Why Kamala Harris visited the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana

By Osoro Nyawangah, TANZANIA

The United States of America’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, on March 28 emerged from the female slave dungeon at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana visibly shaken.

Inside the famous slave trading outpost’s dungeon, Harris set a bouquet of flowers down and placed her hand on the centuries-old wall, connecting herself physically to the sorrow of the Africans it once imprisoned.

It was a rare show of emotion for the typically stoic barrier-breaking leader, often reticent to talk about her own plight as a Black woman in America. But at a makeshift podium in front of the cannons that stretch along the ocean, Harris’ voice broke as she talked, delivering at times off-the-cuff remarks to describe what she saw.

“Being here was immensely powerful,” Harris said at the castle, a relic of transatlantic cruelty. “The crimes that were done here. The blood that was shed here.”

“The horror of what happened here must always be remembered. It cannot be denied. It must be taught; history must be learned.”

At the castle Tuesday, Harris only talked broadly about Blackness and the progress that must be made for equality.

Cape Coast Castle has become a feature of Western leaders’ visits to West Africa, a way to pay penance for the past sins of the nations that shipped and sold African bodies and chart an optimistic future for their descendants both still on the continent and across the globe.

“We must then be guided by what we know also to be the history of those who survived in the Americas, in the Caribbean, those who proudly declare themselves to be the Diaspora,” Harris said.

“All these stories must be told in a way that we take from this place, the pain we all feel the anguish that reeks from this place. And we then carry the knowledge that we have made gained here toward the work that we do in lifting up all people. In recognizing the struggles of all people, of fighting for as the walls of this place talk about, justice and freedom for all people, human rights for all people.”

The plight for Black Americans that Harris and the wider Biden administration must confront has worsened in many ways since the last Black White House principal – Obama – took office nearly 15 years ago.

Cape Coast Castle is a European-built fortress situated on the central coastline of Ghana. 

Since its initial construction in 1652, the Castle served as a trading post for European nations and as the headquarters of British colonial administration for the Gold Coast Colony.  Today the Castle is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 1652, the African, Asiatic, and American Company of Sweden employed Henrik Carlof, a Polish merchant, to negotiate a land agreement with the authorities of Efutu, the small African kingdom that controlled the Gold Coast. 

Successfully gaining permission to construct trading facilities along the coastline, the Swedes established Carlusborg Fort, named in honor of the Swedish king. The fort had high, thin, mud brick walls and became the structural base for the Cape Coast Castle.

The Carlusborg Fort remained in Swedish hands until 1657, when the rival Danish West India Company usurped the establishment. Several more transfers of power occurred between the Danish, Dutch, and Swedes in the early 1660s. 

In 1664, however, a small English fleet seized the Castle (as it was later called) in a brief battle led by Captain Robert Holmes. The British would remain in control of Cape Coast Castle until 1957.

"Door of no return" 

The Company of Merchants, whose governors administered the entire British colony, extensively rebuilt the Castle in 1699 and periodically throughout the 18th century. It was expanded landward and seaward, using both local and imported materials in its construction. 

In 1797, 50,000 bricks and 2,000 flat tiles were imported from England. The expansion of the Castle was necessitated by the growth of the slave trade, which, between 1700 and 1807, constituted 90% of business on the Gold Coast.

Throughout the 18th century, the Castle served as a “grand emporium” of the British slave trade. Thousands of enslaved Africans, sometimes from hundreds of miles away, were brought to Cape Coast Castle to be sold to British slave ships. 

During the interim period, Africans were imprisoned in what the British called “slave holes,” or dungeons in the basement of the Castle that had little ventilation and no windows.

When the British abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, 90% of the British commerce on the Gold Coast was rendered illegal. Though some in Britain argued that the African settlements should be abandoned, an 1821 Act of Parliament transferred the management of the Castle from the Company of Merchants to the British Crown.

The Castle served as the head of English administration of the Gold Coast until 1877, when the colonial government moved its headquarters to Christiansborg.  Since then, the Cape Coast Castle has functioned as a provincial center, complete with a law court and a school.

After Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) gained independence in 1957 the Castle underwent an ambitious restoration project sponsored by the Ghana Museum and Monuments Board. Today the Castle is a museum that encourages tours of the old slave-holding dungeons.