His Excellency John Dramani Mahama on 24th March, 2026 at the UN Head Quarters, led a special event on Reparatory Justice particularly on the enslavement of Africans, where he asserted that excuses for which Africans were enslaved by various colonies should not be normalized or embraced by any African hence, forward. That is to say; Africans, must ensure their commitments, pledges and decisions are entrenched to prevent future recurrence. He mentioned that truth begins with just a language, power to wield consciousness, shift perspective or to propel an action. As such, to offer the truth there was no such thing as a “salve”, but rather, human beings who were been trafficked and enslaved by people who believed they could own another human beings as chattels or their personal properties.
From the President, the entireTransatlantic Slave Trade was designed to deny African People their humanity especially, where it was informed that they disrespected Africans basic rights to dignity and regarded them as objects without any acknowledgement as humans. Also, he stated that this denial on the part of Africans was really premised on a racial hierarchy with no basis in facts or science to prove otherwise; just basically a racial hierarchy that deemed whiteness superior and blackness inferior. He mentioned that these atrocities that were committed against enslaved Africans including the myriads of injustice that were born of slavery and carried forward into successive social frameworks, also only took place specifically because, those persons were considered objects and not human beings. As such, when discussing slavery and its resulting institutions and practices, there is the need to start by reclaiming racial equality, the dignity of Africans, the humanity of ancestors who were enslaved and as matter of fact, considering all Africans humanity as required.
Apart from this, he explained that the importance of this Resolution at UN, to formally declare Transatlantic Slave Trade and the racialized chattel enslavements of Africans, as the “gravest crime against humanity” is simply, to allow Africans as a global community to collectively bear witness to the plight of about more than 12.5million men, women and children whose homes, communities, names, families, hope, dreams, futures and lives were all stolen from them 400years ago. He stated that his capacity today as an African Union Champion for this Reparation to lead a historic initiative, will not only be for Ghana but will also be in solidarity for the rest of all Africans, Caribbean, Latin America, under wider diaspora and all people of good conscience throughout the world. “This Resolution is a path way to healing and reparative justice as well as a safeguard against forgetting”, he informed.
Moreover, His Excellency noted that violence often begins with language, and so, the words that were weaponized through codified abuse, with people been dehumanized or called out of their names regardless of how they were dressed is something so demeaning to human creature in general. Since, it was evident that they were captured, forcibly removed and stripped off their clothing to be held in dungeons and forts built along the African coast by European traders, in which, their limbs were also chained and shackled as they were forced into the holds of cargo ships.
Nonetheless, during these times as well, it was informed that human beings were kept naked and packed tightly together like sardines, with many also not surviving the voyage. This is because some ships which carried these people also got sank with the entire human cargo, with others falling ill along the line and also thrown overboard. Those who also preferred death to captivity didn’t also hesitate, or have any second thought than to jump into the sea voluntarily. It is therefore, believed that between 10 and 20 percent of these enslaved people perished during the Middle Passage.
He explained that whenever a ship also arrives at its destinations, the enslaved people still in nakedness were taken to markets and appraised like livestock, where, they will be placed in an auction block in front of an audience for potential buyers and be sold out to the highest bidder. Again, once these enslaved Africans arrive on the plantation where they are expected or would work and live for their lifetime, they were also stripped off their names like Farida, Kofi, Issaka, Nana Yaw or Emeka and rather given different names like Ben, Jemima, John, Mavis or Tobi.
In addition to these new names, they were also called girl or boy or that “filthy N-word (Nigger)”, irrespective of their age; and their surnames were usually also change to that of their “masters’ and sometimes, branded as cartons with the plantations as signals or logos in according them. These plantations at which the enslaved Africans brutally worked included – sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco and cocoa in the Caribbean, Americas; with South America having diamond and gold mines; whiles, Jamaica also dealt with production of indigo. These people who were enslaved, labored on all these plantations from sunrise to sunset, in which, the conditions under which they worked too, were severely brutal. This is because they were beaten to the point of death, underfed, kept in cramped quarters’ and often died young if not from labor, then from a disease. Also, it was reported that there were even some enslaved women who were kept as breeders and as a matter of fact, Africans were used to boom their businesses, since, when labor is free, profit margins are also huge. Additionally, Africans lives during these times were disposable in the eyes of these white men who felt when an African dies, more was still available to be captured from their homes on the continent, to be further enslaved and trafficked.
