President John Dramani Mahama has argued that historical events such as slavery being judged according to the social norms of the past are, in his view, misguided and misinformed.
He stated that the forced transportation of African individuals to work against their will in foreign lands is a grave injustice requiring acknowledgement and redress.
This statement from President Mahama coincides with heightened global advocacy for reparations and recognition of slavery’s lasting effects on African communities and the diaspora.
Speaking at a high-level special event on reparatory justice at the United Nations Headquarters on Tuesday, March 24, 2026, the Ghanaian leader said, “People will sometimes put a disclaimer to say that you cannot use the social norms to judge the actions and events that took place in the past. Well, such people are loud and wrong,” he said.
He spoke under the theme “Reparatory Justice for the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and the Racialised Chattel Enslavement of Africans”.
He added, “Just because everybody is doing something doesn’t make it right. Slavery is wrong now, and it was wrong then.”
President Mahama said, ‘Throughout history, Africans have been, but there have always been voices—abolitionists—who stood against the injustice.’
“The entire transatlantic slave trade was designed to deny African people their humanity.”
He added that the system was rooted in a racial hierarchy with no basis in fact or science that placed whiteness above blackness.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana