Key Activities and Achievements of SMWeCGEC working in partnership with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) in building the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) & the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM)

“To those caught up in only slogan-mongering about the Afrikan Revolution who self-derisively dismiss mass campaigns such as this one of Reparations, refusing to unfold their own blinds to its crucial significance in our Liberation Struggle; we address our paraphrasing of the remark of Amilcar Cabral that, by taking to the revolutionary path of self-determined Struggle for Afrikan Liberation, the masses of our people are not fighting for ideas in anyone’s head; they are fighting  for a true National and Social Emancipation that will guarantee them such concrete benefits as will ensure their material and spiritual prosperity! That is why the AASU-E [All-Afrikan Student’s Union in Europe] sees Reparations, from the perspective of Afrikan youth, as the actual conscientization of the objectives of our whole people’s Liberation Struggle under the banner of revolutionary Pan-Afrikanism. Therefore the Reparations we the youth of Afrika are demanding must restore to all people of Afrikan origin throughout the World full sovereignty, the absolute ownership of the whole of our Homeland, including all its resources, and the Renaissance of Maat and other value of our classical civilisation, in order to give us the concrete basis for independently achieving our own material and spiritual prosperity.“

Antonieta Carla Santana, ‘Our Struggle for Reparations in Afrikan Youth Perspective’: A Draft Paper for Presentation to the 11th December 1993 Birmingham Working Conference of the African Reparations Movement (ARM-UK)

“Too often our standards for evaluating social movements pivot around whether or not they ‘succeeded’ in realizing their visions rather than on the merits or power of the visions themselves. By such a measure, virtually every radical movement failed because the basic power relations it sought to change remain pretty much intact. And yet it is precisely those alternative visions and dreams that inspire new generations to continue to struggle for change.”

— Robin D.G. Kelley —

The best way to keep abreast of the activities and achievements of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) is to be part of it!

We will not get a sense of the totality of the work just by turning up for one day and then lamenting the lack of numbers or vibes on the day. The UK has always had a Pan-Afrikan approach to this grassroots movement to effect and secure holistic reparations; which means fighting for our power base in Afrika and her Diaspora wherever we are. We cannot be concerned just with our people in the UK, a mere 3% of the UK population. Neither can we NOT connect our quest for reparatory, environmental and cognitive justice (referred to collectively as Planet Repairs) to our homeland and power base Afrika from which much or the resources that prop up the greedy inhumane global North, come from. So, it is necessary to have a glocal (local and global) approach which the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign (SMWeCGEC) and her affiliated structures has been operating with.

Securing Planet Repairs requires us to use all methods at our disposal including, social, legal, extra-legal, political, economic, parliamentary, and revolutionary means. It has meant taking our fight into hostile institutional spaces often led by people racialised as ‘White’, educational institutions, community spaces, social media spaces and taking up space on the streets. It has meant numerous instances of advocacy, public speaking and media appearances, attending conferences and public meetings, lobbying elected officials and making representations, providing reparations education and training to NGO’s, creating and disseminating our own messages and challenging power structures on their own turf.

You will not see all this work that goes on just by turning up on 1st Mosiah and cannot be achieved just by People of Afrikan Heritage talking amongst ourselves! There is a need to hold perpetrators to account (the external dimension of reparations) and challenge ourselves to be the reparatory justice change-makers we are seeking (the internal dimension often referred to as community self-repairs).

Since the first Reparations March in 2014 the SMWeCGEC, in partnership with the AEDRMC and other supporting organisations has:

• Stewarded the organising processes for the annual Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March with the formalisation of the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC), consisting of a diverse array of Afrikan heritage groups, organisations, movements and individuals. Most of the committee members, both individual and organisational, have been involved with the March from its inception in 2014.

• Advanced reparations social movement-building of various constituencies within and outside our Afrikan Heritage Communities locally, nationally and internationally. The reparations movement led by Afrikan Heritage Communities is known as the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) and the ISMAR is part of a wider internationalist movement of other peoples who have reparations struggles known as the PRIM (Peoples Reparations Internationalist Movement). In this regard, priority is given to mobilising our own individual and people’s collective ‘power to’ effect and secure reparatory justice through community organising, reparations social movement-building and institution-building. Social movement-building is the long-term, coordinated effort of individuals and organised groups of people to intentionally spark and sustain a (reparations) social movement. It entails: “the creation of movement infrastructures required for sustained organising and mobilisation, including social relationships, organisational networks and capacity, affective solidarity, as well as movement-related identities, frames, strategies, skills, and leadership.”


