Author Archives: STOP THE MAANGAMIZI
Global Majority Vs: A Reparatory Justice Case of Law as Resistance for Planet Repairs
On the 1 May 2021, Pan-Afrikan youth commemorated the anniversary of the 1 May 1820 legal lynching of William Davidson, through the British courts of the enslavers of his Afrikan people, resulting in his murder by hanging and subsequent beheading by the British State, by launching a class-action to redress such harms of the Maangamizi with a historic case of Reparatory Justice for Planet Repairs utilising Law as Resistance known as the Global Majority Vs the UK Government Campaign.
William Davidson was the son of a formerly enslaved Afrikan woman born in Jamaica and the Scottish Attorney General of Jamaica. At the age of 14, against his mother’s wishes, he was sent to Glasgow to study law. He rose to become one of the pioneering leaders of not only the Trade Union Movement but also the Spencean wing of the emergent Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Movement for the transformation of Britain and its Empire into a true commonwealth of emancipated nations pursuing agrarian revolution that would seize back all stolen lands, redistribute them to everyone and thereby transform the world. Such land redistribution and agrarian repairs were intended to be done in such ways of environmental justice as would result in what today we refer to as ‘Planet Repairs as the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) brought into conceptualising highlighting the interconnections between reparatory justice, environmental justice and cognitive justice.
According to Esther Stanford-Xosei and Dr Nicola Frith, in a co-produced paper for a project known as REPAIRS; Planet Repairs refers to the need to proceed from a standpoint of pluriversality that highlights the nexus of reparatory, environmental and cognitive justice in articulating the need to repair holistically our relationship with, and inseparability from, the earth, environment and the pluriverse giving due recognition to indigenous knowledges in contrast with western-centric Enlightenment ideals that separated humanity from nature and thereby justified exploitation for capital accumulation.
Choosing to open the Afrikan Liberation Awareness Month activities from the 1st May 2021 with a Pagya strike of positive action and also to highlight the two year anniversary since the UK Parliament declared a climate emergency, three young people, Adetola Onamade, 24, Marina Tricks, 20 and Jerry Amokwandoh, 22, two of whom are from our Afrikan heritage Communities, working with the climate litigation charity Plan B and ourselves in the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign (SMWeCGEC), served legal proceedings on the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak and the Energy Minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, over the Government’s failure to honour its Paris Agreement commitments. The terminology of Planet Repairs is used by Claimants Adetola Onamade and Jerry Amokwandoh in their witness statements and publicity materials about the Global Majority case.
The following statement was issued by the Claimants:
Today we filed our claim as people of the Global Majority in solidarity with all communities resisting and suffering the violence of UK and Euro-Amerikan imperialism.
Today also marks the inauguration of Afrikan Liberation Awareness Month as well as International Worker’s Day. While the UK continues to claim international leadership in global justice, its inaction on the climate of injustice, its financial support of corporations responsible for our trajectory of genocide and ecocide, and the continuation of the Maangamizi, make us all complicit in the destruction of the Global South, colonised peoples everywhere, and the marginalised workers of the Global North. The UK must now respond to its criminal failure to safeguard our rights and the rights of our families in the Global South.
We demand the implementation in domestic law of the Paris Agreement. The domestication of international law obligations. Stopping the harm and funding repair in order to uphold Global Majority rights to life, family, self-determination, and the internationally recognised right to remedy and reparation.
All Afrikan Lives Matter, Global Majority Rights Matter.
This must include the killing of BOTH bills, the end to the selling of weapons of mass destruction, no more billions in Nuclear Weapons, and funding people led initiatives for community and Planet repairs.
GlobalMajorityvsUKGov
@GlobalMajorityV
Follow and support our action to stop the harm and fund repair.
The Government will have to reply by June as the battle continues
Aluta continua
Blessings, love, and guidance
The following video explains the rationale for the case by the Claimants
What is the role of the SMWeCGEC in the Global Majority Vs UK Govt case and campaign?
Our role as the SMWeCGEC in this collaboration is to apply our expert knowledge and practical organisational experience in indigenous Afrikan knowledge, culture, concepts, symbols, methods and traditions of justice, in harmony with critical legal praxis, to the law as resistance development of the Global Majority V UK Government case and campaign. Our modus operandi entails utilising our scholar-activist expertise of guerrilla-intellectualism in ensuring that this legal action develops law as resistance, in its Pan-Afrikan revolutionary perspective, to support using action-learning experiences from the centuries of rebellion against genocide and ecocide by Afrikan and other Global South Communities of Resistance in link with Communities of Resistance throughout the Global North; doing so in defence of Human, Peoples and Mother Earth rights. The SMWeCGEC will also ensure that such extra-legal efforts of law as resistance harmoniously complements the conventional legal aspects of the case, in terms of advocacy in the courts.
Since the 2003 Black Quest For Justice Campaign (BQJC) legal & extra-legal Strategy of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice supported by the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE), the Black United Front (BUF), the Global Afrikan Congress (GAC) [between the years 2002-2003], and the International Front for Afrikan Reparations (IFAR), there has not been a reparations case initiated in the UK. The Global Majority case and campaign builds on the BQJC-led one by seeking to hold the British Government to account for the the crimes of genocide and ecocide that it is perpetrating and complicit in today as a key aspect in compelling a cessation of violations and guarantees of non-repetition of what we in the SMWeCGEC recognise as being the Maangamizi; all of which are necessary prerequisites for holistic repairs that will fruitfully result in our victorious building of MAATUBUNTUMAN in UBUNTUDUNIA*. The Claimants are very clear this is not just about what they and their immediate families are experiencing here in the UK, but also the harms that are being meted to their extended families and communities worldwide, especially in Afrika, Abya Yala, Asia and other parts of the Global South (read their witness statements linked below). This is a reparations case with a difference; it combines the struggles for holistic reparatory justice as a result of the impact of the Maangamizi on Afrikan Heritage and other communities with that of environmental and cognitive justice.
The Claimants have innovatively utilised law as resistance which seeks to hold the UK Government to account for its failure to honour its international obligations to implement the Paris Agreement; arguing that such failure violates their rights to life and to family life, which are protected by Articles 2 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Claimants further argue that while the UK Government’s climate failures threaten us all, they as young people, with families in the Global South are exposed to disproportionate and discriminatory impacts and risks pointing out that the UK Government’s complicity in the climate crisis also breaches ECHR Article 14, the prohibition of discrimination.
The case recognises that we cannot just seek to be compensated, outside of a wider strategy to stop the harms of the Maangamizi, redistribute ill-gotten gains and resource the self-repairs that our communities all around the world are working on. This approach takes into consideration the SMWeCGEC’s aim of catalysing the mobilisation and self-organisation of advocates for ‘Stopping the Maangamizi’ as a force within the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations, (ISMAR) as the first step to redressing the crimes and repairing the harms of the Maangamizi.
