The conversation on the subject of slavery and slave trade as well as the possible compensation for the heinous crime cannot ever end. The descendants of the perpetrators will not agree and the prospective beneficiaries will not give up. Ghana President Nana Akufo-Ado revived the subject last week, bringing it to the front burner at the just concluded 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. But first, we start from the beginning. President Akufo-Ado started his address by reviewing the state of our world, the lack of equity and the reluctance of the UN Security Council to use veto power to influence the events in Ukraine. He did not mince words. Political correctness was far from his posture. He was speaking from experience as a member of the Security Council, but painfully Ghana does not belong to the exclusive club with veto powers. He, therefore, emphasized the imperative of an urgent reform which he recalled he had pressed for in his earlier years of participation at the UNGA. In his words:
“We have witnessed at first hand, over and over again, that the big powers of the United Nations might be preaching democracy, fairness and justice around the world, but are happy to practice the opposite here at the UN, prioritizing parochial interests over those of humanity. Back in 2017, the first time I addressed the General Assembly as President of my country, I spoke at length on the need for reform of the United Nations and of the Security Council in particular. I said, then, that the urgent need to reform this organization had been talked about and scheduled for a long time, but, somehow, we have never found the courage and the will to execute it.” He believes that the organization is being hampered by its structure and he had observed that is the way the majority of the members see it, too.
He spoke of widespread terrorist activities in the Sahel which have put serious strain on West African countries. “Several countries in the region have lost vast stretches of territory to the rampaging terrorists. We are convinced that the conflicts that continue to plague our continent and our region, in particular would be more satisfactorily resolved if the international community was to support, not undermine, the efforts of our regional and continental organizations to deal with them. Africans fought and died in the Second World War in defence of Europe and her Allies, who reset the world towards the path of peace and prosperity that their nations and citizens have enjoyed for decades now. It is surely time for the world to reciprocate in our time of need.”
He remarked that “the mutual trust among nations that is required to ensure harmony has considerably diminished.” He therefore considered the theme for the meeting could not have been more appropriate this year. The theme was: “Rebuilding trust and reigniting global solidarity: Accelerating action on the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals towards peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability for all”…This organization, the United Nations, under whose auspices the nations of the world are gathered for the annual review of the world, was established in the belief that our common humanity would be the overriding consideration in dealing with the problems that would invariably arise when we deal with one another.’ He went on to say: “Ghana still believes that this organization provides the vehicle for the world to manage its hydra-headed problems, but it can only function effectively, and meet our expectations when we reform the pillars upon which it rests: anything short of that will continue to undermine its credibility.”
President Akufo-Ado said the dividends of democracy may not have come as fast as had been anticipated, “but we are determined to hold fast to the course because we believe ultimately, it will succeed.” He berated the notion and what he called a deliberate campaign of authoritarian rule as a faster route to economic advancement as is being sold to young people. “The belief of young people in democracy as the governance model best suited to build peace and prosperity in our society is under attack.”
And now on slave trade. President Akufo-Ado said eloquently that the time has come “to acknowledge openly that much of Europe and the United States have been built from the vast wealth harvested from the sweat, tears, blood and horrors of the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the centuries of colonial exploitation. Maybe we should also admit that it cannot be easy to build confident and prosperous societies from nations that, for centuries, had their natural resources looted and their peoples traded as commodities. For centuries, the world has been unwilling and unable to confront the realities of the consequences of the slave trade, but gradually this is changing, and it is time to bring the subject of reparations firmly to the fore. Granted that current generations are not the ones that engaged in the slave trade, but that grand inhuman enterprise was state-sponsored and deliberate; and its benefits are clearly interwoven with the present-day economic architecture of the nations that designed and executed it.
“Reparations must be paid for the slave trade. No amount of money will ever make up for the horrors, but it would make the point that evil was perpetrated, that millions of productive Africans were snatched from the embrace of our continent, and put to work in the Americans and the Caribbean without compensation for their labour. If there are any hesitations in some minds about paying reparations, it is worth considering the fact that, when slavery was abolished, the slave owners were compensated for the loss of the slaves, because the human beings were labeled property, deemed to be commodities. Surely, this is a matter that the world must confront, and can no longer ignore. The AU has authorized Ghana to hold a global conference on the issue in November in Accra.”
I am touched by the speech and depth of our collective pain so vividly painted in President Akufo-Ado’s speech. Come to think of it, human beings were considered not any more than commodities! The pains which we experience from deep within us, Black or White, and the recognition of the evil it certainly was will help us clean to some extent our slate of the dross that precipitated from the act and covered our souls. I will come to it presently. I mention Black because the Black sold and the White bought! Long before Akufo-Ado, our own MKO, that is Moshood Kasimawo Abiola, spearheaded the campaign in 1990 for reparation to Africa. Abiola was a global player, too, and he had the financial muscle, the carriage and the wisdom to mount the campaign. He took the campaign far and wide, to the ends of our world. For two days, eminent Blackmen in huge numbers gathered in Lagos to broach the matter: “Reparations to Africa and Africans in Diaspora.”
