“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.
London Assembly members Jennette Arnold OBE AM & 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.
Cllr Caroline Russell & Cllr Sian Berry
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:
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.
The video clips below, and other relevant information links, point to what is happening in one of the best known countries of West Afrika, in connection with the fraudulent 7th December 2020 General Elections to the Presidency and Parliament of the Republic of Ghana.
We highlight not only the fact that the current pretender to the still hotly disputed position of President-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo, has been caught on camera by an investigative journalist, showing he is a corrupt, deceitful and hypocritical taker of bribes, an organiser of violent political gangsterism, but also someone with question marks about complicity in numerous unresolved murders. This concerns mostly gruesome killings that have occurred and still are happening in Ghana over a considerable period of time, particularly as from 2016, within the duration of his first term in the questionably won position of the President of Ghana.
Moreover, contrary to his initial pronouncements against the illegal mining activities popularly known as ‘Galamsey’, Akuffo-Addo has become one of most notorious profiteering facilitators of the mostly foreign extractivist plunder of Ghana’s resources, and the heinous destruction of her environment, including the desecration of sacred bush groves, forest reserves, mountains, water bodies, indigenous community settlements, endangered unique flora and fauna, and other devastating cases of Genocide and Ecocide known to Afrikan Heritage Communities as the Maangamizi.
That is why it is of the greatest importance for Internationalist Solidarity to be urgently mobilised now, from all over the World, to assist the people of Ghana to create an enabling atmosphere for genuine Participatory Democracy to develop, in the wake of properly establishing the Truth around the hotly disputed 7th December 2020 General Elections. Such Truthquest must ascertain, without any obfuscation and obstruction whatsoever, those who actually won and lost both the presidential and parliamentary ballots, and ensure the true victors are allowed to freely occupy their respective positions of government and other state responsibilities they have been popularly mandated, by the expressed sovereign will of the people, to ascend, in due service, as Ghanaians say it, to their Odomankoma MawuLisa Nyungmo God of Creation, to their revered Ancestors and to their own Ghanamanfo citizenry of Afrika and Miano Asase Yaa, their beloved Mother Earth!
With regard to the above noteworthy points, we of the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/ Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC), propose the following to those Peoples’ of Conscience Representatives in the United Kingdom Houses of Parliament interested in our Operation 2020 Ghana Elections Truthquest (O2020GET):-
(1) Ask the UK Government what it knows, from its own gathered intelligence, and is therefore doing, about the incumbent Government-perpetrated Electoral Violence, which discredits the official Electoral Commission (EC) declared results of, and reports on, the 7th December 2020 General Elections in Ghana.
(2) Call for the setting up of an All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights Monitoring Caucus on Anti-People Violence in Ghana today.
(3) Invite all members of both Houses of the British Parliament to participate in an International Community Right To Truth Assembly (ICORTTA), by way of a Zoom meeting, to be facilitated by the Peoples’ Reparations Internationalist Solidarity Committee for Cognitive Justice in Afrika (PRISCCOJA); that will be addressed by a duly mandated representative each, of the two main contending political parties in Ghana today, that are still heatedly disputing the results of the 7th December 2020 General Elections; that is, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), led by John Dramani Mahama (aka JDM); and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), led by Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo (aka NADAA).
Image credit BestNewsGH.Com
(4) Sponsor, actively support and send a Friends of Ghana International Investigative Team (FOGIIT) to enquire into the various shootings, maiming and claiming human lives, including those of elected Members of Parliament, journalists and ordinary people, young and old, by police and army personnel, as well as other armed state and non-state actors, that have ocurred and still are happening in Ghana today before, during and in the aftermath of the 7th December 2020 General Elections.
(5) Support the Afrikan Heritage Communities-led initiative to hold an inaugural convention to launch their Internationalist Solidarity Forum of People’s Power Accountability on Afrika (ISFOPPAA) in London, United Kingdom, as part of the annual Afrikan Liberation Awareness Month (ALAM) activities in May 2021.
GHANA: STEALING 2020 ELECTIONS WITH MURDEROUS VIOLENCE! Akuffo-Addo and his NPP unleashing lethal terroristic state violence upon peaceful gatherings protesting against stealing the December 2020 electoral Victory away from the winners, John Dramani Mahama and Madam Naana Opoku Agyeman!
