This video is the speech made by Esther Stanford-Xosei at the Movement of Movements Internationalist Solidarity Grounding with the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement (MMISOG-PALM) in Max Roach Park which took place as part of the 1st Mosiah (August) Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings co-organised by the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) and the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC).
Esther is the Official Spokesperson for the AEDRMC, Coordinator-General of the SMWeCGEC and Media & Communications Coordinator of the Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN).
This video is part of the MAATUBUNTUJAMAA -SAAYOOO! (Pan-Afrikan Freedom-Fighting Clarion-Call Series produced by Ubuntudunia TV
Tag Archives: Emancipation Day
Motion: Atonement and Reparations for the UK’s Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved Africans
Further to our earlier post yesterday (below), it has come to our attention that the Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans motion moved by Islington Green Party Cllr Caroline Russell was amended by Labour Party Cllr Gulcin Ozdemir.
One of the significant amendments was removal of the text:
Write to the Speaker of Parliament, Chair of the Women & Equalities Committee and Chair of the Home Office committee to request that they establish, and seek UK Government support for the establishment of an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice and calling on the Government to commit to holistic reparations taking into consideration various proposals for reparations in accordance with the United Nations Framework on Reparations.
Unfortunately, the Islington motion moved by Cllr Caroline Russell and also retained in the amended motion by Cllr Gulcin Ozdemir also omitted (we were told by accident due to working with an older draft of which there were several) this key text:
- In 2003 the Lambeth based Black Quest for Justice Campaign (BQJC) initiated a class action for Pan-African Reparations for Global Justice against Queen Elizabeth II and agents of the Crown as Head of State and Head of the British Commonwealth calling for the establishment of a Reparations Commission of Inquiry. This action was denied on the grounds that the Crown could not be prosecuted, and these crimes could not be enforced prior to the enactment of the International Criminal Courts Act in 2001.
- In 2004 the Rastafarian movement were denied their appeal for reparation because the UK government felt it could not be held responsible for events of past centuries.
Of course these omissions are unacceptable to us and we await the passing of the Lambeth Council Resolution on 15/07/20.
The full amendments to the Islington text can be found here:
AMENDED ISLINGTON MOTION PAGES 1-6
Please read the following text in light of what we have recently discovered.
Original Post 11/07/20
We are pleased to report to you that the ‘Stop the Maangamzi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC) has been part of the drafting of a historic motion on reparations passed by Islington Council on 9th July 2020, (see below). The motion was moved by Green Party Cllr Caroline Russell. This motion came about as a result of SMWeCGEC teamwork with Cllr Scott Ainslie from Lambeth Green Party, other colleagues in the Green Party & Greens of Colour, as well as Cllrs in Lambeth & Islington Labour Party. It builds on the demand in the Stop the Maangamizi postcard calling for elected officials to support the demand for the establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Commission on Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ).
This motion is largely an outcome of engagement with Cllr Scott Ainslie in demonstration of his commitment made at the 2019 Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March to follow-up with a motion on reparations. The motion in Islington was able to pass because of Green Party and Labour Party collaboration and consensus-building around key aspects of the text that the SMWeCGEC contributed and which were added to by members of the Green Party and the Labour Party.
From the SMWeCGEC’s perspective, one of the highlights of this Islington Council Reparations Motion is recognition of our campaign demand for the establishment of the APPCITARJ, which is an essential phase in a participatory administrative reparations process. In addition to reference to selected landmarks in the UK chronology of campaigning on reparations. We also contributed significant amounts of text to the original Islington and Lambeth motion.
A similar motion was submitted by Green Party Cllr Cleo Lake in Bristol on 7th July 2020.
The first drafted motion spearheaded by Cllr Ainslie will actually be voted on by Lambeth Council at the forthcoming Council meeting on Wednesday 15th July 2020.
The SMWeCGEC is truly appreciative of Cllr Ainslie and all others that worked with him from the Lambeth Green Party, Greens of Colour, including Cllr Lake and also Cllr Russell, to ensure that such motions could be submitted.
