The Daily UbuntuThread 01 · Exile and Migration · September 25, 2026
Africville: uprooted at home
To belong is to be expected. You can be exiled without leaving your country, as the story of Africville reminds us.
1 · The scene
At the counter of a CLSC, a woman holds out an envelope full of papers. She repeats her name, slowly, then spells it.
Behind her, a man smiles: "Take your time." She will not forget it. Sometimes, all of welcome fits in one sentence.
Original vignette
2 · The documented case
Africville: uprooted at home
Exile does not always begin at a border. Africville was a Black community in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In July 1964, the City bought the first property. On January 2, 1970, the last resident left. An entire community vanished from the map.
Forty years later, on February 24, 2010, Mayor Peter Kelly offered an official apology on behalf of the City. The apology does not give back the houses. Yet it says something essential: we finally recognize that this "us" had left people outside.
3 · The voice
“I am, because we are; and since we are, therefore I am.”
4 · The question
When someone arrives in your neighbourhood, your workplace or your school, what tells them, concretely, that they are already part of the "us"?
Sources
- Halifax Regional Municipality, "Africville" (history and 2010 apology). www.halifax.ca
- J. S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, Heinemann, 1969 (record). www.cambridge.org
Every figure on this page links to a verifiable public source.
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