OUIDAH — The tree still stands in front of the house even after centuries, a silent witness to immense suffering. In the shade of its limp leaves, generations of captives once circled the majestic trunk three times. The last steps of hundreds of thousands of slaves on West African soil before they were shipped across the Atlantic, degraded to mere commodities.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
According to Voodoo culture, the ritual was meant to help the soul return to its African homeland after death. Here in Benin’s coastal town of Ouidah, they call the old tree “Arbre du retour”: the Tree of Return.
The shadow of the tree weighs heavily on Martin Kakanakou, 72, every morning when he opens his door. His family has lived on the property since the late 18th century, sent there by the powerful Kingdom of Dahomey. Kakanakou’s great-great-grandfather was responsible for ensuring that the captives sold by the Dahomey were properly placed on the ships of European traders.
Veiled genocide
The reckoning with slavery has been part of the town for well over 100 years, understandably focusing long on the disgraceful role of Europeans, who bought at least 12 million African slaves for labor on plantations in the colonies of North and South America. Around two million were shipped from the port of Ouidah.
The historical guilt of the Europeans dominates the debate in the West.
The historical guilt of the Europeans also dominates the debate in the West, where it has been reignited by the Black Lives Matter movement, the toppling of colonial monuments and demands for reparations. Yet some voices that aimed to present a more comprehensive picture have largely gone unnoticed.
For example, the French-Senegalese anthropologist Tidiane N’Diaye, in his book The Veiled Genocide – The History of Muslim Slave Trade in Africa examined the impacts of the oriental slave trade. “It can rightly be said that the slave trade conducted by ruthless Arab-Muslim raiders was far more devastating for Black Africa than the transatlantic slave trade,” N’Diaye asserts. He estimates the number of Africans taken to Muslim countries at 17 million.
A lesser-known slave trade
Even less is known about the intra-African slave trade or the involvement of African kingdoms like Dahomey – a situation that the 2022 Netflix production The Woman King did little to change. On the contrary, the film about a female military unit of Dahomey downplayed the fact that the kingdom “derived its wealth from capturing Africans for the transatlantic slave trade,” according to The New York Times. While The New Yorker — not exactly a leading conservative publication — even recognized a “cynical distortion of history.”
I have often asked myself how my people were able to sell people like themselves.
Significantly, it was mainly influencers in West African countries who spread the hashtag #boycottwomanking on social networks, including in Nigeria, where Dahomey had enslaved people for centuries after successful wars.
Kakanakou doesn’t need movies to process the subject. The tree is his constant reminder; he looks at it from his sofa through the window. “I have often asked myself how my people were able to sell people like themselves, causing them so much suffering,” he says. “I am ashamed of it. That is also something we discuss here repeatedly.”
National trauma
The kingdom’s economy was significantly based on slaves who cultivated the fields even before the arrival of European traders. The highly militarized Dahomey warriors were accomplices to the Europeans, who had them bring the slaves to the coast. European traders considered it too dangerous to conduct their own raids. Dahomey warriors came by ship, brought hundreds of slaves on board – and disappeared.
In recent decades, Benin has also intensively dealt with this chapter of its national trauma. It was first addressed on a larger scale in 1992, during an international conference. A few years later, then Benin President Matthieu Kérékou caused a stir when he knelt before African American religious leaders in the United States to apologize for his country’s historical guilt. This stands out in the region; only Ghana made similar admissions.
Benin’s current President Patrice Talon also addresses the issue. His father came from Ouidah; his mother’s ancestors belonged to the Dahomey Kingdom. Political opponents in the election campaign accused Talon of coming from a family that aided and abetted slavery.
Two museums are currently being built, partially financed by the World Bank. And in Ouidah, a slave ship is being reconstructed in an artificial lagoon. The aim is to expand tourism and create urgently needed new — and probably also a bit about taking the wind out of the opposition’s sails.
Untold stories
Local guides do not deny, but explain: without cooperation, the Europeans would probably have simply supported rival groups, one guide says; it was about self-preservation.
And yes, the Dahomey had many slaves, but the local form of slavery was far more humane and often not meant to last a lifetime. The fact that there were also repeated ritual executions of slaves is not mentioned by the guide. The story also includes that in the 1840s, the then Dahomey King Ghezo vehemently resisted the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, which Britain enforced with patrolling ships off Benin’s coast.
“Slave trading was the predominant principle of my people; it is the source of their glory and wealth,” Ghezo said, according to records of British diplomat Richard Burton, who was sent to negotiate with Dahomey at that time. “Their songs celebrate their victories, and the mother lulls the child to sleep with triumphant sounds about an enemy condemned to slavery.”
Reckoning with history and the guilt
The reckoning with history also happens in Leocardia de Souza’s restaurant in Ouidah, a simple stone building with plastic chairs. At least sometimes. Her last name is the most common in the town; the 53-year-old is one of the many descendants of the Brazilian Francisco Félix de Souza, one of the most important slave traders of the 19th century. He once settled in Ouidah; the opulent house still stands today, freshly renovated, next to the former slave market. King Ghezo invented the title Cha-Cha for de Souza, a sort of chieftain.
We bear a shared responsibility for the slave trade, not just the whites.
Even today, the clan is among the most influential in the country. Over the decades, it has provided several ministers, a bishop and a first lady. “We still don’t talk enough about the past in Africa,” de Souza says, while serving chicken with rice. “We bear a shared responsibility for the slave trade, not just the whites.”
When people hear her name, they assume wealth, “but my part of the family inherited nothing but the small family property.” She also knows feelings of guilt. For example, when descendants of slaves from the United States recently arrived in search of their family roots and stayed with her. For days afterward, de Souza thought about how their ancestors’ paths had crossed in a harmful way two centuries earlier.
The topic simmers beneath the surface of Beninese society, where ethnic groups like the Yoruba, who were once massively enslaved by the Dahomey, live side by side with the Dahomey people. Even today, many descendants of the Dahomey Kingdom belong to the economic and political elite; in some areas, they still hold power. For the first 15 years of its independence, Benin was called the “Republic of Dahomey.”
The silence of the accused
Kakanakou once experienced these tensions firsthand at a memorial event for the victims of slavery. Hundreds had come for a politician’s speech. When the speaker talked about Dahomey’s role, someone in the crowd pointed at Kakanakou, and shouted “that was your family.” Kakanakou remained silent as hundreds of eyes turned to him.
“I cried inside,” he remembers, “that moment was a great shock.” For nights he could not sleep, wondering how much guilt his ancestors bore — and that somehow he bears as well. “They had no choice; the king had assigned them this task,” he says today. Yes, Dahomey benefited financially. But his family did not even receive a regular salary at the time, only a field for farming.
The incident happened several years ago; there have been no such attacks since. But the shadow of the tree weighs heavily on him every day.
