It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says, ‘you toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it’.
‘No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” — Abraham Lincoln, from the 1858 senatorial election debates with Stephen Douglas.
“Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.” — New Testament, Ephesians 6:5-8.
Somewhat improbably, slavery is in the news: the Dutch prime minister has apologised for his nation’s role in carrying it out, and the state of California is considering paying reparations to the descendants of enslaved persons. Do such things have meaning for South Africa and South Africans?
Just before Christmas 2022, Mark Rutte made news (probably the first time in many years that a Dutch prime minister has made international headlines) when he offered a formal apology for his country’s “slavery past”.
In so doing, he acknowledged that the legacy of slavery continued to generate “negative effects”, even if the Dutch had officially outlawed slavery in their possessions in 1863. Slavery had ended in the Netherlands itself some years earlier.
In his apology, Rutte said: “For centuries under Dutch state authority, human dignity was violated in the most horrific way possible. And successive Dutch governments after 1863 failed to adequately see and acknowledge that our slavery past continued to have negative effects and still does. For that, I offer the apologies of the Dutch government.”
Rutte offered his thoughts in a speech at the country’s National Archives, in response to the 2021 report, “Chains of the Past”, issued by the Dutch Slavery History Dialogue Group.
“For centuries, the Dutch state and its representatives facilitated, stimulated, preserved, and profited from slavery. For centuries, in the name of the Dutch State, human beings were made into commodities, exploited, and abused,” Rutte went on to say.
He added that slavery must be condemned as a “crime against humanity,” — a view very few would disagree with in our own time — even though it still persists in various forms, in practice, if not with de jure legal protection. Even now, it persists in the ...