THE SMWeCGEC also has the role of liaising between the Global Majority Vs the UK Government campaign and the emergent formation of support for its case called the MAATUBUNTUSAFO Pan-Afrikan Global Network of Communities of Resistance which includes the MAATUBUNTUMITAWO-Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council, Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), the ABLODEDUNOVISIHA Gbetowo Global Union for Pan-Afrikan Community Regeneration, the KIZEZEMEGBA LIKPORKPEKPE of the Kideame of Avatime, the HEDZOLEHEWAMI GaDangme Association for Pan-Afrikan Community Regeneration, the POLONIACOWAWYA Network of Abya Yala, among others.
SMWeCGEC Guidance by Way of a Call to Action
Despite the fact that the courts are becoming a critical site of resistance against climate breakdown and ecocide, we in the SMWeCGEC believe that it is equally important to wage this fight for governmental accountability in the international courtroom of public opinion. Upon hearing about this case and campaign, the natural question is, so what has this case got to do with me and what can I do to assist the progress of the campaign? The simple answer is, become an International Court of Opinion Advocate for the Global Majority Vs UK Government campaign, this simply means studying particularly, the extra-legal work on the case, engaging in law as resistance action-learning with the support of the Maangamizi Educational Trust and encouraging others to do the same.
This will also lead to you learning how to demystify law to others and assist them to raise their own legal consciousness to enable them to actively play their global citizenship role in exercising their right to be the actual makers of domestic and international law. Furthermore, you can be actively engaged, in which ever country you reside, in the creation and advancement of domestic and international law, for example, particularly in pressurising to ensure the criminalisation of ecocide and the outlawing of eco-fascism, defending our collective (group) rights to Self-determination and protecting our geopolitical interests as Afrikans. It is important for us to organise within our communities glocally to be the reparatory, environmental and cognitive justice changes we wish to see in terms of Afrikan Heritage Communities taking responsibility for leading in the development of a participatory democratic PEMPAMSIEMPANGO Glocal Reparations Action Plan for Planet Repairs Alternative Progression (PEMPAMSIEMPANGO-GRAPPRAP). Such plans can be developed locally, regionally and internationally through joining or seeking advice to create, wherever you are, units of the PEMPAMSIESAFO Pan Afrikan Reparatory Justice Special Task Action Research Forces (PEMPAMSIESAFO-PARJSTARFs). Your unit can contribute its work to developing, in your own locality, proceedings towards the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ). By the time the APPCITARJ is established it is expected that the Pempamsiempango(s) will form part of the proposals for redress and repair which the UK Government will be compelled to adhere to, according to the dictates of how well we can harness and deploy our own Afrikan People’s Power glocally.
Now, the process itself of developing the Pempamsiempango needs to be one in which Afrikan Heritage Communities of Resistance are able to collectively organise to develop by way of consensus-decision making as part of the institutionalisation of MAATUBUNTUMI Pan-Afrikan Assemblies of Peoples Power (MAATUBUNTUMI-PAPPs) feeding into Global Citizens Assemblies of Peoples Power. These organising mechanisms are ways of contributing to organisational repairs in redressing Afrikan Peoples disempowerment and advancing Substantive Afrikan Representation by way of governance and political repairs that are necessary for the geopolitical restoration of our Afrikan People’s Sovereignty; doing it in such ways that will enable us to deliver to ourselves, as a global superpower, the victorious building of MAATUNTUMAN IN UBUNTUDUNIA.
Developing such mechanisms will redress the democratic deficit and creatively foster self-governance and forms of autonomy which Afrikans within and beyond the UK are self-actualising in their campaigning for Pan-Afrikan Reparations to win Planet Repairs in its Global Justice meaningfulness. This is being done in accordance with the Blackprint of the Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare by Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah; with emphasis upon the Pempamsiempango planning for Glocal Pan-Afrikan Community Regeneration, by our own People’s ‘Black Power’, of our Community Resistance Zones such as ‘Maatubuntujamaas‘ (Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination) in the Diaspora, indivisibly linked organically to ‘Sankofahomes‘ inside our indigenous Afrikan Communities of Resistance throughout the continent of Afrika.
In this regard, that is why we are also utilising pertinent lessons from The Art of War by Sun Tzu, in order to advance in Freedomfighting without physical weapons, under the Spearhead Leadership of our own grassroots community-embedded valiant Pan-Afrikan Organic Revolutionary Guerrilla Intellectuals, both old and young, including the “Beautyful Ones” that are being born, steeled and tempered inside the Pagya of our Ogyataana furnaces (forever-burning flames in Twi) of ever raging Soweto Fire, such as the new breed of eco-warriors emerging from the Global Majority Versus the UK Government court case and campaign.
The significance of the 1976 Soweto Uprising to the Global Majority Campaign is that this generation of Claimants are doing Sankofa and going back to take the rebellion torch of Soweto fire forward.
Further info:
For the Plan B Press Release, see here:
https://planb.earth/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/PR-1-May-2021.pdf
See these press articles:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/30/uk-students-sue-government-human-rights-climate-crisis
The government is back in court over the climate crisis | The Canary
To meet the Claimants, see their short film here:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CI6JowBh2nl/?igshid=ne5spl7k598b
The Claim in full is here:
https://planb.earth/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SFG-FINAL-WITH-FOOTNOTES.pdf
For a case chronology see here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SeEOy-5lVWktvzZG5Ww7uWPbSa-358huJ7D1WdAA4Rw/edit
If you would like to know and discuss more about the contents of this article and the types of action that we ourselves can be taking, please contact the SMWeCGEC Spearhead Team as follows: Email – stopthemaangamizi@gmail.com Tel- + 44 (0) 7956431498.
* Pan-Afrika, and not Eurafrica, should be our watchword, and the guide to our policies”
– OSAGYEFO KWAME NKRUMAH, Africa Must Unite , 1963.
MAATUBUNTUMAN is the name and concept being popularised for the envisaged future Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities by various organisations, networks and campaigns associated with the AMANDLA Global Assemblies of Afrikan People’s Power (AMANDLA-GAAPP), based in Accra, Ghana. 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), MAATUBUNTUMAN is meant to promote the concept of a global Afrikan polity (“Oman”), which is an organic embodiment of “Maat”, and therefore practices “Ubuntu” in relation to her own citizens and the entirety of Humanity, Mother Earth and the Pluriverse. 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 (GAFRIC), it has been adopted as one of the key rallying objectives of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice.
UBUNTUDUNIA (Ubuntu+dunia) is a combined Nguni & Kiswahili word which means a Multipolar World of Global Justice.
Next steps after the passing of the Atonement Reparations Motions
By now hopefully you have heard about the recent ‘Reparations and Atonement’ motion passed by Bristol City Council on 2nd March 2021, the role of the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) working with local partner, the Afrikan ConneXions Consortium as well as Afrikan Heritage publicly elected officials in this.
