African rulers whose ancestors collaborated with European and Arab slave traders should follow Britain and the United States by publicly saying sorry, according to human rights organizations.
The Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria has written to tribal chiefs saying: "We cannot continue to blame the white men, as Africans, particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless."
The appeal reopened a sensitive debate over the part some chiefs played in helping to capture their fellow Africans and sell them into bondage as part of the transatlantic slave trade.
The congress argued that the ancestors of the chiefs had helped to raid and kidnap defenseless communities and traded them to Europeans. They should now apologize to "put a final seal to the history of slave trade", it said.
"In view of the fact that the Americans and Europe have accepted the cruelty of their roles and have forcefully apologized, it would be logical, reasonable and humbling if African traditional rulers accept blame and formally apologize to the descendants of the victims of their collaborative and exploitative slave trade."
The shameful history of some traditional leaders remains an awkward subject on which many politicians prefer to maintain silence.
One exception was in 1998 when Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, told an audience including Bill Clinton: "African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them. If anyone should apologize it should be the African chiefs. We still have those traitors here even today."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/18/africans-apologise-slave-trade
