SLAVERY HOLOCAUST
Surrounding our towns and villages, blocking off outlets, they pounced on unsuspecting, unarmed and unprepared families having there meals, siesta, nightcap, relaxing at play or visiting neighbors or farms. Anyone resisting capture was hacked mercilessly to death on the spot, and those who tried to escape were hunted down like game animals.
Ajayi Crowther, The Nigerian slave, gives us a graphic picture of the era in the book Presence and prestige: Africans in Europe, By Hans Werner Berunner. “Woman, some with three, four, six children clinging to their arms, with the infants on their backs and such baggage as they would carry on their heads, running as fast as they could through prickly shrubs. While they found it impossible to go along with their loads, they endeavored to save only themselves and their children to care for. While endeavoring to disentangle from the ropy shrubs, they were overtaken and caught by the enemies with a nose of rope thrown over o the neck of every individual to be led in the manner of goats tied together, under the drove of man”.
Ajayi goes on to say He was captured with His mother, two sisters (one an infant about the ten months old) and s cousin, while attempting to escape in the manner described above. His load, when he was captured consisted of a bow (which he was trying to extricate from a shrub when he was captured and so could not use it) and five arrows in a quiver. His last view of his father was when he (the father), rushed into their burnt home from a fight to give them the signal to flee.
Captured and being led back through their town (which consisted mainly of mud houses, some about twelve feet from the ground, with high roofs in square forms and other dimensions), they found the place desolate and entirely on fire. Humans around were either dead or dying from mortal wounds to the head and body.
On the way to coast, Ajayi saw his grandmother and four of his cousins at a distance in a crowed of captives he soon lost and never saw again. To quote Ajayi: “The aged were to be pitied because not being able to walk as fast as their children and grand children, were often threatened with being put to death on ht spot and the captors were often as wicked in their practice as in their words.”
Coming to a spring of water, they drank a great quantity which served them for breakfast, suggesting they were caught in the night. They had passed several towns and villages on their way, which had been reduced to ashes and they had seen heads of dead people nailed to large trees to serve as warning to captive nursing mischief or disloyalty. The next morning, Ajayi and sister on the one hand, were separated from their mother and the infant, and sold to another slave collector. Ajayi says: We dared not vent our grief by loud cries, but by very heavy sobs.”
In a matter of hours, Ajayi was again sold, this time in exchange for a horse, to a slave merchant who had to return Ajayi two months later because the house had failed to satisfy its purchaser. Three months later, Ajayi was sold to a master who was ready then to travel with his slave cargo towards the coast. The following morning, with baggage on their backs, one hand chained to the neck, the captives were marched out of town, reaching the market town called Ijahi a few days later. There, Ajayi was sold to a “Mahomedan woman,” who led the captive through many more strange towns to reach “Popo country, on the coast, much resorted to by the Portuguese to buy slaves.
Suspecting that Ajayi was contemplating committing suicide, the Mahomedan woman bartered Ajayi to another owner who after a few days bartered Ajayi for some tobacco, rum and other articles. He remained here until his owner could get as many slaves as he wanted before taking them to the slave market at “Ikosi on the bank of the large river.” The sight of the large river terrified Ajayi “exceedingly”; for he had never seen anything like it in his life. The people on the opposite bank of the river were called E’Ko. Before sunset, Ajayi was bartered yet again for tobacco to another owner.
Nothing now terrified Ajayi more than the big river, and the thought of going into another world away from his family and relations. “Crying was nothing, to vent out my sorrow,” he said. “My whole body became stiff. I was now bade to enter the river to ford it to canoe. Being fearful of my entering this extensive water, and being so cautious in every step I took, as if the next would bring me to the bottom, my motion was very awkward indeed. Night coming on, the men having very little time to spare soon carried me into the canoe and placed me among the corn-bags and supplied me with Ab’alah to eat. Almost in the same position I was placed I remained with my Ab’alah in my hand, quite confused in my thoughts, waiting only every moment our arrival at the new world which we did not reach till about 4 o’clock in the morning. Here I got once more into another dialect, the fourth from mine.”
