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Skip Gates
recently re-ignited an old controversy by stating that Africans are
also culpable in the shame that was the transatlantic slave trade
because they were active participants who relied on the trade for
revenue. I agree with Professor Gates. To the extent that African
states sold off Africans, they are just as culpable as the Western
states that bought Africans as slaves. That they are too destitute to
pay should not absolve them from culpability and responsibility.

Should Africa be
compensated for slavery? Slavery was horrible. It is perhaps the
everlasting perversion of this evil that a reparations program is
virtually impossible to implement. I do not believe that the West
should stop giving aid to Africa; however, it is fair to say that over
90 per cent of the aid is being stolen or wasted. At the very least,
Western donors should invest in meaningful accountability measures to
ensure that these funds are going to the intended targets. In the
meantime, what is happening in most of black Africa is black on black
slavery. In Gates’ essay, he shares this gem: “Did these Africans know
how harsh slavery was in the New World? Actually, many elite Africans
visited Europe in that era, and they did so on slave ships following
the prevailing winds through the New World…African monarchs also sent
their children along these same slave routes to be educated in Europe.”
This mirrors what is going on today in Nigeria. Our leaders preside
over decaying classrooms that are too good for their children,
administer hospitals that are not good enough for their hogs and have
built palaces on what were once parks and zoos. They and their children
have to flee the hell they built to go taste a bit of heaven in Europe
and America. Our leaders should be shot.

A while back, I
watched Gates’ documentary on the slave kingdoms and I remember an
engaging, and effective presentation. In West Africa, African narrators
described to Gates and emotional African American tourists how Africans
captured other Africans from the hinterlands to the coast and sold them
to the white man for profit. It is a harrowing narrative and we must be
filled with compassion for Mr Gates whose great great grandmother came
from those parts as a slave. But then, as some scholars have asked
fairly, were these Africans? In other words, did they see themselves as
selling off their brothers and sisters? My view is that they were
selling off enemy captives. You don’t sell your brother. Identity is
dynamic. How “Africans” saw themselves then is different from how
“Africans” see themselves today. That would need to be factored into
any discussion of the role of people of African descent in the slave
trade.

What does it mean
to be African? My grandmother died in the late 70s not knowing she was
African. She died not knowing she was Nigerian. She did have a strong
sense of self and of community. Her friends and enemies were close by;
in nearby hamlets and villages, where strange people lived with strange
customs. Her daughter – my mother – married one of those strange
people, my father, who came from the village next door, strange people
who ate strange things and did stranger things. You could walk from my
father’s village to my maternal land in 20 minutes if you took the
little path. My father loved to crack ribald jokes at the expense of
another village next door. In those times, I could see him going next
door to capture slaves. They were not his relatives. They were simply
black.

The myth of a
monolithic Africa is an invention of the other to compromise our
humanity. Colour confounds and confuses everybody apparently. We are
suffering the crimes of a construct that never existed, save in the
minds of Westerners. An entire continent of (former) states has now
been lumped into one big fat state called Africa. The unintended
purpose of this broad brush has been to further dehumanise people of
colour. At the forefront of this pack of the prejudiced are white
liberal do-gooders who rush to douse any debate with patronising
platitudes about our humanity. The subtext: Africans did some awful
things but they lack the complexity to be responsible for their
actions; they had no idea, poor cute Africans.

The other point that is not made is that despite the protestations
of even the most rabid Pan-Africanists, Africans have been acculturated
by the dominant culture. The dominant culture says a drop of black
blood in you makes you black. That rule is the most effective and
unchallenged rejection of our humanity, a permanent stamp on our
“other” passport. Why is Skip Gates black? Why is he not white? Because
the dominant culture says he is not. Now, that is racist. Let the man
be whatever he wants to be. Not that he minds being black, but the
world is browning. Screw boundaries. The Man Above is not through with
us yet. He is too busy laughing his racist head off.