You must struggle to truly remember this past in all its nuance, error, and humanity. You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance - no matter how improved - as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children.

Looking back, I can see that Haggard and other popular writers, when it came to my continent, were penning from the same dictum: imperialism was normal, resistance to it immoral. Africa and its peoples were the background that enabled European self-realization, the same theme that ran through our history lessons. The fast pace, turns, twists, mystery, and denouement sucked me into those adventures, but soon even these elements could not blind me completely to the negative implications of certain images and groupings of characters. Even in fiction I was not going to escape the theme of empire building. But then I stumbled into the crime thriller and detective category, and I thought, just maybe, I might finally escape into the realm of pure, untainted fiction.

But harmony is a fragile thing, and so is justice. They bend and break easily. We bend and break them with greed, with violence, with lies and obscurations. The people sold into slavery are modern-day Ghanaians’ ancestors too. Their backs and hearts broke under whip and weight. The incomplete story Ghana tells about slavery is a breach. Ashanti culture was breached by colonization. My family broke before and I knew it might break again. The earth broke from the force of a meteoroid, which sent shock waves in every direction.

One of the fascinating stories of formerly enslaved people who started trading on their own and building wealth is that of a woman called Angela from Bengal in India. Angela was also known as Angila, Ansiela, Ansla and Hansela. She had arrived in the Cape together with her husband and three children, shipped to the Cape by a Batavian landdrost, Pieter Kemp. He then sold the family to Van Riebeeck. In 1662, Van Riebeeck sold Angela to Abraham Gabbema was promoted to a post in Batavia. He then liberated Angela and her three children. No mention is made of her husband from India. After she was freed, Angela was given land in Heerestraat with a title deed signed by one Cornelis van Quaelbergen. Part of the conditions for liberation included understanding and speaking the Dutch language, being a confirmed Christian and a member of a church.

Before the turn of the eighteenth century, the status of a Free Black in society was often influenced by the abilities of the individual rather than purely the colour of their skin. There is the story of the two formerly enslaved men, Anthony and Manuel from Angola, who had a white worker as their employee. Despite the upward mobility of a select few Free Black people, the vast majority were not in the same position. By the eighteenth century, poverty was a common feature for Free Blacks.