Tag: South Africa

The Slave Trade: The Myths We Prefer Not to Question

THE SLAVE TRADE: UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS, THEN AND NOW

In my historical novel, The Boys from Umgazana (https://frankcollierauthor.com/), the slave trade appears largely in passing.

While researching the broader historical backdrop, I realised how shallow my own understanding of the slave trade had been.

Like many people, I assumed the issue had been settled long ago — neatly wrapped up when Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807.

That belief is wrong. Seriously wrong.

Slavery did not end. It sanitised its name. Today, we call it human trafficking.

Slavery predates recorded history and has existed in almost every civilisation known to man.

This article focuses on slavery in Africa because Africa sits at the centre of several of the world’s largest and longest-running slave systems.

THE SLAVE TRADE – THE IMAGE WE PREFER TO REMEMBER

In the modern Western imagination, slavery has become almost synonymous with the transatlantic slave trade:

Black Africans packed into the holds of ships, crossing the Atlantic in conditions so brutal that many never survived the journey.

The villains seem obvious: European ship owners, brutal captains, sadistic plantation owners, and overseers armed with whips and dogs.

From the mid-eighteenth century onward, abolitionists rightly condemned these men and eventually forced Britain to deploy the Royal Navy to hunt down slave ships across the Atlantic.

However, this familiar story focuses almost entirely on the final two links in the slave supply chain: the transporters and the buyers.

It rarely examines the first link.

WHO SOLD THE SLAVES?

Slavery in Africa did not begin with Europeans.

For centuries before the first Atlantic slaver sailed, traders exported human beings from Africa:

Northwards across the Sahara to North Africa and the Mediterranean.
Eastwards through the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
And later, westwards across the Atlantic.

The numbers remain staggering, even when historians use conservative estimates.

Between 700 and 1900 AD, traders sold roughly 12 million Africans through trans-Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean routes — an average of 10,000 people per year.

Between 1500 and 1900 AD, traders shipped a similar number across the Atlantic — closer to 30,000 per year.

During the eighteenth century alone, slave traders removed 6.5 million people from sub-Saharan Africa — about 12.5 percent of the population at the time.

These figures exclude the countless deaths caused by forced marches through jungles and deserts, as well as the bodies dumped overboard during ocean crossings.

Astonishingly, most enslaved Africans never left Africa.

Here lies the uncomfortable truth.

SLAVERY WAS NOT A ONE-WAY TRADE

So who supplied the slaves?

The answer remains unavoidable. African tribal chiefs and elites did.

They captured, sold, and traded other Africans through long-established systems of warfare, tribute, and commerce.

Why does no one condemn these so-called sacred ancestors?

THE BARBARY STATES AND THE SLAVE TRADE

While traders sold Africans to the south, east, and west, in the northern hemisphere Europeans were the target.

From the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, pirates and slavers operating from the Barbary states — modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya — captured an estimated one to one-and-a-half million Europeans.

These victims were not only sailors and fishermen.

They included farmers, women, and children dragged from coastal towns in Italy, Spain, France, England, Ireland, and even Iceland.

THE SACK OF BALTIMORE, 1631

In June 1631, raiders emptied the small Irish town of Baltimore in County Cork.

Barbary corsairs led by a Dutch renegade, Jan Janszoon — better known as Murat Reis — arrived under cover of darkness.

More than two hundred armed men crept ashore.

They torched houses.

Terrified inhabitants fled their beds.

Within minutes, the raiders forced over 200 men, women, and children onto ships and carried them to the slave markets of Algiers.

Only two or three ever returned to Ireland.

The captives faced a grim fate: galley slavery for the men and sexual slavery for the women.

ENDING THE BARBARY SLAVE TRADE

After the Napoleonic Wars, the American Navy — followed by British and Dutch forces — attacked Algiers and freed many captives.

Moral arguments failed.

Naval gunfire succeeded.

However, slavery in North Africa only ended decisively in 1830, when France invaded Algeria and dismantled the system by force.

MODERN SLAVERY: THE TRADE CONTINUES

Fast-forward to the present.

According to the International Labour Organization, between 45 and 50 million people worldwide live under conditions of slavery.

Modern slavery includes forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and the sale of children.

The defining feature remains simple: the removal of choice — the inability to walk away.

In South Africa alone, the Global Slavery Index estimates that around 158,000 people lived in modern slavery in 2021.

Strong evidence suggests that the problem persists — and continues to grow.

SO WHAT IS BEING DONE?

South Africa, like many countries, has strong laws on paper.

In practice, authorities enforce them weakly, inconsistently, and often corruptly.

Political interference and institutional incompetence cripple the machinery of justice.

Slavery, like many other forms of crime, flourishes where consequences disappear.

And it will continue until voters install an honest and competent government.

The good news is that we have local government elections later this year!

There is a famous quote: “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve”.

I think we deserve better than the current sorry lot!

Make sure your show up and vote!

Redhouse and Democracy

Note the politically correct headline. The original was Redhouse and Kleptocracy.

The evil Apartheid regime handed over a country which was functioning pretty well to the benefit mainly of the minority, to the liberation movements which have brought the nation to the brink of “failed state” status for the benefit of a very much smaller minority.

This is not the place to record the decline and fall of South Africa, I don’t have enough terabytes to do the subject justice.

So let’s concentrate on the good times!

Number One! 27th April 1994.     The amazing election during which, for the first time ever, black, brown, yellow and white South Africans took their places in queues of voters peacefully trundling through the voting booths. As a volunteer official in St Agnes Church Hall, Swartkops, it was a moving experience to see the happiness on the faces of people who had never been able to vote before, and to feel the sense of relief that the prophets of doom and bloodshed were proved wrong.

In May that year, Queen Elizabeth II and President Mitterand of France officially opened the Channel Tunnel between England and France, at a cost of 16 Billion Sterling in today’s money, well over budget. Believe it or not, the first plan for such a tunnel was drawn up by a Frenchman in 1802!

Number Two! 24th June 1995.     The Springboks beat the New Zealand 15-12  in the Final of the Rugby World Cup, played at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. A drop goal in extra time by flyhalf Joel Stransky did the trick. For the second time in two years the nation stood united.

In Europe, NATO bombed the Bosnian Serbs back to the negotiating table. Peace gradually broke out.

In 1996 Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal, the Taliban took over Afghanistan, and Bafana Banana actually won the Africa Cup of Nations! Its been a downhill slide for our football since then.

Now there is a long gap until 2007 during which the ANC denigrated from a liberation movement with international backing into one of the modern world’s most obnoxious packs of plunderers. Their version of governance is well described as “state capture”.

In 1997, Princess Diana of Wales died in a car accident in Paris, and the sound barrier was broken on land.

USA President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 and Google was founded. Who could have foreseen that Google would become the go to place to find out just about anything! A famine in North Korea killed an estimated 2.5 million people. The municipality handed over the library to the Village and it has provided a valuable service ever since, thanks to the volunteers who run the show.

The following year the world population hit six billion and the Euro currency was introduced.

The first day of the 21st century and the 3rd millennium was celebrated worldwide on New Year’s Day 2000, even though according to the calendar it was a year early.

In 2001, Wikipedia was launched, the first iPod was introduced and the September 11 attacks on the twin towers in New York horrified the watching world. Less than a month later, the USA and the UK invaded Afghanistan and kicked out the Taliban.

In 2002 Queen Elizabeth celebrated fifty years as monarch of sixteen countries and Brazil won the football world cup.

The USA invaded Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein in 2003, starting an eight-year war. Although it doesn’t seem to have stopped yet? The very last VW Beetle came off the production line in Mexico and the Concorde made its last supersonic flight.

On the sporting front, South Africa managed to misread the Duckworth-Lewis method of scoring for shortened games and got bundled out in the group stages of the tournament they hosted. Since then the word “chokers” sticks to the team like poo to a baby’s blanket.

Facebook was born in 2004 and the Redhouse Yacht Club celebrated its Centenary with a major regatta and very enjoyable dinner.

The Boxing Day Tsunami happened in the Indian Ocean, leading to a quarter million deaths. The outgoing tide reversed in the Swartkops River and Port Elizabeth harbour looked like a washing machine in action.

In 2005, YouTube was founded, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf of Mexico and 80 000 died in an earthquake in Kashmir.

Italy won the football world cup in 2006 and Pluto was downgraded from a proper planet to a dwarf planet. You just can’t get away from these rating agencies, can you Cyril?

Number 3! 20th October 2007. The Springboks beat England 15-6 in Paris. For the third time in thirteen years South Africa became one nation, united in pride and happiness.

Elsewhere, the iPhone appeared, and the sub-prime financial crisis engulfed the world.

The following year signalled the start of the Great Recession as stock markets fell dramatically.

In 2009, Bitcoin was introduced, and the world’s tallest skyscraper was completed in Dubai.

