Historical Context
“The much celebrated and romanticised European economic renaissance was fueled through the captured slave labour of mainly Afrikans and the indigenous people of Latin America (this is probably the most dishonest aspect of European history).
Thus, what some Black Warrior scholars refer to as the 'Slave Economy'. In today’s terms, the Transatlantic Slave Trade was a global- multibillion industry that laid the economic basis for today’s European economic powerhouses.
To manage this global industry efficiently, the Europeans set up specific shipping, banking, security, labour recruitment, auction houses and law enforcement entities, to enable the global slave trade.
Essentially, the trade in the bodies of Afrikans gave birth to a global economy and related professions. For instance, many of today’s big western banks have their roots in the slave trade.
In fact, even the system of policing has a similar genesis. The original purpose of the police was to protect the property (most of it stolen) of the land-owning white aristocracy and catch slaves who ran away.
Thus, the other name of the police was the Slave Patrol. Who do you think was providing the money, transportation and chains for the trade in Afrikan slaves?
It was the European slave- entrepreneurs. And some of the companies they formed during slavery, continue to trade today.” - Veli Mbele.
As you know, between the 7th and 14th centuries (western timeline), as part of the Arab and later the European invasion of Afrika, both the Arabs and Europeans habitually mutilated the bodies of Afrikans and displayed them publicly.
One of the things that was common with the Arabs was the castration of the Afrikan males they had taken captive as slaves.
They would take Afrikan women as their sex slaves (a practice that continues today in the Arab controlled parts of Afrika and the so-called Middle East).
With the Europeans, part of their colonial ritual included the capture of Afrikans (mainly men), beheading them and then displaying their headless bodies in public (lynching).
The Europeans also engaged in the mass raping of Afrikan women and men (especially on the slave ships and in the plantations). It was also common for European war generals to take the heads of Afrikan Warriors as personal trophies.
Many of the so-called army generals of the classical slave trading era like Leopold of Belgium and Napoleon of France, proudly indulged in this bloody ritual.
The lynching and raping of Afrikan men (by the Europeans) was mainly done to those Afrikans who dared to resist.
This includes the beheading of our Warrior Kings such as King Badu Bonsu, King Hintsa kaKhawuta, King Mpolokeng Jantjie and many others.
The main objective of beheading and publicly lynching Afrikans was to terrorise them to the point that they shouldn't even dare think of rebelling against their white enslavers.
The Impact & Economic Benefits of The Trade In The Bodies of Afrikans
All these acts of genocide against Afrikans (what Dr Marimba Ani refers to as the Maafa), created what some Afrikan scholars refer to as the 'slave economy'.
It is this trade in the bodies of Afrikans (not the genius of white people), that is responsible for the status of today’s leading western nations as 'first world' or 'industrialised'.
To illustrate the scale of this colonial project, it is estimated that from 1500 to 1866, over 12 million Afrikans were forcefully taken from Afrika into slavery across the Atlantic and it took over 35 000 voyages.
Then the Europeans proceeded to decimate our civilisational splendour- stealing much of it and re-presenting it to us as 'western civilisation.
They engaged in a continent-wide bloody looting spree. Literally taking whatever, they can lay their hands on.
For example, thousands of our stolen artifacts (including the skulls of our Warrior ancestors), are still buried in the massive underground vaults of some of Europe's most 'celebrated' capitals like Paris, Frankfort, London, Madrid and Brussels.
To give you an idea: about 180 000 are in Belgium, 75 000 in Germany, 70 000 in France, 69 000 in Britain and 37 000 in Austria. Out of this bloody conquest, white people built what you today call Europe (and much of the west).
All the capitals of Europe we marvel at today as Afrikans-are the proceeds of the great crime of anti-Afrikan genocide. For instance, for slavery in AmeriKKKa alone, in 2012 it was estimated if whites were to pay Afrikans reparations, they would have to pay something in the region of $14.2 trillion.
There is also the big white lie that the wealth that today’s whites have has nothing to do with slavery/colonialism/Jim Crow/Apartheid, and that it is all a product of the 'hardwork' and 'entrepreneurial genius' of today’s whites.
In AmeriKKKa, banks like the Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan, Brooks Brothers, New York Life, all have their genesis in the trade of the bodies of Afrikans (the slave economy).
In the process of all this, whites invented both racism and capitalism-as both enablers and justifications for this grand project of anti- Afrikan genocide.
The German Genocide In Namibia (1904 – 1907)
It is in this context that we must understand why it is that so called mainstream discourses (in the mass media or academia) do not give as much prominence to the genocides that have been committed by the Arabs or Europeans against Afrikans.
