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Africans are a cursed people



THE ECONOMIC crises confronting the African Continent is nothing but a
curse, Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jnr., an African -American scholar at Harvard
University in the US, has said.

“If you have a continent where fellow human beings and, for that matter, the
human resources were sold out for paltry money, what should you expect to
see?

“I am not surprised that the continent is going through all kinds of
difficulties,” he observed in an interview with Martine de Souza, great
grand daughter of Francisco de Souza, the infamous Brazilian slave trader
and viceroy of Quida in the Republic of Benin, formerly Dahomey.

He made this remark while he was conducting the “point of no return” at
Quidah port in Benin by Martine during the shooting of a documentary titled
“The Wonders of Africa.”

Prof. Gates’ remark came while the continent was still searching for
solutions to the numerous problems confronting it.

Apart from being the least developed continent, African problems range from
political instability, civil wars, poverty, high illiteracy rate, malaria
epidemic to HIV/AIDS.

He also expressed disbelief about most of the ancient remains and edifices
such as Timbuktu University as compared to the level of development in the
continent.

He said it is unbelievable that the continent that used to be the hub of
education some years back could still be struggling in the 21st century for
solution to its problems.

“No wonder we have sold the best human resources for money. Now what should
you expect?” he said. The documentary, which featured some chiefs in Ghana
including Asantehemaah, Nana Afuah Kobi and another prominent chief in
Benin, has a lot of interesting information on the slave trade and how
African chiefs sold their subjects for nothing to Europeans.

At Ouidah port in Benin where hundreds of thousands of fellow Africans were
bundled into docked ships, Louis Gates shed tears as he was led in his
rounds by Martine to a place known as “the point of no return” and the house
of Francisco de Souza the viceroy of Quidah. Francisco capitalized on the
vulnerability of the people and married countless African women during the
slave trade era.

Martine regretted that she was from the root of the infamous Brazilian slave
trader.

“I am not proud of him because you know the slave trade was terrible and a
lot of Africans lost their lives, you know. So, it’s evil business. I don’t
like it at all. I wish I am (were) not a descendent from slaves. That would
have made me feel better. And you know, I always feel guilty when I meet
African-Americans but what can I do? My position is delicate, you know.

“But I am part of the history and at the same time I will be telling this
story, the history, you know, it makes me all the time feel bad, yeah”.

Historically, West Africa is associated with the slave, gold and ivory
trades, perhaps most often the former. West Africa is also the place of
origin of voodoo, the only indigenous African religion to survive the
trans-Atlantic slave trade and remains in practice in the Americas today.

The historical roots of racial discrimination in the United States today can
be traced back to North American slavery and the kidnapping of more than 20
million Africans.

It is assumed that the African slave trade pit brutal, gun-wielding European
slave traders against unsuspecting, passive African victims. While the
Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, English and French slave traders were often
brutal, they were not always working alone. Many Africans were also
complicit in this victimization.

Precolonial empires such as Dahomey and Fanti or Ashanti (located in what is
now Benin and Ghana), where slave ports at Ouidah and Elmina flourished,
accumulated enormous wealth and power as a result of the trade of their
fellow Africans.

In fact, Europeans often acted as junior partners to African rulers,
merchants, and middlemen in the slave trade along the West African coast
from the mid-15th century on. Two factors contributed to this dependency:
the coastal geography and the diseases of West Africa.

Seasonal wind patterns along the Atlantic coast of Africa generated heavy
surf and dangerous crosscurrents, which in turn buffeted a land almost
entirely lacking in natural harbors. Hazardous offshore reefs and sandbars
complicated the matter even further for seafarers along the West African
coast.

European commerce in West Africa took place, therefore, most often on ships
anchored well away from shore and dependent on skilled African canoe-men
whose ability to negotiate across the hazardous stretch of water between the
mainland and the waiting ships made the Atlantic trade possible.

Even in places where Europeans were able to conduct trade on the mainland,
their presence was limited by an epidemiological situation that impeded
their livelihood and threatened their lives.

Malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and other diseases reduced the few
Europeans living and trading along the West African coast to a chronic state
of ill health and earned Africa the name “white man’s grave.” In this
environment, European merchants were rarely in a position to call the shots.

Furthermore, when Europeans first initiated a trading relationship with West
Africans in the mid-15th century they encountered well established and
highly developed political organizations and competitive regional commercial
networks.

Europeans relied heavily on the African rulers and mercantile classes at
whose mercy, more often than not, they gained access to the commodities they
desired. European military technology was not effective enough to allow them
this access by means of force on a consistent basis until the 19th century.

Therefore it was most often Africans, especially those elite coastal rulers
and merchants who controlled the means of coastal and river navigation,
under whose authority and to whose advantage the Atlantic trade was
conducted Domestic slave ownership as well as domestic and international
slave trades in western Africa preceded the late 15th-century origins of the
Atlantic slave trade.

Since most West African societies did not recognize private property in
land, slaves functioned as one of the only profitable means of production
individuals could own. West Africans, therefore, acquired and expressed
wealth in terms of dependent people, whether as kin, clients, or slaves.

Moreover, caravan routes had long linked sub-Saharan African peoples with
North Africa and the wider Mediterranean and Middle Eastern worlds. Not only
was slavery an established institution in West Africa before European
traders arrived, but Africans were also involved in a trans-Saharan trade in
slaves along these routes.

African rulers and merchants were thus able to tap into preexisting methods
and networks of enslavement to supply European demand for slaves.
Enslavement was most often a byproduct of local warfare, kidnapping, or the
manipulation of religious and judicial institutions.

Military, political, and religious authority within West Africa determined
who controlled access to the Atlantic slave trade. And some African elites,
such as those in the Dahomey and Ashanti empires, took advantage of this
control and used it to their profit by enslaving and selling other Africans
to European traders It is important to distinguish between European slavery
and African slavery.

In most cases, slavery systems in Africa were more like indentured servitude
in that the slaves retained some rights and children born to slaves were
generally born free.

The slaves could be released from servitude and join a family clan. In
contrast, European slaves were chattel, or property, who were stripped of
their rights. The cycle of slavery was perpetual; children of slaves would,
by default, also be slaves.

Although the historical reality is sometimes difficult to accept by
African-Americans who still face racial discrimination over a century after
the abolition of slavery, African complicity in the slave trade neither
justifies today’s social problems nor minimizes their seriousness.

Fifteenth-century Africa was not a homogenous group of people. Some African
elites benefited from the enslavement of their rivals, their enemies, their
poor, and other culturally foreign groups from the 15th century through the
18th and even into the 19th centuries. Class, language, religion, gender,
and ethnicity divided Africans, and it was along these lines that certain
Africans participated in the slave trade.

Understanding the dynamics of African complicity in the slave trade is
important in understanding Africans as historically active and diverse human
beings. This understanding should not detract from the horrors of the slave
trade or from its American legacy of inequality and racism.

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in our lifetime can so work and act as to make the dream a possibility
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