ADWA: An Afrikan Victory

ADWA An Afrikan Victory. 

The Italians had more sophisticated guns and military tactics, but ten their hate filled souls fell at the right hand of Ethiopia the minute invaders encountered the heart of unbowed warriors.

 

Yes, it’s about Adwa today too because it’s that important uplifting history, an Afrikan Victory, that all Afrikans both at home and abroad should know about.

•Before the Battle of Adwa, there was a development that took place a hundred years prior to Adwa that was even more stunning when
considering the sheer audacity of the achievement of the Haitian insurrection of 1791 where a rag tag militia of slaves rose up and defeated one of the most powerful armies to ever walk this earth.

Stories like the liberation of Haiti and the triumph of Ethiopia at Adwa are rarely mentioned; the establishment would rather have us focused on being victims than realizing that we come from victors.

•Haiti was a vital thoroughfare during the height of the slave triangle. Men and women, stolen from their homes to be sold as chattel in America and beyond, initially set their feet on Haiti before being shipped off to  concentrationcamps otherwise
known as plantations.

 

The barbarity and cruelty  unleashed by colonizers on people in order to maximize profits and enrich themselves is a testament to the corrosive nature of money and
power.

 

The full scope of the slave trade horrors is something we will never truly understand nor fully
be accounted for.

 

The Atlantic Ocean is a marker of
a mass Holocaust that interred the lives and hopes of untold millions; a graveyard for those who perished in the seas and grave reminder for those who survived the journey only to be sold into
bondage.

•This most heinous machine of trading humans for profits seemed unmovable once—a fixture that
seemed permanent.

It was against this backdrop that Toussaint Louverture led an insurrection against Napoleon’s army handing France a humiliating at the hands of Haitians, the first blow that reduced a seemingly impervious military to mere mortals.

 

•A century later, a people 12,000 miles away would pick up the mantle of netsanet (freedom) and
defeated would be colonizers by punching bullies with bigger guns in the nose with a fist called unity.

 

After European powers sat down at the Berlin Conference and divided the continent among themselves, the entirety of Afrika save one speck of land was colonized by monstrous men who saw human life as assets on their balance sheets.

The one speck of land that was not colonized was the Axum empire which we now call Ethiopia.

 

•Where Ethiopians were living in freedom, Italy saw an opportunity.

Desperate to join the colonial club
and find validation by enslaving people, Italy invaded Ethiopia with the mendacity of Caesar in their heart.

They came chanting “veni vidi vici” only to be met with the “embi” (no) of Ethiopian “jegnoch” (heroes). Ethiopians did not negotiate with colonizers, they sent them packing back north.

The Italians had more sophisticated guns and military tactics, but ten their hate filled souls fell at the right hand of Ethiopia the minute invaders encountered the heart of unbowed warriors.

•The Battle of Adwa was a watershed event not only in the history of Afrika but for the direction of Europe and America. Following Haitians revolution’s 
demonstration of what Afrikans can do when united, once again, unity became the catalyst for overcoming tyranny.

On March 1st, 1896, an Ethiopian army comprised of countless tribes and multiple ethnicities consolidated as one force to shield their nation from the fires of Italian colonization.

Life can be poetic; Adwa is the name of an inactive volcano in Northern Ethiopia.

At the Battle of Adwa, a volcano erupted and consumed a would be occupation force with the might of King David.

 

The lions of Judah kindly refused the Italian offer as Queen Tiatu and King Menelik II led an army united under a clean sendek alema (flag) to repel uninvited guests, solicitors.

 

•The fictitious Wakanda takes great pride in its independence and for having never been conquered.

In Afrika, the real life version of Wakanda was Ethiopia, also referred to as Abyssinia before the
20th century.

When Italy invaded Ethiopia with an army of tens of thousands commanded by “famed and highly rated” Italian generals, it was met by real life Black Panthers and shattered to pieces immediately after stepping its foot in the sacred
soil of Ethiopia during the great Battle of Adwa on March 1, 1896.

•A real life Black Pantheress,  Empress Taitu Betul, carrying a sword and rifle, personally commanded an army of more than 6,000 men and fought for her beloved country.

Her husband, Emperor Menelik II, commanded even much larger a  together with other Ethiopian generals such as Ras Alula Aba Nega –referred to admiringly because of his skills by contemporary European writers as “Afrika’s Garibaldi” after the legendary general who played a key role in Italy’s reunification– Ras Mikael of Wollo, Ras Mengesha, and Ras Makonen.

•While in Rome, before heading to Afrika, the Italian Commander Gen.

 

Oreste Baratieri promised to return
with Menelik II in a cage. But When the dust settled, Empress Taitu and Emperor Menelik and their Grand Army were leading about thousands of captured Italian  soldiers as prisoners of war.

They were forced to march on foot more than 350 miles back to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa –“New Flower”– which had been founded by Taitu herself.

•On the battleground Taitu and Menelik left several thousand dead enemy soldiers, including hundreds
of Italian officers and some Italian generals including “the famed and highly rated” Giuseppe Ellena and Giuseppe Arimondi. Gen.