So now that we as the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) are catalysing advancement of the ‘Afrikan Radical Imagination’ (i.e. the ability to envision and work toward bringing about better and repaired futures) in galvanising processes with a variety of Afrikan Heritage Community stakeholders as well as the support of allies; many of whom are publicly elected officials who we work with to ensure that variations of the ‘Atonement & Reparations for the Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved Africans’ motions get passed by local and city councils in different parts of the country, the question on so many people’s minds is: where do we go from here?
The Reparations and Atonement motions build on recognition of the fundamental rights of People of Afrikan descent as advanced by the Durban Declaration and Programmes of Action arising from the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR), the Programme of Activities of the 2015-2024 United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD) and the 2019 Resolution on the Fundamental Rights of People of African Descent passed by the European Parliament.
It is necessary to recognise what the added significance of the Bristol motion, which includes resolutions committing Bristol City Council:
To call on councillors, the Mayor or other appropriate council agency to:
1. Write to the Speakers of both Houses of the UK Parliament, Chair of the Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee, and Chair of the Commons’ Home Affairs Committee to express Bristol City Council’s view that they should consider establishing, and seeking UK Government support for, an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry. The purpose of this unprecedented commission would be to work on the scope of how reparations may be delivered and may also include for example raising concerns about how tax payers were until 2015 paying back compensation paid to enslavers.
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.
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.
The significance of sections two and four are critical to the success of section one regarding the establishment of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) demand for the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ), which as we in the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign have always advocated, must be led by our Afrikan Heritage Communities rather than others seeking to define for us what reparations mean and should look like.
As Professor Maulana Karenga has stated long ago,
The struggle for reparations for the Holocaust of Enslavement of African people is clearly one of the most important struggles being waged in the world today. For it is about fundamental issues of human freedom, human justice and the value we place on human life in the past as well as in the present and future. It is a struggle which, of necessity, contributes to our regaining and refreshing our historical memory as a people remembering and raising up the rightful claims of our ancestors to lives of dignity and decency and to our reaffirming and securing the rights and capacity of their descendants to live free,full and meaningful lives in our times. But this struggle, like all our struggles, begins with the need for 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.
The key point to note about the PEMPAMSIEMPANGO glocal reparations action-planning process in Bristol is that it asserts the primacy of Afrikan Heritage Communities driving the process glocally through the development of a PEMPAMSIEMPANGO Glocal Reparations Action Plan for Planet Repairs Alternative Progression (PEMPAMSIEMPANGO-GRAPPRAP)
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 swahili word for plan.
Afrikan Heritage Community Self-Repairs are the self-determined efforts that need to be made in building our own power, in such a way, that Afrikan heritage communities are able to identify and enhance ongoing work towards stopping the contemporary manifestations of the Maangamizi, which are putting the individuals, families and other social groups that make up our communities into a state of disrepair; as well as reasoning and consciously carrying out the alternative solutions for glocally rebuilding our power base as Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination (AHC-NSDs), in such a way that that they are eventually transformed, in accordance with the principles and programmatic demands of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice.
However, such Community Self-Repairs for Afrikan Heritage Communities cannot take place in isolation but must link with Afrikan People’s powerbase our Motherland Afrika irrespective of whether we live on the Continent or in the Diaspora. The process of Pempamsie planning should occur within the context of a glocal framework which is establishing repaired Afrikan Heritage Communities which we refer 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. This simultaneous process of establishing Maatubuntujamaas in the Diaspora and Sankofahomes on the Continent of Afrika is what will help usher in a repaired Afrika known as MAATUBUNTUMAN that will take shape in a repaired multipolar world, i.e. UBUNTUDUNIA.
The planning process of developing such a PEMPAMSIEMPANGO, including the facilitation of glocal community hearings should itself be so participatory democratic that it sets the example for and leads into the establishment of the APPCITARJ from the ground-up.
The first step in the PEMPAMSIEMPANGO planning process is establishing working groups of PEMPAMSIESAFO Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice Special Task Action Research Forces (PEMPAMSIESAFO-PARJSTARF); the purpose of which is to work on addressing Afrikan Heritage Communities Community-Self Repairs Solutions to the various aspects of the Maangamizi that they and their families and communities are experiencing.
PEMPAMSIEASAFO – Afrikan Heritage Communities Self-Repairs forces that are ‘sewing in freedom-fighting readiness’ for Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice victory. Asafos are community militia formations to which everyone belongs for community self-defence in some indigenous communities in West Afrika. There are similar formations within Afrikan Communities throughout the Continent and the Diaspora of Afrika.
It goes without saying that our work continues in fulfilling the other SMWeCGEC aims and objectives as found here.
Bristol Takes the APPCITARJ Reparations Motion in the ISMAR Direction of Afrikan Heritage Communities Self-Empowerment
Bristol Extraordinary Full Council, Full Council Tuesday, 2nd March, 2021 4.00 pm
The Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) is pleased to report that the OURSTORY of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) continues to be made glocally and the Bristol Reparations & Atonement Motion passed today by Bristol City Council on this the 40th anniversary of the Black Peoples Day of Action, commemorating the 1981 New Cross Massacre. The motion calls, among other key resolutions:
To call on Councillors, the Mayor or the Chief Executive as appropriate to:
1. Write to the Speakers of both Houses of the UK Parliament, Chair of the Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee, and Chair of the Commons’ Home Affairs Committee to express Bristol City Council’s view that they should consider establishing, and seeking UK Government support for, an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry. The purpose of this unprecedented commission would be to work on the scope of how reparations may be delivered and may also include for example raising concerns about how tax payers were until 2015 paying back compensation paid to enslavers.
The ISMAR’s glocal Afrikan Reparatory Justice process driven by the SMWeCGEC is now advancing with our partners, foremost among them the MAATUBUNTUMITAWO-Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council (MAATUBUNTUMITAWO-GAFRIC) on the Continent of Afrika as well as the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC).
Bristol is the best demonstration, thus far, of the combined ground-up and top-down approach working together in equity. The Bristol process has included meetings with Afrikan Heritage Communities, Afrikan Heritage Community elected officials and Afrikan Heritage representatives of Bristol-based institutions, as well as allies. There were also 72 statements received from members of the public in support of the motion and nearly 200 statements received last year when the motion went before the Council as a silver motion.
The passing of this motion is indeed a cause for celebration as now more than ever we have collectively been able to demonstrate that a radical agenda for change, (in the sense of tackling Maangamizi injustices from the root), can win.
