In July, Sierra Leone became the 23rd African country to abolish the death penalty. Although its use across the continent has dwindled – thanks to concerted efforts from human rights organisations and governments – the death penalty remains on many more countries’ statute books due to its strong colonial legacy.
During the colonial period, punishments that were being abandoned in Europe found fertile ground in Africa. Among them was the death penalty, which was deployed as a key element in the mechanism of colonial repression.
While imprisonment became the most common response to crimes in colonial Africa, the death penalty was at the heart of the colonial project, its practice deeply woven into the fabric of state formation and citizenship building.
African political entities did not use the death penalty before colonialism? What nonsense is this?
What might usefully distinguish said colonial period is the infrequency with which it was applied as compared to earlier…..
And the introduction of due process.
Although Sanders of the River tends to be a bit summary in his punishment.
Sierra Leone became independent in 1961
Britain suspended the death penalty for murder in 1965 and finally abolished it in 1969
The whole premise of the piece is a lie which relies on the gullibility and ignorance of the reader.
This is the steady erosion and rewriting of history straight out of Orwell’s 1984. The BBC is doing something similar with its attempts to paint 60s britons as racist Nazis despite the truth.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/bbc-ridley-road-cast-how-25168946
The story follows the rise of the far-right in London and the UK in the 1960s and the resulting attempts to combat fascism.
A small group of misfits were hardly “the rise of the far right.”
Who controls the past controls the future
Probably more prescient now than when he wrote it.
@TMB: and there’s never any shortage of either at the dear old ‘Grauniad’!
The BBC’s Ridley Road is based on a real life struggle of Jewish resistance groups opposing the plague of the fascist movement in the 1960s
Oy veh.
No capital punishment in this colony: abolished in democratic transition when all the world’s self righteous and smug told us what to do. The strange thing is that in this People’s Republic there’s an awful lot of people’s justice which is seriously brutal, swift and generally fatal. I suspect the two are related.
A different part of the ‘nudge unit’ but equally crucial. Their goal is to create a narrative that everything malign is due to the legacies of whatever ‘ism’ is the bete noire of the day – in this case colonialism.
These people exist to promote fear and ignorance, and in the febrile post COVID environment find a large number of willing dupes.
Human sacrifice in pre-colonial africa:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/722523?refreqid=excelsior%3A7ae908ec64936ee455fb832041d97d69&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Criminal law in pre-colonial africa
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.576.4708&rep=rep1&type=pdf
“In addition to the more common forms of punishments, there were some rather unusual ones,
such as being buried alive inside a sewn-up bull’s hide (Diop, 1987:126)”
Sounds fairly standard. And also much of Africa fell under Islamic law and thus lots of death penalties all round.
“thanks to concerted efforts from human rights organisations and governments.”
Thanks to the neo-missionaries and neo-colonialists.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
George Orwell 1984
Surely everybody knows the world was a Utopian paradise of milk and honey till whitey turned up……
Ken, I remember way back, seeing a movie (Walkabout?) where a bloke was tide to a wooden pole, covered in mud then slow cooked over an open fire.
“The BBC’s Ridley Road is based on a real life struggle of Jewish resistance groups opposing the plague of the fascist movement in the 1960s”
I look forward to the BBC drama of the real life struggle of Jewish resistance groups opposing the plague of Labour and Islamic anti-Semitism in modern day UK.
I may have to wait some time.
“The story follows the rise of the far-right in London and the UK”
Of course, what the BBC won’t touch on is that it is usually disgruntled Labour voters who turn to the likes of the BNP. ‘Far-right’ my arse.
Addolf
That was the Naked Prey you’re probably thinking of with Cornel Wilde. Quite surprisingly brutal for the mid 1960s.
Imagine being a heterosexual white man in 2021 who watches telly tho. I wonder how many Jews took out a subscription to Der Sturmer.
Re: the death penalty. Idk why “liberals” are so keen to end the lives of innocent unborn children and keep murderers alive. Something to do with the Satanic inversion of values mibbe. The Moslems are correct, we should kill the worst criminals, not because it’s a deterrent, but because it’s justice. Failing to administer justice is an injustice itself.
It’s like when you have to put down a dog. Nobody should relish these duties, but they have to be performed sometimes because the alternative is more cruel still.
Liars not loonies. Taking advantage of a thick, ill-educated, self-hating readership.
Presumably the writer is nostalgic for those happier pre-colonial times when, rather than impose the death penalty, noble African leaders mercifully sold their unfortunate neighbours to European and Arab traders.
“In 1727 an English trader witnessed the sacrifice of 400 war captives in Dahomey…Royal funerals in Dahomey involved hundreds of deaths”. Lots of sacrifices in Benin, Asante, amongst the Igbo. To blame colonialism for the death penalty is stupid.
Dior Konate is a House Negro. She’s well paid by the white liberals that control the education establishment. So what did you expect of her?
This isn’t so much Orwell’s 1984 as it is Arendt’s Banality of Evil.
She’s a weak individual taking the path of least resistance to a career in the house, on the plantation, and all that comes with it… And if that means serving the white man by Other Means, so be it… The point is that she’s doing what she must to ensure she’ll be allowed to stay in the house.
Why else would The Guardian publish her, if not to serve the interests of those who run the plantation?
This article is about the imperialism of the british in expanding international treaties to Africa.
https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004412088/BP000007.xml
The British pursued the abolition of the slave trade and pressured African kingdoms into outlawing it. As part of their “civilizing” mission, the British also pressured them to ban human sacrifice, trial by ordeal and debt slavery. Breaches of these provisions led to interventions, which helped colonial interests and the eventual abolition of these practices.
Still, the British famously encouraged boiling missionaries in cauldrons, eh?
Similar situation in an exhibition in Oxford’s Pitt Rivers museum. An exhibit promoting LGBT stuff paints a terrible picture of the oppression suffered under British colonial rule… neglecting altogether to tell us what things were like before and after.
Talking of Moslems Steve, you’re reminding me of the continual push to bring ‘home’ those ISIS supporters and their off-spring who are languishing in Kurdish ‘refugee’ camps in Syria.
Needless to say, I feel these camps should be abolished and the immigrants to Syria told to work for a living. I’m sure Assad is perfectly capable of grinding them under the iron heel of Syrian law.
Although his policy actually seems to be the same as the do-gooders; round up all the people he doesn’t like and send them to colonise Europe.
The Oba of Benin was fond of executing victims by dislocating their necks with a club strike and then sawing their heads off push-pull style using a grass rope.
The merits of such an end for leftist agit-prop peddling friends of non-white justice are obvious. Esp after they have been restrained by nailing their hands to their desks . Nails not just through palm as you might expect or hope but one through each fingernail also.
A lesson to all that wicked white ways of fair trial and –hopefully–humane execution are just Whitey’s patronising racist oppression.
The BBC’s Ridley Road is based on a real life struggle of Jewish resistance groups opposing the plague of the fascist movement in the 1960s
Lol.
This sounds much more true to life:
The BBC’s Ridley Road is based on a real life struggle of British Fascist groups opposing the plague of Jewish organised crime and terrorism in the 1910s/ 20s/ 30s/ 40s/ 50s and 60s.
Elsewhere please. You do, of course, have the right to be as antisemitic as you like, absent third party harm. You can also be so elsewhere.
Fair enough.