The movie awards season is something to look forward to every winter. Not too many of us look forward to this season of the year, but everything that comes with the pomp of Hollywood A-listers and the debates the awards generate is at least some sort of compensation.
For those like myself who are not too keen on the glitz, I look forward more to the debates generated, especially by the biopics that are invariably in contention for the ‘best picture’ gong. One movie has particularly caught my attention this year, and that’s 12 Years A Slave, British director Steve McQueen’s brilliant portrayal of Solomon Northup’s travails in the Southern plantations in the mid-1800s.
According to his autobiography, Northup was born free in New York, but was forced to ensure years of hard toil and servitude after he was kidnapped in Washington DC and sold into slavery. The movie reminds me of the old TV series Roots, the story of Kunta Kinte, who was sold into slavery from his native Gambia and transported to Maryland and subsequently to Virginia.
As usual, the bad guy was the white man who bought and transported him to the foreign land. A universally accepted theory – but is it true?
While it is true that slavery would not have had the wide reaching consequences it did without the impetus it got from the European and American slave traders, I dare argue its success would have been even more hampered if indigenous rulers had not been so readily for it.
Slavery was so successful an industry in Africa because the greed of traditional rulers for the gunpowder, mirrors and whatever other gifts the foreigners brought was insatiable.
My point is, while it’s always easy to blame the traditional bogeyman, there is every possibility there are other culprits in the story.
Olajide Jatto is a software engineer and writer based in Dublin.
