The celebration of Keti Koti as a national holiday would contribute to the realization that the slavery past affects everyone in the Netherlands.
The story of the hunt is told not by the lion, but by the hunter, goes an African proverb. The story of slavery is a variant of it: until recently it was not told at all. At least not in the Netherlands. The centenary of the abolition of slavery, July 1, 1963, was not commemorated by the government, let alone celebrated. The only reference to this historic event was a photo in some newspapers of a festive procession of Surinamese women in traditional clothing across the Zeedijk in Amsterdam. Also in the crown year 1988, Keti Koti passed almost unnoticed by most Dutch people. Despite the fact that the Surinamese and Caribbean communities had grown significantly in size in the previous decades.
That’s how things work here: compared to the countries surrounding us, the Netherlands is relatively careless about its national past – and certainly about emotionally charged episodes. The British research agency YouGov established two years ago that half of the Dutch are even proud of the colonial past – compared to 32 percent of the British, and 26 percent of the French.
The Netherlands was relatively late in abolishing overseas slavery (it had already been banned in its own country), and the debate that preceded this mainly focused on whether the country’s economy could tolerate abolition. In Britain, that debate started much earlier, and was predominantly moral in nature. Even the library of the English King George III, who reigned from 1760 to 1820, contained some abolitionist classics.
With the unveiling in 2002 of the National Monument to the Past in the History of Slavery in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark, a start was made with reluctance to upgrade slavery to a national theme. That does not mean that most Dutch people experience it that way. Many still cringe when it comes to slavery, Rabin Baldewsingh, National Coordinator Against Discrimination and Racism, said on Thursday. de Volkskrant† That won’t change immediately if Keti Koti (July 1) is celebrated as a national holiday in the near future, as Baldewsingh advocates. But in the long run, such a holiday will undoubtedly contribute to the realization that the slavery past affects everyone in the Netherlands.
The position of the newspaper is expressed in the Volkskrant Commentaar. It is created after a discussion between the commentators and the editor-in-chief.