Two races have stood out as the most persecuted in history. They are the Blacks and the Jews. The persecution still goes on till this day, even if it has abated to some extent. In the 17th century, Africans were pursued breathlessly, captured and bundled into waiting vessels of slavery. They became wares displayed for sale in open markets. The buyers went round, inspected their “commodities” and haggled on the prices to pay. After the slaves were bought they were chained and shipped across the seas to the south of the United States where again there was a scramble for the choicest of them to work in plantations. The less able worked in households and workshops. Some later worked in factories. According to reports, those considered troublesome by their captors were padlocked in the mouth. Many died marching in chains from the hinterland to the coast. On the high seas, some were thrown into raging waves.
That there was ever a thought to subject any human being to such an experience for even one day was horrendous enough. That indeed there was a slave trade was unparalleled criminality. And, please, hold it: It went on for about 500 years! In Badagry there is a chain, a relic and a symbol of the era of shame and hate, on display for tourists. The slave market also on display has renovated buildings. Presumably for fear of menacing earth-bound disincarnate souls commonly referred to as ghosts, tourists gaze at the market from afar. The Blackman suffers indignity in many places in the so-called developed world even today from a feeling of superiority. The uncomplimentary remarks many years back by some prominent figures in the Japanese government of old are still fresh in the memory. The hate against the Jews reached a peak in the Middle Ages. There was the holocaust in the Hitleric era during which as many as six million Jews were killed. Anti-Semitism cannot be said to have abated considerably even in this day and age.
In 1990 Moshood Abiola, as President Akufo-Ado did at the United Nations General Assembly last week, drew attention poignantly to the crime of slave trade. Since the abolition of the trade life had gone on as if nothing had happened. Yet, there is psychological harassment the Blackman goes through in these times, and there is pauperization which arose from plunder. And there has not been as little as an apology from government quarters to the Black race. When reparations were planned for the Jews the Blackman was not put in the reckoning. At the gathering organized in Lagos, Abiola vowed to take the matter to the then OAU just as President Akufo-Ado is planning to do on the authority of AU to give sail and bite to his drive. Even if there will be no reparation paid to anybody, attention will have been drawn to the question of human dignity which is often taken for granted. The consciousness of an average Black man will have been raised and the spirit of our activities will have been fired to press African governments to dip hands into their unutilized energy to chase the White debtor to pay the Black creditor.
A case of let-bygone be bygone may be difficult to make when the enormity of the crime is considered, and also when it is considered that while interactions among nations may have improved, the Blacks appear to be in the comity of nations on sufferance. This is despite the fact that the Black has demonstrated the capability in practically all fields of human endeavour.
It has been argued that those who were sold into slavery were the weak ones, who ran afoul of the Law of Survival. Those who were wise and strong, it is said, outwitted captors and slave traders. Many decide they would rather die than lose their dignity. At all times, it is true, a person has to be awake and strong. If he were asleep, an external force will be employed by the unswerving rhythm of Nature to wake him up from slumber. Not to be awake and vigilant leads to weakening and retrogression. And when a person does not wake up of his own, he would be woken up by an outside party—whether he likes it or not since life does not permit slumber. However, when a person is woken up, it can be done in love and justice. When love and justice are lacking, the one who wakes up his fellow man is no better than the one who has been asleep. It would be a case of an evil man falling into the hands of another who has tendencies to do evil.
Slave trade was evil, a crime of indescribable proportion. To the extent that it was borne out of lovelessness and injustice slave trade can never be right and acceptable. President Akufo-Ado’s drive, therefore, is understandable and commendable. Mature people will always treat the weak with understanding and love, and help them as much as possible if they wish to be helped. When they refuse help and fall into the hands of unscrupulous men, they still need understanding and love.
Noble as the efforts of President Nana Akufo-Ado are, the question that may require being reflected upon is: What happens were the President and the others of us to discover, should the veil drop from our eyes, that most of the vocal black crusaders for reparations to Africa and Africans in Diaspora and the cheer orchestra were, indeed, the slave owners of old—the White slave traders and owners—Americans, Portuguese, Spanish and so on who today have found themselves in black pigmentation, and the majority of the White population in Europe and America were an assembly of Chinese, Jews and Blacks who went about their lives quietly during that period concerned with improving the quality of their lives, who pursued higher values of life? I am just asking a question. The question is worth some thought, some introspection. The adamantine Law of life stipulates that he who deals in dirt will be dragged through the morass himself, for the best way to learn is from first-hand experience. Didn’t the Lord say, “Thou shall not get out of thence until thou hath paid the last penny”?
When we shall have answered the question, we can then consider who should receive and who should pay reparations.