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West Africa, Malta and the Balkans in 1999

GHANA

Bec
2004-09-18 19:57:26

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Coast came in the early 16th century when the slave trade had ever had replaced gold as the major attraction. The British first built a trading post at Kormantin (50 kms east of Elmira), which they replaced by a fort in 1640 that they soon lost to the Dutch who rebuilt it under the name of New Amsterdam. With the fort building race in full swing the British concentrated their efforts in reinforcing the Carolusburg fort they had taken from the Dutch and which became the Cape Coast Castle shown here.

By now the gold trade had declined and it was a slave trade that fuelled the competition between European powers and financed all this frantic building activity. In Cape Coast, the slaves brought in from the interior were stored in underground chambers, located under the row of guns seen here, until the time came to ship the merchandise. Then they were led out in chains through the black "Gate of No Return" to the beach to be ferried out to the slave ships anchored offshore.

The slave trade must have been hugely profitable to warrant the investment of such formidable establishments by private companies. The Gold Coast had become the Slave Coast. Slaves were shipped in great numbers from many other parts of Africa but nowhere else can be seen such tangible proofs of that infamous trade.

It is difficult for us to imagine how violent and cruel the 18th century was in the heyday of the slave trade. Today everyone else but the Serbs are appalled by the ethnic cleansing practiced in Bosnia and Kosovo.

I see that as proof that humankind is progressing towards civilization. The concept of "crimes against humanity" is new. It certainly had no meaning when slave meat was a commodity to be traded and fought over. Nor did the horrendous expression "ethnic cleansing" mean anything in 1755 when the British deported the French from Acadia and gave their lands to settlers their own ethnic origin! American Blacks and Cajuns are the heritage of those crimes.

Accra
Finally I got to Accra where I was expected by Thomas Assare, a bright young man who showed me the sights. Naturally we could not miss visiting Kwame Nkrumah's Mausoleum just behind us.

The Gold Coast's climates, hot and humid in the south or hot and arid in the north, were not appreciated by potential British settlers who preferred the more pleasant climate of the Kenyan plateau. That factor and the British policy of administering through local authorities resulted in the presence of very few Europeans when the country gained its independence in 1957, the first country to do so in Africa.

The British handed Nkrumah an elaborate administrative structure, symbolised here by these High Court buildings, but they could not grant him the experience and judgment required to manage the country efficiently.

Nkrumah's prestige as a champion of decolonization grew in Africa but the opted for grandiose projects heralded by a leftist rhetoric and and the country's economy declined until he was deposed by a military coup while he was away visiting Hanoi in 1966. This great Independence Arch and the nearby huge Soviet style Independence Square are very impressive but they did little to satisfy the real needs of the Ghanaian people.

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