UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW RESPONSE TO SMWeCGEC OPEN LETTER

Posted on October 9, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

Greetings Supporter of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC)

This is the response from Dr David Duncan, Chief Operating Officer and University Secretary to the SMWeCGEC open letter sent to the University of Glasgow History of Slavery Steering Committee.

Until next time!

‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign International Steering Committee Spearhead Team (ISC-SMWeCGEC)

#StopTheMaangamizi!
#Educational Repairs!
#Institutional Repairs!
#Decolonise!

STILL NO TO AN EMANCIPATION EDUCATIONAL TRUST!!!

Posted on August 4, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

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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

Posted on August 3, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

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

Posted on July 23, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

“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:

www.reparationsmarch.org

www.stopthemaangamizi.com

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

‘STOP THE MAANGAMIZI!’ 2017-2018 CAMPAIGN MESSAGE

Posted on July 3, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

This is a video recording filmed by ‘joanjoan.london’ who attended the 2017 Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March on the 1st August. She recently released this edited version of the closing speech made at Parliament Square which is still relevant to the various aspects of the year-round mobilising and organising that the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC) engages in and advocates in association with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee.

REPARATIONS MARCH 2018 PROMOTIONAL INFO

Gallery | Posted on July 1, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

2018 PROMOTIONAL FLYER

2018 PROMOTIONAL VIDEOS

Call to action video:

Rationale for why we march video

Link to jingles for radio

IS LABOUR NOW LISTENING TO AFRIKAN VOICES?

Posted on April 13, 2018 by STOP THE MAANGAMIZI

Greetings Supporters of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign (SMWeCGEC)

Following the 13th April 2018 news report on the front page of the Times Newspaper: ‘PM should apologise to ex-colonies says Labour’, it would appear as if the Labour Party is now taking steps towards listening to Afrikan voices for reparatory justice. It is only now since the passing of the late Bernie Grant MP that Labour is thinking of hearing Afrikan voices like his on our intergenerational struggle for reparatory justice.

Within 24 hours of the 11 April 2018 letter from Esther Stanford-Xosei being sent to Heidi Alexander MP and also made available to the office of the Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn MP, leader of the Labour Party, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, advocates in the House Magazine that Prime Minister Theresa May should use the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to apologise for the UK’s historic wrongs. Emily Thornberry also states that, if Labour form the next government in Britain, they will ensure that promoting and engaging with the Commonwealth is one of their top foreign policy priorities. In Esther Stanford-Xosei’s letter to Heidi Alexander she states:

“The fact that BREXIT is making it necessary for the UK Government to seek to strengthen its Commonwealth links in the aftermath of the BREXIT vote raises questions pertinent to Afrikan Reparatory Justice. Among such questions, for example, is the one about what type of relationship is Britain seeking to strengthen with Afrikan and Caribbean countries of the Commonwealth when the existing relationship is not only a product of the crimes of the past, but also fortifies present wrongs of the Maangamizi? So much is this the reality, that in the opinion of the constituencies of the ISMAR to which I belong, this relationship can only be transformed to ensure justice for all, by measures of reparations that will enable Afrikans and people of Afrikan heritage to equitably participate in re-ordering the war-begotten, unequal and unfair system of international relations that continues to be imposed, with manly Euro-American imperial might, upon the globe today.”

It would appear that Emily Thornberry is in her article also providing an answer to the above question that has been posed, in various arenas, by SMWeCGEC and some other formations of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) when she states:

“…we see our Commonwealth cousins [not] just as potential trading partners, but [because] we see them as full and equal partners in all of the challenges faced by the world and by each of our nations, from climate change and terrorism to the fight for gender equality.”

We in the SMWeCGEC are of the view that the above comment on behalf of the Labour Party demonstrates that they can be influenced to advance steps towards better listening to the case being made for holistic reparations by authentic Afrikan Heritage Community voices in and beyond the UK who are involved in building the ISMAR. However, this realisation should, under no circumstances. make campaigners for Afrikan reparations lower our guard about critically engaging with the Labour Party and the wider Labour Movement on what repairs ought to mean, so as to enable us make gains of true reparatory justice.

That is why we should be mindful and seek to ensure that the Labour Party is not made, by ‘BAME’ gate-keeping apparatchiks and other sections still clinging to its old ways of misusing the bureaucratic party machinery, to distort the legitimate measures of redress that oppressed communities influence it to address by revising them, sometimes even to the point of outright deformation; so that at the stages of policy-formulation and implementation, they become mere white-washing tokenistic gimmicks which tinker Afriphobically with vital concerns of particularly Afrikan Heritage Communities; thereby robbing us of the agency that is vitally necessary for us to do for ourselves the true reparatory justice we are seeking.

So let us keep knocking at the door of publicly elected officials as those seeking such offices will come knocking on our doors in the coming weeks soliciting our votes. We must ensure that we use our votes wisely to make candidates we may be inclined to vote for support our Afrikan Heritage Communities strategic interests and concerns; top-most on the agenda should be their support for Afrikan Reparatory Justice and their concrete action on the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Postcard demands.

In Service

‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign International Steering Committee Spearhead Team (ISC-SMWeCGEC)

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