We salute the exemplary leadership of all those who worked on co-producing the Bristol motion which was based on the Cllr Scott Ainslie of the Lambeth Green Party initiated Lambeth Council and Cllr Caroline Russell initiated Islington Council ‘Atonement and Reparations’ motions significant sections of which we as the SMWeCGEC co-produced working with Cllr Scott Ainslie; with some key additions pertaining to the context, institutions and progress made in tackling legacy issues in the City of Bristol. In this regard, we commend: proposer of the motion Cllr Cleo Lake of the Bristol Green Party; seconder of the motion, Deputy Mayor, Cllr Asher Craig and Mayor Marvin Rees of the Labour Party, as well as the Afrikan ConneXions Consortium (ACC) and African Voices Forum (AVF).
There are however two key additions in the motion which surpass the original motions in London passed so far, and that is the inclusion of the following sections:
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.
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.
Of note, is the motion referencing what we in the SMWeCGEC refer to as the PEMPAMSIEMPANGO Glocal Reparations Action Plan for Planet Repairs Alternative Progression (PEMPAMSIEMPANGO-GRAPPRAP), which is a ground-up reparations planning process where our Afrikan Heritage Communities are organised and spearheaded by Pempamsiesafo – Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice Special Task Action Research Forces (PARJSTARF) to carry out as a matter of study and applied knowledge-production on the complexities of Afrikan Reparations. Although the passing of this motion is a stepping stone in an emerging participatory reparatory justice Afrikan Heritage Communities-led process, it is a huge leap forward and a vindication of the position of some of us in the SMWeCGEC took to championing such an approach on behalf of our people and were derided by both state and civil society actors for it.
The above resolutions constructively address the concern some of us in the SMWeCGEC have expressed about the top-down CARICOM Reparatory Justice Initiative known as the Ten Point-Plan, where appointments and disappointments are made to national reparations committees/councils by neocolonial CARICOM state bureaucracies. See here and here for further info about ISMAR position papers on such CARICOM Reparations initiatives. We are glad that lessons from our insights and advocacy in support of the right of the masses of Our People to participate in and steer reparations processes, from the ground-up, have not only been learned but also applied in Bristol.
It is truly laudable that Mayor Marvin Rees and Deputy Mayor, Cllr Asher Craig have been in dialogue with campaigners from the ISMAR and acted in ways which have supported and enabled Afrikan Heritage Communities’ grassroots leadership of this glocal participatory reparations process, rather than seek to hijack leadership of the ISMAR. By so acting, they have contributed immensely to strengthening our prospects for the ultimate victory of our Afrikan People at Home and Abroad in ensuring that reparations results in our Planet Repairs winning of MAATUBUNTUMAN in UBUNTUDUNIA as the true guarantees of non-repetition out of which all other reparations gains can be effected and secured as a continuation of the liberation visions of our Ancestors, not only for present, but also future generations.
The full Bristol Motion can be found here. 47 Councillors voted for the motion, 12 voted against, there were 0 abstentions and 4 apologies. You can read the ACC statement of thanks and call to action following the passing of the Bristol Atonement and Reparations Motion here.
Black Intellectuals, Vaccines & Stopping the Maangamizi: A Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice Critical Examination
“You must not abandon discussion out of tact . . . There should be no
concession where there is a question of establishing a scientific truth . . .
Remember we are focused on a quest for truth and not on a sacrosanct idol
we must avoid debasing”
Cheikh Anta Diop quoted in ‘Great African Thinkers: Cheik Anta Diop’ by Ivan Van Sertima, (1968) p.13
“If you do not understand white supremacy (racism) what it is and how it works everything else you know will only confuse you.”
Neely Fuller, Jr. in The United Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept (1984)
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it”
Zora Neale Hurston
The battles of the future, whether they be physical or mental, will be fought on scientific lines, and the race that is able to produce the highest scientific development, is the race that will ultimately rule
Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!
As a campaign tackling issues of genocide and ecocide, we in the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) cannot fail to recognise the importance of the debate raging on vaccines for COVID-19 in particular, and vaccines in general, for Afrikan Heritage Communities across the world. We need to make our position clear, more so in the light of two prominent figures, whom we consider friends, in the United Kingdom (UK); Dr Patrick Vernon OBE and Professor Kehinde Andrews openly advertising and encouraging our people to take the COVID-19 vaccine; and also recognising what is driving some vaccine hesitancy initiatives in response to the weaponisation of COVID-19 and other pandemics. Clarification of our SMWeCGEC position may also help to ascertain what our standpoint is for engagement with emergent coalitions, such as the International Coalition Against the Coronavirus and other Pandemics for African Development based in Lomé, Togo on the Continent of Afrika and the recently announced proposal for an Afrikan Coalition Against Genocide in the UK.
We of the SMWeCGEC consider ourselves as critical friends of both Patrick and Kehinde together with whom we hope we share in common a desire to see the best interests of our Afrikan Heritage Communities advanced everywhere, and therefore choose to make this response and publicly communicate it to all in order to contribute, at this dangerous time, to raising critical consciousness within and beyond our Global Afrikan Family; for the purpose of better comprehending the fact that this emergency period of the escalating climate and ecological crises demands of us all the very urgent need to be far more careful than ever before about our thoughts and actions particularly those that are shared on social media.
Indeed, we of SMWeCGEC are striving to ensure in everything that we do that not only do we raise critical consciousness, but work our hardest to advance its progression into critical legal consciousness. We do so to enable us to learn together, to better express, enlighten, and more boldly act out the will of our Afrikan People glocally to become the power of law everywhere; so that we can compel all of humanity to respect, abide by and enforce our Global Afrikan collective will to safeguard legitimate Human, Peoples and Mother Earth rights. Accordingly, we hope Patrick and Kehinde will take our constructively critical observations for what they are meant to promote: iron sharpening iron in the critical engagement best Black Radical intellectual traditions of our Afrikan Heritage Communities throughout the world.
In these times when some Afriphobic racists are louder demanding depopulation, targeting Afrikans, as a means to redressing the climate and ecological crises, Black intellectuals have a duty to stand with their community, to identify with their fears and concerns and support them to test the genuineness of this case for a vaccine and to then use their academic, and in the case of Patrick, health care knowledge to clarify matters in this case. The examples of Kehinde and Patrick as leading public figures taking the Covid-19 vaccine will be cited across Commonwealth countries; so they themselves must become more conscious of the global role they are playing in advocating for these vaccines in what has been referred to (in January 2021) as a “great experiment” by US based Dr Don J. Tynes who works at the Benton Harbor Health Center in Michigan, see news report below.
Although Dr Tynes speaks as a Black medical professional, he is also very clear on the fact that this experiment is one more example of the series of attempts to misuse Afrikan people for experiments that result in genocide and he particularly highlights the role of Black professionals who act as ‘sell-outs’ in seducing, enticing and coercing their own people into such murderous processes of science and technology, (e.g.“…and not trust a Black face, Black faces [also] harm the Black Race”). This is the kind of exemplary truth-telling standpoint in the best interest of our Afrikan Heritage Communities that we wished the likes of Kehinde and Patrick were taking here in the UK.
