The trans-atlantic trade in captive Africans – the shameful episode in the history of humanity-should rightfully be condemned because, as His Excellency President Bharrat Jagdeo said, that was “one of the most repugnant industries known to the history of humanity.”
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th through to the 19th centuries.
The vast majority of slaves involved in the Atlantic trade were Africans from the central and western parts of the continent, who were sold by African slave dealers to European traders, who then transported them to the colonies in North and South America. There, the slaves were made to labour on coffee, cocoa, cotton and sugar plantations, in gold and silver mines, in rice fields,in the construction industry, timber, and shipping or in houses to work as servants.

The shippers were, in order of scale, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and Americans. The traders had outposts on the African coast where they purchased people from African slave-traders. Current estimates are that about 12 million were shipped across the Atlantic, although the actual number of people taken from their homes is considerably higher.
The slave trade is sometimes called the Maafa by African and African-American scholars, meaning “holocaust” or “great disaster” in Swahili. Some scholars, such as Marimba Ani and Maulana Karenga use the terms African Holocaust or Holocaust of Enslavement.
Slavery was one element of a three-part economic cycle — the triangular trade and its Middle Passage — which ultimately involved four continents, four centuries and millions of people.
While every Guyanese should celebrate Emancipation Day, not only as a day when a people were freed from bondage; but also because that day heralded a covenant of statehood through a movement that eventuated into a beauteous rainbow of nationhood that is the Guyanese people.
All Guyanese people of African descent, during this year dedicated to them, while taking cognizance of the importance of strengthening their racial identity and embracing their cultural roots, need also to recognize their essential, unique contribution, peculiar only to their racial and cultural characteristics, to the resplendently beautiful interweave that adds to the lustrously resplendent dynamics of our social and cultural topography in Guyana’s mosaic of nationhood.
Thus, while that “most repugnant industry” should rightfully be condemned by all right-thinking peoples, it created synergies for the evolutionary process that eventuated in a Guyanese nation; that gave birth to a Michael Jackson, an Oprah Winfrey, a Walter Rodney, a Sam Hinds, a Martin Luther King; the peoples of the West Indian confederation of nations; the pluralism in the nationhood of Brazil, Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela; the great Afro-American experience – in all its dynamics and dynamism.
In the conclusion of his statement, the President acknowledged the contributions made by Africans in the development of modern civilization, when he said: “We must acknowledge that this inhuman enterprise accumulated great material wealth from the trafficking of peoples of African descent.
“We must recognise that the trade in captive Africans was the crucial factor for the economic development of Europe and for the shaping of the modern America, the Caribbean and of course Guyana.
“Today we must remember those who survived and mourn those who did not. Today we pledge, we resolve that we will never forget the African Holocaust.
“Today the Government and People of Guyana join with progressive forces worldwide in promoting October 12 being declared African Holocaust Memorial Day.”
History is an evolutionary process – with all its contours and resplendence; and yes, with very real episodes that are transitive processes to growth and development in the family of humanity in this global village called the Earth.
So the slave trade is a two-faced coin – one face depicting absolute beauty; while the other depicts all the ugliness inherent in the human condition.
In effect, during the commemorative activities marking African Holocaust Memorial Day, while reflecting on the evils of “one of the most repugnant industries known to the history of humanity”, we should also recognize that our nationality – in all its rich diversity and acculturated magnificence, would have been all the poorer if not for that most shameful episode in the history of mankind.