Prez Mahama addressed that during conversations about slavery also, the point at which euphemism are introduced with a rush to talk about abolishment sounds very unconcerned by some people. Meanwhile, it is the path to pay close attention because the devil is in the detail.
The following were some four trafficking destinations he shared:
- About 6million enslaved Africans were trafficked to Brazil; which is, the fifth largest nation in the world and stretched like 4,400km from North to South and 4,320km from East to West.
- Also, almost 2million enslaved Africans were trafficked to Jamaica, which was the most profitable country then of all sugar producing locations, and it was also the country with 235km long and between 34 and 84km wide depending on the point one might be located.
- Again, about half a million enslaved Africans were trafficked to America from the early 17th century when the first ship arrived to the 19th century when chattels slavery was eventually abolished. America grew from three colonies to an independent nation with 36 states.
- Last but not least, over 450,000 enslaved Africans were also trafficked to Barbados; an island that is 34km long 23km wide.
He mentioned that before this trafficking of enslaved Africans, plantations labor in Barbados came from white indentured servants who were usually Irish; and there were also two major problems with these indentured servants. In which one was that – they eventually had to be granted their freedom and the other was that, if they run away, catching them proved challenging because they blended in, since, their complexion was also white. As a result, in 1661, Barbados enacted a code for the enslaved and in a preamble; they said, Negros were described as – “a hitinish brutish and uncertain dangerous kind of people”. This went on to explain that there must be a set of law detailing how they should be punished, while the Clause 2 of this same code, also detailed what to do if any Negro be it man or woman, offers any violent to any Christian either by striking or the like. The clause further explained that if it is the first offense that the Negro commits, he/she should be severely whipped by the constable. However, if it is the second offense that Negro commits, he/she should be severely whipped with his nose slit and be burned in the face. The code gave owners and overseers the ability to torture, maim or even kill enslaved Africans with impunity, and this became sort of template for the rest of the Anglo-Atlantic world to also use in mistreating Africans.
In 1662 a year after Barbados enacted this code, Prez Mahama stated that a legal doctrine was established to set Judicial Precedent in the America Colony of the genre and it was titled – “Partus Sequitur Ventrem”, in other words, what is born, follows the womb. So, this legal framework ensured that all children born of enslaved women were also automatically enslaved regardless of who the father was. Most importantly, many of these enslaved women were impregnated mainly because they were raped by their plantation owners or by the overseers; and even in cases where a baby was not a product of rape, this law stripped the child of its paternity, because in the eyes of the law, that child as an enslaved person was seen or used as a property to be given out or sold as they deem fit. The doctrine was further adopted through the Americas and Brazil, he informed.
Prez Mahama also added that people who sometimes put disclaimer on slavery by insisting that social norms today cannot be used to judge the actions and events that took place in the past, are just being loud and wrong. Considering the fact that, they believed just because everybody was doing something, all followed and therefore, makes it right. “Slavery is wrong now and it was wrong then, for as long as Africans were been trafficked and enslaved with abolitionist even speaking up against it”, he acknowledged.
Prez Mahama said, the first slave ship landed in America in 1619 and opposition to chattel slavery was voiced and mentioned in passing and in documents. However, in 1688 the German town friends; a group of quakers put out a formal written protest against slavery and wrote –“Now though they are black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying that we shall do to all men like we would have done to ourselves, making no difference of what generations, descent or color they are”. He addressed that this somehow was met, but racial begins with language when words are used as a sleight of hands to gaslight or trick you into doubting what you know to be true, secondly, racial begins with language when words are used to create mythology or when they are spoken, with the volume gradually decreasing in its repetition, until it becomes a full verbal reduction.