Cllr Scott has truly been exemplary in working in such a way which honours the guidance in the INOSAAR Principles of Participation in recognising the existence of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR); and the necessary ethics that this entails. This includes respecting the existence of historical and contemporary reparations work, research and other initiatives at regional, national and transnational levels.
We are also pleased that engagement with the Green Party which was commenced years earlier (between 2002 – 4) with other Green Party elected officials under the auspices of the then Rendezvous of Victory, has now borne some outcomes that help take the goals of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) Further.
We also take this opportunity for recognising the efforts of Lucie Scott in Hackney who recently got in touch to inform us that she had proposed a motion passed in 2018 which recognised the demand for the APPCITARJ. See here Hackney NSN 2018 IR motionFinal (1) for further info.
The following are a few relevant tweets and other publicity:
Dr #WalterRodney‘s wisdom is relevant to #Afrikan struggle 4 #Reparations “A struggle doesn’t drop from the sky; it has roots, it has been going on for years; people’s energies, their consciousness, their organizations have evolved in response to specific historical conditions.”
The following video featuring Esther Stanford-Xosei, legal advisor to then existing Black Quest For Justice Campaign (BQJC), is one of the earliest video recordings which tracks the demand for what has now become known as the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ). However its modern-day antecedents, as well as that of the Ubuntukgotla People’s International Tribunal For Global Justice (U-PITGJ) can be traced back to the the work of Kofi Mawuli Klu who wrote the following paper Charting an African Self-Determined Path of Legal Struggle for Reparations as a contribution to the 11 December 1993 working conference of the African Reparations Movement (ARM UK), co-founded by the late Bernie Grant MP and others.
The following comments from SMWeCGEC Co-Initiator and Co-Vice Chair, Kofi Mawuli Klu provide another layer of historical context to the significance of this motion for the SMWeCGEC and the wider ISMAR.
Also this comment from Kofi is in response to a dialogue between him and Akyaaba Addai-Sedo based in Ghana about the same motion.
Yes, the awesome beauty of this historic action of the London Borough of Islington, to which the work of yourself, Brother Akyaaba and others of the GLC, contributed upon the foundations laid throughout the ages by Kodwo Enu (Ottobah Cuguano), Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglas, Henry Sylvester Williams, John Archer, Marcus and Akosua Boahemaa Amy Garvey, CLR James, Claudia Jones, Paul Robeson, George Padmore, Ras Makonnen, WEB DuBois, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and his stalwarts of the Pan-Afrikan Congresses, is the change in Language and concepts insisted upon by our Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWECGEC), backed strongly by our colleagues of the INOSAAR based at the University of Edinburgh, and friends of the Green Party! So, for example, instead of the so-called very derogatory insulting ‘Slave Trade’, which the likes of Walter Rodney had very well repudiated as no trade at all, there is now acceptance of our PARCOE formulation that it is the Transatlantic Trafficking of Enslaved Afrikans (TTEA)!
Not yet Uhuru; but there is now being galvanized by new waves of Rebellion at home and abroad our Long March to the victorious Reparatory Justice achievement of the Pan-Afrikan revolutionary winning of Planet Repairs, in order to secure our own MAATUBUNTUMAN Pan-Afrikan Union of our Communities of Resistance, stronger unifying those in our Mothercontinent with those in the diaspora, in a New Global Justice World of UBUNTUDUNIA, not by opportunistically riding upon the topdown ramshackle bandwagons of Neocolonialism like the so-called African Union (AU) of misleaders, but rather by the independently organised grassroots-embedded Worldwide Black Power of our Afrikan People in our own Afrikan Communities of Resistance!
Forward Ever Onward!
There is Victory for Us!
Amanda Ngawethu!
Elsewhere, Kofi says this:
Thanks, Sister Esther, Yes, our Stretch of the Maangamizi Counteraction Intergenerational Long March of our ancestral Freedomfighting Afrikan Sheroes and Heroes has now come to one of its major decisive Reparatory Justice Turning Points towards our long desired total Pan-Afrikan Liberatory Rendezvous of Planet Repairing Global Justice Victory! Now is Our Time to Seize WISER than ever before to ensure our Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice Making of, and Black People’s Power contributions to, the Global Justice Writing of true World Ourstory/History is accelerated to its definitive, irreversible and completely victorious destination! Our MawuLisaga, the almighty God of Afrika and the entire World of, and beyond, Miano Nana Asase Yaa Mother Earth be thanked, with all the gratitude due also to our revered Ancestors, for the day we met to begin battling together for the more systematic movement building harmonization of the collective and individual efforts of our Afrikan people glocally towards the better intellectually organic and organisationally disciplined achievement of this sacred purpose! Akpe: Thank you very much!
The rest of us also agree with Kofi who has rightly stated elsewhere:
The biggest gratitude goes to the God of Afrika and the Pluriverse, to our revered Ancestors and also to all of us who have kept faith with them for a true Reparatory Justice that can only be holistic Planet Repairs in its Global Justice for all meaningfulness! Lots more work to do!
Until next time!
‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign International Steering Committee Spearhead Team (ISC-SMWeCGEC)
We Have A Global Plan!
Further Coverage – 2019 Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March
BBC- Victoria Derbyshire Show
CLIVE SMITH – AS IT IS TV
NATION OF ISLAM – London Study Group
CAPTAIN SCARLETT
News Reports
Bristol Live – Bristol group marches on Number 10 demanding reparations for the slave trade
Medium – As Quiet as It’s Kept, the U.K. Also Has a Reparations Problem
2019 Hand-In of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition
London UK 1st August 2019 (L to R) Cleo Alberta Lake, Lazarus Tamana , Hon. Kweme Abubaka and Dr Barryl Biekman present the ‘Stop The Maangamizi!’ Petition calling for the establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice for the Afrikan Hellacaust at 10 Downing Street as part of the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March on Emancipation Day, . Emancipation Day marks the anniversary of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act.
The above image is the © copyright of photojournalist Thabo Jaiyesimi and must be accredited as such.
Please note, only copies of the additional 2,828 signatures collected between last year (14,590) and this year (17,418) were handed in with a copy of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition. Every year we tend to copy the same petitions and re-submit them with additional signatures collected. For environmental reasons, it was determined that we would only hand in the additional signatures collected this year until we reach 100,000 signatures that will be handed in all together when that figure is reached. Or in the alternative that the lobbying efforts of MPs and other elected officials via the ‘Stop The Maangamizi!’ Postcard yield the desired results. However, the SMWeCGEC is not relying on securing 100,000 to secure the campaign objectives, as ultimately reparatory justice will be effected, secured and taken by our own People’s Power, supported by other People’s of Conscience as well as our non-Afrikan Allies as part of PRIM-building.
In total 17,418 people have now signed the petition, this includes those who sign the online petition and the paper version.
Although 6 Petitioners were present as identified in the covering letter to the UK pRIME Minister which accompanied the petition, only 4 of the 6-member delegation were able to hand in the petition this year due to 2 members of the delegation unfortunately forgetting their ID.
This is a link to info about the petition hand-ins in the three preceding years:
This is a copy of the letter that accompanied the 2015 petition hand-in:
STOP THE MAANGAMIZI LETTER TO DAVID CAMERON 2015
FCO Response to the 2018 ‘Stop The Maangamizi!’ Petition
Greetings Signatories of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition and other Supporters of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC)
After sending two letters to the UK Prime Minister Theresa May, requesting a response to the 2018 ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition and its accompanying letter (which was handed in to the Office of the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street on 1st August 2018), the letter below is a scanned copy of the response that we received.
The letter from Stephen Townsend in the Multilateral Policy Directorate of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, dated 19th January 2019, was received by post today. You can find a scanned copy below.
Clearly, more needs to be done on our part, as community members, campaign supporters and advocates as well as other interested parties to ‘up the ante’, so that we do not keep getting such unsatisfactory cut and paste responses. We are reminded by the late Frederick Douglass that: “the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Your constructive suggestions as to what can be done are welcome. Please contact us by emailing stopthemaangamizi@gmail.com or call/message us on 07956431498.
Until next time!
‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign International Steering Committee Spearhead Team (ISC-SMWeCGEC)
Please note, Esther Stanford-Xosei’s address has been redacted
This is the second page of the letter
STILL NO TO AN EMANCIPATION EDUCATIONAL TRUST!!!
Selected images from the 2018 Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March
We see that our Afrikan Reparatory Justice efforts in general, and the work of the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) in particular, is now beginning to impact on British establishment political thinking; in terms of how to respond to our own community self-repair endeavours and the demands we are making, out of such endeavours, upon others. This is evidenced in the recently published Huffington Post article: ‘In the Wake of Windrush, Marking Emancipation Day is More Important Than Ever‘ by Dawn Butler MP, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities and Labour MP for Brent Central.
It is encouraging to note that our criticism of the repugnant name of a Slavery Educational Trust which was made in AEDRMC promotional videos here and here has resulted in an attempt to rename such a proposed body to become the Emancipation Educational Trust. This still misses the whole point. Our preference for a name like the Afrikan Anti-Slavery Resistance Educational Trust (AASRET) still holds. It is mind-boggling that even some leading British Labour Party members, including MPs from our own Afrikan heritage communities, are still so engulfed by Afriphobia that they run away from including and explicitly identifying with anything Afrikan in the name of initiatives that are supposed to be about the Afrikan experience. This is even more shocking given that we are in the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent which has the theme ‘People of African Descent: Recognition, Justice and Development.’ Indeed, there is nothing more unique to the global experience of Afrikan people other than the Maangamizi, (Afrikan Hellacaust) in relation to which this educational trust is being proposed.
So pervasive is this Afriphobia, and so strongly does the British State hold unto it, that it is inherent in the processes of white supremacy racist brainwashing through which all those selected, even from our Afrikan heritage communities, to serve in various positions of the establishment are infected with it. Hence its prevalence amongst virtually all members of the British State legislature, executive, civil and public services, judiciary, armed forces, police, intelligence and other security agencies. It appears that not only submission to but an overt display of Afriphobia is a requirement for service in the institutions and agencies of the British State. No wonder it is those selected from our Afrikan heritage communities to serve in these institutions and agencies who appear to exhibit the worst traits of Afriphobic epistemic and structural violence upon Afrikan Heritage Community people. That is why the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC) regards all these institutions and agencies of the British State as ‘Maangamizi crime scenes’.
The proposed Emancipation Educational Trust will be nothing but another Maangamizi crime scene if it is established with the same intention of avoiding explicit Afrikan identification, whilst seeking to make it simply distortedly flirt with a commoditised form of Afrikan history and experiences. So, we urge Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the Labour Party and the Party itself to study carefully, the themes and messages, which were promoted on the 1st August Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March: ‘Nothing About Us Without Us!: Actualizing the Reparatory Justice Change We Envisage’. It is about time the Labour Party stopped this nonsensical beating about the bush, openly confronts its deeply ingrained Afriphobic racism and seeks to honestly counteract it. This includes taking clear steps to initiate open dialogue with the legitimate grassroots representatives of our Afrikan heritage communities of reparations interest in the UK. Such representatives are clearly known through their visible work in organising endeavours such as the annual Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March and its related ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ campaign activities.
The continuing attempts to evade substantive representation of our Afrikan heritage communities; by bringing members of the Labour Party far removed from such activities and also afflicted with white supremacy racist indoctrination to simply express, their ‘masters’ voices and prejudices in toying with vital matters concerning the survival of Afrikan people in the world today, such as reparatory justice, must be understood as no longer acceptable to us at all. We expect Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, to embrace this firm, non-negotiable standpoint of ours, against all Afriphobic expressions of the Maangamizi as part of the ‘new politics’ he promised Britain, the Commonwealth and the World.
We know Jeremy Corbyn can do better because in his laudable solidarity work for the Anti-Apartheid Movement he displayed some of his best efforts to date of internationalist solidarity with our Afrikan Liberation Struggle. We therefore hope that he will go back to such track-records of his own best practice and do the correct thing once again. The correct thing begins with him taking steps to initiate the dialogue we have been calling for by meeting, to start with, representatives from the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC), the organisers of the annual 1st August Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March and their partners in the SMWeCGEC.
