How many times have you said or heard someone say:
“The system ain’t working for us!”
“Every day I pray for my children!”
“We need to come together and do something!”
These are the rallying calls of our communities, and they remind us that change starts with us. As we continue to build power through self-repair initiatives and community-building, engaging with our Members of Parliament (MPs) is one important step in our broader movement for reparatory justice.
But let’s be clear: the power to create change lies with us—our communities. MPs are public servants who are meant to represent our interests, and it’s their job to listen to us and act on our demands. By engaging with them, we’re using every available tool to advance reparations movement-building while keeping the focus on our leadership and our solutions.
We’ve prepared two template letters to help you approach your MP about supporting our community-led work:
A Concise Version (1 page) – short and to the point.
A Detailed Version (2 pages) – with more context and background.
These letters are tools to help you advocate for our communities while keeping the focus on our community leadership and the international frameworks that support our demands.
Engaging with Members of Parliament (MPs) is one tool in our broader movement for holistic reparatory justice. It’s important to remember that the power to create change lies with us—our communities. MPs are public servants who are meant to represent our interests, and it’s their job to listen to us and act on our demands.
By engaging with MPs, we:
Hold Them Accountable: MPs have access to resources, platforms, and decision-making spaces that can amplify our voices and support our work.
Build Awareness: Many MPs may not fully understand the issues our communities face. By reaching out, we educate them and push them to take a stand.
Create Pressure: When MPs hear from enough constituents, they are more likely to act. This is about using their position to support our community-led solutions, not waiting for them to lead.
This is not about looking to MPs as being all-powerful—it’s about using every available tool to advance our movement while keeping the focus on our leadership and our solutions.
Which Version of the Letter Should I Choose?
Concise Version (1 page)
Use when your MP is already familiar with reparations issues.
Best for follow-up communications or quick requests.
Great for MPs who prefer direct, brief messages.
Useful for initial contact that you can expand on later.
Detailed Version (2 pages)
Use for MPs who are new to reparations work.
Best for first contact or when you need to provide full context.
Helpful for creating a record of the issues and solutions.
Includes references to specific frameworks and examples.
Highlight the need for concrete steps to address historical and ongoing injustices.
Movement Building
Link letter-writing to other campaign activities.
Use this as an opportunity to educate and mobilise your community.
Build long-term pressure for change.
Coordination
Spread the word and pile on the pressure! Share responses and outcomes with:
The Stop the Maangamizi Campaign
Local community organisations.
Relevant working groups.
Other community members engaging their MPs.
This helps build collective knowledge and coordinated action.
Support
For additional help or questions about using these templates, contact: Email:stopthemaangamizi@gmail.com Phone: 07482220013
Remember: These letters are one tool in our broader reparations movement-building strategy. Their effectiveness depends on connecting them to ongoing community building and organising work.
We are pleased to report that on the 1st of Mosiah, Stop The Maangamizi Campaign Coordinator-General, and Executive Director of the Maangamizi Educational Trust, Sista Esther Xosei was the international guest speaker for Afrikan Emancipation Day Commemorations organised by the UBAD Educational Foundation (UEF), chaired by Sista YaYa Marin Coleman. This trip was a vital component of glocalising and strengthening the building of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) in link with the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM) in Belize and the wider Caribbean and Abya Yalan region.
The Maangamizi Educational Trust operates as the educational arm of the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC). We recognise that education is a critical aspect of the community preparations that are being undertaken in furtherance of effecting and securing holistic Afrikan Reparations. Furthermore, education can play a key role in preventing the Maangamizi by providing methods and strategies for addressing the impact of Maangamizi Crimes and violations while promoting the knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and cultural change that can contribute to preventing repetition of group-targeted atrocities and injustices.
MET is dedicated to building narrative and cultural power to move society toward a vision of holistic reparative justice as Planet Repairs, (the interconnection of cognitive justice, reparatory justice and environmental justice), required due to the continuum of the Maangamizi. Accordingly, MET seeks to build the public imagination and cultural will to counteract the Maangamizi and its pervasive impacts through advancing public education and narrative change which supports taking action to counteract the Maangamizi in the process of effecting and securing holistic reparations.
Wake Up Belize Show & Meet & Greet
On the morning of the 31st July, Sista YaYa, Sista Esther & Brother Menyelek appeared on Wake Up Belize (WUB) Mawning Vibes Talk Show the XTV Morning Talk Show.
Libation, Drumming & Petal Release Ceremony & Free Yuh Mind Community Reasoning
On the morning of the 1st of August, UEF hosted a Libation, Drumming, & Petal Release Ceremony in Belize City which featured Garifuna Youth Drummers from Seine Bight Village in the Stann Creek District of Southern Belize. The recording of the ceremony on XTV can be found here and below.
XTV & UEF Emancipation Day
In the evening, Esther was the international guest speaker at the ‘Free Yuh Mind’ Community Reasoning where Sista Esther was given a special gift presentation by Sista YaYa Marin Coleman, UEF Chairperson. Sista Esther’s presentation was broadcasted by XTV and Krem Radio.
The following video is a snippet of some of the drumming done by the Garifuna Youth Drummers from Seine Bight Village where Sis YaYa is serenaded by one of them
The following news report is what appeared in the Amandala Newspaper print copy 2nd August and online 4th August 2024.
Visits to Afrikan Heritage Communities
The trip to Belize also consisted of visits to historic Afrikan Heritage Communities such as Punta Gorda, Dangriga and Gales Point Manatee.
Punta Gorda is the southernmost town in Belize, and the administrative capital of the Toledo District. It was founded as Peini by the Garifuna people which is the accepted Garifuna name of PG. Peini means point in the Garifuna language. A Garifuna elder shared with Sista YaYa and Sista EstherPunta Gorda (PG) is between 2 points, when the Garifuna speaking people populated Punta Gorda 1832-1900, they were not English speakers.
