UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

One aspect of African liberation is finding a way to bring some psychological, emotional and spiritual closure to the trauma we have experienced in the last five hundred years also known as the MAAFA (African Slave Holocaust). The Maafa has been the least discussed human tragedy in the past five hundred years by African people among themselves, yet this segment of African human time has crippled a continent, its people and its children of the Diaspora. What has probably made this tragedy even more horrific has been the inability of its victims to talk about it freely, openly and express their grief without shame or embarrassment.

Yet enough has never been written about the affects and effects of this holocaust on the social, economic and cultural evolution of the African continent and the children that it lost due to the genocidal nature of an emerging European Capitalism seeking free labor to build its cultural empire. The European aggression against African people reached a hundred year apex of violence and brutality as one hundred years of the trade in human beings destroyed and erased the existence of whole villages, peoples, traditions, rituals, ceremonies, histories and languages. At the apex of this barbarity it has been estimated that 60 to 90 million African live were lost in the Middle Passage, not to mention the huge toll of African human life lost on plantations in the Caribbean, North America, Central America, South America and Europe.

African people died for the sole purpose of increasing the wealth and domination of Western Civilization at the expense of Africa and her children. Her children have did, in untold numbers, under different styles of enslavement including colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, segregation and cultural assimilation. It has resulted in African People betraying each other and the pursuit of authentic self-determination on the continent and in the Diaspora. It is a deep spiritual pain of unmeasured effects on African peoplehood worldwide.

In August 1992 a group of African people from throughout the world met at the Black Think Tank conference in Bagdagery, Nigeria to discuss the direction that Pan-Africanism should take as African people approached the year 2000. Out of that meeting was produced a document called "The Black Agenda Up To The Year 2000". In that document was established the observance of "Nakumbuka Day" (I Remember). All African people who attended that conference were encouraged to return to their respective communities to establish the tradition of Nakumbuka Day. The Pan-African Associations of America returned to the U.S. and created the Nakumbuka Day ceremony, presenting its first one at San Diego State University, California November 11, 1994. This was the first known celebration of Nakumbuka Day in the U.S.

Nakumbuka comes from the African language of Swahili and serves to remind us that we can never afford to dismiss, minimize or simplify these past five hundred years of human horror and devastation. It is a day to remember those of our blood who died unknown, unwanted by those who kidnapped them and who left families on the continent who have never been able to lay their grief to rest. On this day we encourage African people to set aside the time to read and talk with our children of all ages about the MAAFA and what we must do to prevent it from every happening again. We ask all African people to burn white candles and incense throughout the day, wear white clothing, ribbons and armbands as a sign of remembrance. Place a mark of ash in your foreheads as a sign of mourning and at the end of the Nakumbuka Day embrace each other and say loudly NAKUMBUKA seven times to reassure the ancestors that they are never away from us.

The following organizations have become instrumental in observing Nakumbuka Day each year:

African Student Union - San Diego State University.
Black Student Union - University of Southern California
African Student Union - California State University Los Angeles

Our incarcerated members in the states of California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Virginia.

We hope to see others join us in the years to come.

The Pan-African Associations of America will hold its 9th annual Nakumbuka
Day Ceremony at St. Stephens C.O.G.I.C. in San Diego California November 11th.