Slavery!: Africa Must Apologize

“Admittedly, Africa may have had some notably corrupt leaders and governments…. Let us ask ourselves: where do the proceeds of this corruption end up? In the vaults of the financial and banking institutions of the Western world. For every dollar of corrupt money that is kept in Western banks, one African child dies, two African children starve and three African children suffer from disease and ignorance. There will be less corruption in Africa if there is no place to hide the proceeds of corruption or if the proceeds of corruption, once uncovered, are returned to their real owners, the people of Africa.”

One of the good things that deserve commendation is the trial of leaders who committed genocide in their countries by the international criminal courts, there is need to extend the jurisdiction of that court to include trial of corrupt leaders and those who keep the proceeds of crime for them, after all it is a fundamental principle of criminal law that those who receive stolen property are liable to be charge for the same offence as the principal perpetrators.

As long as there are no sanctions against African leaders who stole monies from their people and their cronies they will continue to steal and the people will continue to be subjected to abject poverty.

Any African leader that seeks to deposit money in a foreign bank should be made to furnish the bank with prove of how they came about it failing which the crime should be reported to the United Nations and I dare say that the jurisdiction of the court should be extended to cover all third world countries in this regard as they are the ones prone to stealing blindly from their poor countries. This will go a long way to ensure that resources are used for the benefit of inhabitants of third world countries and thus take pressure off resources of advanced countries where people run to when everything goes south in their countries.

They will of course try to steal by proxy; the media should be given free hand to obtain information regarding all government officials in these countries with view to exposing the bad eggs amongst them, the people should have the power under the law to seek redress should the government refused to prosecute especially where it involves someone in power. Office holders in these countries should be stripped of immunity.

Secondly, when monies are burrowed for a particular project some machineries should be put in place to ensure that the monies are used for the purposes stated in applying for the loan which was burrowed in the name of a sovereign country and for the benefit of the people, there ought to be a way of ensuring such monies were utilized and not diverted.

With regard to slavery, Africans at home suffered the same pains as those who were forcibly taken away for those who lost husbands, wives, children, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunties and cousins must have felt the pains of the loss.

History should be put in the right perspectives even if it becomes apparent that those the elites put forth as heroes and heroines are villains. People like Dr. Amanda Lee brooks should be applauded for their courage in seeking the truth. Slavery happened years ago but we can learn from its lessons and people living presently should be made to see that what they did today shall be subjected to scrutiny even after they were long dead.

Africans sold their own to slavery it was an atrocity that cannot be erased, it may be forgiven but it would be a crime to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it ever happened or to down play the agony those who were at the receiving end must have felt or to dramatize something that excruciating. I can feel the indignation of Dr. Brooks at Africans for making heroes and heroines out of people who committed the atrocious act of feeding fat off their brothers’ sorrows.

Africa must be the first to tender an unreserved apology to descendants of their brothers they sold to foreigners to be taken to foreign lands. It is not an excuse that those who perpetrated these hideous acts were not aware of the horrors those they sold into slavery encountered. The fact that they took their freedom from them and collected blood money on them as if they were chattels, which they actually were labeled, is ipso facto an abominable act.

Some of the black people, now citizens of other countries, have every right to look at Africa scornfully and resolve not to have anything to do with people who were so dubious as to sell their kind for material acquisitions, what can be more evil and scandalous than that.

Africa, under the auspices of Organization of Africa unity, should take steps to actively and genuinely unite Africans home and abroad. African passports should be issued at no cost to descendants of their brothers that they sold away so that they will not require visas to visit a continent that they have as much right to as those who are presently regarded as indigenous Africans for if not for the shameless act of selling them off they will be as indigenous as anyone that lay claim to that continent. Having them ask and pay for visas is like adding salt to injury.

If we seek for Africa to be united, we, black men that God in his infinite wisdom deemed fit to put in that geographical location, must first unite. I apologize on behalf of our forbears to our brothers everywhere. They should take solace in the fact that some of them are better off, Africans are still be sold into slavery due to lack of economic advancement of that continent, at least they don’t have to leave loved ones to live in a foreign country where they undergo all sort of humiliation just to survive.