The Drums of Our Fathers Monument, located at the entrance of Dangriga, Stann Creek, Belize, is a monument designed by the Nigerian sculptor Stephen Okeke, honouring Garifuna history, culture and its beliefs
Finally, Esther visited Gales Point Manatee in Belize District which is home to a longstanding Afrikan Maroon Community where she heard from Breddah Liston Myers, community historian about the Afrikan Maroon history in Belize.
Meeting at the Institute of Social & Cultural Research
Below are some picture that were taken that documents the visit to Belize were two main meetings occurred.
The first meeting was with Breddah Ronaldo Cocum, Director of the Institute of Social and Cultural Research (ISCR-NICH), Breddah Giovanni Pinelo, Senior Research and Education Officer at ISCR-NICH and other staff.
The Institute for Social & Cultural Research (ISCR-NICH) aims to advance research, safeguard Belize’s intangible cultural heritage, and deepen the appreciation of the country’s rich history and culture. It is a division ofthe National Institute of Culture and History(NICH), which is Belize’s premier cultural institution dedicated to the safeguarding, promotion, expression, conservation and sustainable development of culture in all its diversity in collaboration with the people of Belize.
The following is a report from ISCR NICH about our meeting:
Meeting at the Intercultural Language Institue – University of Belize
The second meeting was with Delmar Tzib, Director of the Intercultural Indigenous Language Institute, Egbert Irving, Director of Institutional Advancement and history lecturer, Jineen Roches, all at the University of Belize where talks were held about the necessity to develop reparations educational initiatives in association with UEF and the MET which compare, contrast and advance Afrikan and Mayan reparations struggles.
Visit to Hummingbird Farm in Toledo District
Sista Esther & Sista YaYa took a trip to the celebrated Hummingbird Farm in the Toledo District prior to Esther’s return. Hummingbird Farm is a 113 acre Hummingbird Farm committed to the principles of permaculture, conservation and family life. One of its key features is Rochochil PehPem (Butterfly House). Visiting the farm gave Esther an opportunity to see a land rematriation initiative in process.
Sista Esther could not leave the country without touching base with legendary land surveyor Elder Roque Marin (84), the father of Sista YaYa Marin Coleman.
Sista Esther extends her warm thanks and appreciation to Sista YaYa and the Marin Family for their hospitality during her stay in Belize.
We write to inform you that as much as we are immensely proud of our achievements over the last 10 years, the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee has taken a decision to dissolve the organisation as of 1st Mosiah 2024. Whilst the Stop the Maangamizi We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign will continue its work at a national and international level, given the nature of the partnership between AEDRMC and SMWeCGEC, it has also decided to step back from its core roles on the day.
The SMWeCGEC, will continue, as written into its core campaign aims, to facilitate Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings (PARRG) in other spaces and other dates during the coming years. As a core part of the strategic development of the 1st Mosiah, the SMWeCGEC is open to provide strategic advice and guidance to those who aim to work towards the continuation of the day, and in whole or part, support the aims of the SMWeCGEC, as we believe this day should continue to be about something greater than just the day.
The last 10 years have not been easy. We have reflected and are looking towards the next 10 years which requires greater tangible commitments to increase capacity/output to fulfil our part as a contribution to the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR). We also cannot be doing the same thing for the next decade and expecting a different result. A new energy is required (with the strategic guidance of the SMWeCGEC if required), so that we can move forward with new vigour, innovative approaches and greater capacity to facilitate Maangamizi counteraction and build power as a necessary step towards effecting and securing holistic reparatory justice.
As we continue to reflect, we encourage those who attended/supported the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings (PARRG) to do the same. In the spirit of Ubuntu and Ma’at we all bear a measure of responsibility for what we achieve and what we could have done differently or better. Critical analysis, study and tangible actions are all necessary parts to the whole of our success and with the guidance of our Ancestors, will identify where we as a people, should go next. We continue this journey of active Sankofa as all AEDRMC members will be part of other Afrikan reparatory justice structures that they have chosen to engage with, so former AEDRMC members and current SMWeCGEC members will be supporting in some form remotely, on the ground on the day and in the background, if required. We do not rest!
To mark this 10-year milestone the AEDRMC and the SMWeCGEC will be launching commemorative materials through a range of media leading up to and on 1st Mosiah 2024 and beyond, at Windrush Square and via social media.
We trust that our Ancestors will guide the new organisers of 1st Mosiah so that it is a positive, memorable, powerful and engaging day – but we must remember to take action the other 364 days of the year lest this annual gathering will not be able to achieve something tangible and impactful beyond the day itself.
If you are interested in being part of the organizing for 2024 and would like some advice and guidance regarding operations and logistics, please email info@reparationsmarch.org. Please note that we do not have the capacity to deal with general public enquiries via phone calls but messages can be texted via WhatsApp to 07922035446. We ask for your patience in waiting for a reply.
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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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).
‘Sankofaagro: Edutainmanent in our Reparatory Justice Preparations for Planet Repairs‘
In the spirit of cognitive justice and restoring to ourselves the use of Afrikan languages in a our Pan-Afrikan Liberation Truthquest, the 2022 theme for the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings is a compound of 2 words in Twi languages of West Afrika: Sankofa – Go back and fetch it (Twi) and Agro – meaning Play/Entertain (Twi). So the combination of Sankofa and agro means ‘go back and fetch the wisdom of our entertainment’, which is really to go back and fetch our people’s edutainment. Literally, go back to fetch the best of what is there from the past and work with it to guide you in building a better future.
That better future for us is to return to the Motherist Revolutionary Path of Pan-Afrikan Rematriationin our Sankofa Return Journey to our Mawufe-Amedzofe Source (i.e.return to the source of our origin, the essence of ubuntu i.e. to rediscover our humanity in Ewe), in the sacred womb of Miano Asase Yaa (Sweet Mother Earth), for Mianogbenono (i.e. living Mother Earth’s life in Ewe) Regeneration in moving successfully Forward ever in our Freedommarch to our Maatubuntuman in Ubuntudunia Rendezvous of Victory. The road to Maatubuntuman in Ubuntudunia is a Motherist Revolutionary path.