In Service
Esther Stanford-Xosei
Coordinator-General ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign
2018 HAND-IN OF STOP THE MAANGAMIZI PETITION
All images are the © copyright of Thabo Jaiyesimi and must be accredited as such
14,590 Signatures of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Petition handed-in
The 6-member delegation for the 2018 hand-in of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition were:
From Right to Left
1. Hon. Prophet Kweme Abubaka (Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee, Ethiopia African Black International Congress)
2. Dr Barryl Biekman, (Europe-wide NGO Consultative Council for Afrikan Reparations, Netherlands)
3. Mama Lindiwe Tsele (Pan-African Congress of Azania)
4. Ms Kambanda Veii (Ovaherero Genocide Foundation, Namibia)
5. Cllr Joshua Brown-Smith, age 12 (Office of the Young Mayor, London Borough of Lewisham)
6. Professor Gus John (Gus John Associates, Member of the African Union Technical Union Technical Committee of Experts on the 6th Region).
The delegation which handed-in the 2018 ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide!’ Petition represents a selection of the diversity within our Afrikan Heritage Community. The Young, The Elders, Born on the Continent, Born in the Diaspora, Male and Female, and as in previous members some members flew in from Afrika and Europe!
#ReparationsMarch2018
#Parliament is a Crime Scene!
#StopTheMaangamizi!
See the following letter which accompanied the hand-in of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition
Please note, the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition has been handed-in since 2015, in 2016 no signatures were handed in just the petition and a cover letter. In 2016, 5811 signatures were handed in, in 2017, 9636 signatures were handed in.
It is important to note that the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition is not the only tactic we are adopting, the petition signatures accompany a Maangamizi Crime Scene sticker operation and lobbying of MPs strategy via the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Postcard involving support for developing Afrikan Heritage Community advocacy on the points contained in the petition.
It is also important to note that we in the International Steering Committee Spearhead Team of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Campaign (ISC-SMWeCGEC) know that reparations will not be achieved simply by submitting this petition, if one reads the petition it is clear that this is not our thinking. In numerous articles and documents we talk about the March and the petition being part of revolutionary strategy and tactics that we are engaged in, which also involve all forms and levels of liberation struggle waged by various contingents of the International Social Movement for Afrikans (ISMAR).
The Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March and the annual hand-in of the petition is about building a broad public support base for consolidating the ISMAR in order to strengthen the harnessing and building of Afrikan people’s power to advance reparations to definitive victory; whiincluding the establishment of MAATUBUNTUMAN Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities.
See the following links for further info about the strategy and tactics of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Campaign in association with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee:
As we approach the 3rd year of marching, what has been achieved? (2016)
https://stopthemaangamizi.com/2016/07/13/approaching-3rd-year-of-marching-what-has-been-achieved/
After 4 years of marching, what has been achieved? (2017)
https://stopthemaangamizi.com/2017/08/07/after-4-years-of-marching-what-has-been-achieved/
Rationale for Afrikan Reparations March (2018)
This video is of a workshop which took place on Friday 27th July, 2018 and provides some elaboration on the revolutionary thinking and work into for the long-term results that the March is meant to produce and to which it is already contributing.
This is a link to the initial response that was received from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) in response to the 2017 ‘Stop of the Maangamizi!’ Petition and its covering letter, and also the further response from FCO Minister Lord Ahmad.
REPAIRING THE COLONIALITY OF OUR MINDSET ON REPARATIONS
“Pan-Afrika, and not Eurafrica, should be our watchword, and the guide to our policies.”
– OSAGYEFO KWAME NKRUMAH, ‘Africa Must Unite’, 1963.
“It will be gross self-delusive wishful thinking to believe that those wielding the reins of White racist supremacy are going to pay any serious heed to the Afrikan demand for Reparations, unless their hold on the machinery of global power is effectively challenged by the well-organised, upsurgent and self-empowering masses of Afrikan people, and their allied progressive forces throughout the World.”
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, 1993.
