“They were dying slowly? It was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now? Nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.” — Joseph Conrad in The Heart of Darkness
So many tales have either been told or simply swept under the dirty carpet of lies and misconceptions on the emotive issue of the slave trade, but the re-emergence of Africa as a force to be reckoned with in global economic and political affairs now makes it difficult for those lies to be sustained.
Perhaps the biggest lie that has been told about the slave trade is that there was virtually nothing to be told or written about Africa before the gory abduction of the natives.
Africa has been deemed the ‘dark continent’ that had no economic activity to talk about.
That is a dreadful lie.
It was easy for the Europeans and the Americans to sustain that because, then, there were a few, if any, cameras and accurate documentation to counter that blatant lie.
Today we challenge that anomaly with concrete facts.
That Africa had functioning economies that were supported by solid governance structures is a fact that is supported by empirical evidence, which evidence we present here.
During the Transatlantic Slave Trade alone, at least 12 million Africans were shipped off the continent by use of force and aggression.
That is a gigantic figure of potential development that was stolen from the continent.
Evidence from various impeccable sources shows that, indeed, Africa was way ahead of Europe and America in terms of intellectual capacity and development.
Here is why:
In the 14th Century, there was a man called Mansa Musa I from Mali who is widely believed to have been the richest man to have ever lived.
A list compiled by the Celebrity Net Worth website in 2012, which ranks the world’s most richest people of all time, states that King Musa I was the richest person in living memory.
King Musa I is said to have been worth around US$400 billion at the time of his death in 1331.
He ruled Mali in the early 1300s and acquired his wealth through exploiting his country’s vast gold and salt resources.
As a man of the people, King Musa I helped set up the Timbuktu University and built so many mosques which still stand today.
A medieval manuscript, The Catalan Atlas, supports the view that King Musa I was indeed an epitome of African economic and social development.
The manuscript has pages showing the African legend holding a golden coin and also shows his trade routes.
The atlas was reproduced on January 26 2019 at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US.
Titled Caravans of Gold, the exhibition showcases Africa’s wealth and its economic prowess during the Middle Ages.
The map was produced on the Mediterranean island of Majorca in 1375.
“Clearly, Mansa Musa and West Africa and its gold resources are Musa (assets) of greatest importance,” said Kathleen Bickford Berzock, the curator of the exhibit at the Block Museum.
“It tells us a lot about the world we live in today to understand the long history of exchange and interaction on a global scale,” Berzock told Live Science.
“It also helps people think about the history of Africa before Western involvement in things like the Atlantic Slave Trade.”
The BBC this week published a report titled Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived.
The report highlights the many successes that King Musa I scored in advancing education in Africa.
Reads the report in part:
“Mansa Musa returned from Mecca with several Islamic scholars, including direct descendants of the prophet Muhammad and an Andalusian poet and architect by the name of Abu Es Haq es Saheli, who is widely credited with designing the famous Djinguereber Mosque.
The king reportedly paid the poet 200 kg (440lb) in gold, which in today’s money would be US$8,2 million
(£6,3 million).
In addition to encouraging the arts and architecture, he also funded literature and built schools, libraries and mosques. Timbuktu soon became a centre of education and people travelled from around the world to study at what would become the Sankore University.
The rich king is often credited with starting the tradition of education in West Africa, although the story of his empire largely remains little known outside West Africa.”
Bear in mind, Africa did not only lose raw materials.
Several products that included sculptures, art productions and humans were also looted.
“One item in the exhibit, a seated figure found in Nigeria, was made of copper that was likely mined in Europe. Coin molds from Tadmekka, Mali, still hold flecks of the gold from the dinar coins that were a dominant form of currency of the day. The discovery of the molds confirmed Arabic texts at the time, which referred to Tadmekka as the source of dinars,” Berzock said.
“Ivory from Savannah elephants appears in Medieval European art. And metals, textiles, spices and more were swapped back and forth across long distances.”
King Musa I’s tales bring us to our Mutapa Empire.
We will quote extensively from Nathaniel Manheru’s June 13 2015 instalment in The Saturday Herald titled ‘Leadership: When history speaks’.
“I have just been reading primary documents on the Portuguese in Mozambique and Central Africa, records covering the period 1497 to 1840.
Clearly this is not a light read.
A key document in that vast record is entitled: ‘Carta De Irmaos Em Armas: Do Rei De Portugal A Favor Do Imperador Do Monomotopa, Em Resposta A Carta Deste De 4-8-1607’.
In English, the document’s title translates to: ‘Letter of Brotherhood-in-arms from the King of Portugal to the Mutapa, in reply to his letter of August 4 1607’.
I was fully aware that the Mwenemutapa Kingdom interacted with foreign potentates, principally the Chinese Ming Dynasty, the Arab world led by the wondering Emirs of Qatar and, much later, the wanderlust and foot — or is it sea-loose Portuguese Empire.
