Soyinka proposes ‘Heritage Voyage of Return’ from Diaspora to West Africa as reparatory justice for trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
* Set up special Honour Gallery to house artifacts looted from the African continent
By Anote Ajeluorou
BLACK Africa’s Nobel laureate in literature and a powerful voice in reparatory justice for the 400 years ignoble trans-Atlantic Slave Trade has made an important proposition to the world body, the United Nations, to urgently set up ‘The Heritage Voyage of Return’, ‘as a moving Remembrance Monument, a transitional warehouse of a continent’s past, present and future, a vibrant statement on a continent’s interrupted history,’ and as a symbolic gesture of the wrongs outsiders perpetrated against Africa. Such voyage of return would span a sort of regatta, a festive boat/s that would journey back from the lands on which Africans were transported in the infamous outwards voyages of slave trade back to West Africa’s coast and make stops in ports where African slaves were forced into ships and transported away from their homelands.
Soyinka made this declarative proposition on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 while addressing the United Nations’ annual ceremony in observance of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, under the theme ‘Acknowledge the Past. Repair the Present. Build a Future of Dignity and Justice.’ Soyinka entitled his address ‘Remembrance, and the Reparatory Ethos, 2025,’ and spoke to the various ways slavery has remained a source of concern till date, citing instances of homegrown ones that include the abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria in the name of religion.
According to Soyinka, “In visual terms, the concept is not too dissimilar in orientation from those 19th and 20th century “expositions” – Berlin, London, Manchester, etc, etc, in western and other parts of the world, expositions crammed full of the spoils of rape and pillage of others. This time, however, what is being proposed is a lived-in exposition as a moving Remembrance monument, a transitional warehouse of a continent’s past, present and future, a vibrant statement on a continent’s interrupted history. A special Honour Gallery will house artifacts looted from the African continent but since returned under the spirit and ethos of Restitution. Seminars. Readings. Africa themed films. Documentaries. installations. Clinics and life style parades. Music from Africa and the Diaspora. A unique library and manuscript collection. Archeological retrievals. An exhumed slave vessel. The boat will take off from the Diaspora, make a call at representative ports of Slavery connection, positive or negative, on its way to the West African coast. A television crew on board broadcasts events to the rest of the world. Primarily for descendants of the enslaved, it is also open to others – that is, others who are equally embroiled in the quest for a new humanity that embraces, not excludes, that is curious, not foreclosed, that still lays claim to conscience as the touchstone of the rational species.”
Prof. Wole Soyinka
Although he acknowledged that “the nature of reparatory justice that befits the magnitude of Slavery wrongs can only be symbolic, gestural,” the literary giant also said it could be “morally and therapeutically propulsive, one that goes to the core of a continent’s humanity, vividly expressed in its arts and spirituality. It is a symbolic voyage of return, one that stands to become an annual fixture.”
Soyinka noted that UNESCO was already doing something similar to his proposition like its “work on the Routes of Enslaved Peoples, beamed deservedly, at the African continent,” and UNESCO’s declaration of the first and now ‘Second International Decade of People of African Descent’ that started in December 2024. Such recognition, according to Soyinka, only tallies with the ‘Heritage Voyage of Return’, as “a voyage of Learning, Leisure, and Linkage. It is not only feasible, it is imperative. Yes, such a voyage presumes to teach the world, to bring the world into confrontation with centuries of wrongs and possibly a recovery of its lost humanity. It is however not designed to be a vessel of recrimination, but a floating festival of peaceful options and neglected knowledge.”
Although he was quick to respond to those who might dismiss his proposition as ‘glorified tourism,’ he nevertheless said it was the first step towards realising a world that has long lost its humanity, and retorting, “Glorified tourism? Why not? But Tourism “with an attitude”. This is a return, not just to a wronged continent, but a return of the world to its holistic potential, to what it can be, shorn of irrational concepts, embedded prejudice, lust for power and domination. It will be manifested as a first furlong in a voyage towards, put simply, a re-insertion of human in that grossly depleted word: humanity.”
Other speakers invited include UN Secretary-General António Guterres, President of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly Philemon Yang, of Cameroon; Permanent Representatives of all 193 UN Members States, and a dynamic youth speaker. Past keynote speakers have included Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The New York Times’ 1619 Project (2022); Lisa M. Coleman, a member of New York University’s senior leadership (2021); and the Trinidadian mixed media artist Christopher Cozier (2019).
