Dear Editor,
Black Africans in Africa insist that they are not descendants of slaves. Quite true, but black Africa was not unaffected by African Slavery. Apart from not being distinguishable, my main take-away from my reading of Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” is that, in the loss of so many of its citizens, the drain of scarce capital inherent in their loss, and in the very distraction of the domestic trade that fed the trans-shipment of captive Africans, Africa might have been prevented from reaching a point where population density and other consequential social pressures might have sparked a sustained agricultural and industrial revolution of its own.
And it should be noted — as I learnt from Bobby Moore in my 1959/60 Modern Britain history course — that for many in England and Europe during those years of agricultural and industrial revolutions, which years were more or less contemporaneous with African slavery, their lives, in tangible material ways, may have been little better than the lives of slaves.
Spare a thought for English girls of twelve years or so pulling small trolleys of coal out of narrow coal seams; the conditions of work in those dark, satanic mills; having nothing to live on but the discarded heads and tail bones of the fish caught. Life in the poor house was really a life of last resort.
There have been lots of enforced and self-imposed hard times in the growth and development of Mankind in our journey of sustaining, growing, and developing Humankind. However, as adverse as the conditions were for working people in Europe, they could hold the hope of their children rising and enjoying some of the benefits of their labours.
Today, whilst we, the people of African descent in the Americas and the Caribbean, have left slavery 150 years and more behind, the consequences of that period of black African slavery are still largely with us.
A recent series on BBC World chronicled how slave-owning families benefited, and how their descendants still do. On the other hand, too many of the descendants of black African slaves are trapped in a cycle of discrimination, poverty and need.
What is to be done? Exact reparations? From whom, and to whom? There may be as many answers as the many experts with whom you might choose to consult. How is the success of this UN decade to be assessed?
Mr. Editor, it may be considered escapist, but I see the answer in a greater awareness of, and commitment to, the idea of “One World, One Human Race”; and this is what I urge my fellow ‘People of African Descent’ to work towards.
I would argue that this would be what Dr. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, both inspired by the Mahatma, were working towards, and would have us continue. And as Bob Marley reminds us, freeing ourselves from slavery is not merely a material thing; it is essentially a mental thing.
True, when we recall the period of black African Slavery, a great rage, a great anger, a great bitterness can well up within us; a rage, anger and bitterness that must be safely vented. Let us set aside a day or two a year to rage, to be angry, and to rail at the hand fate has served us; but for the rest of the year, let us be what we should be aiming to be: just members of the one Human Race — earnest, conscientious, responsible; not devoid of fun and laughter; no better and no worse than others, as we make our contributions.
There has been much progress won through the lives and sacrifices of many persons, of whom King and Mandela are the best known. Keep the faith, brothers and sisters; that by our work, and through the traditional values which all Mankind hold sacred, we can and will get this period of black African Slavery behind us.
Yours truly,
Samuel A. A. Hinds
Former President,
and former
Prime Minister
