Kenya is set to hold an all-Africa event in remembrance of African Slave Trade and Colonialism. David G Maillu, who is the brains behind the event, has addressed a gathering of academics, students, journalists, critics and members of various civil society organisations on the event.
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Below is Dr Maillu’s full address:
World over, there is not a single human race that has been subjected to the size of human atrocities that have been inflicted on the Black race by non-black races for whatever reasons through the business of African Slave Trade and Colonialism. Recently United Nations voted and declared the African Slave Trade the worst human catastrophe. Why it has taken so long for the United Nations to say that has a motive behind the psychology of the actors of the atrocities. The assembly of the United Nations is dominated by the last generation of the empires that were African slave trade masters. The Atlantis African Slave Trade existed for more than 500. The Sahara Eastern African Slave Trade is older. It kicked off in the 7th Century.
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During that length of time, the fate of the Blackman was thrown into an eternal culture of servitude and psychological devastation. In both the West and the East trade, history books argue that nearly 30million lives died during the transaction while a higher number survived in slavery.
Then, as if to add insult to injury, the end of African slavery gave birth to Colonialism, perhaps, with lesser measure of brutality. That is, Colonialism passes as the baptism of the African Slave Trade. History books tell us that the architecture of Colonialism, constructed by the same African Slave Trade powers, was designed in Europe in Berlin, 1884-1885, chaired by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck supported by France. The architecture has become known as the Scramble for Africa Conference where European minds to discussed how to distribute the entire Africa among themselves for colonization. Africa was not represented in the conference, perhaps, because Africans were not considered as part of human beings but as part of the fauna of Africa.
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The one-million-dollar question unasked is: what was it so exceptionally special about the African that attracted the Whiteman to focus on exploiting Africans to that historic degree?
What the African has learned from the African Slave Trade and Colonialism for the present and future generations should not pass without a yearly Commemoration. On behalf of human rights and dignity, the said Commemoration should and shall also act as the mirror to the Whiteman’s past derailed integrity and savagery.
Historical consideration has proved that racism has polarized world politics between the Black race and the White race whereby, generally speaking, the White race has been playing the role of the predator and the Black race has been the prey. In the planet earth the-non-black population is the majority, while the black is the minority. Hence, the threatened human being is the black one.
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The natural home of the Black race is Africa. In the past, that home has been given ugly and discriminatory appellations by the White race. Africa has been called the Dark Continent and the Lost Continent with publicized and generalized claims that Africa has contributed nothing to human civilization. That statement puts a blind eye to historical facts going back even to the BC times regarding how much Africa has influenced world civilizations.
It is grave sadness that up to this age, in Africa, there is not a single day in the year set aside for the Pan-African Commemoration regarding those atrocities. Omission of that Commemoration has produced a devastating and broad-based psychological acceptance of African servitude.
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Sample the following quotations from Henry M Stanley, 1895:
Every tusk, piece and scrap in the possession of an Arab trader has been steeped and dyed in African blood. Every pound weight has cost the life of a man, woman, or child; for every five pound a hut has been burnt. For every two tusks, a whole village has been destroyed. For every twenty tusks have been obtained at the price of a district with all its people, villages, and plantations. It is simply incredible that, because ivory is required… populations, tribes, and nations should be utterly destroyed.
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Lamentation
By John R Kinard, Louise Daniel Hutchinson (descendant of American slaves) Quoted from his book “Out of Africa,” published by Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, 1979:
The lonesome soul cries out for that distant home that was yesterday, is today, and will forever be, and sighs Africa, Oh my Africa! For out of Africa and cascading down corridors of time have come earthshaking ideas, beautiful things, resources, riches, and people… People of other nations and cultures have either been fascinated and enlivened or disturbed by the power of the richly hued Africa… And while generations have believed that black ethnicity and ethno-history were lost, the glorious past like a sleeping giant has only been lying dormant. But now the great giant stirs, and today we stand on the threshold of a great renaissance. The ancestors are awakening… Now is the time for rebirth… The struggle to survive produces creative ingenuity.