If Kehinde is serious in his assertion of being concerned about the racism of the Covid-19 pandemic, then the vaccine hesitancy of Afrikan Heritage Communities locally, nationally and internationally must be evaluated from an glocal anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and as someone who constantly advocates revolutionary change, one would have thought also a ‘revolutionary medical’ standpoint.
The motives of anyone who, contrary to the historical and contemporary experiences of their people, advocates that their people should just cast aside their fears and concerns and #TakeTheVaccine, should definitely be questioned. For what is the evidence base and factual knowledge to say it is safe for your people to take a Covid-19 vaccine?; especially when there has been no ‘repair’ of the healthy mistrust that Afrikan Heritage Communities across the world have of establishment medicine which has in many instances been used against them for nefarious purposes. If Afrikan Heritage Communities are to trust any vaccine, we ourselves must be able to prove that it is good for our people by doing our own independent investigations into the efficacy and safety of vaccines and establishing an Afrikan Heritage Communities led independent peer-review mechanism. This is even more urgent given the fact that the speed of the development of these vaccines means that the long-term consequences on those that take the vaccine from Afrikan Heritage Communities are not known. Of equal concern and alarm is the fact that in the UK, and around the world, vaccine producers have been given immunity from civil liability and so individuals are in effect taking full unmitigated responsibility for the potentially serious effects of a vaccine because there is currently is no adequate recourse to remedy in the event of any complications developing.
Whilst we accept, there maybe a case that can be made for some type of vaccine, it is fool hardy to uncritically advocate the use of vaccines produced by a historically anti-Afrikan system, more so by its notorious capitalist pharma-medical industrial complex known for seeking profit at all cost over and above decent values and principles. So where such vaccines become necessary, Afrikan Heritage Communities and our tested and trusted allies should be able to supervise the process of vaccine development, manufacture, culturally safe clinical trials and administration from start to finish; as has also been advocated by Dr Nevers Mumba, a politician in Zambia. Outside such a process controlled by duly representative, trustworthy and accountable organs of the masses of Afrikan People, then it is sheer agent-provocateurism to insist that Afrikans accept and take vaccines made for them by others.
Cultural Safety: An approach that considers how social and historical contexts, as well as structural and interpersonal power imbalances, shape health and health care experiences.“Safety” is defined by those who receive health services, not those who provide them.
By agent-provocateurism we mean, consciously or unconsciously provoking our people into taking courses of action, seemingly radical but actually premature and/or erroneous and therefore not well prepared to succeed, and so more likely to be to the counterinsurgency benefit of our enemies rather than the masses of our Afrikan People in the long-term; therefore bringing overwhelming backlash in the more likely event of failure, to cause huge losses even deaths and more atrocious persecution, demoralisation and reversals of previously won gains, so setting back our clock of advancement to victorious total liberation. Furthermore, those genuinely interested in our Afrikan People’s healthcare and wellbeing should be willing from a Reparatory Justice perspective, to release resources from the accumulated wealth of our past and present generations that they have in their possession so we, as part of our Afrikan Heritage Community Self-Repairs, can utilise them for our needs; as for example to fund proper research that will enable us to design, produce, freely distribute, monitor, evaluate and constantly improve such vaccines of our own making; combining our own indigenous medical knowledge and expertise with modern technological processes.
We can draw inspiration from the attempts by scientists and health professionals in Madagascar who prompted their government to support their initiative in creating their own home based organic remedies and other Afrikan medical solutions from what they have in their own environment to address Covid-19 and the threat of pandemics. This is a good example of how Afrikan professionals can take the initiative in ensuring governments support their own Afrikan solutions to problems affecting our Afrikan Heritage Communities within and outside Afrika. We note the good leadership example, in this particular matter, of President John Magufuli of Tanzania who on the 27th January 2021, speaking at a ceremony on the opening of a public forest in Chato in the Geita Region in Tanzania echoed the sentiments of many Afrikan Heritage Communities when he said: “The ministry of health should be careful, they should not hurry to try these vaccines without doing research, not every vaccine is important to us, we should be careful. We should not be used as ‘guinea pigs“. There is also exemplary leadership in the Afrikan Diaspora on this vaccine question from Minster Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.
This issue of our people being targeted as guinea pigs for experimental vaccines and the heightened need for biosafety is a globally shared Afrikan Heritage Communities concern since Covid-19 vaccines has been produced in a system which continues to perpetrate acts of genocide and ecocide against Afrikan people and our environments. It is also the case that the history of disease and warfare are interwoven and not only does the potential exist, but contemporary facts demonstrate, as is currently happening in the foreign orchestrated wars being imposed upon Iraq, Syria and Yemen, that genetic engineering can be applied for biological warfare or bioterrorism purposes, which in itself is the weaponisation of biochemistry for war crimes of genocide.We cannot critically examine and analyze Covid-19 vaccines or indeed vaccine hesitancy without a knowledge of the historical and geopolitical climate in which they are being produced.
Accordingly, we recommend the following points of action:
1. Noting that right now in the current situation of a climate and ecological crisis where depopulation is the eco-fascist solution being popularised for execution against Afrikans and other undesirable colonised peoples of the world, we must recognise that the question of taking or not taking any kind of vaccine is a life and death matter for our peoples across the world. Rather than just focus on the disproportionate impacts of symptoms, we should be courageous at tackling the root causes of such zoonotic viruses and diseases as Covid-19 and other pandemics, as well as building peoples power and community self-defence capabilities to resist and avert the proliferation of genetic engineering and synthetic biology technologies, especially given the lack of legal protection that people have against the iatrogenic harms of vaccine companies.
2. We invite all those interested to join us of the SMWeCGEC in setting up an international working group of the PEMPAMSIESAFO Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice Special Task Action Research Forces (PEMPAMSIESAFO-PARJSTARF) to work on addressing Afrikan Heritage Communities concerns about vaccines and pandemics.
PEMPAMSIEASAFO – Afrikan Heritage Communities Self-Repairs forces that are ‘sewing in freedom-fighting readiness’ for Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice victory. Asafos are community militia formation to which everybody belongs for community self-defence in some indigenous communities in West Afrika. There are similar formations within Afrikan communities throughout the Continent and the Diaspora of Afrika.
3. We invite all those who are interested to join us in critically exploring, debating and counteracting the role of agent-provocateurism in our Pan-Afrikan Liberation endeavours particularly highlighting its counterinsurgency role for seeking to derail the rising wave of our Afrikan Heritage Community organisation, particularly disciplined glocal movement-building and its necessarily diligent scholar-activist spearheading towards strengthening the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) and the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM).
4. The Stop The Maangamizi Petition should be studied more deeply in terms of how enemy schemes such as the weaponisation of pandemics, as manifestations of the Maangamizi, are highlighted for serious reflection and action; including their resolution through processes such as the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ) and its paving of the way for our own Afrikan People’s solutions including the Ubuntukgotla-Peoples International Tribunal for Global Justice and other endeavours for building MAATUBUNTUMAN in UBUNTUDUNIA.
