that if we(present day blacks) really do appreciate and respect the struggle that our foreparents endured,we should at all times establish a clear distinction between them and us since there is an ever widening gap between the mentalities and spiritualities of the two peoples.Please allow me to hastily add that I by no means intended to extenuate the accomplishment/attitude of the minority of blacks who have done what was required of them.
Gewt October 15, 2011 at 10:55 am

“…nurture our inate and pervasive ineptness” . Strong assertion Mr Herbert. I agee that our reality is somewhat different from those of our forefathers, but to say that those who hide behind excuses of lack of opportunity etc. are inately lazy and/or inept, is falling into the same trap. We must accept that our environment also plays a part in determinng our individual reactions to adversity. AIso many films show examples how just ONE individual in an entire street seriously values getting ahead, education and is labelled all sorts of names by his peers. This is a factor in the complex conundrum of the black ghetto. When we begin making generalisations it offends, it does not educate.
Dacia Solomon December 10, 2011 at 10:32 am

There’s a very moving Documentary on youtube called “Maafa 21” If you are moved by this article the Maafa 21 documentary will shock and enlighten you. A must see.