• Partnered with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) to develop aims and objectives for the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March on the 1st of Mosiah (August) which took place between 2015-2019. These aims (below) became necessary so that as co-organisers of the 1st Mosiah activities that we could provide a clear rationale for why we were marching.

• Strengthened the programme for the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March itself by introducing to the programme of the day the People’s Open Parliamentary Session on Afrikan Reparations (POPSAR) which occurred in between 2016 and 2019. The POPSAR at Parliament Square was a mass consciousness-raising forum for public debate and discourse on manifestations of the Maangamizi necessitating Afrikan Reparations. It was a public forum where Afrikan people rehearsed our arguments in pursuit of the ‘Battle of Ideas’ on obstacles to the realisation of holistic reparatory justice. The purpose of the POPSAR was to engage audiences in action-learning on participatory democratic parliamentary debate and the ‘Battle of Ideas’ on critical issues such as how to stop various manifestations of the Maangamizi as part of the process of effecting and securing Afrikan Reparatory Justice.


• Helped to consolidate the emergence of an independent ground-up Pan-Afrikan inspired, and initiated, transnational process of facilitating grassroots leadership as well as mobilising and organising Afrikan people to advocate for reparations on their own terms, which goes beyond the statist CARICOM Reparatory Justice Programme and their Ten-Point Plan. Despite the fact that reparatory justice organising in the UK goes back centuries, there has been little recognition of this by Afrikan heritage social, political and economic elites within and beyond Britain who, for many decades, have chosen, (contrary to our indigenous Afrikan traditions of exercising people’s power), not to identify with the ground-up initiated and led ISMAR. 

• Collected over 25,000 signatures for the Stop the Maangamizi petition which calls for the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice into the LEGACIES of Afrikan enslavement, colonisation and neocolonialism. Have you read and signed it? Click here to read and sign it.


• Established the Maangamizi Educational Trust (M.E.T) in 2018 as the educational, training and other activities conducive to fundraising arm of the SMWeCGEC.

• Through PARCOE, established an Afrikan Reparations research partnership working between grassroots scholar-activists and establishment scholars at the University of Boston and the University of Edinburgh – who came together to form the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) and its youth wing INOSAAR Rep-Afrika. We recommend you also download and read the INOSAAR Principles of Participation as a good model of how reparations activists should engage in co-production with power institutions.


• Co-initiated the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings with the AEDRMC in 2020. The main purpose of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings is to showcase our Afrikan Heritage Communities self-repairs initiatives locally, nationally and internationally.


• Worked with Green Party members to co-produce the ‘Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Trafficking of Enslaved Africans’ motions now passed by Lambeth, Islington in 2020 and Bristol City Council in 2021 and continues to work with Green Party members through the Green Action for Afrikan Reparations Dialogue (GAARD). Through collaboration with members of the  Green Party of England and Wales and INOSAAR, SMWeCGEC contributed to the impetus for the party to be the first and only major UK party to commit to seeking reparatory justice for the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Afrikans (TTEA) in 2020. Green Party Members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the E3 motion ‘Atonement and Reparative Justice For African Enslavement‘ on the final day of their Autumn Conference on the 11th October 2020. Proposed by Green Councillors Cleo Lake (Bristol) and Scott Ainslie (Lambeth), and supported by the Greens of Colour and the Young Greens, the motion calls on Parliament to establish an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice. 

• Through the M.E.T, worked with Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP to establish the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations (APPGAR) as promoted in the SMWeCGEC postcard campaign. Since the establishment of the APPGAR, the M.E.T has shared the running of the secretariat with the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD) and the Glocal Afrika Reparations Forum of London (GARFOL). The APPGAR gained new members in 2023.

•            In order to develop autonomous Afrikan Heritage Community participation in the work of the APPGAR, the SMWeCGEC, co-founded together with GARFOL, the APPGAR community link known as the APPGARL action-learning circles where Afrikan Heritage Communities learn to critically engage with state bodies and the UK Parliament as communities of resistance, e.g., the Education and Reparations Circle and the Mbuya Nehanda Afrikan Women & Reparations Circle.