Mwenemutapa’s was a great civilisation, a trading one and one thus outward and cosmopolitan.
But what I hadn’t budgeted for was the fact that its interaction with the outside world included written communication, such as is acknowledged in the aforequoted document.
I had always thought these were days of orature, days of face-to-face communication unassisted by calligraphy.
Of course I am also aware that under Gatsi Rusere to whom the document I allude to above is written, the Kingdom produced two princes who proceeded to pursue higher studies in Goa, India, then a Portuguese colony. Those two princes gave this nation its first graduate doctor of letters, one Miguel, thereby giving it its abiding trait as one with a great thirst for knowledge.”
Manheru goes on:
“The then Portuguese King put pressure on Gatsi Rusere, the reigning King of the Mwenemutapa Kingdom ‘to acknowledge as his heir his pro-Portuguese son, Dom Diogo, then studying in Goa’.
But this was resisted in favour of Nyambu Kapararidze who was the eldest son and thus the natural heir to the throne through the rule and logic of primogeniture.
This incensed the King of Portugal whose many letters demanded that Gatsi Rusere face war or ‘make me a present of all the gold, silver and copper mines of his said kingdoms and that I (King of Portugal) may order my vassals to take possession and verify them’.
The reward for all this was spelt out as follows:
‘In token of this I send him my royal banner which he may take and raise in his kingdom in all wars he may fight against its enemies’.
He also had to accept and convert to the Portuguese King’s Holy Faith but he would not be permitted to allow the
But he would not be permitted to allow the building next to Christian churches of ‘any Mosques of the Moors, Synagogues of the Jews, Pagodas of the Heathens, nor anything else which offends our Holy Faith’.
Much worse, he was required to be ‘a friend to the friends of the (Portuguese) State of India and of all my captains and vassals’ and to ‘be the enemy of their enemies’.
We will remain in Zimbabwe and continue to explore the myth that Africa was a ‘dark’ continent before slavery.
On June 1 2017, The Patriot published a story that explored the history of mining in this country.
We unravelled several untold narratives which included the indisputable relationship between Zimbabwe and King Solomon’s quest for gold.
This also explains why the EU and the US continue to agitate for regime change in this country.
It is all about the land and the abundant natural resources in Zimbabwe, a key fact that has been woefully lost on the opposition.
This is what we wrote in 2017:
“The modern Zimbabwe nation state had its origins in 12th Century Great Zimbabwe, which had its capital at present day Great Zimbabwe monument with a network of over 350 related royal towns fashioned after it.
The nation state had been fully developed by 1450 AD, which time Mutapa embarked on a full military expansion that gave rise to the Munhumutapa Empire.
The Zimbabwe mining legacy dates back to medieval Great Zimbabwe.
The Munhumutapa Empire had command over and exploited not less than 4 000 gold and 500 copper mines spread across the country.
In his book, ‘The Shona and Zimbabwe 900 to 1850: An Outline of Shona History’, historian David Beach asserts that:
‘They (Zimbabweans) mined iron, built furnaces and forges, and made iron hoes and axes as their predecessors had done, and like them they cleared fields and sowed their crops. They hunted and kept goats and sheep and in general life must have been much like that of the early iron trade’.”
The Beach assessment is buttressed by yet another historian Stanlake Samkange, who states besides mining, blacks had methods of washing and preserving the minerals.
Samkange, in his 1968 book, The Origins of Rhodesia, says:
“After the settlement of the Shona, ‘trade with the East Coast developed steadily.
By the 12th Century, reef mining was in progress, and it continued up to the 19th Century’, with gold constituting ‘the most important single export from the Plateau’, gradually being overtaken by ivory.”
Prominent local writer Chakamwe Chakwame is one of the few Zimbabweans who has had the privilege to stumble upon rich material that demystifies the lies that there was no mining activity in the country.
In 2011 Chakamwe explicated a paper that unravels the history of Globe and Phoenix Gold Mine in Kwekwe.
The research paper titled A Historical Account of the Globe and Phoenix Gold Mine (1894-1935) and the part it played in the Development and Growth of the Town of Que Que (Kwekwe) was written in 1971 by Heather Heap.
Writes Chakamwe:
“The mine, which the early Europeans waxed lyrical about its gold, was founded in 1894 by two prospectors, one Edward Thornton Pearson and another Joseph Schukala.
The two gentlemen actually rediscovered a series of ancient mines which had been worked on for centuries by the Shona in Zimbabwe.”
Tome Lopes, who accompanied Vasco da Gama on a voyage to India in 1502, wrote a narrative that became popular in Portugal.
Lopes knew about Zimbabwe, and the Great Zimbabwe monument in particular, but was not convinced that the construction of that gigantic structure could have possibly been the product of African people.
He sold a narrative, a lie.
Lopes identified Mutapa with the Biblical land of Ophir and King Solomon’s Mines.
