Yet, within Ghana itself, the conversation around African complicity is far more nuanced, and for some traditional leaders, acknowledging the past is a vital prerequisite part of healing.
King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II, the Ga Mantse, leader of Ghana’s Ga people, recently took the step of publicly apologising for his ancestors’ involvement in the slave trade.
“I think that the transatlantic slave trade was the greatest crime against humanity, and ancestors also took part as players in that trade,” says the king.
The Ga people became middlemen who traded with Europeans. They sold gold, ivory and ultimately enslaved Africans, often those captured in local conflicts, in exchange for the manufactured goods brought mainly by the British and Dutch, including textiles, alcohol and guns.
But the king felt he needed to say sorry not just for his own people’s complicity, but the complicity of other Africans too.
“I stand on the same point of apologising on behalf of all traditional authorities and my ancestors and forebears for the part they also played in the slavery of our brothers and sisters.
“It has affected lives and societies up to now, and to be able to go forward, you have to look at your past. It dawns on us to admit our fault and correct it,” he says.
The king believes strongly in the need for those who benefited from the slave trade to pay reparations and acknowledges that he, too, needs to commit to making financial amends.
“I believe that it underpins a state of moral courage and credibility.”
For the Ga Mantse, admitting fault does not dilute the guilt of European empires; rather, it solidifies Africa’s moral standing and sets an example as to how to move forward.
But Ghana is leading the way in another aspect of trying to heal the damage done by the slave trade. The country has run a high-profile campaign inviting the African diaspora – particularly African-Americans – to visit the continent.
It has been promoted as a means of bringing people together in the shared story of their traumatic past, with “reparations” quite literally focussing on “repair” at a very human level.
Yaw Asare, now a Ghanaian PhD student at Howard University, previously worked within the President of Ghana’s Diaspora Office, which ran the campaign.