GHANA: STATE TERRORISTIC VIOLENCE IN DECEMBER 2020 ELECTIONS! Akuffo-Addo and his NPP order shooting of peaceful assembly of citizens protesting against the stealing of their votes!
GHANA-O2020GET: ANTI-EWE STATE TERRORISTIC REACTIONARY VIOLENCE FOR ELECTIONS THIEVERY CRIMINALITY! How the grounds were prepared, with the Afriphobic Bigotry of Ethnocentric Genocide, misusing the Police and Armed Forces and other state and non-state terroristic gangsters, by the stinkingly corrupt Akuffo-Addo Fascist Gestapo of the NPP, to steal the December 2020 Elections Victory away from JDM and Afrikan People in Ghana, to the predatory extractivist benefit of Global Apartheid Racism and its Ecocide agenda of Eco-Fascism in the Global South!
GHANA-O2020GET: ANTI-EWE STATE TERRORISTIC REACTIONARY VIOLENCE IN THE PREMEDITATED AFRIPHOBIC ATTACKS OF MAANGAMIZI GENOCIDE TOWARDS ELECTIONS THIEVERY IN DECEMBER 2020! Another attack of the Ethnocentric Bigotry of Afriphobia, in the series of pre- election intimidation, harassment and brutalization of citizens of Ghana in Ewe Communities, carried out by Akuffo-Addo and his Fascist Gestapo Wing of the NPP, misusing the Police, Armed Forces and other state and non-state terroristic gangsters, in voters suppression preparation for stealing the 7th December 2020 General Elections in Ghana!
GHANA-O2020GET: AFRIKAN WOMEN CONFRONTING THE STATE TERRORISTC REACTIONARY VIOLENCE OF ELECTIONS THIEVERY CRIMINALITY! Unarmed Afrikan Warrior-Queens of the NDC Women’s Wing bravely confronting trigger-crazy Police and Armed Forces in the streets of Accra, Ghana, in protest nearby the bogus Electoral Commission (EC) office, challenging the fraudulent declaration of falsified results meant to legitimise the Akuffo-Addo stealing of the December 2020 Elections Victory away from JDM, his NDC and Afrikan people!
Ashaiman is burning 🔥 Let my vote count. Justice is what we want!!!!
GHANA-O2020GET: MASS PROTESTS AGAINST DECEMBER 2020 ELECTIONS THIEVERY BY AKUFFO-ADDO! Not far from personal residence of Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo in Nima, Accra.
GHANA-O2020GET: MASS RESISTANCE SIMMERING INTO PROSPECTS OF ESCALATING PEOPLE’S POWER REBELLION AGAINST THE STATE TERRORISTIC REACTIONARY VIOLENCE OF ELECTIONS THIEVERY CRIMINALITY! One of the pockets of sporadically emerging ‘Posuban Freedomfighting Barricades’ Gatherings of Popular Resistance, with growing prospects of escalating into massive Rebellion Uprisings in the cities, towns and villages, against the corrupt Akuffo-Addo misuse of the Police and Armed Forces and other state and non-state terroristic gangs, to steal the December 2020 Elections Victory away from the winners, JDM, his NDC and Afrikan People!
GHANA-O2020GET: AN EWE COMMUNITY OF RESISTANCE PROTEST DEMANDING RECOGNITION OF JDM VICTORY AGAINST THE USE OF STATE TERRORISTIC REACTIONARY VIOLENCE FOR ELECTIONS THIEVERY CRIMINALITY! People of an Ewe Community of Resistance defiantly celebrating the 7th December 2020 Elections Victory of the NDC, and demanding recognition of their President-elect John Dramani Mahama (JDM), in protest against the bogus Electoral Commission (EC) complicity in the misuse of the Police and Armed Forces, and other state and non-state terroristic gangsters, for the fraudulent stealing of Victory away from JDM and Afrikan People in Ghana.
GHANA-O2020GET: NDC ACTIVISTS TRYING TO HOLD AN ELECTORAL OFFICER TO ACCOUNT! Upholding Electoral Law to challenge an Elections Returning Officer in verification of the December 2020 General Elections results in the locality of Tachiman in Ghana.
