The real slave master still alive

THE EDITOR: It is good to reflect on one’s history. And this is what we are doing on this Emancipation Day. We are reflecting or reminiscing on our history. This history centres around a time of great deliverance of the African people from slavery in the West Indies.

A large number of African people, as we all are aware, were uprooted from their homeland and brought to the West Indies as slaves. They formed a very cheap and vital labour force on the sugar plantations.

The Europeans were the ones who were involved in this exploitation. But God, who is a merciful God, moved through His people to bring deliverance to the African slaves. Just as how God moved through Moses in the past to deliver the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.

God moved in the life of men such as William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was a white European lawyer. He was rich and well educated and his fight against the European powers reaffirmed the position that God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.

Wilberforce gave his life in the fight for the freedom of the African slaves. And it was all because of his conversion to Christianity. He saw all men as equal. He died one month before the Act of Emancipation was passed in 1833.

The struggle of Wilberforce was impacted by the writing of Dr Eric Williams, who argued that the slaves were not freed due to the lobbying of Wilberforce and others. The slaves were freed because “sugar was no longer king.” Williams presented an economic explanation for emancipation.

Whatever view is looked at, the superior view shows that God was at work in the freedom of the African slaves in 1833. For God is in history and He is also in the present and the future and one needs to see Him.

Looking at this cruelty of the white Europeans against the Africans stirs up anger in most African descendants. It puts anger and vengeance in the African man towards the white man. Nelson Mandela shows the African man how to deal with that anger and vengeance. This anger and vengeance go very far, even to the rejection of the Bible. Some Africans sees the Bible as the white man's book.

But God was present. We sometimes are unable to understand/see God in all of this cruelty. But He is present and working to our benefit. God took 430 years before He sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. And for 200 years the cruelty to the Africans lasted in the West Indies. Twenty millions Africans were loaded on ships, chained in the belly of those ships and packed as sardines. Ten million died on the Middle Passage. This was the “African Holocaust.”

After all this suffering by the African forefathers and having the experience of the hand of God in their deliverance, one will expect a learning curve which should lead to progression. One’s history must work for one’s good and betterment. This has not happened in the African diaspora. One police commissioner's lament on the state of the African diaspora is, “The prison population is black/African. The victims are Africans.”

Many Africans are using their history as an excuse for not achieving their full potential. And some are using their history as a crutch to gain sympathy.

The Africans have not learnt from their history and will continue to perish, in the same way that the Israelites, who did not learn from theirs and perished in the wilderness. Once a year they put on their African garb and make a pose. They make a shout that they are free from the shackles of slavery. But are they really a free people?

The Africans can claim to be free of European slavery, but they need to be reminded of the greatest slave master in the world today. This slave master is alive and active and he is called sin. And for sure, people have a real struggle with sin.

Rev ROBERT DASH

Tableland