launch of the bi-centenary exhibition commemorating the abolition of slave
trade in 1807, Slave Lodge Museum, Cape Town
30 July 2007
Professor Jatti Bredekamp, Chief Executive Officer Iziko Museums
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
It gives me great pleasure to be here at the Slave Lodge as part of the
Department of Education's programme of activities in commemoration of
historically significant events.
The Department of Education has encouraged all schools to participate in the
commemoration of the significant historical events during 2007 while continuing
to observe South Africa's national days and important international days.
One of the significant anniversaries that we are commemorating this year is
the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade on 25 March 1807.
We are here to remember the horrors of the African slave trade and to
celebrate its demise. It is appropriate to commemorate the abolition of the
slave trade here in the Slave Lodge Museum, the place where about 9 000 slaves
lived and died between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries.
It is difficult to imagine how this building at any one time held between
500 and 800 men, women and children, including at times indigenous Khoi-San
people, prisoners and mentally disturbed.
We need to remember that although the slave trade was formally abolished in
1807 and slavery itself in 1834, slavery did not come to an end with those
legal acts of abolition. The buying and selling of slaves continued in many
parts of our country well into the twentieth century.
Abolition led to labour shortages on farms and plantations. It led to a
various forms of bonded labour, of unfree labour, of indentures, of
inboekselings in Afrikaans.
We should never forget that, as a result of slave-trade abolition and the
emancipation of slaves, a new labour force was required to replace slave labour
throughout the world.
Between 1834 and 1917, 2,5 million Indians and thousands of Chinese were
used to replace slave labour in the West Indies, South America, Mauritius,
Fiji, here in South Africa, east Africa and the Seychelles.
These labourers were not slaves but indentured labourers, but they were
treated in similar ways. And indenture was often not a system of voluntary
migrant labour undertaken to escape the poverty of the subcontinent, but a
system of enslavement.
In many ways the evil of slavery only began to come to an end with the first
democratic elections in 1994 and the enactment of the final South African
Constitution in 1996. Until then, forms of slavery continued to manifest
themselves through the colonial period, and the twentieth-century periods of
segregation and apartheid.
Our Bill of Rights for the first time ensured, in law at least, the
principles of freedom, human dignity and equality. However, we should still
remember that we have not eradicated human trafficking, the exploitation of
farm workers, and the exploitation of child labour. Until we do, we cannot say
that slavery has been eradicated from our society.
The Department of Arts and Culture and Iziko Museums is running a Freedom
Project not only to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade this year but
to raise public awareness of the legacy of the slave trade, building up to the
commemoration of the first Cape Slave Rebellion of 1808.
The Iziko Freedom Project is an exciting one, showing how collaboration
between various stakeholders can enrich the learning experience of all.
Iziko's collaboration with other museums of the old slave triangle � in
Britain, Africa, and the Caribbean and America; its collaboration with
higher-education institutions and the national library, as well as the
involvement of artists and poets, has enabled it to enrich the experience of
all who visit the exhibitions.
The reproduction of the Buxton-Wilberforce table and its prominent display,
as well as the Memory Centre exhibitions, including the Memory Wall and Map of
Origins, all strengthen the underlying message of the consequences of the abuse
of human rights.
We need to remember that the popular notion that most Cape slaves were
imported from the East is untrue. The slave trade to the Cape started in West
Africa, turned east after 1706, and finally became re-Africanised after
1780.
The 63 000 slaves imported to the Cape between 1652 and 1808 were diverse in
origins to a degree unparalleled in any other recorded slave population
anywhere in the world. A slim majority of slaves imported to the Cape were
African. The exhibitions put faces and names to slavery at the Cape; they
humanise the real suffering of people so often simply referred to as
numbers.
It is our responsibility in the Department of Education to enrich the
learning experience of our children and to stimulate public interest in order
to create learning opportunities. And this is what this exhibition helps us to
do.
Iziko Museums has shown how to take the difficult themes of the historical
experience of slavery to exciting levels of public engagement. The posters on
display bear testimony to these efforts at this historical site. Iziko is to be
congratulated on the institution's education outreach programme, specifically
targeting learners and educators. Visits to the Museum, and in particular, the
Slave Lodge and workshops, are designed to strengthen visitors' understanding
of slavery.
In closing, it is probably fair to say that apart from the Second World War
more has been written about the Atlantic slave trade than any other historical
subject. That enormous interest is a sign of its importance in shaping world
history, but it is also a sign of its contemporary resonance.
The hurt inflicted by the Atlantic slave trade is still deeply felt today,
deeply felt because slavery was justified by a collective European belief in
African "inferiority".
It is important our children learn about that hurt and learn to understand
the way it shapes our culture and society today. Remember also that
slave-owners were compensated for the loss of their slaves. In 1833 the British
government awarded slave-owners �20 million; a huge amount of money in
contemporary terms. Slaves themselves were never compensated for the loss of
their liberty and the loss of their human dignity.
So as Barney Mthombothi, Financial Mail editor wrote recently, with
reference to the prosecutions of apartheid crimes, a period much closer to us
in time than slavery:
"The past keeps coming back to haunt its victims because the wounds haven't
healed. And they won't, until there's genuine acknowledgement of the hurt
caused." 1
I thank you.
1Barney Mthombothi, "Bridge to the future", Financial Mail 27
July 2007.
Issued by: Department of Education
30 July 2007
Source: Department of Education (http://www.education.gov.za)
