President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has affirmed emphatically that, 2019 is “The Year of Return”, this is to commemorate this quarter-centenary since the anchoring of the first slave ship in Jamestown, Virginia.
Ghana is the only public-private African Nation to initiate the recognition of 400 years of slave trade to encourage people of the African diaspora to make the “birthright journey home” as part of “the global African family”.
In 2001, Ghana passed the Right of Abode law, which gives people of African ancestry in the Americas the right to stay in Ghana indefinitely. Then, in 2007, during Ghana’s 50th independence anniversary, the “Joseph Project” was launched to encourage the return of the descendants of enslaved Africans.
This garnered interest and, in December 2016, then President John Mahama presided over the naturalization ceremony of 34 returnees. As he presented them with their certificates of naturalization, he said, “I have only restored to you what rightfully belongs to you and was painfully taken away.”
Ghana has for decades made itself the destination of choice for returning African-Americans and Caribbean people.
Ghana in the 1820s and 1830s, the Tabon people, a group of African slaves in Brazil, returned to Accra after a popular slave rebellion. Their descendants have been fully assimilated into Ghanaian social and political life.
Accra has accommodated many popular historic figures, such as author Maya Angelou (for three years, with her son, Guy); Sylvia Boone (the first tenured black woman professor at Yale University); actor, director, writer, lecturer and civil rights activist Julian Mayfield; sociologist and historian W.E.B Du Bois; and journalist and author George Padmore.
At a launch of the event in Washington DC, President Akufo-Addo stressed that Ghana’s Pan-African leadership and legacy status was earned by the country’s conscious effort to validate the struggles, strengths and links between African descendants on a Pan-African scale.
The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, is coordinating the year-long calendar of activities in “celebration of the resilience of the African spirit”. This is being done in partnership with the Office of Diaspora Affairs in the Office of the President, the Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival (Panafest) Foundation and The Adinkra Group.
Ghana’s policies have been backed by local attitudes towards returnees. Although there is an awareness of “otherness”, returnees have reported feeling welcomed and included.
By: Gerrard-Israel