“At this juncture in our history, there is no way forward in addressing the problems that Afrikans and people of Afrikan descent and all other Black peoples face without seriously grasping the truth of the necessity for holistic reparatory justice. This includes restoring self-determination and sovereignty, implementing measures of cessation of contemporary violations, restitution.”
Esther Stanford-Xosei, 2016
This workshop will explore the meaning of the theme for the 5th annual Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March on 1st August 2018: ‘Nothing About Us Without Us: Actualizing the Reparatory Justice Change We Envisage.’ The main question we will discuss is: What kinds of tackling of problems and injustices that Afrikan people encounter can be deemed as the everyday repairs starting point of reparatory justice work? In this regard, we will highlight the outreach and other mobilizational work of the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC), in association with the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC) with a view to making people see themselves as the actual ‘makers’ and ‘drivers’ of reparatory justice rather than being passive recipients of the benevolence of government and other state actors. This kind of thinking in views expressed by the likes of CARICOM Reparations Commission, Chairperson, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles when he reportedly stated in a recent interview published in the Barbados Advocate (12/07/18):“…reparations is ultimately a government to government conversation. It is about how governments talk to each other. How governments sit down and work out strategies to resolve issues of this nature.”.
In this connection, this workshop will also further explain the revolutionary substance of the rationale for the Reparations March given in the following video.
The difficulty of grasping reparations differently from what the white supremacist racist establishment defines it to be for us as Afrikan people, is largely as a result of miseducation and the coloniality of our mindsets in even how we are made to think about the cause, nature, consequences and solutions to the problems and injustices that we are encountering as a result of the Maangamizi (Afrikan Hellacaust). It is still largely the case that many who claim to be pro-reparations are inadvertently merely ‘supporters’ or reparations; waiting for the day when someone is going to say “here is your reparations,” or when they and/or Afrikan and Caribbean nation states receive some award of compensation from the British and other European Governments. The whole notion of exercising agency in conceptualising, effecting, securing and taking reparatory justice is completely absent for most of our people, across the world, who are sympathisers or adherents of the cause of reparatory justice.
Taking into account the criticism some establishment scholars make of Black reparations activism, in terms of not seeing its revolutionary tendencies, this workshop will therefore highlight those constituencies of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR), like PARCOE and the Global Afrikan People’s Parliament (GAPP) that advance radical change-making perspectives. Examples of such perspectives are: the concept and methodology of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice which embraces the world revolutionary transformational strategy of ‘Maatubuntusa’ (the art of Pan-Afrikan revolutionary freedom- fighting) for achieving MAATUBUNTUMAN. MAATUBUNTUMAN is the name being popularised for the envisaged future Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities, championed by PARCOE and GAPP and the Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council (GAFRIC) in 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 promotes 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 Universe.
PRESENTERS
Esther Stanford-Xosei is a jurisconsult, community advocate specialising in the critical legal praxis of ‘law as resistance’ and internationally acclaimed Reparationist. She is the official spokesperson for the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) which organises the annual 1st August Reparations March in London. In addition, Esther is the co-initiator of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Petition and its wider campaign (SMWeCGEC). Esther also serves as the Co-Vice Chair of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE), co-founder of the Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament (GAPP), the Afrikan Reparations Transnational Community of Practice (ARTCoP) and the Europe-Wide NGO Consultative Council on Afrikan Reparations (ENGOCCAR). On behalf of PARCOE, Esther and other PARCOE members are involved as an activist partner in the building process of the International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR).
Oleye Gege is an emerging grassroots community scholar-activist, community radio broadcaster who promotes participatory approaches to effecting community self-repairs and addressing the intergenerational impacts of the psycho-social manifestations of the Maangamizi. He serves as the head of security and outreach facilitator on the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee and advocate of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC). He is also a member of Afrikan Reparations Transnational Community of Practice (ARTCoP) and the International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR).
