By MURPHY BROWNE (Abena Agbetu)
On November 11, the world pauses to remember two wars that engulfed much of the known world. Those two wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945) could be described as European tribal conflicts because White men were fighting each other in Europe which eventually spread to other areas.
The Europeans ultimately, in various ways, bamboozled/coerced, racialized men and women to become involved.
When war was declared in 1914, some African Canadian men tried to join the “war effort” but were allegedly told that it was “A White man’s war”. Other phrases reportedly used by Canadian military commanders and recruitment officers to reject African Canadian volunteers during World War I, included: “We don’t want a chequer-board army” and “Sorry we cannot see our way to accept [Negroes] as these men would not look good in kilts.”
Many White soldiers declared they would not fight alongside African Canadian soldiers. This attitude reflected the racism that was prevalent in Canada.
African Caribbean men were encouraged to fight “for king and country”. Ironically, those men were descendants of Africans who had been enslaved by Europeans yet they bravely left their homes and travelled to Europe, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.
The racist recruitment staff in Canada were forced to accept African Canadian men they had previously rejected after the war had been raging for two years with heavy casualties. In the September 1916 issue of “The Atlantic Advocate” the Canadian military urged: “Colored men! Your King and Country need you!
Now is the time to show your patriotism and loyalty.
Will you heed the call and do your share?
Your Brothers of the Colonies have rallied to the Flag and are distinguishing themselves at the Front.
Here also is your opportunity to be identified in the Greatest War of History, where the Fate of Nations who stand for Liberty is at stake.”
The segregated No. 2 Construction Battalion was formed in Pictou, Nova Scotia in 1916 and shipped out from Halifax on March 28, 1917. African Canadians answered the “call” and joined the military to fight for European freedom.
They returned from fighting for Liberty, King and Country to find that their living conditions had not improved. They still were treated as third class citizens in the country of their birth where their ancestors’ blood, sweat and tears had contributed to the wealth and privileges that others could enjoy.
Some Africans on the continent and the Diaspora commemorate Nakumbuka on November 11 instead of Remembrance Day.
Nakumbuka (Kiswahili for “I remember”) is the annual November 11 remembrance ritual for the victims of the Maafa.
Nakumbuka was the brainchild of Tanzanian, Jomo Nkombe, who lived in Toronto and pioneered the idea as a public ritual in 1990. Nkombe asked Charles ‘Mende’ Roach who was a Canadian activist lawyer/jurist, to take the idea of Nakumbuka to the World Pan African Movement Conference which was held in Nigeria in 1992. At that conference it was resolved that the delegates would promote Nakumbuka to remember the Maafa in which millions of Africans perished during the Transatlantic slave trade.
In 1992 Nakumbuka was promoted in Nigeria by Naiwu Osahon of the World Pan African Movement. Baye Kes-Ba-Me-Ra and Adande Ima-Shema-Ra of the Pan African Associations of America who attended the conference in 1992, returned to San Diego, California and established the Nakumbuka observance which was celebrated for the first time at San Diego State University, California on November 11, 1994.
Charles Roach was the driving force behind the Nakumbuka observance in Toronto from the 1990s until he transitioned to the ancestral realm on October 2, 2012. Roach went to Kingston, Jamaica in 2003 and with Jamaican writer/educator Basil “Koosoonogo” Lopez established the first Nakumbuka Ceremony at Mico College.
Observing Nakumbuka reminds us that never should we dismiss, minimize or simplify these five centuries of horror and devastation. It is a day to remember the countless Africans who were kidnapped and taken away from their families and friends on the continent, never able to say goodbye and who never saw their loved ones again.
On November 11, Africans are urged to take time to read and talk with their friends, relatives and children of all ages about the Maafa and what must be done to prevent a repeat. “Those who do not know their history are at risk of having it repeated.” We see it being played out to varying degrees in the USA in 2024.
The Maafa, a crime against humanity, has been the least discussed human tragedy, even among African people, although this centuries-long atrocity has stunted the growth of a continent, its people and its children of the Diaspora.
The inability of its victims to freely and openly express their grief and speak about the trauma has made this tragedy even more horrific, with generational trauma.
The Maafa has negatively affected the social, economic and cultural evolution of the African continent. Millions were lost due to the genocidal nature of an emerging European Capitalism seeking free labour to build its empires.
The European aggression against African people reached an apex of violence and brutality as centuries of the trade in human beings destroyed and erased the existence of villages, communities, empires, peoples, traditions, rituals, ceremonies, histories and languages. As a result of this barbarity, it has been estimated that 60 to 90 million African lives were lost in the Middle Passage, on plantations in the Caribbean, Central America, North America, South America and households in European countries. We have not found a way to bring psychological, emotional and spiritual closure to the trauma we have experienced in the last five centuries.
During this last year (2015-2024) of the UN-declared International Decade for People of African Descent, NAKUMBUKA!
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