Number 4! The 2010 FIFA World Cup was held in South Africa. It was a very happy time and the rugby-mad country loyally supported the games. Let’s forget about the corruption surrounding the event, this is SA. Port Elizabeth scored the best-looking stadium of them all.

Haiti lost 230 000 people in an earthquake, Greece defaulted on its debts, Ireland endured a financial crisis, and the iPad and Instagram were launched.

2011 was a hectic year. An earthquake devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, the Arab Spring revolts upset North Africa and the Middle East, a 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a killer tsunami and a nuclear power plant meltdown, China’s Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, the world’s longest, opened for traffic, the world population hit seven billion, two very nasty people got their just reward, Osama bin Laden shot dead by US Navy Seals and Muammer Gaddafi dying in a ditch in Libya, all of this topped off by the fairy-tale wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Whew!

In 2012 the Higgs Boson was discovered. Sorry they lost it in the first place. A mad fellow called Felix Baumgartner jump out of a helium balloon and fell 39km to land safely after breaking the sound barrier. Nutter! Queen Elizabeth II celebrated sixty years on the throne.

The following year, a rock with a mass of about 13000 tons, and 20m in diameter, entered the atmosphere over Russia and exploded with a force thirty times that of the Hiroshima atom bomb. 1500 people were injured by flying glass as windows imploded, many more had to change their underpants.

2014 was not a happy year for the aviation industry. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared without trace. The little evidence available points to its final resting place being in the Indian Ocean west of Australia. Air Malaysia also lost Flight 17, shot down over the Ukraine, an Indonesian plane came down in the Java Sea, and an Algerian plane crashed in Mali. On the ground, the evil ISIS movement began its reign of terror in Iraq.

China ended its 25-year “one child per family” policy in 2015. It didn’t make much difference because the cost of living in China doesn’t lend itself to having lots of children. Liquid water was found on Mars, no reports of whisky as yet. Climate change became a major topic of discussion worldwide, but not much meaningful action has resulted.

In 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, sparking the biggest internal uproar since World War II. In an episode which properly belongs in the Mad Magazine, Americans voted in Donald Trump as president of the USA.

Mother Nature began to fight back against mankind in 2017. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria devastated parts of the USA, Centra America and the Caribbean. Thousands died. Then Mexico was struck by two earthquakes which killed 350 people. ISIS was declared defeated and Mad Bob Mugabe was finally ousted from power in Zimbabwe. The first known interstellar object, named ‘Oumuamua, which means “first distant messenger” in Hawaiian, wandered into the solar system.

In 2018, the first monkeys were cloned, and there were reports of genetically cloned humans in China. I wouldn’t have thought they were short of people. The worst disgrace ever to have been elected to office in South Africa, Jacob Zuma, was forced to resign. Earthquakes and tsunamis caused thousands of deaths in the East. France won the football world cup in Russia.

Number 5! 2nd November 2019. Against all the odds, South Africa beat England 32-12 in probably the greatest victory of the modern era. Led by Siya Kolisi and coached by Rassie Erasmus (both from “Die Baai”), a happy herd of Springboks blew away the Poms, who came away with the prize for total lack of sportsmanship.

China landed a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon in 2019. So we can’t see what the buggers are up to. ISIS lost the last of its territory, but I doubt we have seen the end of them yet. Boris Johnson became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. During World War II the UK and the USA were led by great men, Churchill and Roosevelt. Now they have Johnson and Trump. How art the mighty fallen!

Then we got to 2020 and the coronavirus struck, and South Africa banned the sale of alcohol!

This has led to the rapid development of many home-built stills producing a wide variety of very drinkable brands. Let’s hope this continues after the ban is lifted.

You will have noticed that I have recorded the population rise from billion to billion as we have gone along. The respected Lancet journal very recently announced its projections for population growth for the rest of this century. What they have to say does not make happy reading for the “old” world.

They estimate that the world population will peak in 2064 at around 9.7 billion, and then decline to about 8.8 billion by 2100, by which time fertility rates in 183 of 195 countries will not be high enough to maintain current populations.

Populations are predicted to decline dramatically in many countries. For example, Portugal will drop from 11 million to 5 million. At the other end of the scale, China will drop from 1.4 billion to 732 million in 2100.

Bucking the global trend, sub-Saharan Africa’s population will triple from an estimated 1.03 billion in 2017 to 3.07 billion in 2100. North Africa and the Middle East is the only other region predicted to have a larger population in 2100 (978 million) than in 2017 (600 million).

So just under half the world’s population will inhabit Africa and the Middle East.