5. Contact us to learn more, including how best you can participate from a Pan-Afrikan Liberatory Perspective highlighting holistic Reparatory Justice, in the ‘Battle of Ideas’ raging on issues such as pandemics, vaccines and depopulation. Under the international law reparations remedy of rehabilitation, collective reparations for the long-term consequences of the Maangamizi, both past and present, can be expressed through public health objectives that aim to stop medical/pharmaceutical wrongs and eliminate lingering racialised health disparities. The ‘Battle of Ideas’ is an important ideological tool in the struggle to transform minds and hearts in support of or against a cause. Within a space where a number of ideological positions struggle for supremacy – reflective of national, ethnic, class and gendered tensions within society – the ISMAR as a revolutionary international social movement should not neglect the importance of winning hearts and minds and mobilising society around a common Reparatory Justice vision that presents a credible political, social and economic narrative around which the movement seeks to transform minds and hearts to support, with all credibility, an alternative to that of the dominant white supremacy racist, capitalist, imperialist, sexist class.
Further info:
Project Coast: Apartheid’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme, Chandré Gould and Peter Folb, edited by Robert Berold (2002)
A Conspiracy to Commit Genocide: Anti-Fertility Research in Apartheid’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Programme by Miles Jackson (2015)
a-conspiracy-to-commit-genocide-anti-fertility-research-in-apartheids-chemical-biological-weapons-programmeDownload
a 2019 documentary film by Danish film- maker Mads Brügger
John Magufuli: Death of an African Freedom Fighter, Confronted Big Pharma and the Corrupt Covid Cabal – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization
How big a task is giving everyone on Earth a digital identity? (siliconrepublic.com)
The Coronavirus Vaccine: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”. Vaccination as a Platform for “Digital Identity” – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization
Storing medical information below the skin’s surface | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Major U.K. genetics lab accused of misusing African DNA | Science | AAAS (sciencemag.org)
Digitizing health—vaccine passports, birth control microchip implants? | Christina Lin | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)
The big picture is ignored in COVID-19 debate (newagebd.net)
South African paramilitary unit plotted to infect black population with Aids, former member claims | The Independent | The Independent
Ex-mercenary claims South African group tried to spread Aids | South Africa | The Guardian
South Africa: ‘Dr Death’ discovered to still be practising medicine (theafricareport.com)
Nigeria sues Pfizer for $7bn over ‘illegal’ tests on children | World news | The Guardian
Pfizer pays out to Nigerian families of meningitis drug trial victims | Nigeria | The Guardian
Abdullahi v. Pfizer, Inc. – Wikipedia
Pfizer Demands Governments Gamble With State Assets To Secure Vaccine Deal – The Wire Science
Oxford University scientists gave babies trial TB vaccine ‘that did not work on monkeys’
Developers of Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Tied to UK Eugenics Movement – unlimitedhangout.com
Exploring the Oxford-AstraZeneca Eugenics Links – Goodandreadi
West Africa: The Roots of the Ebola epidemic (cadtm.org)
4 Unethical Medical Experiments That Used Africans As Guinea Pigs | Listwand
The Caribbean islands poisoned by a carcinogenic pesticide – BBC News
French Caribbean fights to keep pesticide case alive – ABC News (go.com)
Medical experimentation on slaves in 18th-century Caribbean colonies | Stanford News
The hidden stories of medical experimentation on Caribbean slave plantations (theconversation.com)
The Covid-19 Vaccine and the U.S. policy of depopulation – Final Call News
Georgia COVID-19 vaccine rollout: Some wary after mosquito experiment (usatoday.com)
Health and race disparities have deep roots: A brief timeline (freep.com)
US military released bacteria to test biological warfare (businessinsider.com)
How Commonly Was Smallpox Used as a Biological Weapon? | JSTOR Daily
Coronavirus: White supremacists planned to use virus as a bioweapon | The Independent | The Independent
World must prepare for biological weapons that target ethnic groups based on genetics, says Cambridge University (telegraph.co.uk)
world-must-prepare-for-biological-weapons-that-target-ethnic-groups-based-on-genetics-says-cambridge-university-1Download
Future Bioweapons Could Kill People With Specific DNA (futurism.com)
The Racist History of Medical Research | Left Voice
Apology, exposing the past key to black Americans embracing COVID-19 vaccines, American medicine? | Journal of Medical Ethics blog (bmj.com)
West Africans and the history of smallpox inoculation: Q&A with Elise A. Mitchell | Royal Society
Syllabus: A History of Anti-Black Racism in Medicine | AAIHS
Why are we vaccine hesitant in a pandemic? (bma.org.uk)
Vicious racist history feeds fear of Covid-19 vaccine (socialistworker.co.uk)
The DNA database betrays the racism of those behind it | Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Laboratory viruses pose ‘existential threat’, warns bioweapons expert | Financial Times (ft.com)
The Anti-Black History Of Contraception – Daye (yourdaye.com)
#DecolonisingContraception: how reproductive medicine has been used to oppress people of colour : CORTH Blog : … : Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health : University of Sussex
Dozens of HIV-positive South African women forcibly sterilized | CTV News
The real agenda of the Gates Foundation | Liberation School
Bill Gates and the Myth of Overpopulation | by Jacob Levich | Medium
The ‘Objectionable Injectable’: Recovering the Lost History of the WLM Through the Campaign Against Depo-Provera
the-objectionable-injectable-recovering-the-lost-history-of-the-wlm-through-the-campaign-against-depo-proveraDownload
The Black Scourge? Race and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Tuberculosis Commission in Interwar Jamaica
the-black-scourge-race-the-rockefeller-foundations-tb-commission-in-interwar-jamaicaDownload
the-black-scourge-race-the-rockefeller-foundations-tb-commission-in-interwar-jamaicaDownload
Unethical Medical Research in Africa Funded or Assisted by the US Government or Other US Based Institutions
unethical-medical-research-in-africa-funded-or-assisted-by-the-us-government-or-other-us-based-institutionsDownload
unethical-medical-research-in-africa-funded-or-assisted-by-the-us-government-or-other-us-based-institutionsDownload
Reckoning with histories of medical racism and violence in the USA, Ayah Nuriddin, Graham Mooney, Alexander I R White (2020)
the-art-of-medicine-reckoning-with-histories-of-medical-racism-and-violence-in-the-usaDownload
the-art-of-medicine-reckoning-with-histories-of-medical-racism-and-violence-in-the-usaDownload
Next Generation Bioweapons: The Technology of Genetic Engineering Applied to Bioweapons and Bioterrorism, Micheal J. Ainscough, Colonel USAF next-generation-bioweaponsDownload
National Security Study Memorandum NSSM 200 Implications of Worldwide Population Growth For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (THE KISSINGER REPORT) the-kissinger-reportDownload
#StopTheMaangamizi! #WeChargeGenocide! #WeChargeEcocide!
