FAY­OLA KJ FRAS­ER

NOTH­ING COULD be sim­pler:

His­to­ry sim­pli­fied as a cas­tle

The wind stands mouthing

Noth­ing can be heard

Ex­cept the rain­roar of the past

To hear the rain

Re­count its sto­ry to the roof

Flash sil­ver and sor­row

This his­to­ry: a drop of am­ne­sia

Widen­ing in its pool

It hates to in­trude, fears to of­fend

The past with the avert­ed eyes

Is care­ful not to im­pose:

A gift of ab­sence to the present

The weight of the braid­ed days

A whirl­wind com­ing home

The sun slow­ly blind­ed by the clouds

It was dark then, it is dark now

Give mem­o­ry noth­ing

And it is dark­er still to­mor­row

I can feel the sea gen­tly rock our earth to sleep

—“Eclipse,” Kwad­wo

Opoku-Agye­mang

More than 6,000 kilo­me­tres east of Port-of-Spain, two tow­er­ing cas­tles, bathed in white, perched on the coast of Ghana, share with us hor­rif­ic lega­cies left by Eu­ro­pean colonis­ers of a not-too-dis­tant past. Cape Coast Cas­tle and Elim­i­na Cas­tle are in all tech­ni­cal­i­ty, mis­nomers, and sim­pli­fi­ca­tions, which do not ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect the amount of death, full­ness of tor­ture, bound­less dev­as­ta­tion and hu­man in­jus­tices that were per­pe­trat­ed against African peo­ple in their walls. A vis­it to these cas­tles is soul-crush­ing, but al­so nec­es­sary to paint an ac­cu­rate pic­ture of an of­ten ig­nored his­to­ry.

The Cape Coast Cas­tle is a his­tor­i­cal for­ti­fi­ca­tion in Ghana that was built by the Eu­ro­peans for the trade of gold and en­slaved peo­ple and is one of 40 known slav­ing fortress­es in West Africa. Orig­i­nal­ly found­ed in 1653 by the Swedish Africa Com­pa­ny, it was ini­tial­ly built for the trade of tim­ber and gold but be­came a hold­ing area for Africans be­fore they were trad­ed and sent to the Amer­i­c­as to be en­slaved. In 1664, af­ter a four-day bat­tle, the fortress was cap­tured by the British and re-named Cape Coast Cas­tle and sub­se­quent­ly served as the seat of the British ad­min­is­tra­tion in the then “Gold Coast” (Ghana). These fortress­es were even­tu­al­ly adapt­ed to the needs of the Eu­ro­peans for the cap­ture and ship­ment of African peo­ple—name­ly build­ing dun­geons be­low where Africans could be chained and held un­til even­tu­al herd­ing on­to ships.

Up­on en­ter­ing the cas­tle, I was greet­ed with a cho­rus of ‘wel­come home’ from the ven­dors out­side, a re­frain un­doubt­ed­ly sung to many Black vis­i­tors from the African di­as­po­ra. In­deed, I did feel at home. Ghana and T&T have a long his­to­ry of cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal ties, dat­ing back to the colo­nial era and the transat­lantic slave trade. Many peo­ple of African de­scent in T&T can trace their an­ces­try to Ghana, es­pe­cial­ly the Akan and Yoru­ba eth­nic groups. Aside from the eerie chill, un­doubt­ed­ly a rem­nant of rest­less souls in the fortress, there was a pro­found sad­ness cov­er­ing the cas­tle. Much of the in­for­ma­tion giv­en by the tour guide, for­tu­nate­ly, had been learned and un­der­stood in CSEC Caribbean His­to­ry, but to feel and vi­su­alise the painful ex­pe­ri­ences, to sit on earth soaked with the blood and sweat of our de­hu­man­ised fore­fa­thers, and walk their last steps on African soil, made every line of writ­ten his­to­ry come ag­o­nis­ing­ly alive.

Of­ten­times, Eu­ro­pean slavers would set vil­lages on fire, cap­tur­ing Africans as they ran from their vil­lages, and forcibly tak­ing them to fortress­es such as Cape Coast. The dun­geons were sep­a­rat­ed by sex, with males and fe­males be­ing held sep­a­rate­ly, forc­ing fam­i­lies and kins­men apart. These dun­geons were the size of a large liv­ing room, with­out any of the sun­light and air of­fered by a liv­ing room, and in each one, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150-200 hu­man be­ings were held, shack­led to each oth­er and the walls, with no choice but to sleep, eat, uri­nate and ex­crete in one spot.

In one of the male dun­geons dur­ing the 1970s, ar­chae­ol­o­gists ex­ca­vat­ed the floor and found that the orig­i­nal stone floor was about 18 inch­es be­low where they be­gan. All of the ex­cess­es be­tween the ex­ist­ing floor and the orig­i­nal floor were at­trib­uted to an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of blood, urine, fae­ces, vom­it, menses and dirt.

The clear and iron­ic jux­ta­po­si­tion in the fortress, was that right above these male dun­geons was the church. Pass­ing by the dun­geon’s over­head trap­door, where food was dropped down for the Africans, like­ly hear­ing the moans, screams and cries, the Eu­ro­peans would en­ter the church doors in their Sun­day best, ready to praise God all while tor­tur­ing hu­man be­ings be­low.

But the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is clear—Eu­ro­peans be­lieved that African peo­ple, sole­ly based on the colour of their skin, were not, in fact, hu­man be­ings to be treat­ed as such, but mer­chan­dise, or chat­tel, use­ful on­ly for hard labour to al­low for their per­son­al gain. It is this log­ic that al­lowed them to wor­ship right above, or lounge bliss­ful­ly in the sprawl­ing colo­nial quar­ters that spanned the up­stairs area of the dun­geons. It is al­so this log­ic that al­lowed the trade in en­slaved Africans to go on for hun­dreds of years, un­de­terred.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that over 60 mil­lion Africans were cap­tured dur­ing the years of en­slave­ment, how­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to his­to­ri­ans, 12 mil­lion were even­tu­al­ly shipped across the At­lantic. This means that the con­di­tions of slav­ing fortress­es gave way to mil­lions and mil­lions of deaths, a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of miss­ing gen­er­a­tions of Africans who were thrown in­to the sea up­on their deaths in the fortress­es. The ones who sur­vived the dun­geons made first con­tact with air and sun­light af­ter cap­ture, and their last con­tact with African soil came when they were auc­tioned off and led to the ships.

The psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal toll of kid­nap­ping would be com­pound­ed by the hor­rif­ic jour­ney across the Mid­dle Pas­sage and fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the gross­est aber­ra­tion against hu­man be­ings in his­to­ry, en­slave­ment.

This fi­nal con­tact point is known wide­ly as “The Door of No Re­turn”. Each African who was auc­tioned to be sold to a plan­ta­tion in the Amer­i­c­as was forced through the so-called “Door of No Re­turn” at these cas­tles, a nar­row open­ing in the fortress wall that led to the wa­ter’s edge and the near­by ships await­ing them.

Rab­bi Ko­hain Hale­vi, of the Di­as­po­ra African Fo­rum, be­lieves it is the re­silien­cy of the African spir­it that has now cre­at­ed the op­pos­ing side of the door, which is now called “The Door of Re­turn”. An em­blem cre­at­ed by a pan-African ini­tia­tive, the “Door of Re­turn”, was found­ed for African de­scen­dants to walk back through the very doors their an­ces­tors walked out of, in de­fi­ance of the his­toric colo­nial op­pres­sions.

In 2019, Ghana­ian Pres­i­dent Aku­fo-Ad­do called for the de­scen­dants of slaves to vis­it the coun­try and com­mem­o­rate the 400th an­niver­sary of the Transat­lantic Slave Trade, which he tri­umphant­ly called “The Year of Re­turn”. Dur­ing that year, and many sub­se­quent ones, de­scen­dants were able to walk valiant­ly through the Door of Re­turn.

Up­on en­ter­ing Cape Coast Cas­tle, the Ghana­ian au­thor­i­ties have placed pho­tographs and quotes of lead­ers of the Black lib­er­a­tion move­ment Kwame Nkrumah, Mar­cus Gar­vey, Mal­colm X, and our very own Dr Er­ic Williams.

Ac­cord­ing to the quote post­ed at the en­trance by Mar­cus Gar­vey, “A peo­ple with­out the knowl­edge of their past his­to­ry, ori­gin and cul­ture is like a tree with­out roots.” Pop­u­lar rhetoric seeks to in­sin­u­ate that be­cause en­slave­ment was “so long ago”, mem­bers of the Black di­as­po­ra should sim­ply, “get over it”.

How­ev­er, it is in the learn­ing, shar­ing and re­mem­brance of this chill­ing and painful past, we can un­der­stand, ed­u­cate and ac­knowl­edge the way that the African con­ti­nent was raped and pil­laged of hu­man and nat­ur­al re­sources for hun­dreds of years. This caused the stymied so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of var­i­ous coun­tries which have been forced to at­tempt to ‘catch up’ in many ways, all while be­ing viewed and por­trayed as “back­ward” and pri­mor­dial.

A vis­it to Cape Coast Cas­tle, Elmi­na Cas­tle or any of the slav­ing fortress­es on the African West Coast is an es­sen­tial ex­pe­ri­ence for all who are able. Many did not sur­vive. But we, the proud mem­bers of the world­wide Black di­as­po­ra, are the sons and daugh­ters of those who did. As en­graved in­to the walls of the cas­tle, “May those who died rest in peace; may those who re­turn find their roots; may hu­man­i­ty nev­er again per­pet­u­ate such in­jus­tice against hu­man­i­ty.”

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions & Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.