To quote “The 21st century will see a revolution in the story of our human civilisation. Africa and the Arab World will shape our future, while Europe and Asia will recede in their influence. By the end of the century, the world will be multipolar, with India, Nigeria, China, and the US the dominant powers. This will truly be a new world, one we should be preparing for today.”

The logical conclusion is that the Old World (Europe) will be forced to open its gates to the African and Middle Eastern hordes, because it won’t have the labour to keep the wheels turning.

The civilization which evolved in Europe over many centuries will face its sternest challenge yet.

To be blunt, Africa and the Middle East are not exactly models of progressive and effective civilization. Anybody read Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”?    

What of Redhouse during the post-apartheid period?

The truth is that the Village which came into existence as a sporting venue a hundred and fifty years ago, and evolved into one of those “last outposts of the British Empire”, during which time it developed a unique way of life remembered with great affection by so many people around the world, has long been in retreat from those halcyon days.

It remains the ideal place to bring up children and dogs. It does its best to maintain it numerous traditions. But the number of its guardians gets smaller every year. Newcomers to the Village are not necessarily interested in its history or getting involved in maintaining its structures.

Entire generations of Village children have moved out of the country. Redhouse in its present state gives us a glimpse of the future of Europe. I guess traditions are only kept going if they resonate with the majority of the population.

However, nostalgia for a bygone age is quickly laid aside when we contemplate the concept of “tipping points”, those relatively sudden events which call us out of the “noiseless tenor of our way”.

The coronavirus is one such tipping point. It came as a shock to most people, but if you know anything about the past you will realise that it is just one of numerous plagues the human race has endured throughout recorded history and almost certainly before that. And it was predicted by a number of scenario planners and medical experts. It will pass.

Much scarier is climate change.

Mother Nature is getting angry!

In 1950, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere breached 300 parts per million for the first time in 800 000 years. Seventy years later, we are very close to 420ppm.

The more CO² in the atmosphere, the more the Earth warms, the more the ice melts, the more extreme storm events occur, the more droughts extend, the more species go extinct, and so on and so on.

Global sea level rose about 200 millimetres in the 20th century. During the last two decades, the rate has nearly doubled and is accelerating slightly every year.

The human race will react with positive counter measures as best it can. Fresh water will need efficient management. South Africa has a water scarcity problem. The first step in solving this problem is to remove the ANC from power so that people with expertise can be appointed to relevant positions, instead of the corrupt clowns currently in charge.

Finally, a message for the liquor entrepreneurs of the Village, I would like a glass of Bumbo please!

The pirates’ attractive alternative to the Royal Navy Grog, made with 2 parts of dark rum to one part of orange juice,  ½ teaspoon of Grenadine, ¼ teaspoon each of nutmeg and cinnamon! Cheers!

Cultures in Conflict

Genetic science holds that modern man is the end result of a single happy moment during the march of evolution when the ancestral mom and dad (Homo Erectus?) became responsible for a lot of school fees.

How many thousands of generations back this event took place is open to debate; working on an average of 50 generations per millennium for say half a million years, that’s 25,000 great grannies.

Discoveries during the very recent past have complicated the issue; apparently about 20 percent of the Neanderthal genome survives in modern humans of non-African ancestry; Neanderthals had bigger brains then modern man, some had red hair and blue eyes, and they behaved pretty much like their cousins, so-called modern man, i.e. badly.

Recently, DNA taken from a little finger bone found in a cave in Siberia identified a new type of early human; these Denisovans were different to Neanderthals, and people in Papua New Guinea carry some of their genes.

Not to mention the hobbit-like race of humans who survived until about 12,000 years ago in Indonesia. In fact, related specimens might still survive deep in the jungle according to local myths.

Whatever happened from a biological viewpoint pales into insignificance compared to the differences in culture which arose over such a vast spread of time.

It is very difficult to recreate the mindset of people who lived even half a century ago. Hey, that’s me!

I write this while looking at a lovely view of the Hauraki Gulf upon which the first world city of Auckland lies.

I can check my e-mail, bank balances, newsfeeds and social media. I am just about as connected to my day-to-day world back in South Africa as if I was physically there – you actually have to make a decision not to stay in touch if you really want a complete break.

In 1964, radio broadcasts spread the news but information from SA was probably sparse; type-written letters arrived after a three week ocean voyage on a diesel powered mail ship.  In 1914, it took a while longer as ships were slower, coal-fired steamers. In 1864, the post travelled on lovely clippers which raced across the Southern Ocean with acres of canvas set. In 1814 Auckland didn’t exist.

