IF you listen very carefully to fellow Africans talking about ‘Africans in the Diaspora’ or simply ‘The African Diaspora’ you always get the impression that finally we Africans have been awarded a very prestigious award called the ‘African Diaspora’ which ranks alongside great awards like the Royal Order of Munhumutapa etc.
And yet there is nothing to be proud of at all when talking about the ‘African Diaspora’ because it is a bad name given to Africans outside Africa by the whiteman, to ensure Africans remain underlings forever.
Yes.
It is a swear phrase.
Below we would like to show how this phrase, ‘The African Diaspora’ came about and why it is mostly Africans who are referred to as ‘The Africans in the Diaspora’.
The term Diaspora originates from the Greek word ‘Diaspora’ meaning, “dispersion or scattering.”
It has since been applied to Africans because as we show below, Africans are one of the most scattered races on earth.
But what makes the scattering of Africans sad and the term ‘African Diaspora’ unpalatable is the fact that the Africans got scattered all over the world under very sad circumstances.
It was not of their making.
Let us revisit for a while that sad journey when Africans got scattered all over the world.
It is important to note that Africans left Africa in the early days mostly in chains as slaves.
For example, Africans were taken to faraway places like Russia as slaves.
“The first blacks in Russia were the result of the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire and their descendants still live on the coasts of the Black Sea.
“Czar Peter the great was advised by his friend Letfort to bring Africans to Russia for hard labour.”
Africans were also taken to Turkey.
“Beginning several centuries ago a number of sub-Sahara Africans from places like Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan were brought by Turkish slave traders during the Ottoman Empire to plantations around Dalaiman, Menderes and Gesiz valleys.” Furthermore, Africans were also taken to the Indian sub-continent.
“There are a number of communities in South Asia that are descended from African slave traders or soldiers.
“These are found under the names Siddi, Sheedi, Makrain in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.”
From a Zimbabwe perspective, we should not forget that one of the Munhumutapa princes who was the first Zimbabwean to obtain a doctorate found a new home in India and never came back here.
This happened way back during Portuguese times in Zimbabwe.
From the East we go to the West where due to the evil actions of Europeans the African suffered the worst as far as being scattered all over the world is concerned. As a matter of fact, it was due to the diabolic scattering of the African by the European that the ugly phrase ‘The African Diaspora’ was born.
Many analysts identify three periods in which the Europeans devastated African communities turning Africans into ‘Diaspora’.
The first is the transatlantic slave trade.
“Europeans captured or brought African slaves to Europe and later on to South and North America.”
The number of Africans shipped to the Americans was in millions.
“The transatlantic slave trade contributed mostly to creating a large community of people of African origins on the American continent, especially in the United States and Brazil.
“In point of fact the European slave trade can be considered as the founding father of the African Diaspora in Europe and in America.”
The second period of the creation of the so-called ‘African Diaspora’ was during the colonial period.
“The colonial period from mid 19th century until the 1960s contributed to the creation of very unequal ties between Africa and Europe.
“The colonisation process contributed to the exploitation of the African continent which later on facilitated migrations and the creation of an African Diaspora in Europe.
“As a result an important part of the African Diaspora can be found in European countries that had colonial history – France, United Kingdom, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Germany etc.”
On top of colonialism, European wars such as the so-called First and Second World wars resulted in Africans going to Europe.
For instance, France and the United Kingdom were notorious for press-ganging Africans to go and join their armies fighting the Germans in Europe.
France alone press-ganged over 200 000 Africans from its colonies to help them fight in Europe and elsewhere during the Second World War.
The third period when Africans were scattered is the present neo-colonial period where European and American governments through use of military force, proxy wars and economic sabotage have brought about the total collapse of entire African economies with the emergence of the failed states, e.g Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Chad etc.
Because of hopeless poverty in the failed states created by the West, today Africans have been forced to migrate to all corners of the globe including Europe and America in search of a better life.
Who can blame them!
Now while we have looked at the sad scattering of Africans all over the world due to no fault of theirs can we say it is only the African race that have left their homes in Africa to other continents due to one problem of one form or another?
What about the Europeans?
Was the United States of America not founded by the victims of religious persecution in Europe where people were burnt on the stake for their religious views?
Why are these people not referred as, ‘Europeans in the Diaspora’?
Wasn’t Australia founded by English convicts who were sent there as pure slaves? Why are the Europeans in Australia not referred to as, ‘The English in the Diaspora’?
Why are the Irish who left Ireland en masse because of what was called the ‘potato famine’ and went and settled in Australia and America not referred to as the ‘Irish in the Diaspora’?
Why was Ian Smith not referred as a ‘Scot in the Diaspora’?
As a matter of fact, it is interesting to note that there are far and away more Europeans scattered all over the globe than Africans, but they are never referred to as ‘The European Diaspora’!
And wait a minute, have you ever asked yourself why Barack and Michelle Obama are considered members of the so-called, ‘African-American community’ or simply of the so-called, ‘African Diaspora’ in the United States while their fellow counterparts such as the Clintons and the Bushes do not belong to a community called, ‘European-Americans’ or ‘The European Diaspora’.
There is no such community for whites in the United States.
The Clintons and Bushes are simply considered 100 percent pure Americans that’s all.
To refer to them as European is considered an insult.
This then tells you that the phrase ‘The African Diaspora’ is a very dirty word meaning Africans outside Africa should never have any rights outside Africa although Europeans can own the entire globe.
This phrase is not a badge of honour, but a badge of slavery and we should never be associated with it.