Quoting from the legendary American jazz player – Miles Davis, Prez Mahama said “it is not the notes you play but the notes you don’t play” and that, when it comes to the contributions Africans had made to enriched Europe and building the ‘so called new world’, the silence is deafening. Since, Africa paved roads through mountains, put down railroad tracks, constructed buildings laying bricks after bricks, cut sugarcane, picked cocoa and cotton, descended into mines to unearth precious medal and stones and have also witnessed babies. Africans paid the price of admission with the blood of their ancestors but still what greets Africans at the door is silence, he blurted out.
On the aspect of mythology, he explained that in 2015, MCGRAW HILL EDUCATION (one of the largest publishers in USA), released a Geography Textbook used in over thousand districts Texas. In the book, it was stated that millions of “workers” were brought from Africa to work on Agricultural plantations; and since this statement didn’t acknowledge Africans as slaves but workers, a group of families complained about the book and it was pulled off shelves. However, there is also a group of organization called ‘PragerU’ of which its website described them as the world leading conservative non-profit, focused on changing minds through creative use of digital media. Currently, this organization created animated videos used as supplemental materials in public schools, classrooms in 11states, but in one of these videos; “they used a young boy and his teenage sister who were confused on why people celebrate Columbus Day and others also celebrating Indigenous People’s Day. This organization used a time travel app in which, this young boy and his sister found themselves in a ship with Christopher Columbus who tells them all about how the Carib people, the indigenous people of the lesser Antilles in the Caribbean were violent and were uncivilized cannibals. The children hearing this, then asked him to explain why he enslaved people? In his response to these children, he simply said – “Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every part of the world (normalization); and also said, been taken as a slave is better than been killed. But the children still not convienced, replied him as NO, I don’t see the problem, Columbus then accuses these children for coming to his time and trying to judge him by the standards of their time.
In another animated video, these children using the same time travel app, found themselves in the year 1852 again, standing in front of Frederick Douglas, who also tells them that his working to abolish slavery – a system in which people makes other people work for long hours with no pay. The saddest part he explained to these children in the animated video was that, slavery existed everywhere in the world for thousands of years.
Currently at the USA, black history courses are been removed from schools curriculum, schools are also been mandated to stop teaching students about the truth of slavery segregation and racism in American history courses. Books about these topics are been banned in schools and public libraries, Museums, Act Centers and other institutions whose budget rely in any way of public funds, are also been prohibited from scheduling exhibitions and programs or from displaying materials promoting racial awareness or black history. As matter of fact, these whites are trying everything possible to erase those memories or cause forgetfulness among Africans, and that shouldn’t happen, Pez Mahama stated.
Therefore, in his closing remarks, he stated categorically that the Greatness within Africans will always outweigh injustices that have been visited against us and that, despite what Africans had been through for centuries, the survival will always be a testament to that fact. Quoting from Nelson Mandela, he said – Africans Human compassion binds them one to another and not in pity or patronizing; but as human beings who have learnt how to turn common sufferings into hope for the future. Truth will forever begin with language and the united Africans will vote on a historic resolution that will also be another step in the journey of establishing truth and to seek justice in the restoration of dignity and humanity for the about 15million victims of the Transatlantic slave trade.
Voting Results
On 25th March, 2026, the voting results had it that, the President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency – John Dramani Mahama, has secured an overwhelming vote from various members at the Reparatory Justice Event, to compel UN to declare the Transatlantic Slave Trade as the “gravest sin against humanity” and to demand reparations for all affected countries. He said “let it be recorded that history beckoned and Africans have stood up to do what is right for the memory of millions who suffered the indignity of slavery, and that this vote will then restore their dignity and humanity damaged.