Africans mark end of slave trade
2007-03-26 08:13
Elmina - Two hundred years after Britain's abolition of the slave trade, Africans marked the anniversary on Sunday with a sombre ceremony recalling the suffering of their ancestors and the lasting scars of slavery.
Descendants of slaves and dignitaries gathered at a white-washed former slave fort at Elmina in Ghana to remember the more than 10 million Africans - some estimates say up to 60 million - sent on slave ships to the New World.
"Through this dark era of human history, the mystery of it all ... was the indomitable human spirit that could not be broken," said Ghana's President John Kufuor, his voice echoing around the castle courtyard.
"Man should never descend to such low depths of inhumanity
to man as the slave trade ever again."
Elmina was sub-Saharan Africa's first permanent slave
trading post, built by the Portuguese in 1492. It passed to
England and by the 18th century shipped tens of thousands of
Africans a year through "the door of no return" to slave ships.
"It was so bad the way they maltreated our forefathers, the
way they chained them and imprisoned them for so many years,"
said Anthony Kinful, 38, a storekeeper near the Elmina fort. "If
I see white people now, I think badly of them."
After years of campaigning by anti-slavery activists like
politician William Wilberforce, Britain banned the trade in
slaves from Africa on March 25, 1807.
It did not outlaw slavery itself until 1833 and the
transatlantic trade continued under foreign flags for many
years.
Blair expresses sorrow
In a recorded message, Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed
Britain's "deep sorrow and regret" for the country's role in the
slave trade but he appeared to fall short of the formal apology
demanded by a senior Church of England cleric, Archbishop of
York John Sentamu.
Britain's first black cabinet minister Baroness Valerie Amos, herself a descendant of slaves who was born in Guyana, joined South African jazz icon Hugh Masekela and Jamaican-born reggae poet Linton Kwesi Johnson at the ceremony.
Countless Africans perished on the voyage or on
disease-infested plantations in the Americas. Kufuor dismissed
talk of reparations because of the active involvement of
Africans in the slave trade.