Why is it that the story of Africa selling Africans into slavery cannot just be taken as the whole truth without questioning? Yes, it’s true that ‘-when a lie is told repeatedly over a long period of time it turns to be the common known truth’. Indeed, the story of black Africans capturing and selling their fellow African brothers and sisters into inhuman slavery has been told to us (Black People) for generations, and it is still being told to everyone on the face of this planet earth.
Again, it is important to recognize that, not only has this story been told repeatedly over a long period of time, the proponents of this story, have also found their ways in using different cunning methods to deepening its impacts on our society. Commonly, this questionable story is infused into many basic educational curriculums to indoctrinate the children of Africa and those around the world before they are grown up to question its basis.
Notwithstanding the various attempts by those who want to keep the black race at the button of human development for their selfish gains, it is also truth that, no matter how repeatedly or length of time in which a lie is told, it always gets exposed when it comes in contact with the truth.
This is so because; a lie cannot pass basic test of logic and historic-fact evaluation whenever it is subjected to. In this analytical piece, I have subjected this story of Africa selling Africans into slavery to a test of ‘logical reasoning’ and ‘historic-fact evaluations’ in order to understand whether there is enough grounds to accept that Africa indeed sold Africans into slavery as we have been made to believe for centuries.
Logically, it is necessarily that we ask questions whenever a story of our own history is told to us. Basically, we need to be aware of at least, who originally wrote that history; for what purpose was it written; and for whose interests was it written to serve? In the case of the story of Africa selling Africans into slavery, it is obvious that this story was not originally written by any African. Neither did the writings include any objective views of the black Africans (both at home and in the diaspora) at the time. Taken into consideration, for example, the system that governed colonization and slave ownership which makes the act of educating the Black African an illegal action; it was forbidden for slave owners or slave parents to teach their slave dependents how to read or write, let alone, allowing them to document by first hand, what was going on in their lives at the time.
If the Africans were tightly prevented from keeping records of what is happening in their own lives, while at the same time, their colonizers were busily documenting these happenings, then, it is possible that the content of those documents many be for several purposes, but what is logically certain is that, none of these purposes was for the positive interest of the Black African. This definitely calls for the re-examination of our belief in what we read from their handy works.
Another interesting scenario that needs a logical assessment in this story of Africa selling Africans into slavery is how the majority of the slave taken from Africa consistently come from relatively strongest group or tribes as can be seen in the case of the Kingdom of Dahomey; present day Republic of Benin, Ghana and Nigeria where the majority of the people who were captured and stolen into slavery came from the Fon, the Akan and the Igbo tribal groups respectively.
Not only were these people who were stolen into slavery coming from the most dominant tribes; they were also the most muscled, healthy, and intelligent folks in the African society.
-Prof. John Henrik Clarke recorded that that majority of people stolen into slavery from Ghana to all the known destinations were from the Akan tribe which is the largest tribal group in Ghana. As a result, the ‘slave masters’ had to put stringent measures to ensure that these African Royals do not continue to speak their Twi language or perform their common Akan traditions and cultures since they considered these practices as instruments that facilitate rebellion and revolts among these Africans whom they have taken as slaves.
Be that as it was, it would be unnatural that in an event of an institutionalize slave capturing and trading, the smaller groups/tribes would be the ones to capture and sell the larger and the most dominants counterparts. It is also unlikely that in the same event of slave capturing, the strongest and the most intelligent in the society will be the ones to fall victims.
What is more likely to be the true case in point is that, those people taken from the African continent were largely the people who resisted the colonizers’ determination and actions to take over the economic and political powers in the civilized African society at the time. Certainly, these dominant tribes and the strongest men and women in the African society were those who are likely to oppose the colonizers’ actions because, they formed a classes of the society that control major portions of economic and political powers; hence, the need to resist to protect their privileged positions.
Consequently, It comes as no surprising that colonization became possible only after the colonizers have succeeded in taken away these strong ‘men’ from the African society. Thus, colonization and total control of the African society and the African resources was possible only after slave capturing.
Logically, when in need of wildlife, no sane man will walk into a forest and sit to negotiate with the animals and makes payments in exchange for his wants in the forest. This is so, because, the sane man ordinarily does not consider this wildlife to have rights to negotiations or right of exchange.
