Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has raised the alarm that slave trade is back on African soil with a one-sided ferocity, all the more obscene and blasphemous for being camouflaged as a religious mandate.
He noted that “Chibok – plus its insatiable clones and enabling environment – places a searing question mark on Africa’s authentic self recovery after centuries of being mere annotations in the histories of others, to be expunged at will.
Indeed those others have evolved the name calling ploy to ward off, or wrong foot alternative propositions on such a vast land mass, and to such an extent that I have sometimes wondered if there was an undeclared contest for the most exotic or disingenuous. The Dark Continent. Terra incognita.
“The world, including its global institutions had better wake up to the fact that the slave trade is back on African soil with a one-sided ferocity, all the more obscene and blasphemous for being camouflaged as a religious mandate. Chibok – plus its insatiable clones and enabling environment – places a searing question mark on Africa’s authentic self recovery after centuries of being mere annotations in the histories of others, to be expunged at will.
“Indeed those others have evolved the name calling ploy to ward off, or wrong foot alternative propositions on such a vast land mass, and to such an extent that I have sometimes wondered if there was an undeclared contest for the most exotic or disingenuous. The Dark Continent. Terra incognita.”
Soyinka stated this in his keynote to the United Nations’ annual ceremony in observance of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, under the theme: “Acknowledge the past.
Repair the present. Build a future of dignity and justice,” held on Tuesday, March 25, at UN Headquarters in New York. The ceremony was held as an official plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly).
In the keynote titled “Remembrance, and the Reparatory Ethos, 2025” Soyinka noted that there exists a grave lacuna in the concept of crimes against African humanity, stressing that “it is time that we either speak holistically in our approach to slavery or else issue certificates of retroactive immunity to all, and for all time.”
He said: “It is so frustratingly obvious: if I cannot walk on my own ancestral soil, to my own inner and outward rhythm, to my own chants, in celebration of my spirituality, then, what am I but just another commodity among other spoils of conquest? Yet, the efforts persist. If descendants of Druids in the United Kingdom choose to parade through the streets of London and intone their chants all the way to Stonehenge, just what does this subtract from, or how does that contaminate the spiritual domain of the Archbishop of Canterbury? Why do some embark on retrograde steps that diminish the shared heritage of humanity? And so, we assert, the slavery era is by no means over, only morphed in structure and sustaining practicalities. The slavers are next door, and in the ascendant.
“Is it hyperbolic to warn that we are witnessing the inauguration of a twenty-first century slave trade? That we are being coerced to become collaborators in the new slavery venture? Unlike the originals who took risks, today’s slave raiders simply wait until defenceless children are gathered together in one place at the behest and/or compulsion of governance, parents and guardians, for the purpose of learning. The hyenas swoop upon the unsuspecting prey, cart them off, sequester them in forest and other holding pens, then call on families and governments to come and negotiate for them.”
He added, “the world, including its global institutions had better wake up to the fact that the slave trade is back on African soil with a one-sided ferocity, all the more obscene and blasphemous for being camouflaged as a religious mandate. Chibok – plus its insatiable clones and enabling environment – places a searing question mark on Africa’s authentic self recovery after centuries of being mere annotations in the histories of others, to be expunged at will.
Indeed those others have evolved the name calling ploy to ward off, or wrong foot alternative propositions on such a vast land mass, and to such an extent that I have sometimes wondered if there was an undeclared contest for the most exotic or disingenuous. The Dark Continent. Terra incognita.”
The ceremony is part of the United Nations’ unwavering commitment to raise awareness of the history of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, its impact on the modern world, and its legacies, including racism and prejudice. Other speakers invited include UN Secretary-General António Guterres; President of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly Philemon Yang, of Cameroon; Permanent Representatives of all 193 UN Members States; and a dynamic youth speaker.