This year’s theme is designed to amplify the voices of reparatory justice resistance and change-making within Afrikan Heritage Communities of Resistance worldwide through using the medium of edutainment.
We also aim to showcase Afrikan people’s grassroots initiatives to effect and secure ‘Planet Repairs’ (the nexus of reparatory, environmental and cognitive justice) as an approach to Holistic Reparations as well as achievements made towards this objective.
Sankofaagro is not a call to be merely entertained, but is a way of making an intergenerational call to action to continue this work of ISMAR-building (building the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations, known as the ISMAR) by way of succession-planning in our endeavours to be the reparatory justice change that we are seeking to achieve.
1st Mosiah 2022 – Programme
Since 2020, we have attempted to liberate 2 spaces in Brixton (Max Roach Park and Windrush Square), in order to ground with our people and facilitate a space for allies that the Stop the Maangamizi! We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) have been working with to advance interventions to increase public overstanding of reparations and facilitate critical engagement with the British State and public over the years.
Max Roach Park also provides space for showcasing internationalist solidarity networks that structures aligned with SMWECGEC, such as the Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN) have been working with across 4 continents: Abya Yala (the Americas, Asia, Europe and Afrika).
Please see the programme below for both locations (subject to change and all times approximate).
Max Roach Park (Outdoor Session) 10am-3pm
10am – Libation
Internationalist Solidarity Showcase – Elevating the voices of those involved in the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) across the world and the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM) that is involved in co-liberation to effect and secure Planet Repairs.
Sankofaagro – Youth showcase of music and word sounds of resistance
3pm – 3 minutes silence in reverence to our Indomitable Ancestors of great courage, intellect and tenacity.
3.15pm – March to Windrush Square
Black Cultural Archives (Indoor Session)1.15-2.45pm
‘A Masterclass on the The Meaning of Economic Repairs for ISMAR*-Building‘ facilitated by Esther Stanford-Xosei.
Venue: Black Cultural Archive, Windrush Sq (limited places)
* ISMAR means the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations
Windrush Square (Outdoor Session) 2-8pm
Theme for this stage: ‘Building a Repaired Nation: Maatubuntuman in Ubuntudunia – What Afrika and Her Diaspora needs to do to secure Global Planet Repairs‘
2pm – Windrush Square
Opening Libation and Invocations
Opening Remarks – Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee
Edutainment: Songs and Messages of Resistance
3pm – 3 minutes silence in reverence to our Revered Ancestors
3.15pm – Independent Afrikan Schools Showcase on the stage theme
4.30pm
Youth Debate: Building a Repaired Nation – What does Afrika and Her Diaspora Need to do to Secure Global Planet Repairs and How Long do we Have? Facilitated by Bro Kobina Amokwondoh
(Audience decides the debate winner)
5.30pm
Sankofaagro – Internationalist showcase of music and word sounds of resistance
6.30pm
Updates from Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC), the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign (SMWeCGEC) and the Glocal Afrikan Reparations Forum of London (GARFOL)
7.15pm
Solidarity Messages and Showcasing from UK based organisations, politicians and activists
8.00pm Closing Remarks – Our Immediate and long terms tasks
Closing Libation
…….An example of some of the offerings of Sankofaagro from OURSTORY!
Pempamsie is the Adinkra symbol for sewing together in readiness -preparatory actions for reparatory justice. building our future out of our principled operational unity despite our diversity. Indeed, part of the repair process is about Afrikan heritage communities developing our own community capacity and power-base as well as our own Afrikan Heritage Community Self-Repairs Plans. Mpango is the Kiswahili word for plan.
Maatubuntuman is the name of a self-repaired Afrika and means a global Afrikan polity which consists of a Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities. Coined from the conjunction of ‘Maat’ (the holistic justice concept from Kemet, Ancient Egypt, with ‘Ubuntu’ (the Bantu concept of the communion of humanity from Southern Afrika) and ‘Oman’ (the Akan concept of egalitarian polity from West Afrika). Upon the initiative of the Pan-Afrikan Forum of Ghana (PAFOG) in conjunction with the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) and adopted by the Global Afrikan People’s Parliament (GAPP) and the Maatubuntumitawo-Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council, it has been adopted as one of the key rallying objectives of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice.
The process of Pempamsiempango (reparations planning) should occur within the context of a glocal framework which is establishing repaired Afrikan Heritage Communities which are referred to as Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination (AHCs-NSDs)/ Maatubuntujamaas in the UK and other parts of the Diaspora which organically builds links with such Communities of Resistance and Communities of Reparatory Justice Interest on the Continent of Afrika which are known as Sankofahomes.
Maatubuntujamaas are Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination that are regenerating themselves to become autonomous polities of national self-determination in the Afrikan Diaspora integrated into Sankofahomes. Sankofahomes (literally meaning a return to one’s Motherland) are indigenous communities in Afrika that are regenerating themselves purposefully to facilitate the integration of Maatubuntujamaas in the Diaspora. These Maatubuntujamaas are a form of non-territorial autonomy whereby we as a people build autonomous institutions of self-governance focusing on areas of Afrikan Heritage Community Self-Repairs such as education, healthcare, and community cooperative enterprise, for example.
Establishing Maatubuntujamaas is a Afrikan Heritage Community self-repairs effectuating work-in-progress for the holistic regeneration of Afrikan communities; mindful of the fact that such Afrikan communities at present exist in the UK as a multiplicity of different and sometimes even conflicting nation-state, ethnic, racial, class, gender, age and other socio-cultural configurations brought from all over the World; therefore, this Maatubuntujamaa regeneration of Afrikan communities is being done in such a radical changemaking way and manner of Intersectionality so as to enable the Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice development, out of their multifariousness, of a one distinct new type of Afrikan communion of people to serve as a living prototype of the component bodies of the future Maatubuntuman Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities throughout the continent and Diaspora of Afrika.
President Dame Sandra Mason & Prime Minister Mia Mottley
A version of this article was published on Self-Help News on the 30th November 2021. Uhuru means freedom in Kiswahili.
