Back

SLAVERY REMEMBRANCE WEEK: Why reclaiming African identity is the most important aspect of reparations Reparations is about determining how the damage caused by chattel enslavement can be repaired. According to Esther Stanford who has just returned from a global reparations conference in Ghana– the repair must begin from within our minds. 21/8/2006- Reparation is about determining how the damage caused by chattel enslavement can be repaired. According to Esther Stanford who has just returned from a global reparations conference in Ghana– the repair must begin from within our minds. Esther Stanford, co-founder of the Pan Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE), is at the centre of the Pan African reparations movement. In its statement of purpose PARCOE calls on Africans to : “Reclaim our minds and project the true identity of our dignifying Afrikan personality. Reparations will enable us to advance Pan Afrikan community regeneration…in order to build our own independent institutions of education, healthcare, employment, spirituality and culture.” Speaking to Black Britain about the urgency of reparations, Stanford explained: “What colonialism and enslavement did was to take away the African psyche and replace it with a European mindset.” This resulted in Africans loving and aspiring to everything European – including their appearance and detesting and deeming inferior anything that is African. “But how can we – the mothers and fathers of human progress, civilization and advancement defer to the new kids on the block?” But this is exactly what has happened to Africans post enslavement, Stanford suggests. According to Stanford the three key mechanisms used to oppress African peoples have historically been religion, law and education. “These are three systems that they have globalized to impose a form of Euro-American imperialism.” She told Black Britain that if Africans did not concede to these European systems then they were imposed by warfare: “There were many wars of independence…people were tortured, people were ground down and terrorised. That’s what happened.”  Stanford said that these are stories that need to be told to counter misguided claims of “Africans selling themselves,” when the reality is that many of the true chieftains who resisted and rebelled against enslavement and engaged in wars of liberation were executed and other chieftains who were complicit to imperialism put in their place. Pan African reparation acknowledges the damage caused to all Africans which has been experienced in different ways but which are of equal measure: “We all suffered equally but concretely and materially in different ways,” she told Black Britain. For some it was the loss of lineage and loss of language whilst those on the continent had some of the most productive members of their families and communities taken away from them. According to Stanford, even the most Eurocentric black people recognise that they are different to their white counterparts. Above all, reparations “Is about repairing some of the conflicts between us as African men and women…the right to repatriate and to belong to a community.” Stanford charged that whether we are now living in the Caribbean, in Latin America, Europe or on the continent: “We were all affected by one common enemy and oppressor.” But one of the biggest crimes to be perpetrated during enslavement was the tearing apart of African systems of knowledge and beliefs. Reparations can tackle the current legacies of slavery Stanford told Black Britain that one of the most disappointing aspects of so-called independence, was that Africans inherited the structures that Europeans had established for their own benefit and not for the benefit of African peoples. “When we reclaimed a degree of self-determination and sovereignty over aspects of the continent did we say to the Europeans that our best sons and daughters worked on your plantations for four hundred years, building up your societies, propelling Europe into the industrial revolution and we want payback? That never happened.” Stanford said that Africans just took over the running of their countries that had been established by the Europeans with systems of governance and values that are at odds with traditional African value and belief systems. At no point up to the present – which Pan Africans refer to as the reparations movement, have Africans been able to ensure that they are compensated for four hundred years of unpaid labour. Some countries have still not gained independence and are owned by the Crown. Stanford charged that western countries use “Their global, financial and monetary institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund to impose conditions around structural adjustment policies which has resulted in the continuing under-development and impoverishment of African and Caribbean nations.” Stanford told Black Britain that reparationists embrace the concept of debt repudiation. Under debt repudiation, countries who took out loans in the name of the people which the people did not consent to or mandate are invalid: “In the reparations movement we do not say debt cancellation or debt forgiveness – we say debt repudiation.” Reparations is essential to tackle the current plight of African peoples who are still suffering from the legacies of enslavement. Stanford said: “If we look at the conditions for the majority of African peoples they are dire…enslavement put in place a global system of capitalism that was only designed to privilege a few.” Stanford told Black Britain that the reparations movement is not only looking at the past but is also forward-thinking and acknowledges the need to put an end to neo-colonialism. But in order for this to happen Africans in the Diaspora must challenge the governments of their adopted countries in respect of their persistent oppression of Africa. Citing the civil rights movement as an example, she said the challenge was about making the existing oppressive systems ungovernable to the extent that their actions forced concessions in favour of black people: “You have to apply pressure. Power concedes nothing without a demand,” she said. Stanford suggests that Africans need to rebuild their power as despite the superficial and limited wealth of a few elites on the continent, Africa as a whole is powerless to stop the continued oppression of African peoples by Europeans: “On the continent alone we are not powerful enough. We are powerful when we take the Africans in Brazil and the rest of Latin America, the rest of the Americas, Africans in Europe and all parts of the globe and come together as a Pan African community, recognising our different cultures and ethnicities and collectivizing this struggle.” Conference heralds a new global plan of action for reparations Stanford told Black Britain that the international conference she attended in Ghana was evidence of “significant progress,” not least because it brought about the unification and collective strategic efforts in moving the key issues of African reparations forward. Stanford said that at the conference delegates “strategised about a global plan of action, so that whatever action is taken in the UK will be supported by Africans around the world.” PARCOE was part of the organising committee for the conference and many of its ideas informed the programme. One of the key areas being promoted by PARCOE discussed at the conference is Pan African Reparations. Stanford explained: “One of the issues is that reparations must be sought for Africans on the continent and not those in the UK. When we were taken out of Africa we were not British, we were Yorubas and Ibos and members of other nations but we have lost that identity. Our reparations cannot therefore be sought on the basis of pseudo-identities that we have acquired along our journey.” It was also agreed that there must be recognition that Pan African Reparations for Global Justice means not just financial compensation but educational transformation, universal healthcare and the return of land in Africa to the African peoples: Stanford said: “Reparations is also about devising culturally appropriate and competent institutions of education, healthcare and healing. We are being made mentally ill – the system makes us mentally ill, because we are living outside a framework and context that spiritually and ancestrally we are attuned to.” The solution, said Stanford is firstly for us as Africans to not only know ourselves but to go beyond knowing as there are plenty of African scholars, intellectuals and academics who know their history, but crucially, that knowledge is not being utilised. Stanford cited the ideology of Audre Lord, who charges that Africans have bought into the “slaves idea of freedom” – which is freedom is Massa’s house and sitting at the Massa’s table. But true freedom means coming outside Massa’s house to your own house. “This is what many of the movements that evolved in the 20th century were about.” But this does not mean that everyone has to go back to Africa, Stanford stressed: “We are a global community – wherever we are we should be establishing our house.” Another initiative to come out of the conference, designed to send a strong message to Britain around 2007 which was agreed unanimously, is that there will be a united voice around the world which rejects the notion that the chattelisation and enslavement of Africans ended in 1807 and declares that: “When they were forced to make concessions in the system that they designed which benefited then, it was because of our own self-determining, freedom-fighting efforts.” They were forced to make concessions in terms of making chattel enslavement illegal and later to relinquish their governance of African and Caribbean countries. © Black Britain http://www.blackbritain.co.uk/