Can Africa’s Victory at the UN Open the “Door of No Return”?

Ghana’s move to bring the transatlantic slave trade before the United Nations as “one of the gravest crimes against humanity” marks a powerful political intervention—one that forces the world to confront a system of exploitation that has never truly disappeared.

For more than four centuries, millions of people were violently uprooted from African lands and crammed into ships bound for slavery. Many perished in the dark waters of the Atlantic, while those who survived were forced into brutal labor under white masters.

In 1781, the Zong ship, sailing from São Tomé to Jamaica, became one of the most chilling symbols of this systemic barbarity. Overloaded far beyond capacity, the crew faced dwindling water and supplies. Their solution was a “commercial decision”: to throw enslaved people overboard—men, women, and children alike. As 133 innocent Africans were cast into the ocean as “excess cargo,” their cries vanished beneath the waves. The ship’s owners later filed an insurance claim for their “lost goods.” The court, in turn, treated the massacre not as murder, but as an insurance dispute.

The difference between those thrown into the ocean then and those who drown today in makeshift boats crossing the Mediterranean is merely one of form, not essence. Those who die in cobalt mines in the Congo remain, much like their ancestors, the most invisible link in a global economic chain. The system endures; only its methods evolve, its chains rendered invisible.

It is precisely this enduring legacy of systemic violence that Ghana’s President, John Mahama, has now brought back into global debate at the United Nations.

The Dark Side of Enlightenment

Slavery was not abolished because it was recognized as a crime against humanity, but because it ceased to be profitable. As Eric Williams argued, the capital that fueled the Industrial Revolution was extracted from slavery; once mechanization took hold, the system shifted from “free labor” to a workforce that could also consume.

Yet this transformation did not break the mental chains. The intellectual foundations of what the West presents today as “universal values” were laid by thinkers who helped legitimize systems of enslavement. Hegel described Africa as “outside history” and undeveloped. John Locke, a key figure of liberalism, invested in the slave trade. Immanuel Kant categorized humanity into racial hierarchies, placing Black people at the bottom.

Given these intellectual roots, it is hardly surprising that many European countries abstained during the UN vote. The West’s historical and philosophical continuity is not merely theoretical—it continues to shape contemporary political discourse. When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer remarked, “Rather than spending too much time on the past, I prefer to roll up my sleeves and focus on the future,” he encapsulated a persistent unwillingness to confront historical responsibility. Without reckoning with past crimes or returning the wealth built upon them, what “future” can truly be envisioned?

This politics of denial inflicts its deepest damage not on the perpetrators, but on the minds of the colonized.

Mental Colonization and the Guilt of the Victim

Colonialism did not only occupy land; it engineered a deep psychological rupture. It cultivated an inferiority complex designed to estrange Africans from their own history and dignity. Through education and language policies, colonial systems ensured that many Africans would look into the mirror and see only deficiency and backwardness.

Today, some African youth interpret the tragedy of slavery less as a systematic Western crime and more as the failure of internal actors. Colonial discourse not only fosters admiration for the oppressor but also burdens the victim with misplaced guilt toward their own people.

Kenyan thinker Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, in Decolonising the Mind, illustrates how language functions as a tool of domination. Language is not merely communication—it shapes worldview. If a child dreams in the language of those who enslaved their ancestors and learns history through the oppressor’s lens, they are more likely to magnify internal complicity while minimizing institutionalized Western violence. This is the most insidious victory of mental colonization: the victim defending the very system that oppressed them.

Beyond Compensation: Restoring Dignity

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has already exposed the inconsistencies and moral fragility of the West’s so-called universal values—human rights, law, and democracy.

Ghana’s initiative stands as part of a longer historical trajectory—from the 1993 Abuja Proclamation to the 2001 Durban Declaration—both of which declared colonialism a crime against humanity. This moment signals the end of an era in which the West could unilaterally claim moral authority.

Ghana, with more than thirty slave castles lining its coast, was once a central hub of this immense tragedy. The infamous “Door of No Return,” through which countless Africans were forced onto slave ships, remains an open wound in the nation’s memory. Mahama’s stance is an effort to reclaim the dignity of the millions who passed through that door.

The issue is not merely financial compensation or symbolic apologies. Reparations must encompass broader justice: investment in education and healthcare, cultural restoration, and the redressing of structural economic inequalities.

As Mahama emphasizes, the focus should not be on a passive narrative of “slavery,” but on the active crime of “enslavement.” Yesterday’s perpetrators were captains who chained human beings; today, they may take the form of financial systems that trap African nations in debt, or multinational corporations that impose unsafe labor conditions in mines.

What is required is the dismantling of the entire colonial economic system—its debt traps, monopolies, and proxy leadership structures. Africa’s path forward lies in reclaiming its dignity and liberating its consciousness from colonial frameworks.

The innocent souls who perished centuries ago in the Atlantic now await justice in different forms—in the Mediterranean, in Congo’s mines, in Kenya’s data-labeling centers, and in Ghana’s electronic waste sites.

Africa is still waiting.

The original version of this article was published in Independent Türkçe.