“The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries,” Dlamini-Zuma said, according to The Independent.


Trump’s order did not name the countries that would be affected, but reporters quickly confirmed that individuals from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia would be blocked from entering the country. The three African countries ― Libya, Somalia and Sudan ― are all members of the African Union.


“What do we do about this? Indeed, this is one of the greatest challenges to our unity and solidarity,” said Dlamini-Zuma, who is stepping down from the AU this summer and is expected to run for South Africa’s presidency.


The U.S.’s role in the transatlantic slave trade constitutes one of the grossest abuses of human rights in the country’s history. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database estimates that more than 300,000 Africans were forcibly taken to the U.S. over the 360 years of the trade’s operation.

Today, the administration’s treatment of Muslims has elicited comparisons to the 1942 executive order President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans.