The word '''Maafa''' (also know as the African Holocaust) is derived from a (Kiswahili) word meaning disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. The term today collectively refers to the Pan-African study of the 500 hundred years of suffering of people of African heritage through Slavery, Imperialism, Colonialism, Oppression, Invasions and Exploitation.
The African Holocaust was the greatest continuing tragedy the world has ever seen. It was also the most impacting social event in the history of humanity. It reduced humans with culture and history to a people invisible from historical contribution; mere labor units, commodities to be traded. From the Maafa the racial-social hierarchy was born which continues to govern the lives of every living human where race continues to confer (or obstruct) privilege and opportunity. And in the 21st century the legacy of enslavement manifest itself in the social-economic status of Africans globally. Without a doubt Africans globally constitute the most oppressed, most exploited, most downtrodden people on the planet a fact that testifies to the untreated legacy of Slavery. 
Slavery was not only an aspect of history, today Slavery is still a World problem; millions of people are trapped in domestic slavery from China to USA. However, It is estimated that 40 -100 million people were taken out of African by the Atlantic, Arabian and Trans-Saharan routes. Many died in transport, others died from diseases or indirectly from the social trauma left behind in Africa.  .
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Editor's note: These extracts are taken from the film 500 YEARS LATER and the audio DARK VOYAGE.
STUDYING AFRICA
The new attack on African history manifests in blame reassignment and statistical downsizing. Blame reassignment refocuses on African and Arab slavery. Statistical downsize serves to lessen the volume of Africans impacted by enslavement. The authentic study of Africa is often masked with political or emotional objectives; whether these objectives are Islamaphobic, Anti-African, European supremacy or "Black" supremacy.
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The horrors of humanity are not limited to non-Africans. Honesty cannot be a one-way mirror. African history needs to be studied both as an experiment in sociology and as a historical discourse; as to study one is by default to study the other.
AFRICAN SLAVERY
The line that defines what is and isn't slavery is blurred and there is no secret that when ethnic groups and nationalities fought in wars the vanquished where given into a system of subservience to the victors: askew rules of war. However, let not the word "slavery" allow an analogue to what happened on the plantations of Jamaica, Brazil and America. In Africa,
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There were no fields filled with men and women tolling away to the crack of a whip. There was no place where so-called slaves outnumbering their enslavers. Chattel Slavery did not exist within Africa but serfdom, servitude or vassalship did, as it did in most of Europe and the rest of the world. In addition, this vassalship was scattered and infrequent; it was never the commerce of the land. Most non-free people could amass wealth and upward mobility was very frequent. Some, as in the case of Ali Kolon ascended the ranks to become rulers. Many enslaved people were employed in high government office with virtually no restrictions on their native language, religion etc.
HOW MANY
While traditional studies often focus on official French and British records of how many Africans arrived in the “New World” these studies neglect the death from raids, the fatalities onboard the ships, introduced European diseases, the victims from the consequences of enslavement, the trauma of refugees displaced by slaving activities. The numbers of arrivals also neglects the volume of Africans who arrived via pirate ships who for obvious reasons wouldn’t have kept records. In the centuries of death that surrounded slavery some suggest that a few kings got rich or life in Africa was so horrid that being brought to slave plantations was a progressive life style change. (See African Kingdoms for Africa prior to slavery)
An often-neglected study within history is the value of population demographics as a function of time. 30 million people 500 years ago is not equivalent to 30 million people today because 30 million as a percentage of the world population represented 500 years ago is far greater than what it represents today. It is estimated that by the height of the Transatlantic slave trade the population of Africa unlike the rest of the World had stagnated by 50%.. (See How Europe underdeveloped Africa. "Walter Rodney")
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Not only was Transatlantic Slavery of demographic significance, in the aggregate population losses but also in the profound changes to settlement patterns, epidemiological exposure and reproductive and social development potential. Thus Africa's development potential was being experienced outside of Africa, as opposed to inside Africa. This was perhaps the most profound destructive factor to the development of Africa. Systems of enslavement inside of Africa never underdeveloped the continent while the Transatlantic Slave trade did while enriching Europe.
SLAVERY AS A PENAL SYSTEM
Today there is an overemphasis on the word 'slavery' where slavery means the involuntary removal of an individual’s freedom. But the restriction of degrees of freedom is an ongoing aspect of human societies; where if members of a given society commit undesirable acts (not paying tax, adultery, treason, terrorism, etc) then systems were designed to curb the freedom of these individuals. So today America calls it the Criminal Justice System, history calls it Slavery. An in America's system Africans are again targeted and taken out of the voting process and the competitive job process (not to mention the obvious stigma).
A judicial process was in place throughout most of Africa to preserve the law of the land; resources were such that large expensive industrial complexes were not viable. The Transatlantic Slave system distinguished itself because there was no crime on the part of the victims, simply being of African ethnic origin was the “crime.” Moreover the inhumanity and absolute debasement of the human being was the issue which must be put in focus and then the subsequent legacy of this system which still exist and still creates privilege and opportunity for the majority of European descendants.
SLAVERY, LEGACY & LANGUAGE
Africans became black when Africans became enslaved. This was a critical process in the making of a slave; disconnecting the African from any notion of having a Motherland. Black people (negroes in Spanish) is a construction which articulates a recent social-political reality. Political blackness is thus not an identity in terms of who a people are but moreover a social-political consequence of a world which after colonialism and slavery existed in those color terms. Indians are no longer "brown people", Chinese do not respond to being called "yellow." identity is always geographical and ties the people to their native environment or their core doctrine (Jews of Judaism, Muslims of Islam, Chinese of China). There is no country called Blackia or Blackistan. Hence, the ancestry-nationality model is more respectful and accurate: African-American, African-British, African-Arabian, African-Brazilian, and African-Caribbean.
Today terms like sub-Saharan Africa dominate history books and discussions on Africa. But this term is not an African construction but yet another European linguistic tool to divide and conquer. This barrier of sand hence confines Africans to the bottom of this make-believe location, which exists neither politically (African Union), ethnically (Tuareg), linguistically (Afro-Asiatic), religiously (Islam) or physically (Sudan and Mali). Sub-Saharan Africa is used as a by-word for primitive African: a place, which has escaped advancement. Hence, we see statements like, “no written languages exist in Sub-Saharan Africa” and “Egypt is not a Sub-Saharan African civilization.” It is a term used to satisfy negative perceptions and feed the "Dark Continent."
Part of any examination of Slavery and it's legacy must also look at how language is use to favor European interest and justify slavery. "Black on Black" violence in Africa is a term which is used to say Slavery was self-inflicted. But then the Jewish Holocaust would be "White on White." Words have powerful meanings and a serious effect on historical perception.
RELIGION AND SLAVERY
Religion has been fingered time and time again as being the inspiration and agent of slavery. Mass religion is a big soft target since most people are members of a religious group it is easy to say it was this factor, above all others, which is responsible for their negative behaviour. However, far more emphasis has to be placed on greed and its effect on the human condition. In the absence of religion, slavery would have taken place. In the absences of democracy and communism wars would have taken place. If we look at the most ruthless dictators most of them do not kill in the name of religion (Mao for example said religion was poison). The biggest wars in history are not really in the name of religion; even the crusades were about Europeans acquisition of trade routes which Muslims controlled. Outside of Islam and Christianity slavery existed, the largest slavers on the continent were neither Muslim nor Christian.
The sincere question regarding the role of religion in Slavery has to be looked at from the perspective of 1st came the greed and 2nd came the justification. Religion, like political systems (communism, democracy, etc), offer the justifications for the greed of man and all three world religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have been used in this way, as well as indigenous religious systems. So in the America’s we see Christianity being used as part of the making of a slave by transplanted Eurocentric values. In Africa we see Islam, or lack of Islam, being used as justification for enslaving people. We also see how selective interpretations were used in both Islam and Christianity (Curse of Ham, etc) to sustain slaving. However when slavery became a liability due to the numerous revolts and the industrial changes the same religioous insitutions which formally sanctioned became vocal in the abolishion of slavery. In addition Europeans and Arabs didn’t walk into Africa to enslave Africans because of a deep hatred for dark skin: The primary motive was profit. South African apartheid was the same. It was a system which protected European privilege and the opportunities it bore. Race was used as a justification to secure this privilege and most found justification in the Bible, the same Bible that Martin Luther King and Nat Turner used for liberation.
HOLOCAUST TODAY
The African Holocaust is also sadly not confined to history or to external influences. Darfur, the Congo, Sierra Leon and Rwanda are testimony to some of the horrors today. And although the legacy of Colonialism is clearly at the root of these problems it would be immoral not to see that Africans, like everyone else, are capable of unspeakable brutality. Just as in the European-European Holocaust during WW2.
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In studying Africa it is therefore critical to weigh situations on truth, for failure to identify truth results in repetition. The uncomfortable reality is an aspect of the African Holocaust has to be 'self-inflicted' horrors which cannot be escaped via the smooth language of evasion.
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MAAFA TIMELINE
The Enslavement of Africans Timeline
The world's most heinous crime
1444 - first slaves brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania
1444-5 - Portuguese make contract with Sub-Saharan Africa
1471 - Portuguese arrive in the Gold Coast
1482 - Portuguese begin building Elmina Castle on the Gold Coast
1488 - Bartholomew Diaz goes round the Cape of Good Hope
1490 - first Portuguese missionaries go to Congo
1500 - sugar plantations established on island of Sao Tome two hundred miles from coast of West Africa
1510 - first slaves shipped to Spanish colonies in South America via Spain
1516 - Benin ceases to export male slaves, fearing loss of manpower
1532 - first direct shipment of slaves from Africa to the Americas
1780's - slave trade at its peak
1652 - Dutch establish colony at Cape of Good Hope, South Africa
1700 - Asanti begin to consolidate power
1720's - Kingdom of Dahomey expands
1776-1783 - American War of Independence
1787 - Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery by Quobna Ottobah Cugoano published foundation of the Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade
1789 - French Revolution Life of Olaudah Equiano published
1791 - slave uprising in Haiti (Saint Domingue) led by Toussaint L'Ouverture
1804 - - Danes pass law against slave trade Haitian independence
1807 - British law passed declaring buying, selling and transporting slaves illegal (ownership continues)
1808 - North America abolish slave trade
1814 - Dutch outlaw slave trade
1823 - founding of Anti-slavery Committee London
1834 - British law passed declaring ownership of slaves illegal
1839 - Amistad slave ship rebellion
1848 - French abolish slavery
1860-65 - American Civil War
1865 - 13th Amendment abolishes slavery in America
1869 - Portugal abolishes slavery
1886 - slavery abolished in Cuba
1888 - slavery abolished in Brazil
1873 - slave market in Zanzibar closed
1936 - slavery made illegal in Northern Nigeria
1805 - Muhamed Ali comes to power in Egypt.
1807 - British abolish slave trade
1808 - Sierra Leone declared a colony
1816 - Gambia occuped by British
1820 - British settlers land on Eastern Cape
1820-34 - Mfecane (crushing) establishes Zulus as leading kingdom in South Africa
1822 - Liberia colony established
1830 - French occupy Algiers
1834 - Slavery abolished in British Empire
1835 - Great Trek across Orange and Vaal rivers
1838 - Piet Retief killed by Dingane & Zulus & Vortrekkers in Natal.
Boers beat Dingane Zulus
1842 - Britain takes Natal
1847 - Liberia declares independence.
Slavery abolished throughout the French Empire
1852 - Transvaal declared independent
1854 - Louis Faidherbe conquers Senegal Valley for the French.
First railway on continent in Egypt (from Alexandria)
1861 - US recognises Liberia
Britain occupies Lagos
1863 - French declare Protectorate over Porto Novo (Dahomey)
1866 - French establish trading posts on Guinea Coast
1867 - First diamonds found in South Africa - Hopetown, Cape Colony
1868 - French Protectorate treaties Ivory Coast.
Emperor Theodor of Ethiopia commits suicide.
British annex Basutoland at invitation of King Mosheshwe
1869 - Completion of Suez Canal
1870 - Lobengula becomes king of Ndebele.
Diamond rush to Griqualand South Africa
1872 - Cape Colony made self-governing
1874 - Kumasi, capital of Asanti, sacked by British
1876 - Egypt bankrupt - Anglo French control established
King Leopold of Belgian founds International African Association
1877 - Britain annexes territory from Walvis Bay (modern Namibia) to Cape.
Shepstone annexes Transvaal for British despite protest of Afrikaners
1878 - Berlin Congress
1879 - Zulu War
1881 - French proclaim protectorate in Tunisia Boers invade Natal and are defeated
1882 - Egypt occupied by British army after riots in Alexandria
1884 - USA recognises Congo Free State
1885 - First telegraph cable laid between West Africa and Europe
Mahdi takes Khartoum, death of Governor General Gordon
Germany annexes East Africa
British declared Protectorate over Bechuanaland
Bishop Hannington murdered on order of Kabaka (king) of Buganda
1886 - Christians put to death in Buganda by Kabaka (king) Mwanga
1890 - Dunlop invents the pneumatic tyre
1894 - Uganda made Protectorate
1896 - Asantehene (king of Asanti) forced into exile by British
Chimurenga war breaks out in Southern Africa
1897 - Khartoum retaken for British by Lord Kitchener
1899 - Kabaka (king) of Buganda and Kabarega (king) of Banyoro sent into exile by British
1904 - 50,000 Herero driven into desert by Germans and die
1912 - ANC established as South African Native Congress
Trade in fire arms forbidden by Portuguese in Angola
Liga Angolana established
1914 - Outbreak World War I
1916 - Tax riots in Yorubaland (Nigeria)
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What I hate is ignorance, smallness of imagination, the eye that sees no farther than its own lashes. 
- Ancient Egypt
Songs we would never hear! Histories we would never know! Art we would never see! Because the European had the capacity to destroy and didn't have the moral restraint not to