•  Raised awareness, popularised and increased public recognition of key concepts and knowledge produced by the ISMAR including: the Maangamizi, Maatubuntujamaas, Sankofahomes and Maatubuntudunia in Ubuntudunia.

• Been instrumental in the development of Maatubuntumitawo – Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council (Maatubuntumitawo – GAFRIC) by promoting glocal relation-building in association with Vazoba Afrika & Friends Networking Open Forum and Maatubuntumitawo – GAFRIC with indigenous Afrikan communities of resistance on the continent of Afrika. In this way, contributing to the concretisation of Maatubuntujamaas in the UK and internationally in link with emerging Sankofahomes in West Afrika with a view to the eventual building of Maatubuntudunia in Ubuntudunia.


• Co-initiated the Glocal Afrikan Reparations Forum of London (GARFOL) to glocally promote Afrikan Heritage Community engagement with the British public and local and central government structures in London from the standpoint of enhancing efforts towards building Maatubuntujamaas in link with Sankofahomes as part of the building process of Maatubuntuman in Ubuntudunia.

• Contributed to establishing the Afrikan Reparations Transnational Community of Practice for Action-Learning about Reparations (ARTCoP).


• Developed the ISMAR Advocates Training Course and other reparations action-learning, education, learning & teaching initiatives and co-facilitated with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC), several reparations awareness and orientation workshops across the UK.

• Developed a version of the petition for lodging at the European Parliament and had it translated into Dutch, French and German through working as part of the Europe NGO Consultative Council for Afrikan Reparations (ENGOCCAR).

• Developed a critical analysis of the CARICOM Reparations Initiative, through the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition of Europe (PARCOE)

• Contributed to developing a position on the CARICOM Reparations Initiative alternative approach to reparations in association with PARCOE and the Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament.

• Co-convened, in association with Esther Stanford-Xosei, a meeting with UK based reparations activists of International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) to interface with the CARICOM Reparations initiatives of the Jamaican National Council on Reparations regarding how best to jointly work together recognising differences in our respective reparations strategies and tactics.


•           Supported the candidature of SMWeCGEC Co-Vice Chair, Kofi Mawuli Klu who championed programmatic aspects of the SMWeCGEC in his campaign as independent candidate in the 2019 European Parliamentary elections as part of the ‘CEE the Truth’ Campaign, (#CEEtheTruth). One of the 3 aims of #CEEtheTruth was to “develop National Citizens Assemblies on Climate & Ecological Justice to oversee policy making, including those of Planet Repairs embracing Reparations, and have a leading role in shaping a zero carbon Europe”.

• Established organisational links with the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation (Namibia), N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (USA) and the UBAD Educational Foundation (Belize) through PARCOE. The SMWeCGEC Coordinator-General, Esther Stanford-Xosei was selected to become a board member of N’COBRA when she was appointed Co-Chair of the N’COBRA International Affairs Commission in 2022.


•           Contributed to the establishment of the University of Repair co-initiated by Decolonising the Archive in partnership with Esther Stanford-Xosei (SMWeCGEC), Professor Gus John (Gus John Associates) and Professor Patricia Rodney (Walter Rodney Foundation).


•           Supported the formation of the Global Majority Vs Campaign and leant to their legal case knowledge and expertise in advocacy and critical legal praxis, particularly in developing the extra-legal dimension of the case from a law as resistance perspective.

• Co-initiated, the Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN) and the Extinction Rebellion Being the Change Affinity Network (XR-BACN) as an organised way to work with non-Afrikan allies in championing Planet Repairs and PRIM-building. In addition, the XR-Ubuntunovisi (bridge network of Afrikan Heritage Community activists developing critical resistance engagement with Extinction Rebellion).

•            Has been instrumental in co-founding and developing the Majority World Internationalist Solidarity Coordinating Council of Communities Of Resistance (MWISCCCOR) which currently embraces Afrikan and Abya Yalan Heritage (so-called Americas) community activist circles working within and around XR-Ubuntunovisi and XR-Aylhcan (Abya Yalan & Latinx Heritage Communities Affinity Network).