Kofi Mawuli Klu is Chief Executive Commissioner of PANAFRIINDABA, a grassroots Pan-Afrikan Community Advocacy, Research and Think Tank based in London, UK and Accra, Ghana. He is also co-Vice Chair, Pan-Afrikan Reparation Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) in London and Joint Co-ordinator of the Global Justice Forum based in London and a founding member of the Global Afrikan People’s Parliament. Bro Kofi runs his own Law-Related Educational Services Agency, UEQUIPOISE. His scholarly activism has and continue to make a significant contribution within institutions of education in and outside of the UK [various courses, seminars, workshops, conferences and Groundings on Afrika and Pan-Afrikanism] and serves Afrikan students/communities as a conscientising tool for grassroots resistance and social change.
For further info about the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March & the SMWeCGEC visit:
https://www.change.org/p/stop- the-maangamizi-we-charge- genocide-ecocide
Date: Friday 27th July 2018
Time: Prompt Start @ 7.00pm [Doors Open 6.30PM]
Venue: 336 Brixton Road, London SW9 7DA (over from Max Roach Park) DISABLED ACCESS
Donations Welcome
Please Spread The Word, Attend And Bring A Friend!
We look forward to welcoming you.
Bless,
Sis Maureen
On Behalf of PASCF (Pan Afrikan Society Community Forum
IN GHANA ON 1ST AUGUST? YOU ARE INVITED TO THE SANKOFAAPAE PAN-AFRIKAN REPARATORY JUSTICE LIBATION CEREMONY
“The great tide of history flows and as it flows it carries to the shores of reality the stubborn facts of life and [hu]man’s relations one with another. One cardinal fact of our time is the momentous impact of Afrika’s awakening upon the modern world. The flowing tide of Afrikan nationalism sweeps everything before it and constitutes a challenge to the colonial powers to make a just Restitution for the years of injustice and crimes committed against our continent.“
Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, from his Friday 23rd September 1960 address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, USA.
We in the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC), in association with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) are working in partnership with VAZOBA Afrika & Friends Networking Open Forum who organise the annual SANKOFAAPAE Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice International Libation Ceremony (SANKOFAAPAE-PARJILC), every year in solidarity with the annual Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March which takes place on the 1st August.
VAZOBA are calling Afrikans throughout the Continent and Diaspora of Afrika, and good Friends of Afrika from all over the world to join them on Wednesday, 1st August 2018. The 3rd SANKOFAAPAE-PARJILC will take place in Accra, Ghana as part of the International Reparations for Emancipation Season in glocal link with the Reparations March in London, UK.
Venue: Osekan Rock Oceanic Retreat, Accra, Ghana
Time: 11am
Contact Details: +233 (0) 574619258 or +233 (0) 203790105
Email: sankofaapae.ghana@gmail.com or mawuse.yao@gmail.com.
“We must have every inch of our lands, every one of our mines and industries…”
Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah
The SANKOFAAPAE-PARJILC is a strictly non-party political activity of various grassroots progressive forces of Pan-Afrikan civil society which are independently mobilizing for the ground-up popular education, reparatory justice civic conscientization and its relevant human, peoples’ and Mother Earth rights awareness raising among ordinary masses of peoples throughout the World to achieve our interconnected vision of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice.
We in the SMWeCGEC and the AEDRMC highly appreciate what is being done in Ghana and encourage all those interested in the Reparations March living in Ghana or West Afrika to help build and strengthen this satellite process in Ghana and extend it into the countries in which you live, even if you are not resident in Ghana. We recognise the SANKOFAAPAE as a unity promotional endeavour, of global dimensions, for connecting into the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR). In addition to the efforts being made by various indigenous Afrikan communities in Afrika to assert their rights to self-determination and reconstruction of nationhood including overcoming the divisions imposed by the artificially created European borders and other manifestations of the Maangamizi which continue into the present to the detriment of their Afrikan personality, humanity and sovereignty.
