The Presence of the Maafa within the Global African Community in 2023 ~ by Elder Baye Kes-Ba-Me-Ra

The effects of the Maafa (African Slave Holocaust) remains with African people today on the African continent and in the Diaspora. None of us can claim any kind of collective power in the world whether it be an African nation below the Sahara, an island in the Caribbean or a group of African people in North or South America. The symbolism of individual achievement has no meaning if it cannot translate into real, organized and directed power. We need to observe Nakumbuka Day, not just because of the past horrors of the Maafa but also because of the current horrors of the Maafa. Here is some of the manifestation of the Maafa today:

1. Not one African nation that controls its destiny without the assistance or interference of non-African people.
2. Not one Caribbean nation that controls its destiny without the assistance or interference of non-African people.
3. Not one organization or group of African people outside the African continent that can has matched its accomplishments with its rhetoric.
4. Mass incarceration of African people in the U.S. and other places in the diaspora.
5. Mass impoverishment of African people globally.
6. Mass health problems of African people globally.
7. Mass ineffective education of African people globally.
8. Mass mother and child mortality rates of African people globally.
9. Mass omission of African history globally.
10. Mass global disorganization of African people globally.
11. Mass incompetence of global African leadership.
12. Mass misuse of global African genius due to the lack of inspiring global leadership.
13. Mass disrespect of indigenous African philosophy in global African affairs.
14. No global unifying rituals, ceremonies or traditions among African people.

Nakumbuka Day was introduced in the United States November 11, 1994. A small group of individuals who were members of the Pan-African Associations of America participated in the first ceremony at San Diego State University in San Diego, California. As head of the Pan-African Associations of America, I was asked to bring the concept back to San Diego after learning about it at the Black Think Tank conference held in Badgarey, Nigeria that was facilitated by Bro. Naiwu Osahon. Ancestor Charles Mende Roach, a barrister from Toronto, Canada introduced the concept to those attending the conference in 1992. We had a concept but no structure to guide us by, so we created one based on the enslavement experience of African people in America. Ancestor Roach created one in Toronto that was different from ours, yet both spoke to the tragedy of the Maafa, our ancestors who survived and those who didn’t.

The Maafa was not just a tragedy that happened to African people in the United States. It happened to African people throughout the western hemisphere, and we learned it also happened to African people on the east coast of Africa as well. For those of us in attendance, the fact that a brother from east Africa had introduced the concept because of Maafa, there was a striking parallel, considering that our initial knowledge of the Maafa was focused on the western hemisphere. So, in reality there really should be an observance of Nakumbuka Day in east Africa as well that reveals the human exploitation that came out the Middle East.

When we expand the nature of the African holocaust to the bloody process of colonialization on the African continent, we know that it should have the same importance to African people as African Liberation Day because the Maafa has affected African people globally. Our global ancestors have suffered at the hands of other human beings who felt that it was their right to own our ancestors, our resources, our genius, our skills, our contributions to the development of their nations and us as property to enrich themselves and cripple our evolution as a collective. This Maafa has extended down through time, not only robbing us of those elements that would have kept us powerful today and in the future, but which also shattered us into a million pieces of internal contention, western indoctrination, physical conflict, internal exploitation, and behaviors we have learned from white supremacy at the expense of our global unity.

Nakumbuka Day offers us the opportunity to meditate on this as we share the experiences of our ancestors who died through marches to the ocean on the east and west coasts of Africa. Nakumbuka Day offers the opportunity to meditate on the experiences of ancestors who died at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and those who died in treks across the Arabian desert. Nakumbuka Day offers the opportunity to meditate on the experiences of our ancestors who resisted enslavement aboard ships trafficking in human cargo; who resisted once on land, fighting back and dying for freedom and their human right to existence on their terms; who fought colonial armies, armed only with swords, cutlasses, bows and arrows, or old muskets against gatling guns, cannons, repeating rifles and other inventions of war in the west. We must also remember those who picked cotton, reaped rice, cut sugar cane in one part of the world while others picked tea, mined gold and collected rubber on the African continent.