The Ethiopians captured thousands of rifles and artillery pieces. 

There were even some reports that some defeated Italian soldiers were castrated. Other accounts suggest that rumors of such punishment were enough to scare Italian soldiers into throwing down their weapons and fleeing.

 

•As Italian prisoners entered Addis Ababa, Ethiopian women lining the streets jeered at them and spit on them for daring to invade their country to kill their sons, brothers,  and husbands. Some prisoners were forced to work like slaves, building Addis Ababa — yes, the tables were turned– for more than one year.

Finally, they were released after Ethiopia and Italy signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa and Rome paid several millions of dollars as reparations.

And of course, as a result of the Adwa victory, Ethiopia was never colonized.

•Ethiopia became a clarion call for oppressed people throughout the world, Adwa became the North Star for those who felt the boot of tyran on their backs.

The sons and daughters of former 
slaves were the first to understand the significance of the Battle of  Adwa and the value of what Ethiopians accomplished in defending their freedoms.

Ethiopia gave hope to the decedents of the Afrikan diaspora who endured the legacy of the slave trades. Intellectual giants like Marcus Garvey, Carter G. Woodson and Langston Hughes were inspired by Adwa and passed the significance of Ethiopia’s accomplishment to Afrikan-American and maltreated people throughout the world. 

•It was for this reason that Afrikan-Americans lined up by the thousands during the 1930’s to volunteer to defend Ethiopia when Italy decided to avenge Adwa by unleashing a chemical genocide against Ethiopians.

The world ignored the horrors of
mustard gas being unleashed on citizens as hundreds of thousands perished under the bombs and bullets of depraved fascists.

Injustice ignored becomes injustice that takes from all, the same fires that came for Ethiopia boomeranged and landed as an inferno at the doors of Europe as a result of their own suicidal war, WWII.

 

Where the world ignored the plight of Ethiopia, those who had the heart of Louverture answered the call and traveled to Ethiopia to join a new generation of jegnoch in taking on Mussolini’s army.

 

The past is prologue to the future, the few who oppress billions and purvey suffering throughout the
planet without fear of repercussions would do well to remember Haiti and Adwa. P

People will only take so much before they push back; injustice is kerosene that sparks into a fire when mass frustration meets a unifying moment.

 

This is why the status quo invests billions pushing divisive stories and empowering demagogues who propagate separable grievances.

They are trying to bury the legacies of freedom under the ashes of despondence.

 

Truth endures, the legacies of a free people are greater than the fortunes of aristocrats.

 

The stories of Haiti and Adwa are stories that are rarely told by the western main stream media and educational system that indoctrinates us and by a punditry class that would rather have us view ourselves as being insufficient and, yeah, heroes that may rarely exist only in fiction like in Wakanda.

It is for this reason that Afrikans should see the Black Panther movie as just entertainment and  nothing more.

 

If you, as Afrikan, want inspiration,
you should read about real life heroes who stood against oppression and fought for their freedoms.

Louverture, Atse Tewodros II, Etege  Taitu and Atse Menelik are few examples that show we are greater 
than Wakanda.

 

Our ancestors are reminders that no matter how immovable injustice seems, a people united with a purpose can obliterate the might of oppressors. 

This is what oppressors always fear; despots who rule through brute force know their days are numbered the minute oppressed people put aside their differences and unite as one.

All Afrikans should learn about  their true history as told by their own people.

Of course, we don’t want 
us to dwell in the past.

Just like most Afrikans, we’re tired of talking and listing to others keep
talking about the conditions our personal live in.

AVM is here to take action and organize our people to unite and take action to change the conditions we live in.

However, we also know, just like most of you do, that Afrika is supposedly free from slavery and colonialization but our leaders and some woke Afrikans inspired by them know that Afrikans both at home and abroad are still not free from mental slavery and they can only emancipate themselves by knowing their true history told by their own people.

This is consistent with what one of our true leaders, Marcus Garvey, once said, “People without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”

Know your true history, have some root to stand your ground and share it to help other brother and sisters to stand their ground too! 

That’s why besides building its platform, AVM will keep doing best to shade some lights into what it can to provide some historical facts about our people that will uplift our people and inspire to take action for good. We urge you, all Afrikans, to know your history as told by your own people, know yourself!

To know yourself, you have to think free of the lies you have been told and the brainwashing still going on through your oppressors’ religious and text books and media.

To think free, you have to be
financially free.

To be financially free, you have to 
own and support businesses in your own community.

AVM is building a platform that encourages and makes it easier for our community members to take ACTION to OWN, CONTROL and SUPPORT business in our OWN community.

AVM will organize and facilitate ways for Afrikans to transact with each other to keep our money within, in circulation, as much and as long as possible to uplift Afrikans at home and abroad.

Stay tuned, engaged, awake and
Afrikan! 

In the meantime, START, keep, learning from, working with and supporting your own people in any
way and capacity you can such as only buying from your own community, whenever possible!

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