19th Century abolitionist Mary Ann Shadd who founded the Provincial Freeman newspaper in Toronto, Canada in 1853. She relocated the publication to Chatham in 1855 to enhance sales and advertising., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
No remorse for slavery. . .No reparations, no land, no justice
Sunday, 21 July 2013 00:00
Nilene Foxworth
Words of wisdom from elders are indeed a blessing, and one can find similar sentiment in the meaningful voice of proverbs.
One such proverb is from the Chinese: “You can drink water from a well, and forget those who dug it”.
Unfortunately, European colonisers behave as if slavery was exempt from righteous laws of humanity — showing no remorse for their ruthless history.
The Museum of Slavery in the Americas (website) suggests that a minimum of 28 million, and perhaps as many as 180 million Africans, were murdered or enslaved in the horrible Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, between 1435 and 1888.
To justify such evil, Romans who printed the first Bible had the audacity to teach Christianity as if Africa didn’t exist, nor make any contribution to humanity and/or shape history.
However, the truth has been unveiled by many historians, researchers and scientists.
All European false teachings will someday vanish.
According to E. A. Allen’s 1891 book, History of Civilisation: “Christianity did not go forth claiming to teach doctrines and ideas before unheard of, but simply ‘took’ many of the beliefs, rites, and ceremonies of the heathen world.”
One must ask who the heathens (uncivilised) truly were, since the so-called civilised had to “take” from them, their beliefs, rites, and ceremonies.
In 1974, Mexican author Rodolfo Benavides in Dramatic Prophecies of the Great Pyramid said: “Four thousand years ago, China was just inventing the Potter’s Wheel. The age of bronze and jade was only dawning around the world. A few savage tribes dressed in rough skins wondered over terrain that was unhealthy swampland.
“The first stone had not yet been laid in what would become golden Greece or imperial Rome, but in Egypt, the Pharonic civilisation was already flourishing — a mature culture capable of producing literature with the grandeur of ancient Egypt 5 000 years ago!”
So, that is why the colonisers cut off the robust wide nose of the ancient Egyptian Sphinx, built by Pharaoh Khufu.
European offspring of the slave trade are still trying to erase the great contribution Africans and their descendants have made to civilisation.
It’s no secret what has happened to Egypt with all its historical grandeur, and also Mali where the world’s first university called Sankore University in Timbuktu was built, as far back as the 12th century, with an attendance of 25 000 students from all corners of the African continent.
Sankore University had one of the largest libraries in the world, and catalogued 700 000 manuscripts. They taught the science of spiritual purification, algebra, chemistry, geometry, trigonometry, physics, astronomy, plus more.
The history of the university is fascinating. It was Emperor Mansa Musa who wanted a world class learning institution, he built it with the financial support of a local Mandinka lady, esteemed for her wealth.
The emperor also built a courtyard mosque with the exact dimensions of the Ka’abah in Mecca.
Unfortunately, according to a recent media report, Mali is considered the poorest country in Africa, and out of every thousand children born, 176 die.
Sometimes I feel like Marvin Gaye. “Makes me wanna holler.”
It is confusing that Mali would have such an internal struggle, with the same old colonisers coming to the rescue. What did France do for Haiti after the devastating earthquake, or before it?
America, France, Britain, Australia, plus all the other colonisers, have no right to advise, observe, nor dictate to African sovereign nations until they clean up their own history of inhumane atrocities.
It’s no secret why the countries listed above have practised double standard systems of overt racism. Trayvon Martin is just another statistic of racist white lynchings with no justice for African descendants. Emmett Till was also a 14-year-old teenager who was brutally murdered in August of 1955 by whites in Mississippi, and the whites were acquitted.
Blacks have been killed twice inside the Mississippi jail dungeon.
According to Eric Verle’s recent article on a historical lynching case in Colorado:
“Colorado can tie for the worst race lynching ever, when in 1900, black 16-year-old Preston Porter Jnr, innocent and probably mentally feeble, was burned at the stake by a cheering white mob numbering over 300 from Limon and Colorado Springs. The horrible lynching was covered by Denver Times and New York Times.”
Someone was drawing the cruelty as the mob took turns pouring petrol on his burning body.
I was blessed to have an aunt who lived to be 103. She told me several years ago about the necktie lynchings when they didn’t have a rope.
My husband was an administrator at the time, and had to wear neckties, but I had no problem shopping for them until I learned about the necktie history.
Whenever a white man mentioned a necktie party, that meant there was going to be a lynching of a black man.
Immediately, I replaced all his neckties with nice turtlenecks. The first neckties were worn by Roman soldiers, but the modern European necktie was worn in the 16th century by the Croatian military in France.
According to the Daily Kos (website), nearly 3 500 African-Americans were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. I keep wondering if there is any end to the arrogance of America and its radical racism against African-Americans, as they continue to drink the water from the well of those who dug it.
As they continue to send billions of dollars to numerous countries and ignore the overdue reparations our people have truly earned for more than 400 years.
We know that America paid Japanese $1,2 billion reparations after World War II, and the Germans paid the Jews billions in settlements for the holocaust; and New Zealand recently paid the indigenous people of the country for the harsh treatment and land grab, and are returning land to them, according to Al-Jazeera May 24 2013.
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade was described by the African bloc in Durban as a crime against humanity, while European countries were divided on an offer of “apology” or an expression of “regret.”
I keep wondering what kind of human beings are such unmerciful people.
However, they must understand that they are dealing with a new brand of angry and oppressed people who have a great vision, and Hollywood won’t be pushing false images with negative producers trying to make slavery humorous, and a white Batman trying to be Jesus.
Why were we not taught the history of Sankore University in schools dominated by Europeans? Obviously for the same reasons the Egyptian Sphinx was defaced, the Zimbabwean Bird was stolen, Biblical scrolls kept secret; and for the same reason slaves were not allowed to speak their native tongue and isolated from our colonised homeland until the independence of Ghana in 1957 — the same year my daughter was born.
I remember parents telling their children when they were naughty: “I’m sending you to Tim-buk-tu!” After so many centuries, did African-American parents really know where Timbuktu was?
There are many African words that passed down from slavery and are still used today like: Yaw Kay (okay) meaning all right, hipi (hip) meaning aware, cat (cat) meaning person, dega (dig) meaning understand, tota (tote) meaning carry.
Many Zimbabweans don’t believe that slaves were taken from here. They often say people were only taken from West Africa. We must clearly understand the history of our people, and not feel offended by the reality of slavery and colonisation — both were two harsh evils we had to deal with, but we cannot disassociate ourselves because of boundaries, language, religion, tribe and etcetera.
The same people who created boundaries for us are more united than us. There are several books on the slave trade. One such book is titled (East African Slave Trade) by Edward Alpers: “The Portuguese slave trade existed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not only along the coast of Kenya and Tanzania, but also Mozambique and Zimbabwe.”
There are so many Africans born in America who are indeed hungry for a simple touch of the soil where their ancestors proudly walked.
The Motherland must be motherly in the interest of our future generations.
That they might know the rocky roads we have travelled, the contributions we have made to the world, and never fear to embrace our own black race with compassion, as colourful African flags fly high in the sky, we can sing beautiful songs of our past, our future, and be proud.
Nilene Omodele Adeoti Foxworth is an accomplished author, poet and producer.
She is published in four countries — Zimbabwe, Switzerland, London and North America.
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