On 30th November 2021, Barbados transitioned from a parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the hereditary monarch of Barbados (formerly Queen Elizabeth II) to a parliamentary republic with a ceremonial non-executive President as Head of State elected by members of parliament and not the people. The Prime Minister, Mia Mottley EGH, OR, QC, MP remains Head of Government.
However, the question that I and many other citizens of Barbados have been discussing is whether this transition to a republic is more symbolic rather than substantive. Whilst much of the corporate whitestream media is hailing this move as some huge achievement, questions remain about whether selecting the existing Governor-General, Dame Sandra Mason GCMG, DA, QC, who had been Queen Elizabeth’s II’s representative in Barbados since 2018, to serve as Barbados’s first President and Head of State is really the kind of substantive change one would expect when a country transitions to a republic. Queen Elizabeth II bestowed on Mason the Dame Grand Cross in the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George when Mason was appointed Governor-General.
Lest we not forget, the hitherto Governor-Generals of Barbados are appointed by Queen Elizabeth II supposedly on the advice of the Prime Minister of Barbados. Nevertheless, the fact that two thirds of the Barbados Parliament selected the (former) Governor-General to become the first President of the Republic of Barbados could be seen as an attempt to hoodwink the people into believing that there has been a changing of the power structure, when that is clearly not the case. Indeed, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Significantly, Following the end of the Dame Sandra Mason’s term as president, future presidents will be elected by either a joint nomination of the Prime Minister and leader of the opposition or if there is no joint nomination, a vote of both houses of the Parliament of Barbados where a two-thirds majority is required. The electorate will therefore have no meaningful say. As Opposition Senator, Caswell Franklyn has also argued, there are flaws in the republic process. To raise legitimate concerns about the manner in which Barbados is transitioning to a republic does not mean that one is against republicanism, this is indeed long overdue. Nevertheless, it is prudent to raise the fact that the process we are embarking on in Barbados appears to be more symbolic rather than substantive. It reminds me of when President Obama became President of the United States and people got caught up with him being reported to have been the so-called first Black President of America (which was not true), rather than looking at how his presidency impacted on people of Afrikan ancestry and heritage.
Many are also getting caught up with the symbol of a first President of Barbados who also is a woman rather than critically examining the substance of how meaningful these changes will be. Whenever it comes to women in power and the tendency to see women in positions of (neocolonial) state power as emancipatory, I always question to what degree such women are or act, in ways that is described by Dr June Terpstra, as Women of the Hegemon. To find out more about what this means see here and here. In a global system of imperialism and neocolonialism, the Hegemon is ever-present even when it may be difficult to see because of the tendency to use a single lens of analysis when assessing reality rather than embracing an analysis of power on intersectional grounds.
I like many other agree that we should have a new constitution fit for purpose of what it means to be a republic drafted with input from our people who have up until now not really been given a say about what type of republic they want Barbados to be. Only then could it be said that there is a fair and equitable process which reflects a real intention to break with the coloniality of power of ‘Global Britain‘. Instead, Barbados’ republic status is premised on retaining links with European coloniality by simply making amendments to a constitution that came out of the Barbados Independence Act of 1966 passed by the UK Parliament, which gave Barbados “fully responsible status” (independence) within the Commonwealth. This Act has not been repealed.
“…provide a constitution for Barbados. This took the form of the Barbados Independence Order 1966, which was laid before the Barbados Parliament on 22 November 1966 and came into force on 30 November. The Constitution of Barbados formed a schedule to that order. This was drafted by a Constitutional Conference comprising political parties in Barbados and the then UK Secretary of State for the Colonies.”
In a recent article Dr Yearood & Professor Cynthia Barrow-Giles opined:
“….Barbados will move inexorably to republican status but with the status quo remaining, and with the symbolic change associated with the national head of state both practically and theoretically representing the citizens and not theoretically a foreign head of state. The real issue is therefore not about whether Barbados becomes a republic, or whether the Constitution is patriated, but about the relationship between the people and the Government as articulated in the Constitution. Is Barbados going to change its Constitution or be content with tinkering around the edges, masquerading as change?“
It would be far more transformatory, if an entirely new constitution was drafted instead of trying to seemingly ‘repair’ this colonial Westminster instrument. There is a long-standing need for constitutional review and reform which enables the electorate to have a greater degree of participation in accountable governance of the country. In order to become a republic, the Barbados Parliament had to revoke the Barbados Independence Order 1966 as an Order in Queen Elizabeth II’s Council via the Constitution (Amendment Bill) 2021, while keeping intact the existing Barbados Constitution. The amendment transfers the functions and powers of the Barbados Governor-General (Queen Elizabeth II’s representative) to the new President of the republic, amending the official oaths of Barbados to remove references to the Queen Elizabath II, as well as ensures continuity in all of the other aspects of the functioning of the state of Barbados.
The UK Parliament will have to pass consequential legislation “to avoid any confusion in its domestic law” as has been the case on previous occasions when Commonwealth Realms have become republics. The last time ithe UK Parliament passed a similar bill was the Mauritius Republic Act 1992. It is this aspect of the process thus far to republicanism that is most indicative that for now, Barbados will become a republic in name only. When a nation is seeking to establish true independence on the road to sovereignty, it cannot do so by maintaining relics of the colonial power that has ruled and influenced its institutions of governance for centuries. No wonder Prince Charles was invited as a guest of honour to make an address at the ceremony marking Barbados’ transition to a republic.
The cockily confident, Prince Charles felt it necessary in his public messaging on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II to emphasize those things “which will not change” such as the: “close and trusted partnership between Barbados and the United Kingdom”, the “common determination to defend the values we both cherish and to pursue the goals we share; and the myriad connections between the people of our countries.” He was even awarded the Order of Freedom of Barbados, which is now the country’s highest distinction. Quite rightly, the contradictions inherent in this decision has been condemned. In a recent facebook post Dr Tyehimba Salandy, a sociologist and scholar-activist based in Trinidad & Tobago says: “There is something very problematic about proclaiming Republic status and at the same time instead of pressing home the case for reparations awarding the creators of some of the worst crimes ever in human history with the Order of Freedom.”
Not surprisingly, Prince Charles’ visit has generated condemnation from across civil society, campaigners from the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration and the 13th June 1980 Movement had planned to stage a protest in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados yesterday. However, the government refused to grant permission for the protest. Clearly, such campaigners in Barbados, need support in amplifying their voices especially in the UK to present a counter narrative to this celebratory tone which is smothering those voices who are challenging the dominant state approaches to republicanism which are obfuscating the most fundamental issues of Global Europe and the continuance of Afrikan powerlessness in the Caribbean and elsewhere around the world. That is why the UK contingent of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations campaign, driven by the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign, to establish a UK All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice which prompted the establishment of the UK All-Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations (APPGAR), will become of increasing importance in this regard.
The Secretary General of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, David Denny is right to say that Prince Charles’ visit is an insult! According to a recent report in the Daily Mirror: David Denny who felt the opportunity should be used to call for an apology and reparations, said:
“Barbados should not honour a family who murdered and tortured our people during slavery. The profits created the financial conditions for the Royal Family to increase their power.”
Kevin Cahill provides good justification of this last point when he uncovers in his 2007 book: ‘Who Owns the World’, the world’s primary feudal landowner remains Queen Elizabeth II. She is monarch of 15 countries in addition to the United Kingdom, head of a Commonwealth of 54 countries in which a quarter of the world’s population lives and holds legalised title to about 6.6 billion acres of land, one-sixth of the earth’s land surface.
Wherever one stands on this issue, deeper questions remain; like how will the centuries old accumulated benefits acquired by the British Monarchy be dismantled in Barbados? What will the rulership do to free the country of imperial influences, the Maangamizi of neocolonialism and its attendant neoliberal economic reforms?, which are not only raising the cost of living for ordinary people and exacerbating income inequality; but also furthering the dominant model of maldevelopment worldwide which has implications for effectively tackling the genocidal and ecocidal glocal impacts of the worldwide Climate and Ecological Crises and the necessity for charting alternative paths of progression in Barbados premised on transformtaive adapatation as an aspect of Planet Repairs. Will there be widespread land, wealth and resource redistribution?, especially since (prior to becoming a republic) the British Monarch owned all state lands and state-owned companies etc. I really doubt it!
Despite becoming a Republic, Barbados remains one of the most important offshore financial centres in the Caribbean and one of the world’s top 15 according to Oxfam. Accordingly, there is a link between financialisation and the growth of top incomes. In an article written whilst he was a PhD researcher at the London School of Economics, Scholar Dr Collin Constantine argues that: “Barbados’ status as an offshore financial centre also contributes to rising inequality in Western Europe and the USA by allowing wealthy foreigners to shift income and wealth into a low-tax jurisdiction. Yet while OECD countries are attempting to reclaim their “hidden wealth”, Bajans face growing inequality alongside austerity measures and weak tourism.” Constantine provides an important perspective on how the ‘idea’ of Barbados as a beacon of democracy in the Caribbean persists. He argues that this is in part the same issue studied in other contexts by Thomas Piketty: “When you have large wealth, you cannot just consume like other people. You start to consume influence, consume politicians, consume academics, you consume power; this is what high wealth is here for.”
Constantine goes on to state: The enormous concentration of income in Barbados historically meant that the most powerful and prestigious positions were reserved for colonial elites. In present-day Barbados, economic elites use grants, media ownership, campaign contributions, and so on to influence public policy, public opinion, and key actors to forge societal buy-in on policies that protect and reinforce elites’ economic interests.Even more than in OECD countries, part of the problem is a lack of transparency about top incomes in Barbados, with a severe lack of studies on wealth and income distribution. But this is compounded by deliberate attempts to shift the blame onto the most visible participants in the local economy, namely migrants.
The above arguments put forward by various commentators demonstrate that there is still a long way to go before we can say that we have overcome the tyranny of gradualism and effected as well as secured Uhuru in Barbados and across the Caribbean region. The struggle to transform our material, spiritual and cultural realities naturally leads to the path less travelled; i.e. that of continuing to build and strengthen movement-building for Pan-Afrikan Liberation at home in our Motherland Afrika, as well as across the Diaspora. This is concretised by the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign’s advocacy of the necessity to prefigure decolonial post-Afrikan Reparations futures epitomised by the establishment of Maatubuntuman in Ubuntudunia built from the emerging Community Resistance Zones such as Maatubuntujamaas (Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination) in the Diaspora, organically and indivisibly linked to Sankofahomes premised on our indigenous Afrikan Communities of Resistance throughout the Continent of Afrika.
“Unless our struggle for Reparations leads to the Pan-Afrikanist revolutionary consientization, organization and mobilization of the broad masses of Afrikan People throughout the Continent and the Diaspora to achieve first and foremost, their definitive emancipation from the impeding vestiges of colonialism and the still enslaving bonds of present-day Neocolonialism, to smash the yoke of white racist supremacy and utterly destroy the mental and physical stranglehold of Eurocentrism upon Afrikans at home and abroad, delinking Afrika completely from imperialism of any sort whatsoever, we shall have no POWER to back our claim for restitution and to give us the necessary force of coercion to make the perpetrators of the heinous crimes against us to honour the obligations of even the best fashioned letter and spirit of International Law.”
*Esther Stanford-Xosei is a Motherist and Pan-Afrikanist Jurisconsult, Community Advocate and Reparationist. As a ‘new abolitionist’ emphasizing the need to ‘stop the harm’ and effect Planet Repairs, Esther serves as the Coordinator-General of the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign, among other responsibilities.
Zoe Steadman-Milne, Producer and all other organisers of the Bristol Festival of Economics as well as the Panel discussion on ‘What are the Ecomnomics of Reparation’.
