CELEBRATIONS to mark Africa Day will be held on May 25.
As a build up to those celebrations, we shall be running a series of articles between now and then on our African motherland under various topics – its sad history, economy and politics.
This week we are looking at Africa’s sad past under slavery and settler-colonialism.
For convenience, we have decided to break down slavery into three parts.
Part one refers to the gigantic and diabolic Transatlantic Slave Trade which drew most of its victims from West Africa – roughly from Angola to Cape Verde.
Since we covered this part extensively in the past, we are not discussing it in this article.
The slavery we are looking at here is under part two and three which refers to the trans-Saharan and East African slave trades respectively.
And also for convenience, we have divided settler-colonialism into three parts.
Part one and two refer to the huge settler-colonialism of South Africa and the then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) which we are not covering here because we have also covered the two widely in the past.
In this article, we are looking at the horrors of settler-colonialism in Namibia.
One Martin Merechith helps us with our discussion. “An Arab army fighting under the banner of the new religion of Islam, invaded Egypt in 639 and rapidly put an end to six centuries of Roman and Byzantine rule.”
The Arabs went on to conquer the whole of North Africa – Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco — settling in those areas.
However, they did not cross the Sahara to find new homes there.
But they still ventured into that part of the African interior, crossing the Sahara Desert in search of gold and slaves, thus ushering in the trans-Sahara slave trade.
They raided countries like Mali, Chad and Mauritania, all the way to the northern areas of countries like Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.
Highways were created across the Sahara to ferry slaves from the above countries to the Middle East and Asia.
Says Merechith: “South of the Central Sahara, slavery was the mainstay of trade.
Black tribes to the south of Lake Chad were regularly raided for slaves.
Slaves were marched across the desert to a place called Zawila and from there, sent on to Tunis, Tripoli, Cyrenaica, Egypt and beyond to western Asia.
The demand for black slaves remained high.”
What horrors did these black slaves meet with?
Terrible horrors.
For instance, boys were castrated.
On top of this, a lot of the boys died while being castrated.
“Female slaves were bought by prosperous urban households for use as servants and concubines,” writes Merechith.
“The average service life of a slave – from the time he was bought to his death was only seven years. So the need for replacements kept demand high.”
How big was this trans-Sahara slave trade?
“At first it stood at 1 000 slaves a year, but went to 5 000 a year later. The total number of slaves taken across the desert was more than four million.”
We now shift our gears from the Sahara to East Africa.
The land of Zanj (blacks) on the East Coast of Africa was a familiar destination for Arab and Persian sea captains travelling the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean.
Zanj was renowned for its valuable trade items of ivory, rhinoceros horn, rock crystal and slaves.
One of the best known towns built along the East African coast was Kilwa.
There, at that port, they built a slave barracoon and two harbours to accommodate large ocean-going dhows.
Slaves from Zanj (the entire black East African area) were shipped to Arabia and the Persian Gulf where they were known as Zanj – to serve as labourers, soldiers and concubines.
The Sultan of Kilwa was much given to going to Zanj territories in search of slaves but was generous in distributing a percentage of the spoils to visitors.
There you have it.
Black slaves could be given as gifts.
Yes, the slave trade in East Africa was just as bad as the trans-Sahara one.
And the black slaves suffered all the horrors we described on the trans-Sahara slave trade.
Lastly we look at one of the most barbaric settler-colonialisms to visit the African continent.
The German colonisation of Namibia.
The vast stretch of south-west Africa between the Orange and Kullene rivers that Germany claimed as a colony proved to be a disappointment to Germany’s colonial enthusiasts.
Much of it was desert.
What the above meant was that the German colonial masters here decided to take the little good land available in Namibia from the local people.
“In 1890, the colony’s military commander, captain Curt Von Francois moved his headquarters from a site on the edge of the Namib Desert to a broad valley known by the Dutch name of Windhoek that lay in the fertile heart of Hereroland.
Von Francois built a fort there and encouraged German farmers to settle in the neighbourhood.”
With that, trouble had been sown.
The new German colonial master, besides stealing the people’s land, instituted a reign of terror.
There were numerous incidents of flogging, rape and murder.
One of the Herero chiefs was heard saying: “All our obedience and patience with the Germans is of little avail for each day they shoot someone dead for no reason at all.”
He then went to urge all people to rise by saying: “Let us die fighting rather than die as a result of maltreatment, imprisonment and some other calamity.
Tell all the chiefs down there to rise and do battle.”
But the diabolic colonial master replied to the above thus: “I know enough tribes in Africa.
They all have the same mentality insofar as they yield only to force. It was and remains my policy to apply this force by absolute terrorism and even cruelty.
I shall destroy the tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money. Only then will it be possible to sow the seeds of something new that will endure.”
The colonial master lived up to his word soon after.
One of their leaders, one Von Tonder, encircled the Herero and closed all drinking holes to make them die of thirst.
He wanted to annihilate them and so he issued an extermination order whose result was that a lot of the Herero were killed through being butchered or starved.
By the end of 1905, only 15 000 Herero were left alive in Germany South West Africa (Namibia) out of a population of 80 000.
In December 1905 Kaiser Wilhelm formally expropriated all Herero land.
In the long run, the people of Namibia fought a liberation war that eventually freed their land.
They are now an independent people.
Above we have looked briefly at highlights of the sad history of the black people under slavery and settler-colonialism in Africa.
It would appear there is no other race on earth which has suffered under other people like the blacks.
But wait a minute!
What about the Jews?
They were made slaves in Egypt as well as Babylon.
On top of that they were slaughtered by the Europeans.
But today they control the world’s money and media.
They have not sat there crying, feeling sorry for themselves.
This is what Africans must do: Stop crying and compete against other races.
Don’t allow anyone to enslave you again or oppress you.
Stand up and fight everywhere.