Elsewhere, I make the point that, these approaches to societal, political or academic discourse is primarily aimed at sensitizing us to white pain and suffering and de-sensitizing us to Afrikan pain and suffering.
For instance, as it relates to the 20th century, why is there so much attention given to the Jewish holocaust, but not as much focus on the first holocaust of the 20th century that was carried out by the Germans against our people, in what is today called Namibia?
It is said that the German invaders killed an estimated 100 000 of our Herero and Nama kin. Between 1904 and 1907, the Germans raped and murdered (lynched) thousands of Afrikans. They even went as far as to poison water sources and starved them.
Under the direction of racist so-called doctors and ethnologists such as Luschan and Dr Eugen Fischer, the Germans set up concentration camps and actively harvested the skulls of Afrikans and other body parts.
It is estimated that, today, there are still over 12,000 body parts of the Herero and Nama in the University of Frankfurt, 7,000 at Dresden Völkerkunde Museum, in the Charité, Berlin.
There is also an unknown number in the Arbeitstelle fur Geschichte der Medizin, University of Marburg. Museums on major German cities, including Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Cologne, Dresden, Frankfurt, Freiburg, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Nuremberg and Rostock.
Equally important, is the fact that under the leadership of Herero and Nama Warriors such as the great Samuel Maherero and Henrik Witbooi, our people launched gallant resistance campaigns and they too and legitimately so, killed large numbers of European invaders.
The Globalised Nature of European Terror
What the Germans did in Namibia was not a mistake and neither was it unprecedented in the imperialist history of white people. Like the other genocides against Afrikans, what the Germans did in Namibia was part of a historically- evolved- globalised project of European terror.
The creation of today's European states and extended criminal colonies like the United States of AmeriKKKa, Australia, South AfriKKKa, was all based on the crimes of genocide against indigenous peoples and looting.
As stated earlier, as part of this campaign of terror, European invaders beheaded many of our other Warrior Ancestors. These include the killings of Afrikan Warriors such as Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana aka Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi of Zimbabwe and Zumbi dos Palmeras in what is today called Brazil.
Our seemingly endemic contemporary social, economic and political problems as an indigenous people in South AfriKKKa, Namibia and the entire Afrikan continent, have their genesis is in this violent and bloody history of foreign invasion, by the Arabs and Europeans.
And where there are sincere attempts by Afrikans to honestly confront this history and its continuing impact on us as a Race - there are still some among us (Afrikans), who are doing all they can to ensure that there is no honest and penetrating confrontation of this history.
The use of the Namibian genocide in this reflection is simply intended to focus our attention (as Afrikans), on the phenomenon of mass atrocities or genocides (past and present) that have been committed against Afrikan people, in Afrika and other parts of the world.
This must include a focus on the minerals-driven genocide that is currently raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where over 6 million of our kin have died, and the most ignored genocide of our time in the south Pacific in West Papua.
Since the 1960s the military of the anti-black Indonesian regime has been systematically killing, raping and torturing our Black kin in West Papua. This terror has not stopped. It is estimated that Indonesia has killed over 500 000 of our kin.
It is important that those Afrikans whose concern is the rise and resurrection of our Race, investigate and bring to the fore, these and other atrocities that have and continue to be committed against our Race, by the Europeans and others.
Most importantly, it is important that my generation of Afrikans uses their knowledge of these unspoken atrocities to both arm ourselves (intellectually), and consciously challenge the anti-Afrikan- hegemonic- europeanised discourse on the history of humanity.
At the centre of this problematic discourse is the project of erasure through amnesia, that seeks to sensitise Afrikans to white pain and suffering, with the view to de-sensitize them to Afrikan pain and suffering.
Camagu! Lesedi! Kganya! Makukhanye!
Recommended Readings
1. Resistance In The Northern Cape In The Nineteenth Century (2012).
2. Aljazeera - Namibia: Skulls of my People
3. Atlanta BlackStar - The Afro-Brazilian Story I: Black November and Zumbi dos Palmares
4. News Zimbabwe
5. Atlanta BlackStar - Experts Find Nearly 90 Percent of African Art Is Outside the Continent, Recommends French Museums Return Stolen Artifacts
6. National Geographic - How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy
7. QZ
8. The telegraph - Dutch return 171-year-old severed head to Ghana
9. Patch - The Maafa (The Black Holocaust)
10. World History Encyclopedia - The Spread of Islam in Ancient Africa
11. AP News - South African Tribal Chief Hunts for Predecessor’s Head
12. New Africa - Why Africa’s stolen treasures must be returned
