Africa Day |27 May 2023
Lecture traces our African origin
History lovers, including some students from the Anse Royale secondary school gathered at the University of Seychelles (UniSey) yesterday afternoon to learn about our country’s African origin in relation to the first settlers (15 whites, 7 slaves, 5 Indians, 1 negress) in 1770 and to the slave trade that followed in 1787 in the region between the East coast of Africa, Reunion, Mauritius, Madagascar and our country.
This was through a lecture delivered by Dr Odile de Commarmond, with the theme ‘Our African Origin’. Dr de Commarmond is a former teacher and former principal secretary for Education.
Along with historian colleague Colette Guilleaux, Dr de Commarmond interviewed 80 people in the country with the knowledge among whom included researchers, slave descendent of slaves and descendent of slave owners. Their first interview took place in 2002.
Dubbed the ‘Achille Kwame Luc memorial lecture’, the lecture in honour of famous local Africa activist, Achille ‘Kwame’ Luc, who passed away in 2018, was organised by the Creole Language and Culture Research Institute to commemorate Africa Day yesterday.
The aim of the presentation was to share some information on our origin based on testimonies obtained from some of the ancestors. It was also to promote public interest in this facet of our history and to advocate the importance of conservation of historical documents, artefacts and sites.
“It is also to help us understand and appreciate our past and the impact on our present,” said Dr de Commarmond, who noted that the slave trade brought many slaves to Seychelles of whom many of us are descendents.
Apart from the interviews, the study also took them to various sites across the country where the slaves and their masters lived, including in the region and on mainland Africa to study documents on areas where the slaves come from and on the path the slave trade took to bring them into the country.
In her presentation, Dr de Commarmond said that our slave ancestors came from as far as west of Africa where they took three months to reach the slave port along the eastern coast before being transshipped to the Tanzanian Island of Zanzibar to be sold on the slave market.
She added that they came from different tribes, with whom some of us here bear resemblance, and different languages and cultures still present in their traditional way of life of the tribes today are among many of those present in our creole culture.
“It is important to note that the intention is not to instigate any bitterness among the population but to bring more tolerance and respect for each one of us as individuals,” said Dr de Commarmond, who noted that her research also include the atrocities, punishments and superstitious activities that occurred during the slave era, many of which are still being practiced today.
She noted that information gathered have been verified as much as possible with archive documents from the Seychelles Archives among other primary sources, including sources from the region, e.g. Mauritius,Tanzania, Zanzibar.
She added that the research is still on going and her next project will be a research on where our slaves descendents lived, on the clothes they wore and their working conditions among others.
Being part of the British colonisation, slavery was abolished in Seychelles on February 1, 1865.
The director of the Creole Language and Culture Research Institute, Dr Penda Choppy, said the institute have been holding activities to commemorate Africa Day for many years and it was in 2019 that they started to hold the lecture in honour of Mr Luc, to celebrate the day, given his contributions made towards promoting arts, culture and heritage in the country, especially for Africa Day.
She added that the works of Dr de Commarmond will be published by the institute in October.
For her part the vice-chancellor of UniSey, Joelle Perreau, said that the idea of having those lectures is to give the locals a platform to make known of their researches carried out.
Another culture activist, Danny Dufrene, known as Roi Daniel, who died in August 2022, was also honoured during the activity for his contributions towards the promotion of the African culture here.
