Africa needs apologies for sufferings of the slave trade- Jeffries

Cape Coast, Aug 1, GNA - A member of the African-American group attending the PANAFEST/Emancipation day celebrations, Dr Leonard Jeffries has said Africa needed an apology from the perpetrators of the slave trade and from the church for supporting it.

"Africans should be offered a thousand apologies for the disintegration and disorganisation the continent suffered during that era."

Dr Jeffries, a Lecturer at the Department of African Studies of City College in New York, made the call at a PANAFEST forum.

He threw a challenge to Africans on the continent, as well as those in the Diaspora, to rededicate and reaffirm their mission as Africans. "We need to continue the African revolutionary struggle of freeing the minds of Africans from mental slavery."

Dr Jeffries said Africans should, as "soldiers, join the war of delivering mother Africa from rape, segregation and re-enslavement. Africans have the capability to develop their potentials, since science, medicine and agriculture, were first discovered on the continent".

He said the only way forward for a new world for Africans was through Pan-Africanism and urged all Africans to unite and refrain from victimising one another.

Mr Jerry Robinson, also known as Nana Okofo Kweku Iture I, an African-American based at Elmina, said there were "forces at war with Africans and are working hard to disintegrate them and to restrain them from improving their conditions".

Jahi Issa of the Department of History at the Howard University in Washington DC, appealed to Africans in the Diaspora not only to return home but also to invest to help to improve the economy of African countries.

Nana Kobena Nketsia, the Paramount Chief of the Esikado Traditional Area, appealed to all people of African descent to cherish the traditional values of Africa and free themselves from white supremacy.