Moreover, the tender of exchange to be offered by this sane man is likely to have no value for the animals in the wild to entice them to agree to his offer.
If the above logical positions are true, then it is more likely that the colonizers’ story which tries to rope-in Africa into his barbaric and inhuman act against the children of Africa is untrue.
First of all, these colonizers did not consider the African as a human. In fact, their historical descriptions of the African, as well as their legal documentations clearly indicate so. For example, in the attempts by the Africans who were fiercely sent to America to force the system to recognize them as humans, the 1787’s Three-Fifths Compromise Act was passed and presented to clearly tell us the category in which the colonizers place us. Yes, this legislative Act clearly stated that the African can only be recognized as 3/5th of other humans not as full humans.
There is no way the same person who does not consider us as humans will come and negotiates with us, and makes payments to us for what they wanted.
In the event of trading and exchange, the African societies which were self-sufficient and have no need for western lifestyle or an American dollar, were unlikely to sell their sons and daughters to some hungry people who were roaming around the world in search of food and of survival.
Empirically, one would be able to identify whether the story of Africa selling Africans into slavery is true or false when the following questions are fully and sincerely answered:
What did the colonizers gave to Africa in an exchange of the slaves, and where are the evidences of these exchanges?
Did Africa take part in building any of the slave dungeons?
Did Africa take part in signing the Papal Bull in 1452 which prescribes that the Africans and none-believers must be enslaved and even be killed without any feeling of gilt because these Africans have no souls?
Did Africa take part in building or buying the ships that transported the slaves?
Did Africa take part in changing the names of the slaves, baptizing and forcing them into alien religions and cultures?
Did Africa take part in throwing slaves in the ocean for insurance money?
Did Africa take part in labeling the slaves 3/5 of human beings?
Did Africa take part in raping and impregnating the women among the slaves to continue breeding for their plantations?
Did Africa take part either in forcing the slaves not to read or write, or not to own wealth?
Did Africa take part in partitioning the African continent among colonizers at the Berlin Conference in 1884?
Did any African country need formal legislation to be passed to end slavery as it was the case in the UK, France, Belgium, the United States and the other Colonizers countries?
We can keep the questions ongoing without ending.
In spite of the above analysis which exonerates Africa in the colonizers’ barbaric act against Africans, I acknowledge the fact that; there were some Africans or some ‘black-hands’ that aided the colonizers in capturing, torturing, and abusing our kings and queens into inhuman slavery. However, these black-aided hands were in many instances those people that the colonizers have already overpowered and enslaved. They were therefore servants and acting under the colonizers’ forceful control and threats. Similar to those Black Africans who were forced into working in the colonizers’ plantations when sent across the Atlantic, those who were working under the colonizers’ forceful control at home cannot said to have freely aid the colonizers to accomplish their interests.
Additionally, there were some criminal elements in the African society who took advantage of the African plight for personal gains, hence, freely joined the colonizers to exploit the African community. These were merely criminal who are found in every community everywhere in the world, they by no means form a true representation of the African society at the time or the African society of the present.
It is therefore wrong to base on this to rope-in Africa as an accomplice in the slave capturing and forceful slave transportation.
In all these, if Africa was innocent, then it is unlikely that the negative stories told about Africa’s role in slavery are true.
Unfortunately, the stories of slavery and slave trade have solely been told by the wicked slave master. As a result, he has painted every African on the Africa continent whom he did not take away from the African soil as a slave seller. However, the reality is that, both the African in the diaspora and those at home we all slaves to the same slave master during that period of his total dominance; except that he made selections based on his interests and needs and sent out the most fitting ones while keeping the rest on the African soil with the same fate!
It is time for us to come to recognize that this story is being told to make the oppressor looks less evil in the eyes of the oppressed and also, to create an unending animosity between the black population at home and those who were taken across the Atlantic Ocean. By doing so, the colonizers have in their hands, a tool to prevent a possible reunification between the two families of the same ancestry, history, and a common destiny.
Let us not allow the wicked man to still stand on our way for a reunification that will generate the needed force for a genuine emancipation of our black race. The slave trade story is a scam which all black people have to know its intentions.
My name is Kwadwo Agyei Yeboah and I love Africa. I call on all Africans in the world to please join me in this pragmatic organization to work towards rebuilding Africa as a Global Power-base across our generations. Kindly register your membership at www.africanacup.org