“In E’ko, I was sold to a White man who examined me whether I was sound or not. Men and boys were at first chained through an iron fetter on the beck of every individual and fastened at both ends with padlocks. In this situation the boys suffered the most; the man sometimes, getting angry would draw the chain so violently, as seldom bruises on their poor little necks; especially the time to sleep, when they drew chain so close to case themselves of its weight, in order to be able to lie more conveniently, that we were almost suffocated, or bruised to death, in a room with one door, which was fastened as soon as we entered in, with no other passage for communicating for air, than the other opening under the eave drops. Very often at night, when two or three individuals quarreled or fought, the whole drove suffered punishment, without any distinction.”
“After few weeks delay, we were embarked, at night, in canoes, from E’ko to the beach, and on the following morning were put on board the vessel, which immediately sailed away. The crew being busy embarking us 187 in number, had no time to give us either breakfast or supper, and we, being unaccustomed to the motion of the vessel, employed the whole of this days in sea-sickness which rendered the greater part of us less fit to take any food whatever.”
Africa as a whole was not just waiting to be dismembered without a fight. After the initial surprise attack, we braced up, by and large. We were only defeated by superior weapons. In fact, they came initially as equal as they found out that we had no guns. Even then, our generals were as valorous as any of their day. Names of our warriors nationalists mostly kings and queens abound. Queen Nzigha of Angola, King Nana Kwamena Ansa of Ghana, Ashanti King Prempeh, Chief Sunbu Mobee of Badagry, Nehenda of Zimbabwe, Anowa of Ghana, Oba Ovomramwen Nogbaisi of Benin City, Behanzin Hossou Bo Welli of Dahomey, Madam Tinubu of Lagos Island, Samori Toure of Mali, Mohammed Ahmed the Mahdi of Sudan, Nefertiti of Nubian, Mohammed Ben Abdulla Hassen the Mad Mullar of Somali Land, Chaka the Zulu and many other gave accounts of themselves in our Honour.
It is estimated that over hundred million Africans were murdered by whites during the slave trade alone. One hundred million of our young people and virile just to capture about a quarter of that number into captivity. Whites destroyed our homes; our family units, our industries, everything, and they continued this for hundreds of years. To temporarily evade capture, Africans had drastically changed their habits and lifestyles. A reasonable secure community life could no longer be taken for granted by anyone. Africans had become fugitive on their own soil, with fewer and fewer bread winners, all fleeing from one mishap to another, unable to put down firm roots anywhere, or aspire to any form of organized living, let alone invent and improve upon the civilization they had pioneered. But Africans never surrendered to slavery. Africans had to be beaten, chained and dragged on board slave ship.
To break and humble Africans, some of the most brutal and inhumane treatment in the history of mankind were practiced against them by Whites on board those slave ships. Some captains, at the start of the journey would chop a number of slaves to bits and force the other to watch and to eat the flesh. Africans were constantly subjected to callous beating and torture and with the sick, the dying, the dead, the living, all chained together and confined in a heap, excreting on each other, in narrow suffocation space.
Here is a White writer’s description of what happened on those slave ships; “Below the deck… Sometimes more than five feet high and sometimes less: and this height is divided towards the middle for the slaves lie two rows, one above the other, on each side of the ship, close to each other like books upon a shelf….so close that the shelf would not easily contain any more. The poor creatures, thus cramped, are likewise in irons for the most part which makes it difficult for them to turn or move or attempt to rise or lie down without hurting themselves or each other. Every morning, more instances than one are found of the living and the dead fastened together.
On slave ships, many Africans starved themselves to death, cut their throats with their fingernails, threw themselves over board to escape torture and slavery. Quite a number of them succeeded in over-powering their captors and taking over their slave ships as was the case with AMISTAD or Joseph Cinque, the son of a Mendi King of Sierra Leone.
There is also the incident of a slave of the Igbo ethic group in Nigeria, who having landed at a suspiciously secluded spot on the west side of and island in the West Indias, preferred death to a life in captivity. So every one of them walked back into the river behind their leader, saying as they drowned: “the water brought us here, the water will take us away. “How about that Nigerian bravery and self-respect even in those ancient times?
White laws sanctioned the horrendous punishment meted out to Africans by categorizing Africans as chattels which like horses and cattle could be bought, sold, mortgaged, borrowed, rented, bartered, etc. Christianity makes slavery divine, arguing that the Africans were the children of Ham who bore the curse of darkness from God. The Pope received a percentage gain on every slave sold. Missionaries often forced slaves to promise not to seek freedom as a condition for being baptized.
