This article was published in The Citizen Newspaper – Tanzania on March 25, 2025
Shimbo Pastory
A bit over a hundred years ago is not very far in history. There is at least a generation familiar to the readers who at least knew people who lived around 120 years ago. As such the history of 120 years ago is close to ours, and can easily be communicated with minimal errors by oral tradition.
120 years ago, though at the peak of slavery and domination of foreign nations over most of the African lands and communities, the world had learnt – at least in principle – the minimal measures of human dignity and value, and what actually constitutes being human.
Slavery, especially of Africans was carried on and on, not because the perpetrators did not know that it was morally wrong, or they were ignorant of the core principles of care for humanity, but it was rather because of the preferred power dynamics and systematized choice to suppress and oppress other people for a benefit.
It is a particularly meaningful coincidence to mark globally the International Day against Racial Discrimination on March 21, while Mbye Otabenga, a long term victim of abuse and discrimination, sadly ended his life on March 20, 1916 after the distress of the dehumanization he was served at the tables of elite America.
We will explore his case in search of lessons of history, not anachronistically though, as in transferring the knowledge and values we have today to that time, yet bearing in mind purposeful relatability with the contexts of remnant discriminative structures and situations today, both domestically in our country and internationally, while judging the former as purposed brutality for gain.
The case of Mbye Otabenga (c. 1883-1916), now popular as “Ota Benga,” a Congolese young man from the Mbuti indigenous forest people, who was put in the zoo in America, is not isolated from the deep-rooted and widespread oppression and suppression of people of different races by the Caucasians of Europe and America, who at the time dominated science, trade, media, and publications.
The degrading oppression of people of African origin who have been referred to by colour ‘black,’ a hugely controversial and widely unacceptable taxonomy, has for centuries been given both reason and justification meaning by manipulating science in favour of the pervading oppressive idea.
Mr Samuel Verner (1873-1943) who took Ota Benga and other tribal people from across the world for exhibition in the human zoo in America was a missionary and explorer who traded African animals. There is a big contradiction of values here; especially that he was a missionary.
On the other hand, he was trusted for this organized abusive task because he was experienced with trading and transporting animals to America, a clear sign of enduring presumption of superiority of the people of his race to all other people in the world.
The practice of keeping humans of different races in zoos in not new in history in the West, with France, Belgium, Germany, United States and United Kingdom having most zoos. But the fact that such a brutality happened just a hundred years ago is a concern.
Ota Benga was displayed at the St Louis World Fair (1904), and later at the Bronx Zoo in New York (1906), together with an Orangutan, an ape, in a zoo whose director William Temple Hornaday (1854-1937), was a well-educated scientist.
From his scientific knowledge he should have known that Ota Benga was human and undeserving of such treatment, but he went on to exhibit him with the orangutan ape, instructed him to dance and play with the ape, locked him in the same cage with it, and entertained public mockery of fairgoers who threw peanuts at him as if he were a monkey.
Mere pseudoscientific claims were used by Western scientists to dehumanize people of African origin, considering them as less than human with an inherent and scientifically justified inferiority, even without justifying such claims scientifically.
It is important that our young people learn that this happened just 100 years ago. This will help to shape their mindset as independent and dignified people, and enable then to look at the Western powers with care, so as not to repeat mistakes written in history.
We can ask, how comes all bilateral conversations are presented as if on our favour, yet 100 years ago we were considered less human and fit for zoo display for the entertainment of a so considered superior race?
Is such a quick shift realistic based on the global dynamics ruled by the desire of the powerful individuals and nations to acquire more wealth, power and control? Why should we be favoured while at the same time there is a complex systemic oppression of people who share our origins in those same countries?
Shimbo Pastory is a Tanzanian advocate for positive social transformation. He is a student of Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, Manila, Philippines. Website: www.shimbopastory.com