I am writing to let you know that upon further reflection, I feel compelled to withdraw my participation in the forthcoming panel discussion on ‘What are the Economics of Reparations’. Since my agreement to participate in July 2021, I have come under scrutiny from Afrikan Heritage Community Members, who have quite rightly raised concerns about the ethical and legal dimensions of the contentious admissions policy for those attending the Festival of Economics and the panel discussion on reparations.
One overriding concern is how the admission requirements indirectly discriminate against certain sections of Afrikan Heritage Communities who have protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 and therefore creates differential treatment among individuals based on characteristics, (such as immunity status or vaccination status); thereby restricting their access to and ability to effectively participate in public events concerning issues of reparations. Indeed, the findings of report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) on COVID-19 vaccine certification released in June 2021 are instructive here. The report raised concerns among MPs’ that certification schemes would “disproportionately discriminate” on the basis of race, religion, age and socio-economic background. It states: “While the committee accepts that in emergency situations the prospect of temporary infringement of rights may need to be weighed against public health or other emergency considerations, these occasions should only ever be when there is an overwhelming case of necessity and should, in all situations, be proportionate to that necessity”.
Even the PACAC has expressed concern about the UK Government’s “failure to make the scientific case” for COVID-19 certification schemes. It is not surprising then, that for some sections and groupings within Afrikan Heritage Communities, there is a lack of trust due to the UK Government and the medical establishment’s failure to provide convincing explanations and evidence regarding the scientific case for COVID-19 vaccinations, including concerns about vaccine efficacy and safety for a plethora of reasons, such as institutional racism, medical forms of discimination and structural inequalities in health outcomes. The arguments often put forward as justification for the infringment of human and people’s rights in imposing certification schemes, like public health and safety, also have racialised and other intersectional dimensions. Addressing these issues requires embracing intersectional human and people’s rights approaches which balance risk and benefits across society taking into consideration such risks and benefits for specific communities and groups.
There is a simple maxim that has been adopted by Afrikan Heritage Communities regarding the disturbing trend of many institutions to hold meetings which put on events discussing issues of reparations pertaining to Afrikan Heritage Communities, but which at the same time largely exclude us. This maxim is: Nothing About Us Without Us, Anything About Us Without Us is Against Us! Questions are also being raised about the way this event is organised and whether this is the best use of resources.
Whilst I was indeed looking forward to participating in such a discussion and offering perspectives from the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations on the ‘Economics of Afrikan Reparations’; I have had to take very seriously the challenges and critical questions raised by Afrikan Heritage Community Members about my own participation in the panel discussion. Some of these critical questions relate to perceptions that I appear to be ‘legitimising white spaces’ which host events of interest and vital concern to Afrikan Heritage and other Majority World Communities, but at the same time impose exclusionary conditions limiting their own access and ability to participate themselves, including among other things cost prohibitions.
This becomes all the more serious when many such discussions end up becoming springboards for policy and other programmatic proposals of white-led institutions as well as NGOs, which are not informed by Afrikan Heritage Community experiences, voices, perspectives and lineages of mass struggle and are often unaccountable to Afrikan Heritage Communities of Reparations Interest and the movements that they have built which advance the strategic goals and cause of effecting and securing holistic reparatory justice. This often occurs even when such institutions and NGOs choose particular scholars, scholar-activists and other professionals who represent particular classes disposed towards Eurocentricity, from Majority World Communites to work with, who are prepared to engage on the terms of ‘whiteness’, but do not necessarily recognise the wider autonomous structures and networks of accountability which promote substantive representation for the communities and groups that such persons are part of. In this regard, I am guided by the call for ethical engagements on issues pertaining to reparations for people of Afrikan ancestry and heritage as highlighted in the Principles of Partcipation of the International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR).
In particular, objections have been raised about the requirement of an NHS COVID Pass for all ticket holders over the age of 18.
One such intervention, (but by all means not the only one), has been offered by @AfriThinka who in a recent tweet states:
So-called 'Liberal White Ally' spaces are contradictory and funny.
Reparations in the context of ignoring the particular principled objections of many Black peoples to having a vaccine experiment imposed on them – and in such a neo-colonial, paternalistic way as this? Do better https://t.co/AiRrTy6UmHpic.twitter.com/D3g4vsHgUk
The full admissions requirements can be found here:
@AfriThinka then follows up with a tweet to me personally:
But what is this?
Is it not the epitome of a deafness to Black voices of those owed add entitled to reparative repair on their own terms?@Xosei Really?https://t.co/ftW2r0Hsto
Concerns have also been raised about the data protection implications, for Afrikan Heritage Communities, of the Festival of Economics admission policy in terms of individual community members COVID-19 status being ‘special category’ data, and a lack of assurances that use of it will be “fair, relevant and necessary for a specific purpose”. Furthermore, questions have also been raised as to whether We The Curious and Bristol Ideas have undertaken a data protection impact assessment which takes into consideration the potential disproportionate and high risks of the admissions policy to individuals from Afrikan Heritage Communities on the basis of data known thus far about the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19, the human rights dimensions of imposing the NHS Covid Pass as a requirement for admission as well as how COVID-19 discrimination manifests.
As you may be aware, there is a heightened sense of awareness of, and expectations among Afrikan Heritage Communities regarding their rights to effectively participate in events and discussions about reparations given their involvement, and that of the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign, working with Bristol based advocacy organisations, such as the Afrikan ConneXions Consortium and others, in creating the environment conducive to the passing of the ‘Atonement and Reparation for Bristol’s role in the Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved Afrikans‘ motion by Bristol City Council on 2nd March 2021. This is more topical given the fact that Bristol based Afrikan Heritage Communities are organsing to develop their own glocal reparations plans of alternative progression known as Pempamsiempango’s given that the Bristol ‘Atonement and Reparations’ motion identifies that Bristol City Council resolves to call on Councillors, the Mayor or the Chief Executive as appropriate to:
2. Support Afrikan Heritage Community (AHC) organisations in Bristol to galvanise support for the emerging Bristol AHC led ‘Reparations Plan’ from, and in collaboration with, wider stakeholders including institutions, city strategic leaders, corporate leaders, key strategic programmes/initiatives and cross-party politicians, and
4. Recognise that reparative justice should be driven by Afrikan Heritage Communities experiences, voices and perspectives to ensure that advocacy messages not only reflect but also respond to the real needs of the community in order to recognise inequalities.
