SLAVERY: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.... I want to appeal to everyone reading this article to please forgive me for taking them back on this retrospective journey of the sufferings, mindless torture,humiliation,indignities,servitude, persecutions and denial of the basic and fundamental rights metted on our African ancestors, brothers and sisters by the whitemen. For the sake of this article, I cant but review the importance of the Middle Passage; the sea route through which Africans were taken from their Native land to shores of the Carribbean and America where they were invariably destined to an existence of an institutional slavery. The journey was one of the most horrific aspects of the morally deplorable system of slavery. One cannot, ofcourse mention the Middle Passage without eliciting the horrors of tightly packed men,women and children...more tighter than the condition of Titus fishes in a sardine can; chained together, to keep them from rebelling, or from choosing the suicidal fate of jumping overboard. Olaudah Equiano, a boy kidnapped from his homeland in what is known today as Nigeria recalls in his memoir that the closeness of the place and the heat of the climate added to the number in the ship which was to be crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. Death was a constant threat as disease, murder, starvation, suicide, asphyxiation and severe depression rampantly claimed the lives of both African slaves and even the white crewman. As a glaring example of the sheer cruelty of the Europeans during that period, King Leopold 11, who ruled Belgium from 1865 to 1909, actually owned the Congo and all that was in it as part of his personal estate. By virtue of his supposedly blue blood, one man owned millions of Africans and all their land and chattels even though he resided thousands of miles away in a distant Europe. Such was this man’s inate brutality and monstrous power that he orchestrated and directed the slaughter of no less than 15 million Congolese Africans whilst he ruled from Brussels. This was so even though he never set his foot in Africa throughout his long reign. As a matter of fact many of his fellow Europeans actually applauded his actions and described him as a good example and indeed the epitome of all that was noble and all that ought to be expected from the very best of European royalty. If I may ask,what did the black man do to deserve this? What about Cecil Rhodes, the Englishman man who, according to European historians, ”literally and lawfully bought” a large part of southern Africa and all that was in it for the British Crown and who named that new frontier after himself by calling it ”Rhodesia”? It took over 100 years and a prolonged 15 year civil war (from 1964 to 1979) for the black Africans of that sad and beleaguered land to secure their rights, to be recognised and acknowledged as being human beings, to win the right to vote and to install democracy and majority rule.It was only after all this was achieved, in 1979, that the name ”Rhodesia” was dropped and changed to ”Zimbabwe”. Again, what about the sufferings of our black brothers and sisters in the Apartheid South Africa at the hands of the white Boers [Dutch]. Shamefully, the head of the Boers, Jan Van Riebeek, arrived on the South African coast and described Africans graphically described as ”stinking black dogs”. What about the humiliation and enslavement of our fellow black Africans at the hands of the Arabs of the Sudan, whether it be in Darfur or Southern Sudan for over 500 years. Readers, I dont know if any of you still remember the sheer barbarity and inhuman suffering that our brothers and sisters were subjected to in the Sugar cane fields and the coffee and banana Plantations of the West Indies and South America for many centuries. However, despite these Europeans cruelty and harsh treatments, yet God was still marvellous in changing over things for the Africans by giving us the zeal to fight for our freedom and independence. He provided Himself in our plights by giving us hope and indeed that God’s power still remains sure and ever present. He is ever faithful and His promises are ever sure. The morale of this tale...no matter how dark the night may be, ”joy comes in the morning”. To everyone expecting one thing or the other from God, the above is an affirmation of the undeniable fact that ultimately good always triumphs over evil. The magnificent example of God’s power, grace, manifold blessings and great mercy was proved again despite all we have suffered over the centuries in the hands of those that enslaved us and that viewed us as nothing more than worthless chattel, today it is a black man of free African descent, whose forefathers were never slaves and whose proud ancestry can be traced to modern-day Kenya on the east African coast, that is the most powerful man in the world. That man’s name is Barack Obama, President of the United States of America. The fact that such a man with such a heritage can be President of a nation that once prided itself on slavery and that once regarded the black man as nothing more than a glorified chimpanzee is a testimony to the power of God. Readers,do you know that African is not alone in this respect? Apart from the Jews, the Red Indians of North America, the Armenians of Asia and the Aborigines of Australia there is only one other group of people that have suffered almost as much as the African in the hands of other races in human history. Those people are those that were once known as the ”serfs”- the slave under-class of slavic Russia. Like the African, the serfs and peasants of Russia were also treated with disdain, regarded as chattel and viewed as being sub-human by the Tsars and ruling class of the Russian Empire. They also suffered immeasurably in their millions for thousands of years under successive Russian governments and rulers. Like the African, they were also ”owned” by their rulers and they lived or died at the pleasure of the nobility. Moreover, it is yet another irony of fate and another testimony to the awesome power of God that today the second most powerful man on the planet (and some would argue that he is actually the most powerful) is a proud, confident and strong-willed Russian whose ancestry can be traced directly to the serfs of mother Russia and who comes from equally humble origins. His name is Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation. The world has indeed been handed over by God to the seed and lineage of those that were once oppressed and that were once treated as sub-human by others but that is not good enough. Again, I want you all to take note of two other curious and interesting observations about these great persons~Putin and Obama. The historic suppression of their forefathers and ethnic stock are not the only things that they have in common. Permit me to explain and let us marvel together at the power of God. President Barack Obama’s paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was a cook to a British army officer. President Vladimir Putin’s paternal grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovitch Putin, was a cook in Lenin’s country home and later became a cook to Josef Stalin. Who would have ever thought that the grandson’s of two mere cooks and men from such a humble lineage could ever become the Presidents of the two most powerful countries on the planet at more or less the same time. This message is meant for us all...especially those holding one position or the other in their nations to learn from. People who had in the past chose to be autocrats despite the dishumanisation their ancestors and African brothers suffered in the hands of the Europeans.If you have forgetten, I know you wont missed the names of African leaders that clinged to power for long and subjected their followers to tensed hardship.People like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt (29yrs in power); Mummar Ghaddafi of Libya (41yrs in power); Abdel aziz Bouteflika of Algeria (11yrs in power); Omar Hassan al-Basir of Sudan(21yrs in power); Albert Benard Bongo of Gabon (41yrs in power)...we all know the end of these people. As the Bible says, ”the Lord exalts the humble and resists the proud”. The morale of the tale...never look down on anyone and treat all men and women, regardless of their level in life, with the respect that they deserve because only God knows tomorrow. The son or grandson of your servant today may well be the leader of your nation tomorrow. Finally, be not be deceived, for God is not mock...for whatsoever a man soweth, he shall also reap
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 14:20:04 +0000
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