Simon Carr: Memory, complicity, and the complexity of history

Key topics:African kingdoms actively participated in and profited from the slave trade.Barbary pirates enslaved over a million Europeans in Mediterranean raids.Reparations debates ignore abolition efforts and the complexity of history..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Simon Carr*.Introduction: Memory as WeaponAs the African Union marks 2025 with the theme "Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations," and commentators like Adekeye Adebajo fill pages with emotional appeals and historical grievances, it's time for a dose of clear-eyed reality.Slavery was real. It was brutal, dehumanizing, and driven by profit. It tore millions of Africans from their lands and helped finance the early engines of European industry. No one disputes this. But what is increasingly in dispute is the use of slavery's memory: not to educate, but to extract; not to unify, but to divide; not to understand history, but to weaponize it..The Complexity of History: No Monopoly on Moral ClarityAs acclaimed history writer Ian Knight observed: “There are few things more profoundly pointless than attempting to apply contemporary morality to historical events.” That statement should be on the lips of anyone confronted by shallow historical reckoning. It’s a sharp rebuttal to those who distort or simplify the past through the lens of modern ideological convenience.Adebajo’s familiar case—Middle Passage horrors, indigenous annihilation, European profits—is all true. But what is left out is just as important:African complicityAfrican complicity in the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades was not incidental—it was structured, deliberate, and deeply woven into the political economies of the time. Kingdoms such as the Ashanti, Dahomey, Oyo, Benin, the Aro Confederacy, and the Yao were not reluctant victims—they were active agents in the global commerce of human beings, capturing, condemning, and selling rivals, war captives, dissidents, and, at times, even their people.The Ashanti and Dahomey launched slave raids as state policy, enriching themselves through European trade in captives. The Oyo Empire used cavalry expeditions to dominate inland routes and flood the markets with human cargo. Benin, after initial resistance, turned to slavery as a primary export. The Aro Confederacy institutionalized the trade through a theocratic system that used religious judgments from the Ibini Ukpabi oracle to justify enslavement, transforming accusations of wrongdoing into profitable sentences of exile. Meanwhile, in East Africa, the Yao people—situated between modern-day Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania—played a key role in the Swahili-Arab slave trade, capturing inland populations and supplying Zanzibar's bustling slave markets well into the late 19th century.These were not isolated acts of desperation—they were deliberate enrichment policies. And in some cases, the legacy continues: certain African royal families and chiefdoms still hold influence and wealth rooted, at least in part, in the profits of historical slave trading. While modern political correctness often resists confronting this dimension, it is essential for any honest reckoning with the past.Even Chinua Achebe—a renowned Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic, best known for his seminal work Things Fall Apart (1958), which depicts the collision between traditional Igbo society and British colonialism—reminds us that brutality is not unique to any one culture. Achebe does not shy away from exposing the harsh customs embedded in African societies, such as the abandonment of twins in the veld, seen as cursed, not long ago in parts of Nigeria. Widely considered the father of modern African literature, Achebe explored themes of identity, cultural disintegration, and the legacy of imperialism—but also the realities of indigenous cruelty and superstition. His honesty is a reminder that confronting uncomfortable truths is the first step toward genuine understanding.Global scopeThe Barbary slave trade, which flourished from the 16th to the early 19th centuries, saw North African corsairs, primarily based in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and the independent Sultanate of Morocco, raiding European coastal towns and seizing ships throughout the Mediterranean and even as far as Iceland and Ireland. Historians estimate that between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary pirates between 1500 and 1800. Entire villages in Italy, Spain, France, and even England were depopulated by these raids, with victims forced into hard labor, galley rowing, or sold in slave markets across North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. The Barbary slave trade was finally suppressed in the early 19th century, after a series of Anglo-American naval campaigns and treaties, culminating in the bombardment of Algiers in 1816..Read more:.Dutch republic: Freedom’s legacy marred by Atlantic slave trade.Abolitionist effortsBritain not only abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 with the Slave Trade Act, but then spent the next 60 years leading a costly and sustained international campaign to suppress the trade. The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron patrolled the Atlantic, intercepting slave ships and freeing more than 150,000 Africans from bondage between 1808 and 1860. This effort was driven by the tireless work of abolitionists such as William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, Olaudah Equiano, and later David Livingstone, who risked reputation, fortune, and sometimes their lives to end the trade. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 ended slavery throughout the British Empire, and Britain signed treaties with other European and African powers to pressure them into ending the trade as well. The abolitionist movement was one of the first great international human rights campaigns—one that required decades of activism, political struggle, and, ultimately, military intervention.This matters because no one alive today was enslaved or enslaved in the transatlantic trade. And yet, modern slavery persists, from human trafficking to forced labor, including abuses within Africa itself. These local abuses are often excluded from global reparations debates, yet they have shaped lives for generations. Reparations: Impractical or Unresolvable?We honour the memory of those who suffered, but we must also acknowledge the generations who fought to end it. The moral responsibility for slavery was not only recognised in its time—it was actively confronted and dismantled by those whose descendants are now being asked to atone again.In other words, history is messy. Blame is widespread. And no single side holds the monopoly on moral clarity.So who, exactly, is to pay? And who, exactly, is to receive? In a world of mixed ancestries, shifting borders, and moral contradictions, how would we ever agree on the price?Reparations, then, are not just impractical. They are, in essence, unresolvable—a question with no credible answer and no logical end. There is no clarity, because reparations are not designed to resolve. They are designed to prolong grievance, keep identity politics alive, and create an unending moral debt from which there is no escape.to be continued..*Simon Carr has lived in South Africa for 35 years, spending 10 years working in Johannesburg's retail sector. Currently, he resides in the Western Cape, where he is involved in a restoration farming project. He is a keen reader of history and passionate about South Africa and its people.

Simon Carr: Memory, complicity, and the complexity of history

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