Nakumbuka Day offers the opportunity to meditate on how this span of four hundred years has affected ALL African people spiritually and how we must listen to and speak to those ancestors both in the past of the Maafa and in the recent times of this Maafa. We must understand how this Maafa has affected the importance of our indigenous rituals, ceremonies, traditions, customs, and languages that were designed to unify us, and how white supremacy fractured us into being American, British, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Arab at the expense of being African which now we hold as dear while looking at the ways of our ancestors as primitive and unholy in our culturally programmed minds. We have the opportunity to meditate on the idea that if we do not hold ancestors in praise, speak to them with reverence in public and honor them their adaptability and resistance, then we can expect no blessing from them because in the philosophy that held them together, the one was never more important than the many and individualism was not a part of their indigenous philosophy. That philosophy was Ubuntu which was our primary principle and practice: “I am because we are, therefore, we are because I am.”

As we observe Nakumbuka Day, it is important that we keep this mind while we promote our brands, pursue individual expression, and no longer see the “We” because we are focused on the “I”. Perhaps if we do this, we will find that the best way to honor our ancestors is work more for “Us” collectively rather than for “individual causes” that may include us but are not, specifically about us as a collective. Perhaps if we meditate more remember this history of shared pain, suffering, and death, we will set aside all the dogmas to see each other as family and find ways to cooperate rather than compete with each other so that ALL our children will experience the practice of Ubuntu through how we respect each other and work to help each other achieve Pan-African unity, not just based on some political/religious/western philosophy but on the principles of indigenous African philosophy that defined us as a people before the onset of the Maafa. Nakumbuka Day is here to stay because it was supposed to come into existence, and those who observe it can be guaranteed the blessings of the ancestors for years to come.

Nakumbuka! Nakumbuka! Nakumbuka! Nakumbuka! Nakumbuka! Nakumbuka! Nakumbuka!

UBUNTU ~ Baba Baye

An EMBER is a glowing piece of coal or wood from a fire. Unlike the short-lived spark which may start a fire, embers are the hearty memory of the fire that lives on in the ebbs & flows that glow on down through the ages in the ancestral bonds & cultural memories that are preserved & remembered thru communal expression, ritual, & repair.

Of the 3 Gregorian calendar months that end in “-ember,” November was chosen in 1994 as the annual month of observance for NaKumbuka [Swahili: ‘I Remember’] Day, thanks to cultural custodians such as Baba Baye. 11/11 (the annual Nakumbuka date), is a coded number which holds the dual vibration & still-glowing embers of Divine Counterparts – the God/dess archetypes of Humanity’s most ancient Mysteries (hidden teachings) from Khmt, including: 

“The Key to all problems is the problem of Consciousness… If you search for the Laws of Harmony, you will find Knowledge… The best and shortest road toward Knowledge of Truth is Nature… If the Master teaches what is error, the Disciple’s submission is slavery. If he teaches Truth, this submission is Ennoblement… The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You, & Whosoever Shall Know Thy Self Shall Find It…” [proverbs from Ipet-Resyt, the “southern sanctuary” of God/dess Amun/Mut]

Such wisdom is organically resonant with the observances of indigenous cultures, such as those who, rather than participating in the annual U.S. Thanksgiving extravaganza, observe a National Day of Mourning to remember the historic reality of their genocide simmering under the festive masquerade that opens the commercial U.S. holiday season.

Brazil in South America has the largest Africa-descended population outside of the continent at an estimated 56-60 million people. In this segment of the African Diaspora, Black Awareness/Consciousness Day (Dia da Consciência Negra in their enslaver’s Portuguese tongue) is observed annually on Nov. 20^th as an official holiday. Originally [1960s], this day of rememberance was celebrated on May 13^th – the 1888 date when Brazil abolished slavery. The later revision to 11/20 – aka Zumbi Day – was to honor & remember the death in 1695 of resistance leader, a Maroon of Congolese descent, Zumbi – King of Quilombo dos Palmares.

Related: (i) Miller, Robert J. 2019. The Doctrine of Discovery: The International Law of Colonialism. UCLA Sch of Law “Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture & Resistance” [5: 1]; (ii) Vatican “Apologises” for Helping European Colonizers; (iii) Baye Kesbamera (Duane Bradford) 2023. Reflections on 21st Century Pan-Africanism, and the Envisioning of the Pan-African Congresses and the Development of the 6th Region of the African Union; (iv) “I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me” ~ The Osagyefo, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah ❤ ❤ ❤ UbuNtu ❤ ❤ ❤ Blessed Be ❤ ❤ ❤