American basketball star LeBron James visited the National Museum of Slavery in Luanda during his first trip to Africa, expressing himself "very happy" and "enthusiastic" to be in Angola for the first time. The NBA champion, a multiple-time winner of the NBA title, had been in Luanda since Friday to participate in the Angolan stage of the E1 Electric Boat World Championship, competition scheduled for Sunday, September 13. Accompanying him on the museum visit was the Minister of Tourism, Márcio Daniel, who also hosted a restricted executive breakfast with representatives of Angolan business leaders.
The National Museum of Slavery, located on Morro da Cruz, is installed in a complex that operated during the colonial period as a commercial depot, concentration center and point of embarkation for enslaved people, linked to the captain and merchant Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso. The site served as a deposit where Africans captured in the interior of the continent were concentrated before being transported to the coast and subsequently loaded onto slave ships, under conditions marked by unhealthiness, malnutrition and violence.
The privileged location of Morro da Cruz allowed a direct connection to the beach for the dispatch of ships that transported men, women and children to the Americas, especially to Brazil, transforming Angola into one of the main points of origin of enslaved people destined for the American continent. In the Chapel of the Great House, enslaved people were subjected to baptism, a process that represented the imposition of a new cultural identity through the replacement of African names with Portuguese names. The slave trade continued at the site until the 19th century, when the legal prohibition of the export of slaves from Portuguese colonies contributed to the closure of this activity.
Today, the museum constitutes one of the main spaces for the preservation of Angola's historical memory, with a collection that includes chains, shackles and other objects associated with the slave system. LeBron James' itinerary in Luanda also included, for this Saturday, a visit to the mangroves of Barra do Kwanza, reinforcing the tourist and environmental component of his stay in the country.