Young People/Global Majority v UK Gov-MOU between Co-Claimants, Plan B & SMWeCGEC
This Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) sets out the common understanding between the Co-Claimants: Marina Tricks, Adetola Onamade and Jerry Amokwandoh, Plan B and the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) (“the parties”) concerning their collaboration, Young People / Global Majority vs UK Gov (a youth-led Global Majority campaign against the UK Government).
In this collaboration, the role of the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC) is to apply indigenous Afrikan knowledge, culture, concepts, symbols, methods and traditions of justice, in harmony with critical legal praxis, to the law as resistance development of the Global Majority V UK Government case. Our modus operandi entails ensuring that the case supports and is supported by the centuries of rebellion against genocide and ecocide by Afrikan and other Global South Communities of Resistance in link with Communities of Resistance throughout the Global North; and also in defence of Human, Peoples and Mother Earth rights.The SMWeCGEC will also ensure that such extra-legal efforts harmoniously complements the convention legal aspects of the case, in terms of work in the courts.
Stop The Maangamizi co-organises Bristol’s 2nd conversation on Race & Reparations – 9 Feb 2021
“Let’s talk about Reparatory Justice with City Institutions”?
About this Event
Many people are joining together to walk the path of racial justice and healing. Whilst it is important to do some deep introspection about how those of us from the Afrikan diaspora relate to each other and seek to heal from the racial wounds of the past and indeed the present. This healing cannot take place until we connect with others on the path towards reparatory justice.
“Lets talk about Reparatory Justice with City Institutions” is the 2nd in a series of 3 discussions on Bristol’s Conversation on Race & Reparations, following on from the 1st meeting held on the 14th January with and between Bristol’s Afrikan Heritage Communities, which started to explore the meaning of Reparations and the specific UK and international demand for An-All Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice.
This 2nd meeting will hear from representatives from some of the city institutions who benefited from the Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved AfriKans (TTEA). We have invited speakers from the Mayor of Bristol’s History Commission, University of Bristol, Diocese of Bristol and the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign. What reparative justice plans have they put in place and why? How do they intend to connect with the city’s Afrikan Heritage Communities ? “Nothing about us without us”
You will also hear from Lambeth Borough Council, the first council in the UK to pass a Reparations Motion. What happens after the motion is passed? Find out how Lambeth are supporting the reparations movement locally and nationally.
This event has been organised by the Afrikan Connexions Consortium, African Voices Forum, Mayor of Bristol, Bristol City Council and the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign
PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A PUBLIC MEETING.
Response to 2nd written question asked by Baroness Natalie Bennett re: APPCITARJ
The above is the response by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on behalf of the UK Government to a second question asked by Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, Green Party Life Peer regarding the UK Government’s intentions on establishing the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ).
As one can see, the result is no more favourable than the first response received from Lord Ahmad on behalf of the UK Government to the first question asked by Baroness Bennett contained in the following Stop the Maangamizi Campaign Briefing Note.
These type of responses are why the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign in association with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee declared the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion in 2020; because our people are not being listened to or taken seriously regarding our reparations social-movement demands for the UK Government to establish the APPCITARJ.
If these demands for a community engaged participatory reparations process such as the APPCITARJ are not made, and concretely acted upon by the masses of our people and bringing pressure to bear on elected officials of local and central government, as well as state institutions, then of course we will continue to de disregarded, ignored and disrespected. At the level of popular mobilisation we in the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign continue to advocate the signing, sharing and reasoning through the content of the Stop the Maangamizi Petition as well as lobbying elected officials to support the work of self-repair which you are engaged. Such lobbying in can be done in a variety of ways. We also advocate the development of local, national and international community-owned reparations plans, which we refer to as Pempamsie Plans, such as the process unfolding in Bristol. 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.
Afrikan Heritage Community Self-Repairs are the self-determined efforts that need to be made in building our own power, in such a way, that Afrikan heritage communities are able to identify and enhance ongoing work towards stopping the contemporary manifestations of the Maangamizi, which are putting the individuals, families and other social groups that make up our communities into a state of disrepair; as well as reasoning and consciously carrying out the alternative solutions for glocally rebuilding our power base as communities, in such a way that that they are eventually transformed, in accordance with the principles and programmatic demands of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice.
The key thing is what more are you and the groupings that you are part of prepared to do to further Afrikan people’s sacred cause of effecting, securing and taking reparatory justice?
“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.”
Kofi Mawuli Klu, ‘Charting An Afrikan Self-Determined Path of Legal Struggle for Reparations’: A Draft Paper for Presentation to the 11th December 1993 Birmingham Working Conference of the African Reparations Movement – UK Committee
6 years into the IDPAD the GLA motion passed yesterday does not go far enough!
Dr Onkar Sahota MLA, Labour Group
Yesterday, 4th February 2021, the Greater London Assembly (GLA) unanimously passed a motion pertaining to the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD) moved by Assembly member for the North East London constituency of Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest, Jennette Arnold OBE, a Labour Co-op Politician.
This press release contains the full text of the motion as follows:
“This Assembly is committed to eradicating and ending racial injustice and anti-Black racism. In our pursuit of these aims, the London Assembly is passing this motion to recognise formally and mark the United Nations International Decade for peoples of African Descent running from 2015-2024.
This Assembly recognises the work undertaken by the Mayor of London in promoting diversity and inclusion, and celebrating Black Londoners through Black History Month activities, the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, and working with the Black Curriculum to provide relevant education resources and to review the London Curriculum.
This Assembly calls on the Mayor of London to recognise formally and mark the UN’s Decade by embedding in policies where possible, the UN’s General Assembly resolution on the International Decade for People of African Descent. The Mayor’s work should reflect the following requests from the Programme of Activities for the Implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent:
- Work with schools and community organisations to ensure that the educational histories and narratives of Black people are properly taught and celebrated in schools across London all year round;
- Work on reviewing and reworking policies that continue to have a discriminatory effect on peoples of African descent across London;
- Consider establishing policy directives to mainstream equality and non-discrimination considerations in all policy-making, including measures to ensure the equal enjoyment of rights and opportunities for people of African descent; and
- Ensure that the end of the decade is marked in 2024, celebrating progress made in moving towards racial justice.”
Assembly member for Ealing and Hillingdon, Dr Sahota seconded the motion.
London Assembly member Caroline Russell, one of two Green Party representatives on the Assembly and a councillor for Highbury East within the Islington North constituency moved an amendment to the above motion which included the following text:
“The Assembly also notes that the UN International Decade for People of African Descent2015-2024 calls on those that have not yet expressed remorse or presented apologies to find some way to contribute to the restoration of the dignity of victims, and therefore asks the Mayor to support calls for the establishment of an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice.”
