President John Dramani Mahama has rejected arguments that historical events like slavery should be judged by the social norms of the past, describing such claims as “loud and wrong.”
According to him, the fact that fellow human beings from Africa were shipped against their will to work as slaves in another country constitutes a crime that needs to be recognised and rectified.
President Mahama’s speech comes amid growing international advocacy for reparations and global recognition of the long-term impacts of slavery on African communities and the diaspora.
Speaking at a High-Level Special Event on Reparatory Justice at the United Nations Headquarters on Tuesday, March 24, themed “Reparatory Justice for the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and the Racialised Chattel Enslavement of Africans,” Mahama stressed the enduring moral clarity of condemning slavery.
“People will sometimes put a disclaimer to say that you cannot use the social norms to judge the actions and events that took place in the past. Well, such people are loud and wrong,” he said.
He added, “Just because everybody is doing something doesn’t make it right. Slavery is wrong now, and it was wrong then.”
Mahama further noted that throughout history, Africans have been enslaved, but there have always been voices—abolitionists—who stood against the injustice.
President Mahama added that, “The entire transatlantic slave trade was designed to deny African people their humanity.” According to him, the system was rooted in a racial hierarchy with no basis in fact or science that placed whiteness above blackness.
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