HISTORY: HANGING OF SLAVES WAS MEANT FOR CLEVER AFRICANS.

By: Magedi Mmetoane

The Arab and European enslavement and colonialisation of Africans not only underpopulated Africa but also underdeveloped and disorganised the institutions that existed in Africa before Europeans came in to Africa.

This article is not about how the slave masters who hanged the Lewis brothers carried out their wickedness towards these brothers, but the reason behind why they hanged them.

Many things remain uncertain about the slave trade and its consequences for Africa. One of the uncertainties concerns the basic question of how many Africans were imported and which ones exactly were imported. This has long been an object of speculations, with estimates ranging from a few millions to get hundreds of millions.

We all know who wrote this history that we read, we all know how European propaganda works. European scholars who are apologists for the capitalist system and its long record of brutality in Europe and abroad want us to believe that only few millions were taken abroad as slaves and hundred of millions remained to be colonised later in Africa.

This is partly true. They claim much atrocities occurred in Africa on both sides during colonial battles with African tribes than in Europe during the period of Trans-Atlantic slave trade. They do not want to talk of the lynchings and shootings of clever Africans who resisted capture here in Africa and who rebelled against slavery in Europe – but they speak of African colonialism and its effects as if the only things wrong they did to Africans was that they colonised the African land and its peoples.

In order to white wash the European slave trade, they find it convenient to start by minimising the numbers concerned and avoid to explain which types of Africans they did lynch by whipping and which types they did hang and beheaded. The truth is they took clever Africans, some doctors, engineers, teachers, artists and so on – to Europe and when they arrived in Europe they forced them into forced labour – to perform what they have been performing in Africa for European development. When they refused or someone rebelled against their masters or refused to take orders they where hanged or beheaded.

Those who obeyed became lucrative business (sold into slavery), and they traded them for huge profits; to trade in these skilled slaves became a lucrative enterprise and more of these were needed. Many of those who were hanged were the slaves that did not take orders, those that could not read and write, and those who could interpret road signs and calendars were regarded as “moderate ones”.

These are the ones that have learned the other way through working for their kingdoms and institutions in Africa and refused to work under slavery became very dangerous components to the white supremacists and capitalist systems.

However, the illiterate ones or those who posed no threats to the establishments were whipped and tortured when they disobeyed orders until they submit to their masters. But others were lynched to death, hanged and beheaded.

The truth is that any figure of Africans imported into the Americas is narrowly based on the survival records (those who have made it through hundreds of kilometres through the Atlantic ocean) and is bound to be very low, because there were so many people who were smuggling slaves and without holding data, same as the global immigration crisis where people crossing Mediterranian into Europe and from Libya are estimated to be 200,000 which the reality is that the number is three times this estimate.

Nevertheless, if the low figure of 10 million is accepted as a basic for evaluating impact of slaving of Africans as a whole, the conclusions that could legitimately be drawn would be wrong. Slavery existed from 1445 until 1870s; in Asia and Europe or the Americas, and its effects are still felt to this day in the 21st century.

Africans are still feeling the smells of guns fired by the slave traders and colonial settlers. The destruction of African institutions during this period of slavery (15th and 16th centuries) and then during colonialism (17th and 18th centuries) were Africans scattered over the continent hiding in pockets and unaccessible areas, far away from ports of trades, because of fear of capture and colonialism underdeveloped Africa. The effects are still felt 400 years on after these events have occurred.

Not only slavery involved those who had survived, if 10 million have made it into slavery in Europe how many have died in the sea? How many as well have been killed in Africa during capture? And how many have died within enslavement in Europe? The figure would be in their tens of millions. The 10 million that is recorded is a dodgy number, but the estimate should be at over 200,000 million if one has to answer these questions.

These were the people taken away from Africa; died and or slaved. There were numerous deaths in Africa during time of capture and time of transportation of slaves. In fact, 10 million that the records says had made it into Europe as slaves one would oppose this number looking at those who been killed on arrivals and during rebellions when they tried to escape or disobey their masters nor organise themselves.

No wonder the slave traders continued to demand more slaves from Africa because those who had made it (10 million) were slaughtered and shortages of more slaves thereof as a result.

We should estimate 200 million and/or more as the African labour force taken away from African population for Africa’s development. This massive loss to the African labour force was made more critical because it was composed of able-bodied young men and females.

Slave buyers preferred their victims between the ages of 15 and 35, and preferably in the early 20s, sex ration being two men to one woman. Europeans accepted younger African children, but rarely any older person. They shipped the most healthy and skilled whenever possible, taking the ones that the local merchants are familiar with their skills and level of education.

Fro example, the Lewis brothers came from a business background, were captured in Benin in the 1760s and were able to reach the Americas by 1761. They were four, and were never sold separately because of their skills in wood work and carpentry. They worked in the Benin Royal house as carpenters when they were captured. They decorated the Royal houses so beautiful that the Portuguese armies stole their artefects when they stormed the monarch and destroyed the Benin empire in the 18th century. The slave buyers wrestled to buy them immediately after they heard of their story.

Arriving in Europe very young and scared the four brothers worked wonders with their carpentry skills and became the most expensive slaves in Europe. They were sold from one slave to the other until they decided to invent their own underwater ship. Working at the comfort of steel manufacturing company in Mausiory County, the four decided to build a secret escape ship; small enough to fit in and their house until it is completed.

They combined wood, metals, plastics and some engineering to allow air to flow in and out of the ship. For about 3 months they were able to complete the underwater ship. They knew that they would be sold to another master sooner than later and if they do not build the ship right away they would be caught. So they worked night shifts to construct this ship.

When their master and other guards were away on a hunting trip the pair escaped on their ship. They made it until a lake nearby and were able to reach another 300 kilometres away from where they were kept. However, they were caught and because of their invention – underground ship, the pair where not murdered but jailed.

They were sold to another slave master who traded in building ships, forced to define the ship that they were traveling on. After they had designed the ship the state government was impressed with their invention and suggested that the pair be hanged because if they escape and reach African they would be very dangerous to Americans.

May be, i mean may be, this is a story of a black four who invented a submarine. Until to this day the story of the Lewis Brothers remain a secret and unknown to the world.

The story must be told to the world that slavery was a depopulation, underdevelopment and under-skilling of Africans for over 400 years and should be reversed.