The amendment was also seconded by Green Party London Assembly member Sian Berry, the only Green Party councillor on Camden Council, representing Highgate
See below for the recording of the debate about the motion:
See the full plenary session here: Plenary meeting – YouTube
The full text of Caroline Russell’s speech is as follows:
Thank you chair.
I am so glad that Assembly Member Arnold has brought this motion – it is something we discussed last summer so I am pleased to hear it today.
However, I am proposing an amendment, not to detract from this motion or water down its aims – but to make it more inclusive of the asks of campaigners – and those are the voices I am bringing to the Assembly today.
This motion recognises the UN’s International Decade for Peoples of African Descent and asks that the Mayor’s work reflects some of the actions listed in the Decade – it rightly highlights celebrating Black history, improving education, and anti-discrimination policies.
However, we on the Green Group believe there is a serious omission in this motion and that is the issue of reparatory justice.
The UN International Decade for People of African Descent also has under the programme of activities for the justice theme the text:
“Inviting the international community and its members to honour the memory of the victims of these tragedies with a view to closing those dark chapters in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing; further noting that some have taken the initiative of regretting or expressing remorse or presenting apologies, and calling on all those that have not yet contributed to restoring the dignity of the victims to find appropriate ways to do so and, to this end, appreciating those countries that have done so.”
In London we owe so much to Africans and People of African descent – and not just here in this city, but in all our connections and communities all over the world.
Let me remind everyone listening here today that it was only in 2015 that our Government stopped paying off the debt they took on to “compensate” businesses and people “forced” to stop trading in human lives.
And over the last 200 years the equivalent of £17 billion pounds in today’s money has been paid out.
This so-called “compensation” went the wrong way.
I spoke with the Stop the Maangamizi campaign just yesterday, a group co-led by the extraordinary legal expert Esther Stanford-Xosei and Kofi Mawuli Klu.
She told me that the first thing her campaign group is asking for is to be heard.
For us to hear about the impact of intergeneration harm, for us to hear about what communities are doing to prevent this harm, and for us to hear about how they are healing from this harm.
She asked me to tell you that real reparations mean not just addressing historical enslavement and the money made in human suffering,
But real reparations means recognizing the critical future role that communities and individuals who continue to suffer have to play.
It is vital that communities from the African diaspora are at the heart of the process of any investigation into reparations. Their voices, their stories, their solutions, should be the driving force.
But even working out how to do that starts with establishing a commission to study the impact and legacy of our country’s involvement in slavery and what reparatory justice means.
This is why the amendment I have brought to you today calls on the Mayor to support the establishment of an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice.
I hope you will vote for this amendment.
Despite the amendment adding teeth to the motion, it fell because only the two Green Party members voted for it. There was value however in raising the arguments and challenging Assembly members to go further than they were clearly prepared to in responding to a global unifying clarion call of Afrikan Heritage Communities to implement their right to remedies and reparations. Nevertheless, this struggle continues unabated!
The GLA motion, which passed unanimously, did not reference or focus on the following key aspects of the IDPAD Programme of action under the justice theme pertaining to reparatory justice:
- Ensuring that people of African descent have full access to effective protection and remedies through the competent national tribunals and other State institutions against any acts of racial discrimination, and the right to seek from such tribunals just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered as a result of such discrimination;
- Acknowledging and profoundly regretting the untold suffering and evils inflicted on millions of men, women and children as a result of slavery, the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, apartheid, genocide and past tragedies, noting that some States have taken the initiative to apologize and have paid reparation, where appropriate, for grave and massive violations committed, and calling on those that have not yet expressed remorse or presented apologies to find some way to contribute to the restoration of the dignity of victims;
- Inviting the international community and its members to honour the memory of the victims of these tragedies with a view to closing those dark chapters in history and as a means of reconciliation and healing; further noting that some have taken the initiative of regretting or expressing remorse or presenting apologies, and calling on all those that have not yet contributed to restoring the dignity of the victims to find appropriate ways to do so and, to this end, appreciating those countries that have done so;
- Calling upon all States concerned to take appropriate and effective measures to halt and reverse the lasting consequences of those practices, bearing in mind their moral obligations.
Stop The Maangamizi Campaign co-organises historic meeting in Bristol re: reparations motion calling for the APPCITARJ
Colleagues in Bristol from Afrikan Heritage Communities are invited to an Afrikan Heritage Community-led conversation on Race and Reparations on Thursday 14th January from 7.30pm to 9.00pm. This community meeting has been called in partnership with the Mayor of Bristol, Bristol City Council, Afrikan ConneXions Consortium, African Voices Forum (AVF) and the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign.
All contributors to the dialogue are *Afrikan Heritage representatives from the bodies facilitating this event. You will hear from range of speakers about the context that has led to this point in the Reparations conversation, explore the meaning of Reparations and what that means for the city and globally, seek your support for the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign initiated call for an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ), as referenced in the Stop The Maangamizi Petition which will form the main proposals within the ‘Reparations and Atonement’ motion that Afrikan Heritage Communities are invited to comment upon before it is brought to a future Full Council meeting for discussion and approval.
It is really important that the debate is shaped by the whole community, both in terms of the concept itself, the work done to ready the city for a discussion and ensuring there is a shared understanding. This is the first of 2 conversations, the second conversation will be held with wider city stakeholders and the views of the city’s. Afrikan Heritage Communities (AHC) will be fed into this wider event to be held in early February 2021.
*Afrikan Heritage Communities are a diverse group who may also identify or describe themselves as:African, Caribbean, African-Caribbean, Nigerian, Jamaican, Ghanaian, Trinidadian, Black British, or of a dual heritage including African etc.
Please note that this initial meeting is open ONLY to the communities of interest as expressed above.
See the link for the meeting:
Bristol’s Conversation on Race & Reparations Tickets, Thu 14 Jan 2021 at 19:30 | Eventbrite
See the link to the above BBC News Report:
‘Historic’ Bristol event kicks-off slavery reparation talks – BBC News
Message from Cllr Asher Craig – 14/01/21
Dear All
Thank you for confirming your attendance at Bristol’s Conversation on Race & Reparations this evening. The event is now SOLD OUT
The meeting will be held via Zoom and will start promptly at 7.30pm.
The agenda for the meeting is as follows:
7.30pm Welcome & Introductions – Cllr Asher Craig, Deputy Mayor
7.35pm Speakers
- Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol
- Cllr Cleo Lake, Bristol City Council
- Esther Stanford-Xosei, Stop the Maangamizi Campaign
- Jendayi Serwah, Afrikan Connexions Consortium
- Peninah Achieng, African Voices Forum
8.10pm Panel Discussion /Q & A
- Speakers will be joined by Kofi Mawuli Klu, Stop the Maangamizi Campaign for this session
8.45pm Next Steps
9.00pm Close
