Slavery and Colonialism: The Ultimate Causes of Africa’s Problems?

On 23rd August this year when the world marks the remembrance and end of slavery, there is no doubt Pan-African speakers at forums and durbars will mention the unpleasant legacies it left in Africa. They will, with pictures, show how the strong and healthy breeds of our kinds in those days were chained in long sequences, beaten and dehumanized before they got to their various destinations in far away and foreign lands.

They will, most probably, continue with the events in the 1880’s when the Europeans subjugated the African people, dominating and altering first their economic structures, then later their political, social and cultural establishments. Finally, they would explain to us, or rather try to convince us that colonialism is still existent. Only this time the perpetrators are not settling on our lands as in the colonial days: They are working through African leaders, through grants and benefits, education and media to dominate our minds with their modes of thinking and culture. Their cry and admonition will be: emancipation, freedom and the need for self-discovery as Africans.

The general theme, year after year, is the same on emancipation day celebrations in Ghana: The perpetrators of slave trade and colonialism, the Europeans, have deprived us of our self-identity; they have infiltrated our culture. They have (to put it mildly) succeeded in clogging our minds from self-discovery. That is, they have impeded our abilities to the management of our political, social and cultural affairs.

But the tone of dignitaries of international organizations will be softer and conciliatory. It will address the causes of the continuance of slavery by other methods, and suggest mechanisms for its abrogation. On 2nd December, 2005 in a message delivered on the International Day for Abolition of Slavery, Mr. Kofi Annan urged “all States to ratify and implement existing instruments to this effort” of ending children and women trafficking and other transnational organized crime. He was not bitter about the past. And if the conciliatory tone is as a result of his position as the General Secretary of a world body mandated to ensure co-operation among all countries in the world, then that should be the tone of all lovers of Africa.

No doubt, events in the past of any person or group of persons, to a large extent, determine the subsequent event(s) of such a person or group. But it must be stressed that the look-back into, and memory of the past should serve as guides to the future. They should not rouse bitter feelings or excite hatred. When we understand that the world is not leagued against us, but rather it is a series of events through which we must live courageously, we will not be blocked by sentimentalities and sensitivities; for sensitivities obstructs proper judgment and hence deprive appreciation of events around us. Our flaws in the past, the wrong choices and steps – our mistakes – should embolden us to deal with the present and plan for the future, the whole of the reason being the attained maturity in mind and soul.