Maafa Truth 2007: Overview

“He who tells the truth is never wrong”
Swahili proverb

The Lies

With the British government promoting an inaccurate revisionist version of history for the bicentenary of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, many are determined to ensure that Truth prevails in 2007. Over £20 million has been allocated by the government to various projects in 2007 that support a distortion of World history. Ironically, the same amount of money was also paid in reparations to the immoral, opportunistic British slavers who ‘suffered financial loss’ as a result of the attempts to transform the dehumanising practice of the enslavement of African people to the equally dehumanising but more profitable policy of colonisation (The enslavement of entire African nations) that endorses the false notion that millions of African people were passive victims of enslavement who were eventually liberated through the moral conviction of a handful of europeans. With William Wilberforce being hailed as the latter day Bob Geldof, African people are continuing to resist the suppression of the Truth about history and expose the duplicitous nature and sinister motivations of the government, politicians and other state endorsed institutions.

The Truth

With contributions from community activists, project workers, teachers, historians and the business community, this documentary confronts the myths of British slavery, presents the true history of the Maafa and African resistance, examines the politics of the government’s bicentenary celebrations and highlights the on-going resistance work of the African community in Britain. As this Labour government, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair become more assertive about their assimilation agenda at the expense of individual cultural identities, African people continue to galvanise and unify and are more determined than ever to work towards self determination and ultimately ensure that we never forget the suffering, the strength, the foresight and the lessons of our Ancestors.

What is the Maafa?

The word '''Maafa''' translated into English language means ''The Enslavement of (Mama) Africa''. It is derived from a Kiswahili word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence, injustice and great tragedy. When capitalised The Maafa uniquely refers to the injustice of the subjugation, contamination and loss of indigenous African cultures, people, land and resources primarily by invading arabs, europeans and other non-African ethnic groups. The word also incorporates the historic and ongoing commercial and human exploitation of Africa through enslavement, colonisation and neo-colonialism. These foreign policies result in present day atrocities and human rights violations in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora that continue today. The use of the term also conveys the unprecedented scale and nature of the inhuman treatment of African people.

The term “Maafa” was popularised in the Diaspora by the African American academic, Dr Marimba Ani, who used it to also signify that the Maafa did not begin 500 years ago but covered a “1300-year-long period (652 CE – Present) of African conquest, enslavement, domination, oppression, exploitation and genocide at the hands of Europeans and Arabs”.

Attempting to define African peoples experience during the on-going Maafa as a single word in the european lexicon (holocaust, genocide) has become increasingly problematic as there is no precedent for this scale of destruction against a mass of people. The use of the words ''Mama Africa'' in the English translation has a special symbolic relevance as a direct reference to Africa being the birth place of humanity and the cradle of civilisation.