GHANA-O2020GET: ‘VIM LADY’ JOURNALIST SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER! “Vim Lady”, a Broadcast Media Journalist, demonstrating the fierce commitment of some female journalists in Ghana to Freedom of Expression, in a pre-election forewarning to the NPP Government about its losses, that happened in the 7th December 2020 General Elections, as she had predicted; and which the bogus Electoral Commission (EC) Chair, Ms Jean Mensah of the NPP, has been trying to falsify in order to help her NPP to steal, with resort to Reactionary Violence by Akuffo-Addo, misusing the Police and Armed Forces and other state and non-state terroristic gangsters, for stealing Victory away from the winner John Dramani Mahama (JDM), his NDC and Afrikan People in and beyond Ghana!
GHANA-O2020GET: A PARTICIPANT’S CHALLENGING VOICE OF TRUTH! An official Observer of the December 2020 General Elections Ballots Results Collation Process in the office of the bogus Electoral Commission (EC) in Accra, Ghana, speaks about his own shocking experience in observing the Big Fraud!
GHANA-O2020GET: PEOPLE SHOWING TRUE RESULTS OF DECEMBER 2020 GENERAL ELECTIONS! People in one of the local constituencies, spearheaded by NDC Activists, showing the appropriately verified and all-party duly signed true results of the 7th December 2020 General Elections in their own constituency; thereby exposing, with the appropriately legal documentary evidence, the falsified results declared rather fraudulently by the bogus Electoral Commission (EC) and its Chairperson, Ms. Jean Mensah of the NPP, in complicity with the fraudulent attempt by the stinkingly corrupt Akuffo-Addo, also of the NDC, to steal Victory away from the winner, John Dramani Mahama (JDM), his NDC, and Afrikan People in and outside Ghana!
GHANA-O2020GET: PREMEDITATED MAANGAMIZI GENOCIDE OF ELECTORAL VIOLENCE IN GHANA! Who says the premeditated Electoral Violence of the Maangamizi Genocide of Neocolonialism, was not calculated intentionally by the Akuffo-Addo Fascist Gestapo Wing of the NPP, to manifest itself in the December 2020 General Elections in Ghana, from the meticulous preparatory groundwork of violent intimidatory brutalization of people done for it, under Western intelligence, corporate and state cover-up by governmental and non-governmental organisations of the Global North, that are complicit in extractivist plunder crimes of Ecocide in Afrika, to set the scene for the attempted fraudulent stealing of Victory away from the winners, John Dramani Mahama, his NDC and Afrikan People and all our allied progressive forces of the World in Reparatory Justice Rebellion for Planet Repairs?
DO NOT TRUST THE EC, SEEK JUSTICE – With All Due Respect By Kevin Taylor
AKUFFO ADDO WINS 2020 ELECTIONS
Accra Newtown 13 Dec 2020
GHANA-O2020GET: AFRIKAN MARTYRS OF PEOPLE’S BALLOT POWER WE MUST GLOBALLY HONOUR! When greedy, corrupt and unwisely old ‘Politrickcians’ of Evil, intoxicated with foreign-backed Coloniality of Power, and feeling untouchable because of White Supremacy racist Afriphobic protection from Global Apartheid, stretch their criminality of Electoral Violence to wantonly take innocent lives with impunity, including the Black lives of even teenage Youth simply desiring Good Governance in Afrika, then now is the Time to glocally seize by any means necessary for a victorious People’s Power Uprising for Global Justice. No ifs and buts: we must Stop the Maangamizi Reactionary Violence of Neocolonialism with our Reparatory Justice Rebellion for Planet Repairs now! Indeed we can and must do so now!
Azzees Minott, chair of the Greens of Colour and a significant contributor to getting the motion adopted, stated, ‘I am thrilled that Greens have been able to lead a historic movement in Britain by passing this motion. So many people see the Greens as a single-issue party, but achieving true social and racial justice is also at the core of what members care about because it’s all connected.’
Tyrone Scott from the Young Greens added: ‘As a young person of African descent, it has always been a source of shame to me that the UK was so complicit in enslavement. Our school curriculum only offers the most basic teachings of our colonial past, which generally only celebrates the power of the British Empire without detailing how this created deep racial inequalities in this country and across the world, which continue to exist to this day. The Young Greens were proud to work on this groundbreaking motion which sets a precedent to all other UK political parties.’
The campaign aims to urge the UK Government to commit to a holistic process of atonement and reparations in accordance with the United Nations Framework on a Right to a Remedy and Reparation. A key part of the process includes recognizing and addressing the longstanding legacies of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, such as the racial discrimination of majority world peoples, socio-economic inequality and environmental injustice.
