ABSTRACT
On 25 March 1807 a Parliamentary Act was passed to abolish the British Slave Trade, though slavery itself was not outlawed in British colonies until 1833.1 For nearly 400 years African men and women, boys and girls were physically, psychologically and spiritually dehumanized by European and North American slave traders for economic gains. ‘It was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that England first entered the murky waters of slave trading – a full 100 years after the Portuguese.’2 Anywhere between 9-15 million Africans were captured, inhumanly transported to the Americas, and enslaved.3 These Africans were never to return to their homelands again, and on an average journey 10-15 per cent perished in the Atlantic.4 Transatlantic Slavery is known as the African Holocaust. While slavery pushed Africa into untold misery, it laid the foundation for the wealth and industrialization of the western world.
