(EDITOR’S NOTE: This historical treatise was posted on her Facebook page by Ann Marie Albury, and as an avid student of Black history for many years, I decided to share it with readers of BAHAMAS CHRONICLE as a Guest Commentary. It was written by Edward Mitole, Visiting Professor at the University of South Africa.)
GUEST COMMENTARY: BY EDWARD MITOLE
We all know that Europe effectively carved up Africa at their Berlin Conference (circa 1884-1885). But how did Africa end up in such disarray as to be conquered so easily for enslavement and colonization? Let’s walk through the direction of this, carefully.
African continental history is not complex. There are three paths it has taken: (1) flowering indigenous Black African, (2) Greco-Roman Christian then the whole of Europe, and (3) Arab Islamic.
The Nile Valley indigenous African civilizations (the apex being African Kmt) are at the heart of all subsequent continental African civilizations. The indigenous Black masses in North Africa along the Nile River and its delta were initially neither Christian nor Muslim — these are the religions of the invaders who methodically converted the Black populations as they century-by-century defeated them and took their land, lives and mental/moral liberties.
Initially, indigenous Africans supported neither the Copts (offspring of the White interlopers who kept remnants of Kmt’s language), the Romans, nor the Arabs. Since the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Roman predatory occupations, Nile Valley belief systems and religions were in disarray, were not written down, were transported and transmitted by oral tradition, and were decimated by invasion after invasion. This was the first nadir — the lowest point — of African Nile Valley civilization: thoroughly defeated by force of arms, whipped into servitude, bent and broken, on the run, not fighting for political/economic/cultural or social independence, burdened by the extraction of tribute, tax, and the open theft of these Greek, Roman, Assyrian and Persian occupiers in North Africa, easily defeated by these invaders after Kmt’s “Last Pharoah” Taharqa’s (690-664BC) defeat 1300+ years earlier.
When the Arabs showed up with their rusty swords, Islam, and a way of life adapted from deserts, Africans accepted them believing they would get the Romans and their oppression off of their backs.
The Arabs did get the Romans off their back, but they then replaced the Romans on their backs. Therefore, the fight for what was Kmt (now Egypt) — in the seventh century North African delta region — was essentially a war between Arabia and Rome (Arabs and Europeans) starting in 639AD.
Africans were on the sidelines, sporadically fighting as unpaid mercenaries for which ever organized invader enlisting them. Slavery came down hard, driven by perpetrator Arabs (1300+ years) then perpetrator Whites (500+years). All of them using Black collaborators. Tossed in the balance was Egypt, then North Africa, then later the whole of Africa at the Berlin conference (1884-1885).
The Arabs ended up seizing and occupying the land mass of the greatest civilization of antiquity: Ancient African Kmt (renamed Egypt). In winning the war against Rome, the Arabs with their Islam put their name, face and claim on the monuments, traditions, ancient achievements, history, and accomplishments of indigenous Africans for the next 1460-plus years until present.
Today these Arab invaders sell tickets to African monuments and pyramids (as if they built them) like the Spanish in Mexico and Peru sell tickets to the Aztec and Inca monuments of the great Native populations they defeated.
