Online Reporter
Gibson Nyikadzino
Zimpapers Politics Hub
To imagine that when Britain abolished slavery in its colonies in 1834, it made sure slave owners, not the enslaved, were compensated, diminishes the aroma of humanity’s ability to consider what being fair-minded means.
That was injustice. The same unjust principle was applied in the United States through the operationalisation of the Compensated Emancipation Act signed by President Lincoln on April 16, 1862, where slaveholders were compensated for the loss of enslaved people.
By way of comparison, since 1945 Germany has been atoning for the Jewish Holocaust to the Israeli government. It has paid approximately $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust victims and their heirs from 1945 to 2018.
This compensation is neither for slavery nor colonialism, but the Jewish Holocaust. The same Germany compensating Israel, in 2021 agreed to pay Namibia $1.2 billion as recognition of the Herero-Nama genocide at the start of the 20th century, is now denying that it has a legal duty to provide reparations to heirs of victims of that genocide.
Of interest is the recognition that in the case of slavery, colonialism and the colonial-era genocide by Germany in Namibia, the victims are being denied reparatory justice because their extraction is different from those who survived the Jewish Holocaust.
Thus, these differences in acknowledging that colonialism and slavery were operationalised against a people who are of different extraction from the Jews informs the historic UN General Assembly’s adoption of a Ghana-led resolution recognising the transatlantic slave trade as a “gravest crime against humanity”.
The resolution, which passed with 123 votes for, three against (United States, Israel, Argentina) and 52 abstentions, is calling for reparatory justice, encourages formal apologies and education. It should be said with certainty that the resolution is not legally binding and cannot be legally enforced. This means countries are not compelled to act on this resolution. However, it alters how Africa perceives who is for justice, who acts symbolically in addressing acts of historical injustice and who shares a similar history with Africa.
Culprits, numbers
First, the total volume of African slaves traded was unprecedented. However, it is also unsurprising that of the 52 abstentions on the Ghana-proposed resolution, the United Kingdom and the European union (EU) member states were the majority. These are signals of denying responsibility as European countries were the major architects and beneficiaries of this “gravest crime against humanity”.
Of the European countries, Portugal was responsible for trafficking over 5,8 million Africans into slavery, followed by the British slave traders who transported almost 3,3 million. Translating these numbers to fit modern explanations, it means between Portugal and the United Kingdom, they were responsible for the enslavement of total populations of Botswana, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Lesotho, Cape Verde, Seychelles, and Mauritius. The two countries thus enslaved seven countries. Other European countries that were involved include France, Spain and the Netherlands, which fuelled the plantation economies of the Americas.
Countries like the United Kingdom have long rejected calls to pay reparations over this “gravest crime against humanity”, saying today’s institutions cannot be held responsible for past wrongs, despite the same institutions enjoying fruits built on these “past wrongs”. The culprits are known. They have no remorse for the historical injustices and wrongs they committed, yet all want to be friends with Africa. They, yearly, host summits to engage Africa as an ally or friend, a friend they also want to continuously exploit and never compensate. Something is amiss!
Racism, ethno-supremacism, inequality
Social groups or states that believe in racist and ethno-supremacist ideologies, arguing that they have more rights than the others, have historically tended to use violence to entrench inequalities and a hierarchical structure that disregards human rights. This nature of violence is also institutional.
It explains why the apartheid system in South Africa survived on violence because it did not consider whites as equal citizens to blacks, it thrived on white domination that was enforced through institutions of the state which unleashed violence like during the Sharpeville Massacre in March 1960 and murders during the June 1976 Soweto uprising. Similarly, a similar logic is seen during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s USA where the Ku Klux Klan was a supremacist group that upheld an ideology of whiteness to implement segregation laws that disenfranchised blacks they considered unequal before the law.
With racism and ethno-supremacism, the goal is to deny people of another race fundamental human rights. For more than four centuries, millions of Africans were exploited and denied their fundamental human rights. This excuse that past wrongs have no relevance in modern society as denying that perpetuates the face of racism, exposing that racism does not want to take responsibility, and is evasive when confronted with facts of its injustice. Denying this “grave crime against humanity” is also trying to erase the hardships and inhumane realities that are part of African history.
We need fairness
In most cases, Africans have confronted a sad reality that often tells them to forget about the past and look forward into the future. This is a narrative that tries to make Africans forget what their forefathers and disregard their competence as people who must be seen as equals.
However, the same has never been said to the Jews that they should forget about the holocaust. Those who remind people about the holocaust have gone to say that its denial is a form of anti-Semitism that attempts to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. They have also even made film productions to keep in memory the history of the holocaust so that it does not die.
The same should be applied to Africa. The cruelty of slave traders, local and foreign, should not be washed away. It should be used to remind Africans that their struggles were also manmade, as many who were shipped to foreign lands have not enjoyed similar rights as individuals in those territories. It is acknowledged that slavery was legal, and ending it was also legal. Anyone who also denies responsibility should be considered an Afrophobic and xenophobic. Thus, if the perpetrators were compensated, the same compensation should be made to victims, which is why the UN General Assembly adopted the Ghana-led proposal.
If the United Nations also fails to give advocacy to this matter, it will stay on record that it no longer has the moral duty to address contemporary issues raised by people who endured oppression. It needs to be reformed!
