ŠNW NW DHDH/Shenu Nu Dekyahdekyah:
[Cycle of Revolution]
The Moral Response of
an Oppressed People!
Ambakisye-Okang Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi, Ph.D.
[Public Policy Analysis]
The
Ayitian Revolution c.
6032-6045 KC [c. 1791-1804 CE]
"The
only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every
oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil,
Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba - yes Cuba too." [Mhenga Malcolm X]
As the Maafa Mkubwa expanded to new of
heights of misery for Global Afrikan peoples between c. 5991-6091 KC [c.
1750-1850 CE] and engendered renewed sustained efforts at socio-political
economic military resistance and Afrikan state reformation in all quarters of
the Afrikan world forcing some retrenchment by the Eurasian state funded
vanguard multi-national business enterprises one particularly momentous
revolutionary incident occurred initiated by Global Afrikan spiritual,
cognitive, affective and psycho-motor physiological agency that has had
multiple repercussions for Global Afrikan peoples to the present day. That
incident was the Ayitian Revolution waged by organized, enslaved newly arrived
West Afrikans, who were approximately seventy percent of the Afrikan population
and Ayitian born Afrikans, who were roughly thirty percent of the enslaved
population all under the spiritual guidance and leadership of the Wahenga na Wahenguzi Dutty Zamba Boukman, Cecile Fatiman,
Toussaint L'Ouverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri
Christophe, Alexandre Pétion and Francois Capois against the French Republic
under Napoleon Bonaparte, Great Britian, the Kingdom of Spain and Polish
mercenaries from 21 April c. 6032 KC [c. 1791 CE] to 1 January c. 6045 KC [c.
1804 CE].
The progressive Global
Afrikan spirituality that resulted in the Ayitian Revolution had roots in the
actions of Mhenga Francios Mackandal, an Ayitian Afrikan Vodun priest and
Afrikan cultural traditionalist who used Afrikan cultural traditions to unite
Afrikan Maroons in socio-political economic struggle against the French on the
island of Ayiti from c. 5992-5999 KC [c. 1751-1758 CE] and in Mhenga Dutty
Zamba Boukman, a Ayitian Afrikan Vodun priest and Cecile Fatiman an Ayitian
Afrikan Mambo, i.e. Vodun priestess, who conducted a spiritual-religious
ceremony in Ayiti in which a Liberation Covenant was affirmed between the
Wahenga na Wahenguzi, the q R, NTR ‘З/Netcher-aa [Kush/Kemet:
The Great Spirit or Ancestor], the Beautiful Ones
Not Yet Born and the oppressed, enslaved Ayitians. The Ayitians under the
inspiration of the Wahenga na Wahenguzi acting through Zamba Boukman and Mambo
Fatiman were encouraged to:
Koute lalibete nan tout kè nou! [Listen to
the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us!
Additionally, in prayer Zamba Boukman invoked the q R, NTR ‘З/Netcher-aa [Kush/Kemet: The Great Spirit or Ancestor] in the following way:
"Bon Dje ki fè la tè. Ki fè soley ki klere nou enro. Bon Dje ki soulve
lanmè. Ki fè gronde loray. Bon Dje nou ki gen zorey pou tande. Ou ki kache nan
niaj. Kap gade nou kote ou ye la. Ou we tout sa blan fè nou sibi. Dje blan yo
mande krim. Bon Dje ki nan nou an vle byen fè. Bon Dje nou an ki si bon, ki si
jis, li ordone vanjans. Se li kap kondui branou pou nou ranpote la viktwa. Se
li kap ba nou asistans. Nou tout fet pou nou jete potre dje Blan yo ki swaf dlo
lan zye. Koute vwa la libète kap chante lan kè nou." [Ayitian Kreyol]
“Great God who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us
light. Great God who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our Great
God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds, who watches us from
where you are, You see all that the Whites have made us suffer. The White man's
God asks him to commit crimes. But the Great God within us wants to do good.
Our Great God, who is so good, so just, orders us to revenge our wrongs. It is
Our Great God who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It is Our
Great God who will assist us.”[1]
This
Vodun ceremony, which had many counterparts in the multi-denominational Global
Afrikan spiritual system, is considered a primary catalyst to the coordinated
grassroots uprising that signaled the genesis of the Ayitian Revolution in c.
6032 KC [c. 1791 CE].
Though the revolutionary leader Dutty Zamba Boukman would
eventually be murdered by the French colonial forces and the guidance of the
Ayitian Revolution would fall into the hands of men such as Jean-Francois
Papillion, Georges Biassou, who were participants with Dutty
Zamba Boukman at the Bois-Caiman Vodun ceremony and later to Toussaint
L'Ouverture, Henri Christophe and Jean Jacques Dessalines whose allegiance to the Wahenga, Vodun spirituality and
the Afrikan way was negligible to non-existent with perhaps the exception of
Jean Jacques Dessalines, who is the only one of the first three leaders of the
Ayitian nation, the other two being L’Ouverture and Christophe, to be declared
a Saint of the Vodun faith; the ceremony and the success of the military phase
of the Ayitian Revolution demonstrates operative Afrikan spiritual liberatory
agency. However, even here one can see the bedevilment of the spirit of the
comprador, for example in Toussaint L’Ouverture who came to eventually rule
Ayiti with his strong affinities for France and French culture
probably due to his ‘status’ as a coachman and the
suppression of the Vodun faith that he promulgated during his rule and which
were continued to a lesser extent under Henri Christophe and virtually ended
under Jean Jacques Dessalines.
[1]
Paul Camy Mocombe, Carol Tomlin and Cecile
Wright, Race and Class Distinctions Within Black Communities: A Racial Caste
in Class (London: Routledge, 2013) pp. 191-192
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