On the plantations, flogging of Africans with a leather strap on the naked body was a regular affair; also frequent was padding the body with a handsaw until the skin is a mass blisters, and then breaking the blisters with the teeth of the saw. Very often, slaves were seen stretched out upon the ground with hands and feet held down by intimidated fellow slaves, or lashed to stakes driven into the ground for burning. Handfuls of dry cornhusks are the lighted, and the burning embers are whipped off with stick so as to fall in showers of live sparks upon the naked slave victim. This is continued until the victim is covered with blisters if in His writhing of torture, the slave gets his hands free to brush off the fire, the burning brand is applied to them.
Another method of punishment which is inflicted for such crimes as running away, or looking at white woman, is to dig a hole in a ground large enough for the slave to squat or lie in. The victim is then stripped naked and placed in the hole, and a covering or grating of green sticks is laid over the opening. Upon this, a quick fire is built the live embers sifted through upon the naked flesh of the life to enable him to crawl. The slave is then allowed to recover from his wounds if he can, or to end his suffering by death.
Our ancestors did not take kindly to their torture. They continued their acts of rebellion through sabotage at work or by running away into hardly accessible swamps, forests and mountains to continue the fight for their freedom. Africans cursed their tormentors in work songs; communicated with each other, even under severe restrictions, with body language and signs, and transformed their religious indoctrination to their advantage by replacing, for instance, ‘Heaven’ with ‘Africa’ in Christian songs about the joys of heaven. Flying away home to Zion and crossing the river Jordan was translated by slaves to mean the joyful return home to Africa through the Atlantic. Death was seen as a welcome means of returning to Africa with that, African slaves conquered the fear of torture and death. While these great African were fithting for African emancipation: Toussaint:’Ouverture, Bourkman, Dessalines, Henry Christophje, Gabriel Prosser, Paul Cuffer, Jean-Pierre Bayer, Denmark Vassey, Nat Turner, Frederick Doughlass, Marting Delany, Edward W. Blayden, Thomas Hodgkin, Pat Singleton, Henry McNeal Tubman, Sojourner Truth… Europe started their scramble for Africa, which is effect was the transformation of the practice of slavery into the system of colonialism, enslaving the Africans in their own countries.
Today, over 400 years after our slavery began, nearly a hundred years into the Pan-African Movement, some forty years after independence, twenty fiver years after the sixth congress, Blacks all over the world still constitute the dregs of the societies in which they live. We remain the poorest, most neglected, most abused of humanity and yet the most helpless because of our inability to work together as a family.
The only industry available to us in the last five hundred years has been to be born and captured into slavery, colonialism and racism and our exploiters/tormentors are not about to relent yet, even as we visibly reel in pains, helpless and defeated into the troughs of their magic year 2000AD.
Of course, they let us survive to aspire again and again to rise from our broken back because without hope we are dead and they need us barely alive to continue to cheaply and passively oil and turn the wheels of their steady advancement at our peril.
In the last one hundred years, we have fought back with what is being described as intellectual Pan-Africanism, which received a boost with its series of congresses from 1900. Our Pan-African Movement pioneers include: Henry Sylvester Willkenyatta, Nnamde Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah.
Europe grudgingly granted some African countries “flag independence,” in the 1960s with deafening fanfare to distract our attention while they stayed on in the guise of neo-colonialism. Now their cartels bestride our continent like giant Octopuses, crushing and absorbing all indigenous initiatives thrown in their paths.
Our era of intellectual Pan-Aficanism also produced heroes and heroines like Martin Luther King, Mary McLeod Bethune and Malcolm X. it has given us geniuses like Cheikh Anta Diop, George G.M. James, John Henrik Clarke, Walter Rodney, Chancellor Williams, Yosefben Jockannan and hundreds of others, whose works are right now changing the ugly face of world’s scholarship by challenging centuries-old White lies and dogmas, to blaze a new path of hope for all mankind
MOBEE OLUSEGUN ST.ANDREWS.
Mobee Tours International.
E-mail: segmobiz@yahoo.com
Tel: 2348033774188
Website: www.mobeetoursinternational.4t.com
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