History of MAAFA Usage of the Swahili term Maafa (Great Disaster) in English was introduced by Marimba Anis bookLet the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora. It is derived from a Swahili term for disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. The term was popularised in the 1990s. The term African Holocaust is preferred by some academics, such as Maulana Karenga, because it implies intention. One problem noted by Karenga is that the word Maafa can also translate to accident, and in the view of some scholars the holocaust of enslavement was not accidental. Ali Mazrui notes that the word holocaust is a dual plagiarism since the term is derived from Ancient Greek and thus, despite being associated with the genocide of the Jews, no one can have a monopoly over the term. Mazrui states: This borrowing from borrowers without attribution is what I call the dual plagiarism. But this plagiarism is defensible because the vocabulary of horrors like genocide and enslavement should not be subject to copyright-restrictions. Some Afrocentric scholars prefer the term Maafa toAfrican Holocaust, because they believe that indigenous African terminology more truly confers the events. The term Maafa may serve much the same cultural psychological purpose for Africans as the idea of the Holocaust serves to name the culturally distinct Jewish experience of genocide under German Nazism. Other arguments in favor of Maafa rather than African Holocaust emphasize that the denial of the validity of the African peoples humanity is an unparalleled centuries-long phenomenon: The Maafa is a continual, constant, complete, and total system of human negation and nullification. The terms Transatlantic Slave Trade, Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Trade have also been said by some to be deeply problematic, as they serve as euphemisms for the intense violence and mass murder. Referred to as a trade, this prolonged period of persecution and suffering is rendered as a commercial dilemma, rather than as a moral atrocity. With trade as the primary focus, the broader tragedy becomes consigned to a secondary point, as mere collateral damage of a commercial venture. Others, however, feel that avoidance of the term trade is apologetic act on behalf of capitalism, absolving capitalist structures of involvement in human catastrophe.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 17:15:26 +0000
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