Cleo Lake said, ‘Getting this motion to conference has been a great example of collaborative working with key reparations campaigners.
‘It represents a significant milestone towards acknowledgement, justice and reconciliation over a painful shared history, the legacy of which still plays out today through rife global inequality, racism, Afriphobia, and a ravaged planet that continues to be pillaged and disrespected.’
The vote at national level follows on from the work of Lambeth Council, led by Green Party Councillor, Scott Ainslie. Earlier this year, Lambeth, which is home to the largest African-Caribbean population in the UK, became the first local authority to pass a successful motion calling for an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice to address the impact of slavery on current racial inequalities in the UK.
Ainslie, who co-signed the motion to Conference, said: ‘This motion is a step towards “Global Britain” finally facing up to the impact it has on countries throughout the world.
‘If Britain can properly address the legacies of its colonial past and present, then it can truly deal with the root causes of our country’s socio-economic inequality and systemic racism.
‘By engaging in a genuine process of reparative and transitional justice, we can begin to heal holistically and re-balance these injustices inflicted by the few which cause endless suffering to the many.’
Since 2001, PARCOE has been leading different reparative initiatives, including the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and its petition, which has gained over 20,000 paper and online signatures. PARCOE have long been working to put the voices of grassroots and Afrikan Heritage Communities at the centre of the struggle for reparations.
Klu described the motion as a ‘giant leap’ for Afrikan Heritage Communities of reparations interest as they march towards ‘self-determination to achieve reparations that will meaningfully impact on Planet Repairs.’
He paid tribute to others in the ISMAR and the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM), noting that ‘with this enlarging grassroots force of peoples becoming the change, we can now convincingly express confidence in our ability to win the case for the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice and make reparations doable as a unifying force of all who desire Planet Repairs.’
He noted that it has taken ‘almost three decades of painstaking campaigning endeavours to raise consciousness enough for such results to be the works of not just a few, but the many, including now the Greens of Colour and Young Greens.’
Esther Stanford-Xosei, Coordinator-General of the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign, said, ‘The passing of this motion by the Green Party is vindication of our efforts. We have believed all along that our community organising efforts will eventually have the ground-up impact of winning more allies who grasp the necessity for an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice and understand it as a repairing process.’
‘This repair is important, not only for the restoration of the agency of our Afrikan Heritage Communities and stopping the despoliation of the Earth as our human habitat, but also for the rebalancing of society. Afrikan Reparations is a cause that will redress the globalised historical and contemporary injustices of what we call the Maangamizi (Afrikan Holocaust of chattel, colonial and neo-colonial enslavement).’
Emphasising the unifying narrative of reparations and its integral links to environmentalism, she stated that ‘no home in the world has been untouched by such manifestations of the Maangamizi as the climate and ecological crises.
‘That is why the Afrikan reparations we are seeking must have the Planet Repairs impact of restoring the familyhood of humanity which began from our Afrikan peopling of the entire world.’
Passing the motion at national level is, however, only the first step. The next step is to build on existing work that is underway between communities and councillors at local levels.
As Lake states, ‘The aim is that as many local authorities as possible also pass motions calling for the All-Party Commission, as well as other overarching and region specific resolutions.’
Cities with direct links to the transoceanic trafficking in enslaved Afrikans and areas with strong Green support will be selected as priorities.
To improve understanding about reparations as a holistic process and its links to Planet Repairs, Greens of Colour will be working with the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and the INOSAAR to produce motion templates and guidance, as well as dedicated workshops for councillors, regional parties, activists and citizens. In the meantime, further information and FAQs can be found on the Green Party Living Room.
Esther Stanford-Xosei and Kofi Mawuli Klu participated in a Green Party conference fringe session with Cllrs Scott Ainslie and Cleo Lake organised by Greens of Colour to sensitise Green Party members to the contents of the motion on 3rd October 2020. The recording of the session can be found here.
This is the livestream video of the International Network of Scholars & Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) Roundtable Discussion facilitated by Professor Joyce Hope Scott, Clinical Professor of African American Studies at Boston University, Boston, USA which took place on 09/10/20.
In this third roundtable hosted by the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR), our panellists discuss the role and responsibility of universities in the struggle for reparative justice and in the context of recognizing the university sector’s historical links to slavery and colonialism.
