President John Dramani Mahama has described the transatlantic slave trade as a deliberate system aimed at stripping Africans of their humanity.
Speaking during the UN High-Level Special Event on Reparatory Justice, Mahama said, “The entire transatlantic slave trade was designed to deny African people their humanity. And that denial was premised on a racial hierarchy with no basis in fact or science, a racial hierarchy that deemed whiteness superior and blackness inferior.”
According to him, the atrocities committed during the four centuries of enslavement were rooted in viewing human beings as property.
“The myriads of injustices that were borne of slavery and carried forward into successive social frameworks, took place specifically because they were considered objects,” Mahama stressed.
He urged the global community to confront this history directly, stating that discussions about slavery must always begin with “reclaiming racial equality, the dignity of Africans, the humanity of our ancestors who were enslaved and, as a matter of course, our own humanity.”
Mahama recounted the brutal conditions enslaved Africans endured, from shackled voyages across the Middle Passage to dehumanizing auctions in the Americas and the Caribbean.
“They were inspected and appraised, like livestock. They were then placed on an auction block in front of an audience of potential buyers and sold to the highest bidder,”* he said.
According to the president, recognizing the deliberate nature of these crimes is critical to reparative justice.
“This resolution allows us, as a global community, to collectively bear witness to the plight of the 18 million men, women, and children whose homes, communities, names, families, hopes, dreams, futures, and lives were stolen from them over the course of four centuries.”
Mahama concluded by calling for global action, “Truth begins with language… When discussing slavery and its resulting institutions and practices, we must always start by reclaiming racial equality, the dignity of Africans, the humanity of our ancestors who were enslaved and, as a matter of course, our own humanity.”
Source: Starrfm.com.gh