We have a totally connected globe – the technology is brilliant – and it gets better all the time, exponentially.

I can speak to my family in four different countries in both hemispheres simultaneously – and as we come from the same family, and therefore share the same culture, it is as if we were all in the same room.

But – we can physically be in the presence of people from different cultures, and immediately we bump into barriers.

The Maori in New Zealand arrived in New Zealand about 1280 AD; once they had wiped out the indigenous wildlife they discovered that life was hard without free food; their society evolved into  groups of extended families (whanau) living in villages for mutual protection; these villages eventually formed part of a clan (hapu) of inter-related families, which in turn belonged to a tribal group (iwi); after the mayhem which ensued upon the arrival of large numbers of British emigrants, all parties settled down more or less amicably and they all swear allegiance to New Zealand as a country.

In South Africa the situation is much more complicated.

We identify with our families, then our close friends, and at the next level up with our official race group (as recorded by the democratic government of South Africa, proud owner of the world’s most advanced constitution, specifically designed for a non-racial nation).

But we can also be defined by the rugby franchise we support (in the case of at least two of the official language groups) or a soccer franchise (for the rest of the tribes); loyalty to the country generally only surfaces when national sports teams are playing, although in the case of rugby, large sections of one particular race group shout for the opposition due to the enormous chips they carry on their shoulders.

Then we have the economic divide, which can be broadly defined as the super rich, the middle class, and the vast masses of unemployed and unemployable living in the townships and rural areas.

The super rich have the means to skip the country when the latter finally rise in revolt a la France in 1789.

The middle class wishes it had.

And Ju Ju– the latest in a long line of African rabble rousers – waits in the wings to lead the revolution which will take the evolution of South African society to a new low point.

So why is it that when people of different cultures are drawn together, there are some fundamental differences that – language barrier apart – are very difficult to detect, understand and assimilate?

Different cultures appear have some basic differences in their value systems.

For example, how did the concept of land ownership develop in Europe and Asia but was absent in many indigenous societies?

The answer must surely partly relate to population density; if you have a whole continent to roam about in, e.g. a few thousand Aboriginals in the vast outback of Australia, the concept of personal ownership would be meaningless; whereas in the crowded slums of Europe and the countless paddy fields of China, the little patch of land that was all you had to sustain you and your family, would be most jealously guarded.

Fast forward to the 21st century – the 7 billion strong population of the world is many times more than the Earth in its natural state can support.

But so far, modern technology has kept up the supply of food at affordable rates, except that from 2002 food prices began to rise in real terms.

The real problem we face today is the provision of sufficient food and water to an ever increasing global population – which of the different world cultures is best equipped to handle this impending crisis?

The answer must surely be, the culture with the best work ethic.

There are lots of cultures with healthy work ethics; across Europe, Australasia, the Americas; some are stronger and more organised than others; but in general, when faced with a major threat, these cultures will react by taking steps to counteract the danger; they may lose casualties in the battle, but they will give it their best shot.

Then you have Africa; and offshoots like Haiti.

The following observations will, of course, be branded racist; if that is your immediate reaction, try to see through the veil of political correctness, and prove them wrong.

African culture does have a work ethic; individual Africans have demonstrated brilliance in many fields; but these commendable efforts seem to be the result of individual initiative, perhaps backed by close family support, and exposure to Western education and culture.

African workers – when left alone by the parasitic unions to which too many belong – work well when led well; but in most cases, the leaders are non-African.

A good example is the current Ebola pandemic; doctors and soldiers from the Western world are flown in to counteract the threat; what would the death toll be if the crisis had been left to Africa?

The vast majority of Africa’s people appear to remain immersed in an age old culture of “subsistence existence”, to coin a phrase.

Working hard and working smart is not seen as a viable route to riches; the rule seems to be, “if you can’t take, break it”; thus corruption hangs like a pall over the continent; a fine example is surely South Africa, which is headed inexorably down the same road as Zimbabwe.

How is it possible that this country, armed with the world’s finest constitution, ends up after twenty years of “independence”, with a President who gets away with stealing the equivalent of the United Kingdom’s annual aid to SA to fund his homestead, and an education system ranked 133 out of 142 by the World Economic Forum?

SA’s future is being plotted by politicians without vision beyond their personal bank balances; when the crisis comes, will they have a plan to provide food and water to the helpless millions in the townships? Judging by the recent water “outage” in Gauteng, I seriously doubt it.

So enjoy a beer while you can!