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| The Bristol debate: City says no to Maafa apology |
| Me2We - Maafa (Enslavement of Africa) |
| Wed 10 May 2006 |
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Over ninety percent of participants in a BBC phone poll of almost ten thousand callers said no to making an apology to Africa for Britain’s leading role in the Maafa. |
BBC reporting on the issue claimed that the City of ‘Bristol [agreed it] should apologise for its role in the slave trade’ but this erroneous conclusion was based solely on a show of hands following a passionate debate at the British Empire and Commonwealth museum.
Throughout the week callers to BBC Radio Bristol expressed a torrent of racist and abhorrent anti-African views often supported and left unchallenged by radio presenters on the station. |
Anti-African claims to promote Africa |
Richard Dowden, the european director of the Royal African Society (RAS) was one of the panellists of the debate. He told the Observer newspaper;
'Africa itself was the main perpetrator of slavery; the continent is deeply implicated as a buyer, catcher and seller of slaves. What is really important is the lasting damage done to the psychologies of black people'.
Funded by anti-African organisations such as De Beers and the British American Tobacco and with the Queen as its Patron, RAS describes itself as Britain's primary Africa organisation, promoting Africa's cause. As its director Dowden is frequently invited by the British media to speak as an authority on the behalf of all African people.
However Toyin from the Pan-African organisation Ligali, was also one of the panellists. He rejected the plethora of falsehoods asserted by Dowden and other panellists and stated to the audience that;
“The question is not should Bristol apologise for slavery but do African people want an apology from Bristol for the Maafa. The answer is no. Britain is not yet culturally or emotionally mature nor ideologically supportive of the concept of human rights to make any such apology sincere.”
His view is echoed by the majority of the one billion African people on Earth who to this very day still remain socio-economically disadvantaged by the legacy of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and capitalism left by the British today.
The Maafa continues….. |
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This article is from the Ligali Media
Network
http://www.ligali.org//article.php?id=462 |
Last Updated Fri 12 May 2006, 3:58 am |
| Copyright © The Ligali Organisation |
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