Slavery wasn’t the fault of a single black person.

The disastrous consequences of slavery have proven to be the main reason we black people across the world can’t look each other in the eye. But slavery was neither the fault of our ancestors who remained here in Africa, nor you our kinsmen and kinswomen who were taken across the Atlantic as slaves.

Slavery wasn’t like a cattle rancher selling off his cows to a butcher, and thereafter going back to his armchair to enjoy his newfound treasure in peace, no. Through the course of slavery, both the cattle rancher and his cattle were all subjects of the butcher, and operated only under terms set by him. Why should this divide us eternally, never to work together ever again?

Slavery wasn’t like a cattle rancher selling off his cattle to a butcher, and thereafter going back to his armchair to enjoy his treasure in peace, no. Throughout the course of slavery, both the rancher and his cattle were all subjects of the butcher, and operated only under terms set by him. Why should this divide us eternally, never to work together ever again?

Throughout the history of slavery, we haven’t heard of a single, heroic African who somehow tried to resist the enslavers, by setting his own terms — and was then left to exist on his own alongside the enslavers, as parallels. The whole thing was involuntary on the side of Africans.

All tales of slavery have put it clearly that “Africans fought against & resisted slavery in their homeland, on the seas”, and wherever they were taken. Yet we can’t assume assume that those Africans who were successfully taken across the Atlantic as slaves, are the only ones who resisted, no. Every African fought and resisted equally.

 

Our African ancestors didn’t even sell you. 

You our brothers and sisters in the diaspora who are the direct descendants of slavery, have held onto the belief that our African ancestors are the ones who sold you into slavery.

But, it’s not like our ancestral African traditional chiefs who handed you over to the enslavers in the 1480s and 1600s somehow had their own wholly independent, and all-mighty governments and armies that operated separately from, or parallel to, the enslavers.

Our ancestral chiefs in Africa, back then, only had total powers until the arrival of the enslavers. From the very first day the enslavers landed in Africa, our ancestral chiefs and kings (who handed you over to the enslavers) immediately became puppets of the enslavers, and not because of their choosing.

Think of it in terms of a local mayor in Crimea following Putin’s orders immediately after annexation in 2014. It’s not because they are betraying Ukraine. It’s because they are simply powerless this point on.

After all, if Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi can be occupied in a month, how about Africa’s ancestral chiefs in the 1480s and 1600s who were only using arrows to defend themselves against armed enslavers?

 

Slavery didn’t only affect you our kinsmen and kinswomen who crossed the Atlantic. 

Before the very first African slave died in the Atlantic waters, or on the other side of the Atlantic, countless Africans, including those who weren’t being transported as slaves, had died either because they were trying to resist, or for simply being African.

It is worth noting that, for those of us who remained here in Africa, the day slavery started, is the very day colonialism began, albeit gradually. And the day cross Atlantic slave trade started to wane in the 1800s, is the day full-blown colonialism set in across Africa, and this has never really changed.

Also, not only did Africa as a whole immediately come under total rulership of the white man during the same years of slavery, but also, those of us who remained here in Africa were immediately made to start working only in the plantations that belonged to our colonial masters, the same way you our brothers and sisters on the other side of the Atlantic were doing.

When it comes to reclaiming our lost liberty, while you our brothers and sisters in the west were busy mounting the civil rights movement as recently as the 1960s, many African countries were still under total control by the Europeans. Many were erecting revolutions like the Mau Mau. And the fate of countless African statesmen (Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara etc) was effectively being decided by people in Europe and America, until as recently as the 1980s.

Even after full blown colonialism in Africa had ended, what we got in its place instead, is paternalistic aid systems and exploitative trade practices that make it precisely impossible for Africa to ever become free.

What we got instead is aid systems where the only real aid that is given to we the poor in Africa, is the aid where the givers “actually receive more” on this type of aid, than what they give as aid.

Does this sound like those of us who remained here in Africa really made any money selling you our brothers and sisters into slavery? And did we even we sell you in the first place? Definitely not.

 

Everyone else has moved on. Why not us?

The true perpetrators of transatlantic slave trade, i.e., the Europeans, haven’t only wronged us, no.

These people have wronged each other and have been at war with each other countless times, including as recently as the 1940s (Britain vs France vs Germany etc), but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming very close allies, working together with each across BORDERS, and most importantly, putting poverty far away from their people.

Now, if the original aggressors who also happen to aggress each other every now and then, can make peace with themselves and even become a people who are very easily available to each other, and a people who very seamlessly work together with each other across borders, why is it that we, the aggressed, can’t even get back together again?

Why it is that we, the offended, are the ones who can’t see eye to eye?

Again, let’s really put these things aside, and become a people who are easily available to each other, and a people who have our motherland Africa at heart.