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CAPE
TOWN, Jun 30 (IPS) - The greatest monument to slavery in this
city is the telephone directory, where the origins of many of its
citizens can be seen in names given to their forebears by slave
owners. "Many slaves were give biblical names or named after
the months of the year," explains Ramzie Abrahams of the South
African Cultural History Museum, "Today we can recognise those
names in the telephone directory."
January
and February, Abrahams and Jacobs are common surnames in the Cape
Town telephone directory.
South
Africa is the one country on the African continent where slaves
were imported from other parts of the world. Over 180 years, as
many as 63 000 slaves were brought to Cape Town from East Africa,
Madagascar, South India and Indonesia, among other places. They
were used as labour on farms on the outskirts of the city, as workers
in households and factories and as builders.
Slavery
in the Cape only came to an end when the British banned it in what
was then their colony, in 1834. Now, the city has created a slave
route for tourists ¡ which takes them to places where slaves
where bought and sold, lived, worked and were punished.
One
stop on the route is Greenmarket Square, venue of a popular city
flea market, and once a place where slaves were publicly whipped.
Another is the Slave Tree, just around the corner from the South
African Parliament. Here, slaves were bought and sold weekly for
hundreds of years.
There
are also stops at churches where slaves were allowed to worship
and mosques where they converted to and practised Islam. Signal
Hill, which overlooks the city and where the emancipation of slaves
was celebrated in 1834, is also on the route.
The
tour also shows the tremendous impact the slaves had on the culture
of the city ¡ starting centuries ago, up to today. Cape Town's
people, its language and its food today all bear the marks of the
slaves who were brought to the city from around the world.
However,
there are no accurate figures for the number of descendants of slaves
who now live in the city.
Abrahams
is the manager of a project to turn the Cultural History Museum,
formerly a slave lodge, into an exhibition about slavery. The project,
scheduled to be completed in about two years, aims to highlight
the evils of slavery and the contribution that slaves made to the
political and economic development of South Africa. It hopes to
unlock the history of slavery and make it accessible for the many
South Africans who are descendants of slaves and those who chose
to ignore the city's darker history.
Besides
providing a means to educate young South Africans about slavery,
the exhibition is looking at creating a database of slave names.
The database will allow South Africans who are the descendants of
slaves to research their background.
For
Abrahams, the importance of this is that South Africans descended
from slaves often tried to hide their history. Apartheid and institutionalised
racism elevated Europeans above indigenous blacks and those descended
from slaves in South Africa, until the end of apartheid. In the
new South Africa, people are becoming more comfortable with their
past.
The
exhibition will also look at training slave route tour guides recruited
from the communities that began among the slaves.
Abraham
sees the exhibition as a way of highlighting the slave heritage
of Cape Town, a South African tourist attraction better known for
its mountains and beaches.
For
the moment, slave route tourism has a limited appeal, say some of
the guides who have run tours, but Abraham is confident interest
will pick up once the exhibition and related projects are established.
The
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) has been working on an international slave route project
since 1994. An international scientific committee ¡ with experts
from Africa, the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean - has been established
to work on the project, which includes the restoration of sites
associated with the slave trade and the development of museums in
Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean. The chair of the South African
Parliamentary committee on Arts, Culture, Science and Technology,
Wally Serote, serves on the committee.
Meanwhile,
preparations for the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), to
be hosted in South Africa from August 2001, have bogged down, with
Africa and the West deadlocked over whether the continent should
receive reparations for slavery. At this stage, it is reported that
while former colonial powers are ready to apologise for slavery
and colonialism, they are set against any claims for reparations.
Western
countries also have been reluctant to put slavery and colonialism
on the agenda, arguing that it is more important for the conference
to deal with contemporary forms of racism than historical events.
The
South African Non-governmental Coalition (Sangoco) has come out
strongly in support of the call for reparations. "The economies
of developed countries were essentially built on resources taken
from the developing world. We need to look at reparations as a means
of restructuring the world economy, so that developing countries
can also benefit from globalisation and the inequalities and injustices
of the past can be addressed," says Sangoco spokesman, Mark
Weinberg.
At
this stage, explains Weinberg, there is no clear idea about what
form reparations should take. "While some have spoken of reparations
for individual families, we are more in favour of debt cancellation
to free productive resources in developing countries and adjustment
policies that will aid the poor in the developing world." (END/IPS/AF/CR/AE/as/aa/01)
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