Slavery Africa is Sorry

Africa regrets slavery. Defeated villages were enslaved internally. The slave trade came with guns and silver coins, and ships that took sons and daughters of the sun, to the other side of the sea.

Men and women stolen from Africa, miraculously survived in participating Arab countries, British possessions, Haiti, the Caribbean, Brazil and the United States of America. Their generations are still here, still standing, but some are very bitter about the continent: You sold us.

Africa is such an anathema, they don’t want to be called African Americans. It is their prerogative to hate Africa, but I would like to put it in context, using isiZulu a South African language. First of all:  

1. Africa had wars, like all parts of the world, the evergreen survival of the fittest mode, men love so much.  Villages fought each other for land and slaves.

2. The white man brought a new dimension: guns and silver coins called money. It led to Portuguese, German, Dutch and British slave traders paying bandits, to steal human beings while farming, going to the river, cooking and doing normal activities on their land.

Yes, human beings were kidnapped or sold. Let’s look at this Zulu word, thumba. It means to take by force, to abduct, to kidnap. Women, children and cattle were primary targets. That’s why they were moved to safe places once there was a whiff of war. A safe place was called inqaba, like my name Nonqaba. We are bringing this up, to demonstrate to African Americans that their enslavement was an act of war. That is why there is a word for kidnapping in most African languages.

As for selling them, let’s look at the word thumba again. I-thumba means a boil in Zulu. It appears from nowhere, and kidnaps a particular part of the body. With slavery, it was the invasion of Africa by Europeans, their guns and their decision that these people are not human beings: so black! They are savages to be used as beasts of burden in the New World. If Europe had not invaded Africa, there would be no black people in the U.S. and elsewhere. It would have been business as usual in Africa: village against village and taking slaves.

Yoruba proverb: a slave is someone’s child. Black people taken to America had mothers and they cried. They went to their graves hoping they would see their kids again.

Slavery is wrong, was wrong, will always be wrong. African Americans that don’t want to identify with Africa have a right to feel that way. On behalf of our ancestors, we are sorry. They didn’t know what we know now. History has many wrongs. I just hope their hatred for Africa does not result in hatred for what they see in the mirror, because they’re beautiful. The world knows it. That’s why it doesn’t openly admit it.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger