Its strategic location on the Atlantic coastline led to its invasion by European slave traders in the early 14th century. Since then, the Ghanaian town of Cape Coast is visited annually by tourists in numbers that far outstrip the town's population of about 100,000 people.
An estimated 12 million slaves are believed to have been sold out along West Africa's coastlines during the Transatlantic trade; exact figures are not available. Boasting the best educational institutions in present-day Ghana, with many great names as products of such schools, Cape Coast's story is woven around the painful slave trade that has defined the modern populations of many West African countries and the diaspora.
Cape Coast Castle served as the main headquarters of European slave traders in the former Gold Coast (wow, Ghana). The structure was built over 200 years ago, in what was then the capital of the Gold Coast, before the seat of power was moved to Accra, over 120 kilometres away. The historic building's Gate of no Return tells a story of the long battle for freedom: from slavery to colonialism and imperialism.
Paved with gold
The slave castle was originally built by Swedish traders but the British took it over in 1662, only for the Dutch to capture it a year later before it finally ended up with the British in 1664. And so began a trade that saw millions of Africans losing their status, cultures, traditions, languages and names. The Germans were also around at one point. Portuguese traders were the first Europeans that came to the Gold Coast. They named the place of their arrival ‘Elmina' (from the Portuguese word ‘mina', meaning ‘gold mine'); they also named the country, ‘Gold Coast,' because of its abundance of gold dust.
The slave castles were used to hold captives procured in exchange for gold, money, sugar, fineries and other goods, prior to their being loaded onto ships for transportation across the Atlantic. Walter Carrington, a tour guide and staff of the Australian embassy in Ghana, said the country is fortunate to have structures like the castles as reference points on the history of the slave trade. To secure the castle against further invasion from competing European powers that also coveted the booming trade in gold and slaves, the British brought in ammunitions and created a fort. Amongst such forts were Fort Victoria and Williams, which provided a lookout onto the surrounding sea.
The captives that passed through places like the Cape Coast Castle, were sold into slavery by their neighbours, or by raiders who periodically invaded surrounding towns and villages. Thousands of African captives languished in dungeons dug deep into the grounds of the castle. The tour caused much weeping among the tourists. The dungeons bear testimony to the sheer inhumanity of man to fellow man; and made us recoil with pain at the horrors that must have been visited on captives in the slave castle.
During our tour, a teenager who had been swimming in the ocean before the Gate of no Return was opened for tourists, rushed to me. "Good evening. My name is Patrick and you are welcome to the Gate of No Return," he said. "I was born here, but I thank God not as a slave. I come here most times, because of the stories we have heard, and sometimes to watch people who come to trace their lineage. I love hearing their stories and, sometimes, we might be lucky to get money from them."
Like Patrick, many local youngsters frolic in the sea, swimming and playing beach football. Others eke a living through fishing, a business that existed long before the slave trade
Palaver Hall
Among the many attractions of the castle is the Palaver Hall, which had an ongoing art exhibition at the time of our visit. Showing us round the big, well-ventilated hall, Carrington said, "We have the reason to believe that a lot of the trade happened in this hall. And when we say trade, we do not mean just the slave trade, but also food items like palm oil, gunpowder, guns, and others. We now have modern additions in the hall, especially the befitting ceiling slates."
The significance of the hall even tallies with the date of Ghana's independence, according to Carrington. "We had our independence on 6 March, 1957, because on the same date on 6th of March, 1844, a number of chiefs in the area agreed to hand over their rights to the European colonialists. With this action of surrender, the colony of Gold Coast officially came into being. The local chiefs were given rooms in the Palaver Hall, where they could peep to see the evil inflicted on fellow Africans, though they often did not understand the languages of the trade," he said.
War Captives
The tour also included some accounts of how wars and conflicts were instigated and sponsored among local communities to generate captives for the slave trade. With guns made available by European powers and other financial inducements, local chiefs and warriors waged wars against themselves for riches and proceeds from the trade in slaves.
The evil cycle was repeated all over West Africa, from Nigeria to Togo, ending in the shipment of captives from places like the Cape Coast castle to the New World. The castle today stands as a stark reminder of these historical wrongs.
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