One Milton, a great poet, then wrote a poem called Paradise Lost which triggered so much interest in Zimbabwe.
Yet the slave trade story cannot be fully told without exploring Walter Rodney’s book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972).
Rodney argues the slave trade fundamentally altered African economies.
“There have been times in history when social groups have grown stronger by raiding their neighbors for women, cattle, and goods, because they then use the ‘booty’ from the raids for the benefits of their own community.
Slaving in Africa did not even have that redeeming value. Captives were shipped outside instead of being utilised within any given African community for creating wealth from nature (page 100)”
He goes on:
“If the prisoners were to develop into a true serf class, then those prisoners would have had to be guaranteed the right to remain fixed on the soil and protected from sale (page 118).”
Going by Rodney’s assessment, there is evidence which shows that it was the most developed areas of Africa that tended to gravitate into the slave trade.
In 1526, Affonso, King of Kongo, bitterly complained to Portugal that: “There are many traders in all corners of the country.
They bring ruin to the country.
Every day people are enslaved and kidnapped, even nobles, even members of the king’s own family.”
We conclude with an October 1 2014 article published by The Atlanta Black Star titled, ‘12 African inventions that changed the world’ which gives us the following compelling facts:
Mathematics
The invention of mathematics is placed firmly in African pre-history.
The oldest known possible mathematical object is the lebombo bone, which was discovered in the Lebombo Mountains of Swaziland and dated to approximately 35 000 BC
Many of the math concepts that are learned in school today were also developed in Africa.
Over 35 000 years ago, ancient Egyptians scripted textbooks about math that included division and multiplication of fractions and geometric formulas to calculate the area and volume of shapes.
Medicine
Many treatments used today in modern medicine were first employed in Africa centuries ago.
The earliest known surgery was performed in Egypt around 2750 BC.
Medical procedures performed in ancient Africa before they were performed in Europe include vaccination, autopsy, limb traction and broken bone setting, bullet removal, brain surgery, skin grafting, filling of dental cavities, installation of false teeth, what is now known as Caesarean section, anesthesia and tissue cauterisation.
Speech
Estimates supported by genetic, archaeologic, paleontologic, and other evidence, suggest that language probably emerged somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle-Stone Age, hence, the first words by humans were spoken by Africans.
Architecture and engineering
The African empire of Egypt developed a vast array of diverse structures and great architectural monuments along the Nile, among the largest and most famous of which are the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Great Sphinx of Giza.
Later, in the 12th Century, there were hundreds of great cities in Zimbabwe and Mozambique made of massive stone complexes and huge castle-like compounds.
In the 13th Century, the empire of Mali boasted impressive cities, including Timbuktu, with grand palaces, mosques and universities.
Mining
The oldest known mine on archaeological record is the ‘Lion Cave’ in Swaziland, which radiocarbon dating shows to be about 43 000 years old.
The ancient Egyptians mined a mineral called malachite, while the gold mines of Nubia were among the largest and most extensive in the world.
Metallurgy and tools
Many advances in metallurgy and tool-making were made across the entirety of ancient Africa.
These include steam engines, metal chisels and saws, copper and iron tools and weapons, nails, glue, carbon steel, bronze weapons and art.
In places like Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda, the advances in metallurgy and tool-making surpassed those in Europe.
Navigation
Evidence suggests that ancient Africans sailed to South America and Asia hundreds of years before the Europeans, debunking the propaganda that Europeans were the first to sail to the Americas.
Many ancient societies in Africa built different types of boats, from small vessels to large ships that could carry up to 80 tonnes.
Law and religion
Evidence shows ancient Ethiopians were the first to honour their gods, offer sacrifices and organise other religious customs for people to honor the divine as well as being the first country to have established law.
Astronomy
Several ancient African cultures birthed discoveries in astronomy.
Many of these are foundations on which we still rely, and some were so advanced that their mode of discovery still cannot be understood.
The Dogon people of Mali amassed a wealth of detailed astronomical observations.
They knew of Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons, the spiral structure of the Milky Way and the orbit of the Sirius star system.
Philosophy
Philosophy in Africa has a long history dating from pre-dynastic Egypt and continuing through the birth of Christianity and Islam.
One of the earliest works of political philosophy was the Maxims of Ptah-Hotep, which were taught to Egyptian schoolboys for centuries.
Ancient Egyptian philosophers made extremely important contributions to Hellenistic philosophy, Christian philosophy and Islamic philosophy.
International trade
Evidence shows international trade was first developed between Africa and Asia, and among these international trade contacts were the exchange of ideas and cultural practices that laid the foundations of the earliest civilisations of the ancient world.
Art
The oldest art objects in the world — a series of tiny, drilled snail shells about 75 000 years old — were discovered in a South African cave.
It is clear from the above analysis that Africa was a thriving economic giant before the slave trade and it’s time the continent revives that trajectory regardless of machinations by Western forces.