West Africa Review (2000)

ISSN: 1525-4488

MONUMENTALITY, SCRIPTOCENTRISM AND OTHER MISMEASURES OF MAN

Oyekan Owomoyela

Africans unquestionably participated in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as procurers for the European slave buyers. They saw the activity as a commercial venture. It fitted in snugly with the long-standing practice of enslaving war captives and sometimes putting them to death. Selling the captives was, to the captors, a more sensible (because more profitable) and certainly more humane alternative to putting them to death. The simplistic comments about who sold whom into slavery and what level of guilt there should be ignores several facts. Who wound up as a slave was often a matter of fortune or chance, inasmuch as the captor could as easily have been the captive if the fortunes of the military engagement had been different. If de Souza (of Ouida), who wound up rich from his slaving activities, could himself have avoided being enslaved (because he was white) his children fathered with African women could easily have been enslaved. The African American descendant of slaves who accuses Africans of being descendants of the people who sold him could, had chance been different, have been the African being accused by an African American of being a descendant of an African slaver.

The comments and accusations also ignore the reality that the trans-Atlantic slave trade would have taken its course with or without the participation of Africans as suppliers. The history of European activities around the world, especially in the Americans, indicates that they would have done whatever it took to procure slaves. The collaboration of Africans made their tasks easier, admittedly, but they would have blasted their way into the interior and laid waste the land in order to get at their quarry.

It is disingenuous to suggest that the Africans who sold other Africans into slavery "knew what they were doing," that they knew the conditions in which slaves were held in the forts, that they knew the conditions in which they were transported across the ocean, or that they knew their fate in the new world. The forts were well defended and out of bounds for all but those who worked there. The entrance and exit were doors of no return. If the condition or fate of the slaves were generally known, what would account for the stories one hears (and celebrated in works like Maryse Conde's SEGU and to a lesser extent in Buchi Emecheta's THE FAMILY) about men who volunteered to go into slavery because the women they loved had been sold into slavery?

Ghana's current campaign to rewrite history in order to relieve the Europeans of the onus of initiating and fueling the slave trade and transfer it to Africans is disturbing. It may be satisfying to African Americans in search of mea culpas from someone, anyone, since it is not forthcoming from Europe or white America, and it is certainly gratifying to the white world that wants us to believe that Africans, not Europeans, bear the blame for Africa's woes, past and present. But it does nothing to bridge the chasm in the African world.

The last segment of Gates's WONDERS emphasizes one of his conflicting preoccupations in the series: the obsession with claiming humanity for the black man on the white man's terms, at the same time as he is savaging Africans for slavery and other forms of barbarity. Black Africans built huge monuments (pyramids and stone cities); black Africans wrote books; therefore, they have a claim to humanity. Gates has told us (in LOOSE CANONS) that writing makes the man, that those slave autobiographies and other early African American writing were African Americans' way of writing themselves into history.

We can't forget, though, Michael Adas's testimony to the nimbleness with which Europeans can revise their standards of humanity when the standing ones that favor them are challenged. The technology standard on which they based their superiority to all others failed when they came face to face with the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, and formidable Chinese junks, so, enter Christianity.

My point is, scouring the continent for monuments and evidence of writing so we can prove our humanity is misguided. It is a manifestation of the extent to which we continue to dance to the European's tune. Even if circumstances force us into compromises we should still keep our senses alert; we should know what we are doing and why. Remember the proverb, Bi a ba nsunkun, a maa riran (One may be crying, but one can still see, or should still be able to see)?

Skip Gates's highly personal progress through Africa, and those unfortunate snide asides, demonstrate one thing: Africa has always been a thing to exploit. As Gates's series shows, Africans are also in on the exploitation, and we do it in a variety of ways: commercializing sensationalized versions of Africanity—music, dancing, literature, chieftaincy titles, and so forth. "The Wonders of the African World" is really no wonder, and not news.

Citation Format

Owomoyela, Oyekan. (2000). MONUMENTALITY, SCRIPTOCENTRISM AND OTHER MISMEASURES OF MAN. West Africa Review: 1 , 2.[iuicode: http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?101.1.2.16]