Tag: Dutch slavery

Dutch King Heckled in Slavery Museum in South Africa

On By Dr. Y.In Great Moments1 Comment
Flag of South Africa

Last month, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands visited South Africa, for what was their first official visit, and decided to visit the Iziko Slave Museum in Cape Town. At the end of their visit, as they were exiting the museum, they were surprised by about 100 protesters who confronted them about their country’s part in the enslavement of Africans transported to the Americas. Excerpts below are from AP.

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Flag of the Netherlands

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Angry protesters in Cape Town confronted the king and queen of the Netherlands on Friday as they visited a museum that traces part of their country’s 150-year involvement in slavery in South Africa.

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima were leaving the Slave Lodge building in central Cape Town when a small group of protesters representing South Africa’s First Nations groups — the earliest inhabitants of the region around Cape Town — surrounded the royal couple and shouted slogans about Dutch colonizers stealing land from their ancestors.

… The Dutch colonized the southwestern part of South Africa in 1652 through the Dutch East India trading company. They controlled the Dutch Cape Colony for more than 150 years before British occupation. Modern-day South Africa still reflects that complicated Dutch history, most notably in the Afrikaans language, which is derived from Dutch and is widely spoken as an official language of the country, including by First Nations descendants.

San (Basarwa/Bushmen) hunters
San (Basarwa/Bushmen) hunters

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima made no speeches during their visit to the Slave Lodge but spent time walking through rooms where slaves were kept under Dutch colonial rule. The Slave Lodge was built in 1679, making it one of the oldest buildings in Cape Town. It was used to keep slaves — men, women and children — until 1811. Slavery in South Africa was abolished by the English colonizers in 1834.

Garth Erasmus, a First Nations representative who accompanied the king and queen on their walk through the Slave Lodge, said their visit should serve to “exorcise some ghosts.”

The Dutch East India Company established Cape Town as a settlement for trading ships to pick up supplies on their way to and from Asia. Slaves were brought to work at the colony from Asian and other African countries, but First Nations inhabitants of South Africa were also enslaved and forced off their land. Historians estimate there were nearly 40,000 slaves in the Cape Colony when slavery ended.

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Dutch King Apologizes for Colonial-Era Slavery

On By Dr. Y.In Great Moments3 Comments
Slaves on board a ship

Last July, Dutch King Willem-Alexander apologized for his country’s involvement in slavery, transporting Africans to the Americas. At this point, any blind person can clearly see the rush for the New Scramble for Africa. As said earlier, although we hear these apologies, Africans are tired of these empty words followed by no actions; words spoken to put Africans back to sleep, while another New Scramble starts. Africans are not dumb: Africa is at the center of the survival of the world. Now we see all these heads of state, kings, queens, and pope, crisscross the African continent; Africans have to wake up… to not fall asleep to these sign off the continent.

Excerpts below are from DW.

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Flag of the Netherlands

The Netherlands is marking a century and a half since the end of the Dutch slave trade which transported Africans to the Americas. King Willem-Alexander used the occasion to apologize on behalf of his country.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander has apologized for his country’s historic involvement in slavery and its ongoing repercussions, as the Netherlands on Saturday begins an official event to mark 150 years since the end of slavery in Dutch colonies.

The king issued his apology during a speech marking the event.

“Today I’m standing here in front of you as your king and as part of the government. Today I am apologizing myself,” Willem-Alexander said. “And I feel the weight of the words in my heart and my soul.”

The king commissioned a study into the exact role the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau, played in slavery in the Netherlands.

He asked for forgiveness “for the clear failure to act in the face of this crime against humanity.”

The back of a slave

Thousands of descendants from the former Dutch colony of Suriname and the Dutch overseas territories of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao are attending celebrations in Amsterdam.

The event has been dubbed “Keti Koti,” meaning “breaking chains” in Sranan Togo, a Creole language spoken in Suriname.

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Beginning in the 17th Century, the Netherlands grew into one of Europe’s major colonial powers and was responsible for about 5% of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Some 600,000 slaves were transported from Africa to colonies in the Americas, and many Javanese and Balinese people were enslaved and taken to South Africa under Dutch colonial rule.