Africa Did Not Sell Africans Into Slavery
There is a saying that when a lie
is told repeatedly over a long period of time it turns to be the common 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 telling 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, have also found their way in using different cunning
methods to deepen its impact on our society. Commonly, this unfounded story is
infused into many basic educational curriculums to indoctrinate our children
before they are grown up.
Notwithstanding the various
attempts by those who want to keep the black race at the button for their
selfish gains, it must be recognized that that no matter repeatedly or the
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 the basic test of logic and historic-fact evaluation.
In this short piece, I intend to subject 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 it or not.
Logically, it is necessarily that
we ask questions whenever a story of our history is told to us. Basically, we
need to be aware of 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 the
objective views of the black Africans (both at home and in the diaspora) at the
time. Taken for example, the system that governs colonization which makes the
act of educating the Black African an illegal action; it was forbidden for
slave owners or slave parents to teach their dependents how to read and write
let alone allowing them to document by first hand, what is going on in their lives.
If the Africans were tightly preventing from keeping records of what is
happening in their own lives, while at the same time, their slave colonizers
document these happenings, then, it is possible that the content of those
documents many be for several purposes but what is certain is that none of
these purposes can be for the positive interest of the Black African. This
definitely calls for the re-examination of our beliefs 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 Ghana
and Nigeria where the majority of the slaves taken away come from the Akan and
the Igbo tribal groups respectively. Not only were they coming from the most
dominant tribes, they were also the most muscled, healthy, and intelligent
folks in the African society.
It is on records that majority of
slaves taken from Ghana to all the known destinations were from the Akan tribe
which is the largest tribe in Ghana. As a result, the slave masters had to put
stringent measures to ensure that the slave to do not continue to speak their
Twi language or perform their common Akan traditions and cultures since they
considered these as instruments that facilitate rebellion and revolts among
these slaves.
However, it would be unnatural
that in an event of slave capturing and trading, the smaller groups/ tribes
will 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, those who resisted the
colonizers’ determination and actions to take over economic and political powers
in the civilized African society at the time. Logically, these dominant tribes
and the most strongest men and women were more likely to be the sections of the
African society 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.
Logically, when in need of wildlife,
no sane man will walk into the forest and then sit to negotiate with the
animals and makes payments in exchange for his wants. This is so, because, the
sane man ordinarily does not consider this wildlife to have rights to
negotiation. Additionally, 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 this logic is 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 legal
documents clearly indicate so. For example, in our attempts to gain recognition
as humans, the 1787’s Three-Fifths Compromise was presented to clearly tell us
the category in which the colonizers place us. 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 he wants. On the other hand, 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 will 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:
1. What
did the colonizers gave to Africa in an exchange of the slaves, and where are
the evidences of their exchanges?
2. Did Africa take part in building any of the
slave dungeons?
3. Did Africa take part in signing the Papal Bull
in 1452 which prescribes that the none-believers must be enslaved because they
have no souls?
4. Did
Africa take part in building or buying the ships that transported the slaves?
5. Did
Africa take part in changing the names of the slaves, baptising and forcing
them into alien religions and cultures?
6. Did
Africa take part in throwing slaves in the ocean for insurance money?
7. Did
Africa take part in labelling the slaves 3/5 of human beings?
8. Did
Africa take part in raping and impregnating the women among the slaves to
continue breeding for their plantations?
9. Did Africa take part either in forcing the
slaves not to read or write nor to own wealth?
10. Did
Africa take part in partitioning the African continent among colonizers at the
Berlin Conference in 1884? Etc…
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 in Africa whom he did
not take away from the African soil as a slave seller. But 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 faith!
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 reunited between the two groups. 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.
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