Reparations and acts of reparative and transitional justice will be interpreted broadly. For example, we could read the history of the Black colleges and universities in the USA as reparative, alongside the proliferation of centres and programmes dedicated to Black, Africana, African and African American Studies, which have sought to counteract the negative stereotypes of African peoples institutionalized by establishment academia.
In 2003, Brown University in Rhode Island, USA, became the first higher education institution to openly acknowledge and apologize for its links to African enslavement. Its report, ‘Slavery and Justice’, acted as a catalyst for other institutions to establish how they profited from the enslavement of Afrikan peoples and functioned as primary sites in which racialized discourses were produced and validated.
In some cases, recognition has resulted in the adoption of what might be considered reparatory measures, including: raising funds for educational grants and scholarships; renaming buildings and removing insignia and statues linked to enslavement, colonialism and racism; erecting new statues, monuments and sculptures; and inaugurating dedicated research centres.
In 2014, an attempt to gather these efforts together and share practices across higher education institutions resulted the creation of an international consortium of ‘Universities Studying Slavery’, which now includes around seventy colleges and universities in the USA, the UK, Ireland and Canada.
More recently, in 2019, the University of Glasgow signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of the West Indies to work together on the foundation of the Glasgow Caribbean Centre for Development which was widely reported as being a reparative justice initiative.
It is against this backdrop of widening interest and increased lobbying for universities to recognize and redress their links to enslavement and colonialism that we are asking our panellists to consider the following questions:
• What are some of the ethical questions raised by conducting research into the links between universities and their histories of Afrikan enslavement and colonialism?
• Within universities, as sites of educational knowledge production, what are the different ways that reparation and reparative justice can be approached?
• What processes are already underway within universities that might be defined as reparative?
• What role should universities play, and what responsibilities do they have, in engaging with local, national and international communities (including communities of reparations interest) on matters of reparative and transitional justice, and what principles should guide that engagement?
• What consideration has been given to creating spaces within higher education institutions to enable difficult conversations to take place within and outside of the university community?
Our panellists include:
Dr Nicola Frith is a Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Edinburgh and co-founder of the INOSAAR, who focuses on the legacies and memories of enslavement and reparations.
Professor Gus John, Visiting Professor at Coventry University and Honorary Fellow and Associate Professor at UCL Institute of Education at the University of London, is a renowned activist and academic who has been working in education, youth work and social justice since the 1960s.
Dr Athol Williams is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where he focuses on ethical leadership, corporate responsibility and applied ethics.
Professor Kris Manjapra, Associate Professor of History at Tufts University, and Chair of the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora. Manjapra is also a steering committee member of the Tufts Action Group; a grassroots organization of faculty and staff working in alignment with the Movement for Black Lives. Manjapra works on histories of colonialism, decolonization, plantation economies, and reparations movements. His most recent book is Colonialism in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Professor Jemadari Kamara, PhD, is Founding Director of the Center for African, Caribbean and Community Development (CACCD) and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is former Senior Fulbright Professor at the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal; international coordinator for the Youth Education and Sports (YES) with Africa Program (which has served nearly 3,000 African youth); Senior Advisor to the Boston Pan-African Forum; treasurer of the West African Research Association and Member of the board of directors of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century. Prof. Kamara has extensive expertise in Community Development and Public Policy; Black Social Movements; African-American Urban Politics and African-American Intellectual Thought. His numerous publications include State of the Race – Creating Our 21st Century.
Esther Stanford-Xosei is a Jurisconsult, Interdisciplinary (Law & History) Scholar-Activist, Co-Vice Chair of PARCOE and Coordinator-General of the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign.
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.
Full Council has passed the amended motion “Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans”. Click here for more information: https://t.co/BcATxea4NV#IslingtonFC
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.
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.
Hearing from #Cofi about how we need to lead humanity back to honouring Mother Earth. @uk_march “we are returning to the wisdom of our ancestors who warned of the dangers of exploiting the earth’s resources” pic.twitter.com/euaiBZ1baK
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 draftedmotionspearheaded 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:
Last night Islington Council passed our Green Party motions on reparations and glyphosates 💚
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 will not let the British state get away with historic and contemporary crimes against African people”
Reparationist Esther Stanford-Xosei, @Xosei, is organising today’s Afrikan Emancipation Day March fighting for justice for the descendants of slavery pic.twitter.com/7huy6rZnh2
