Honouring ancestors, dealing with ancient hurts
DESCENDANTS of victims of the Nazi holocaust are now waging a billion dollar class suit against those industries which benefitted from Jewish `slave' labour during the second World War. In the United States, the direct descendants of slaves and the progeny of slave-holders are meeting and talking, not as victims and victors, but as dignified human beings conscious of past wrongs and seeking plateaus of understanding to a future dreamt by Martin Luther King Jr. Yesterday's ceremony of Holocaust Memorial Day, organised by the African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA) brought to the fore of our consciousness some of the range of human destruction waged during the centuries of the nefarious Middle Passage when the Atlantic Slave Trade tore Africans from their continent and made them into chattel and units of labour to fuel European industrialisation. This is the second year that Holocaust Memorial Day has been celebrated on such a large scale and we believe that it is a worthy and necessary ritual by which members of the Black Diaspora can honour their dead, and at the same time, reassert their right to life in this civilisation. Few people can imagine the terror that consumed the Africans during their crossing of the Atlantic. When Alex Hayley's runaway bestseller `Roots' was being filmed in the 1970s, the actors portraying African slaves suffered a curious experience. They could not endure the physical and mental degradation of lying shackled in the hold of ship with "just a coffin space". And even today, Black tourists of slave facilities at West African ports weep openly as they envisage their ancestors being herded like cattle while awaiting a ship to bring them as slaves to the Caribbean. African slavery must be the one of the greatest injustices in history. So-called decent, Christian-minded people owned slaves and justified their actions by insisting that the Black slave was genetically inferior and must be subjugated and converted for his own good. In his landmark work, `Black Jacobins', Trinidadian author CLR James documents some of the most barbaric acts perpetrated against Africans by White slave-masters to feed their cruel, inhuman appetites. A century and a half has passed since slaves were manumitted, yet the residue of the hurts and indignities endured by the ancestors still linger in the consciousness of the Black race. What is more worrying is the fact that there is systematic discrimination perpetrated on Black people in many countries of the world. We are constrained to recall the words of a 1980s writer who said the Black man has to be, in reality, the only true existentialist since he alone must create meaning in a world that is constantly forcing him to accept his non-existence. We knew, however, that Africans are not the only people who have suffered enslavement and genocide. Fifty years ago, Adolf Hitler set in motion a killing machine to exterminate the Jews, and in this decade the Tutsis suffered genocide in Central Africa. A day dedicated to the memory of the African holocaust is necessary for Black people to reflect on past hurts and to re-imagine the sacrifices of their ancestors. It is a time also for the descendants of slaves to show by their efforts and aspirations that they can rise above the historical pain and take their place proudly in the present civilisation.
|