200 Years after Abolition: Did the Slave Trade really End? Part 2.

Man bound soul and limbs.

Photo by Robin Taylor. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

Cameron Doudu, the Ghanaian columnist wrote a piece in The Guardian last weekend in which he basically had a good point but managed to bury it under his poor research and bad contextualising. His point was that the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade was started by European slavers, and soon found suppliers in African Chieves. The origin for moral accounting of this, according to him was the European slaver.

On the comment thread, came a comment saying;

It is also a bit simplistic to suggest the problems of African countries today and black people in general can be traced back to the Slave Trade.

After all Germany, Japan and the Jews suffered similar catastrophes to their people in World War II- yet they have recovered and have created prosperous democracies in their lands- and that was much more recent.

Also: There are parts of Africa where the Slave Trade was light or did not last long and where they were never European colonies- places like Ethiopia and Liberia. Yet they suffer from the same problems as the former colonies.

This idea is one of the most egregious of the racist excuses of the African situation. It is exactly for this, that the narrative of Africa as the victim has service.

6 Million Jews were killed in World War two, and it took Jews one generation to recover. This is perfectly true. However, extensive reparations were paid to Jews complete with a return to their ancient homeland. The holocaust happened in one decade and was done with. Jews could move on.

However, in the case of Africa there was 400 years of the slave trade, followed by almost one century of Colonialism. Colonialism was the worst of the atrocities wrought on Africans. Their treasures were stolen. Their understood ways of life and political organisation were trashed. Their economies were completely ruined in setting them up to perform just one function; supply extracted inputs for European consumption at European dictate. While Jews could walk away with their culture, religion and history intact, Africans became the only people on earth to have their history deleted and retold from racist European perspectives, and forced down their throats.

While the British are celebrating a hypocritical moral victory in the abolition of slavery they lose sight of the fact that colonialism was even worse. All the worst features of slavery were present in colonialism. And then added to it was extensive debauchery and pillage the likes of which is unparalleled in history. The same 'Christians' who won abolition became missionaries used to justify the deep debauchery of colonialism.

No sooner was Colonialism over that Neo-Colonialism began. If you look at the essential purpose of Colonialism, the economies of Africans remain set up today to serve those purposes. Just like the British set up infrastructure to move Palm Oil from Nigeria to Liverpool and Bristol (ah those same cities that had sold slaves!), today Nigeria remains set up to move oil from Port Harcourt to Liverpool and wherever else. Just as Europeans more or less unilaterally dictated the terms of the palm oil trade, the West today unilaterally (even with OPEC) more or less unilaterally dictates the terms of trade of oil. Now it is sanitised as the "free market". In reality the market for African commodities has remained very unfree.

Thank God for the rise of the BRIC. For 4 decades after Independence, the price of African commodities actually continued to decline Combined with debt peonage and IMF @!$%#y (pardon my Swahili), this made the 1980s one of the most miserable times in history for Africa. It took Africa 20 years to recover from the global recession of the early 1980s. These three factors are to blame and they were 100% imposed from without.

Just like how during Colonialism, Europeans installed puppet leaders for Africa, that remains true today. Just like Colonial economy existed to move primary commodities out of Africa and bring finished goods for African consumption, the situation exists that colonial and slavery organisations which have done business in Africa for decades and centuries still routinely expatriate all their profits. They keep investments minimal and they have transferred little technology or developed little local technology. In some of these companies, European staff are still treated different from African staff. In some of them qualified Africans are kept out of certain jobs.

The Colonial Powers have been brilliant in their immorality. Every time the moral hide-and-seek of their latest pillage of Africa is revealed, they adopt another one. And bless the people of the Colonial democracies. They have caught on to it. What is coming next is in some way the end of history for Africa. The people in the West have come to see the great imbalances and the serious peonage. In the last decade a strong movement to end this as it currently manifests. Fair trade, banning weapons sales, and cancelling debt have reached critical mass as issues Western populaces support. Coincidentally, Africa is starting to lose the fifth columnists which sell if cheap. History might be ending for Africa! The only danger is the rise of Neoconism. The new names for colonialism are "nation-building", "regime-change" and "democracy domino effect".

So Africa has not had a chance to recover. No parallels exist for what Africa has been through in the corresponding period of world history. One of the dimensions never mentioned is the racist dimension as it affects Africa itself. Usually racism is used to explain the experience of blacks in post-slavery Western societies. While one can argue that racism has definitely kept black people down, it has kept Africa down even more.

It's simple. It's like High School. Once you get designated as one of the uncool kids, you are done for. The narrative about Africa remains to treat it like it is not part of the world. Africans are not even allowed to visit European countries without unbelievably discriminatory and humiliating visa procedures. Africa is reported, not as a place of immense opportunity which it is but the unaidable dependant on aid.

While aid has done no good to any country in its development drive, the Western public is conned to believe that the West saves Africa when in reality, the chief benefits of aid reside in donor countries. Westerners continue to use the same concepts for conceiving Africa that existed 200 years ago.

The African story has been the same for 500 years. European marauders, African collaborators and the slow, slow rape of a continent and its people.

What better to close this episode than to quote the poetic words of David Diop?

That tree over there

Splendidly alone amidst white and faded flowers

That is your Africa springing up anew

springing up patiently obstinately

Whose fruit bit by bit acquire

The bitter taste of liberty.

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