In these circumstances, my own participation in an event which appears not to have sufficiently considered these implications for and sensitivities of Afrikan Heritage Community stakeholders, has now become untenable.
I hope that as organisers you will draw the necessary lessons and do better going forwards in properly consulting stakeholding communities of reparations interest about everything to do with topics of particular relevance to such groups of people with particular emphasis of issues concerning barriers to participation.
In Service
Esther Stanford-Xosei
Coordinator-General, Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) Co-Vice Chair, Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) Official Spokesperson, Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) Co-Facilitator, International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) Co-Founder, Global Afrikan People’s Parliament (GAPP) Co-Founder, Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN)
Left to Right: Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, Marsha De Cordova MP, Caroline Lucas MP, Sir Peter Bottomley MP, Representation of Ottobah Cugoano, Bernie Grant MP, Esther Stanford-Xosei
Please note where you see different spellings of Afrikan this is because we in the SMWeCGEC use the spelling of Afrikan with a K but have preserved the spelling of African with a C when that is used by others.
Today we in the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign and our educational arm the Maangamizi Educational Trustwere participating stakeholders to the historic establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on African Reparations (APPGAR) which was launched in the British Houses of Parliament (via an online AGM) at 10.30am this morning, Wednesday 20th October 2021. The APPGAR is chaired by Bell Ribeiro-AddyMP, the Vice Chairs are Marsha De Cordova MP and Caroline Lucus MP, the Assistant Secretary is Sir Peter Bottomley.
On behalf of the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign, the Maangamizi Educational Educational Trust will be sharing the running of the Secretariat for the APPGAR. Other organisations who will also be part of running the secretariat are the Glocal Afrikan Reparations Forum of London, (GARFOL) and The African Foundation for Development, (AFFORD).
The APPGAR will be officially launched on 27th October 2021.
Esther Stanford-Xosei, Chair of the Maangamizi Educational Trust and Coordinator General of the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign who was honoured to speak at the AGM made the following speech:
Good Morning
My name is Esther Stanford-Xosei and I speak as the Chair of the Maangamizi Educational Trust (MET) which is the educational arm of the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC). Because of the historic importance of the AGM of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on African Reparations (APPGAR) today, the MET/SMWeCGEC has agreed a written speech from which I shall read.
First of all, we would like to acknowledge countless generations of Afrikans in the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) on whose shoulders, struggles and sacrifices we stand, whom since the mid-1700s in the UK specifically, have advocated for holistic reparations. In this regard, we particularly highlight the role of people like Ottobah Cugoano and other members of the Sons of Africa.
This idea for the APPGAR comes out of the campaigning efforts of the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign and our charitable educational arm, the Maangamizi Educational Trust. Maangamizi is the Kiswahili term for the continuum of chattel enslavement, colonialism and neocolonilaism.
We see the establishment of the APPGAR as a continuation of the work of the late Bernie Grant MPwho was the first member of the British Houses of Parliament to take up the issue of Afrikan Reparations following on from the ‘First Pan-African Conference on Reparations for Chattel Enslavement, Colonisation & Neocolonisation’ which took place in Abuja, Nigeria in 1993 and resulted in the establishment of the organisation known as the African Reparations Movement UK as well as the Abuja ProclamationEarly Day Motion 1987. It is in continuity of this work that we in the Maangamizi Educational Trust and the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign take our duties within the secretariat of the APPGAR very seriously. For this parliament has played a major role in legalizing, historical and contemporary injustices against Afrikan people worldwide including the passing of the Slave Compensation Act of 1837, which compensated our enslavers rather than Afrikan people. It has been very instrumental in legalizing our dehumanization, and continues with justifications being provided by this government for the discriminatory impacts of its extractivist policies in the Global South to supposedly avert the climate and ecological crises.
In terms of our MET/SMWeCGEC vision of the APPGAR, we see its purpose as: “bringing together parliamentarians, campaigners, communities and other stakeholders to examine issues of African Reparations; explore policy proposals on reparations and make recommendations to Parliament on how to redress the legacies of African enslavement, colonialism and neocolonialism today“. In this regard, a key objective of the APPGAR being to facilitate, work towards establishing the UKAll-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ) which is a key demand contained in the Stop The Maangamizi Petition and forms one of the main purposes of the ‘Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans’ motions being passed by local and city councils.
People of Afrikan Heritage have been denied their right to be heard on what we mean by reparations, and what solutions we are already working on as part of Community Self-Repairs so that is what we are calling for a mechanism which can facilitate the dialogue between Afrikan Heritage Communities and the British State and society; which for us is the APPCITARJ. We therefore see this APPGAR as an important step in the process towards establishing such a mechanism of such vitally necessary dialogue. For it is only then that we can truly make appropriate policy and other programmatic types of redress by way of remedies to repair ourselves here in the UK and extending into the Afrikan Heritage Communities globally; and in the process also catalyze the repair of the entire British society and of course, of all peoples and societies, within and beyond in the UK.
It is necessary for the APPGAR to invite people to honest dialogue on this issue of Afrikan Reparations, because this struggle to effect and secure holistic reparatory justice, like all our struggles, begins with the need for, as advocated by Professor Karenga, a clear conception of what we want, how we define the issue and explain it to the world and what is to be done to achieve it. However, on this we should be guided by Afrikan Heritage Communities and the movements they have created to effect and secure holistic reparatory justice which have been operational over centuries.