Examples of such national self-determinist endeavours with reparatory justice bearings which seek to overcome the divisive colonial 1884-1885 boundaries of the Congress of Berlin and counter the ensuing Euro-centric economic and geopolitical interests which have been inimical to the aspirations of Afrikans include, but are not restricted to:
• Ablodeduko Movement for Gbetowo Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice Self
• Determination, Unification and Sovereignty
• Edo People’s Movement for the Restoration of Benin
• Igbo National Self-Determination Movement
• Movement For the Survival of the Ogoni People
• Niger Delta Sovereignty Movement
• O’odua Liberation Movement/Yoruba Self-Determination Movement
• Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom Movement
• Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council
• Sahrawi National Liberation Movement
• Kgeikani Kweni Movement (First People of the Kalahari)
• Nubian Katala Movement
• OvaHerero & Nama Genocide Redress Movement
• Marikana Massacre Redress Movement
• Nyasaland Massacre Redress Movement
• Ethiopian Genocide Redress Movement
• Bamileke Genocide Redress Movement
• Oromo Liberation Movement
• Tigrayan Liberation Movement
• Muhimu Kenya, Land & Freedom Army Movement
• Maasai Autonomy Movement
• Landless Peoples Movement of Azania/Namibia
• Abahlali base Mjondolo Shackdwellers Movement
• Affirmative Repositioning Movement
• Naija Resitance Movement
• People’s Union of Cameroon
• Economic Freedom Fighters of Azania
• Peoples Land Organisation
• Pan-Afrikan Congress of Azania
• Togo Resistance Movement
The SANKOFAAPAE is also relevant to providing global visibility for such self-determination battles and the communities waging them in order to facilitate Pan-Afrikan internationalist solidarity. In addition to reinvigorating our Pan-Afrikan Liberation Struggle for the Reparatory Justice regeneration of our Communities of Resistance to the MAANGAMIZI everywhere; in order not only to stop its devastating crimes of Genocide/Ecocide but also to speed up our walking the talk of principled unity in rebuilding our interconnecting Afrikan Communities of Reparations Interest at home and abroad as the cornerstones of our future MAATUBUNTUMAN Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities. MAATUBUNTUMAN is an organic integration of our autonomous Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination (AHC-NSDs) in the Diaspora into the Sankofahomes Liberated and Contested Zones on our Mothercontinent of Afrika! All this being done in accordance with the ‘Right to Afrika’ being championed by ENGOCCAR as the most vital aspect of the UN ‘International Decade for People of African Descent’.
See this link for videos of activities which took place in Namibia and Ghana last year in solidarity with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March.
*The Indigenous concept of Rematriation refers to restoring a living material culture to its rightful place on Mother Earth; restoring a people to a spiritual way of life, in sacred relationship with their ancestral lands; and reclaiming ancestral remains, spirituality, culture, knowledge and resources.
“Convinced that the pursuit of reparations by the Afrikan peoples in the continent and in the Diaspora will itself be a learning experience in self-discovery and in uniting experience politically and psychologically.”
A Declaration of the first Abuja Pan-Afrikan Conference on Reparations for Afrikan Enslavement, Colonisation and Neo-Colonisation, sponsored by the Organisation of African Unity and its Reparations Commission April 27-29, 1993, Abuja, Nigeria
“Afrika is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Afrikans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Afrika’s impoverishment.”
Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, ‘Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism’ (1965).
You Can Still Participate If You are in Another Country Outside of the UK
We invite you to also organise a solidarity march or event in your locality or country on the 1st August 2018.
If you are not able to organise a march, we encourage you to organise some other type of solidarity reparations action, activity or event such as: a libation ceremony (as occurs annually in Accra, (Ghana), rally, reparations radiothon e.g. #Conversation Reparations (as occurs in the USA) or reparatory justice ‘occupations’ of specific places with connections to the Maangamizi, in the past or the present. For example, companies, university campuses or historic building sites.
Even if your community were not enslaved or colonised by the British Empire, you can still connect with what we are doing in the UK by highlighting and educating people about the British Establishment’s complicity in the Maangamizi as it affects and impacts on your personhood, family and/or community.
Examples of such impacts may include, land grabs, extractive industries, environmental degradation, GMOs, tax-dodging and other forms of corporate looting, debt-bondage, various forms of externally reinforced reactionary violence such as USA-AFRICOM presence and proxy wars in addition to fratricidal inter and intra-community violence in self-destructive subservience to the global system of white supremacist racism, including its gendered forms.
At a minimum, please consider sending a solidarity statement to pr@reparationsmarch.org. or stopthemaangamizi@gmail.com.
stopthemaangamizi.com 