President John Mahama has rejected claims that the involvement of some Africans in the transatlantic slave trade diminishes the crime of slavery or weakens the case for reparations.
At a high-level dialogue on reparations at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica during his state visit, President Mahama said the role played by some Africans as intermediaries did not absolve those who conceived, financed, and institutionalised the transatlantic slave trade.
Drawing a parallel with the Holocaust, he argued that the participation of some Jewish individuals in assisting Nazi operations did not erase the reality of the genocide or lessen its status as a crime against humanity.
“The Holocaust occurred, and I believe that there was a Holocaust and six million Jews were killed. Some of the most brutal prison guards were Jews. Some of those who went into the communities and showed where Jews were hiding and delivered them to the Nazis to be exterminated were Jews,” he said.
“But it doesn’t mean the Holocaust didn’t happen and that the Holocaust wasn’t a crime against humanity.”
President Mahama said the same principle applies to the transatlantic slave trade, insisting that the involvement of some Africans does not diminish the scale or severity of the atrocity.
“So even the argument that Africans were involved in enslaving Africans does not stop it from being the gravest crime against humanity,” he stated.
President Mahama called for a broader examination of the legal, financial, and commercial structures that sustained the slave trade for centuries.
“You must look at all the legal underpinnings. You must look at everything that was established to support the slave trade in terms of the insurance of the cargo, the auctions, and all that,” he said.
According to the president, the transatlantic slave trade was a highly organised system involving governments, institutions, and commercial interests, making it impossible to dismiss its historical significance because some Africans participated in it.
It was a very systematic trade, and so you cannot wish it away just by saying that some agents whom you use as agents to bring you slaves as commodities participated in it, and because they were Africans, then it means that the slave trade didn’t happen,” he said.
“No, we reject that,” he stressed.
President Mahama stressed that understanding the full history of slavery is essential to shaping Africa’s future, saying independent African nations must tell their own history truthfully.
“We are now independent. We should be able to tell our children the truth,” he said.
Source: Joy News