We in the MET/SMWeCGEC want to emphasize that the grassroots of our Afrikan Heritage Communities across the world should be driving this work. It is up to this APPGAR to demonstrate that there is a leadership that will be of service to our communities at this time when there are big questions about what kind of leadership we have and even some of the state and non-state actors active on issues of reparations, being heavily scrutinised in terms of their credibility and commitment to our people in what some see as a tendency to want to make elitist deals under the guise of reparations which do not benefit the masses of the people. We should all be clear that Afrikan Heritage Communities have a right to participate in reparations programme and policy development and must be in the driving seat of such processes best summed up in the mantra: Nothing About Us Without Us for Anything About Us Without Us is Against Us. Furthermore, participation rights are individual and collective human rights under customary international law. They are enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and further established in states’ legal obligations as spelled out in the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination(ICERD) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples(UNDRIP).
That is why for us in the MET/SMWeCGEC, the emphasis should be on Afrikan Heritage Communities Self-Repairs as was recognised in the Bristol ‘Atonement and Reparations’ motion which states: reparative justice should be driven by Afrikan Heritage Communities experiences, voices and perspectives to ensure that advocacy messages not only reflect but also respond to the real needs of the community in order to recognise inequalities. Also, that Afrikan Heritage Communities in collaboration with wider stakeholders, should be supported to develop their own glocal ‘reparations plans‘ to tackle issues of community disrepair as a result of the Maangamizi, locally, nationally and internationally. These issues of disrepair rooted in conquest, dispossession, structural racism as well as intergenerational oppression and trauma include in the UK: gun and knife crime among young people, kidnapped and missing children, the discriminatory impacts of the criminal justice system, the education system and the issue of Afrikan heritage maternal death-rates and inequalities of primal health of people of Afrikan heritage and ancestry etc as a result of the continuing impacts of the Maangamizi.
Research of people like Professor Carlton Waterhouseshows that much of the reparations policy-making, scholarship and public discourse pays little attention to the quality of past reparations programmes implemented around the world and whilst the emphasis is placed on former and contemporary wrongdoers to make apology, recompense, or other types of restitution, very little attention is paid to results, the end result of any reparations process should be the restoration and recovery of those that have experienced enduring injustice and harm, as well as the critical role that communities and individuals suffering from past abuses should play in establishing those programmes in order to re-establish their personal well-being and societal standing. Similarly, a lot of attention gets placed on state initiated reparations programmes; but this is based on a false and outmoded notion of international law as just being about the law of nation-states or governments rather than peoples and/or affected communities.
As much as this APPGAR has been centuries in the making, we must also recognise the context within which this struggle to effect and secure holistic reparatory justice is unfolding as historian Professor John Henrik Clarke advocated, we must be conscious of what political and cultural time of day it is given our locations as Afrikan people on the map of human geography. At a time when the extent of the Maangamizi is now imperilling all life on Planet Earth and some of us are threatened with literal extinction; an approach to effecting and securing holistic reparatory justice is required which brings about Planet Repairs which means: when safeguarding the rights of past, present and future generations; the need to proceed from a standpoint of Pluriversality that highlights the nexus of reparatory, environmental and cognitive justice in articulating the impetus to repair holistically our relationship with, and inseparability from, the Earth, Environment and the Pluriverse. Such an approach recognises there is urgent need for us all to compel the stopping of the Maangamizi of Neocolonialism and its inbuilt manifestations of genocide and ecocide and for Afrikan Heritage Communities to engage in deep and transformative adaptation given the certainty of intensifying climate and ecological crisis which is already impacting all life support systems as we know it rapidly-changing Planet Earth; doing so in ways and means that repair and transform our existing failed institutions in all spheres of people activity, locally, nationally and internationally. Such repair and transformation being anchored in the ancient Afrikan ethical imperative of Serudj ta, i.e., healing, repairing and remaking the World, making it more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
For these reasons, an essential part of our communities self-defence is transformative adaptation which is also about us beginning to make Pempamsiempangos, an Adinkra symbol, which encapsulates the necessity to knit and sew together in readiness for our community self-repairs; these are Glocal Afrikan Reparations Plan for Planet Repairs Alternative Progression being drawn up locally, nationally, internationally as well as globally. Alternative Progression plans become necessary given the contested nature of currently dominant processes of globalized development as highligted in Pluriverse: A Post Development Dictionary, given its structural roots in the Maangamizi, modernity, capitalism, state domination, and exclusively masculinist values which have often ended up being instead maldevelopment.
Finally, it is important to note that we who have been struggling to effect community self-repairs over centuries have built up an extensive knowledge base about the kind of system-change reparatory justice policy and programmatic measures are required. It follows that reparations education and conscientisation is part of the preparation for effecting and securing reparatory justice and this requires the APPGAR to also facilitate intense study about this issue as well as recognising that there is such a thing as reparations ethics. In this regard to acknowledge the INOSAAR Principles of Participationwhich promote equity between the knowledges produced by Afrikan Heritage Communities on Reparations and all other stakeholders.
We in the MET and the SMWeCGEC commit to disciplined, proactive work in the APPGAR secretariat and in fulfilment of this vision and we are keen to work equitably with partners who recognise the principles of Afrikan agency in determining what is best for our people.
We thank Bell Ribeiro-Addy for taking up this challenge by taking this historic step in initiating this APPGAR and agreeing to chair it and of course also to all of you who have agree to be the other executive officers.
We look forward to supporting and working with you all in the APPGAR.
The orginal proposal for the APPGAR as proposed by the MET can be found here.
“Accepting our responsibility and obligation to our Ancestors for ensuring that the African identity is proclaimed, maintained and developed; and that Africa is restored to its rightful place at the centre of world politics; call upon all people of African origin in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, the Americas and elsewhere to support the movement for reparations and join forces with a view to forming a strong united front capable of exposing, confronting and overcoming the psychological, economic and cultural harm inflicted upon us by peoples of European origin.”
Birmingham Declaration, Africa Reparations Movement (UK), 01/01/94
“Reparations is a process of the repairing and remaking of a people who are in the process and practice of repairing, renewing and remaking the world”
Professor Maulana Karenga, Black Power Encyclopaedia: From “Black is Beautiful” to Urban Uprisings, 2018
stopthemaangamizi.com 