Tag Archives: Stop the Maangamizi
SMWeCGEC & AEDRMC Key Achievements in ISMAR & PRIM-building
Key Activities and Achievements of SMWeCGEC working in partnership with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) in building the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) & the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM)
“To those caught up in only slogan-mongering about the Afrikan Revolution who self-derisively dismiss mass campaigns such as this one of Reparations, refusing to unfold their own blinds to its crucial significance in our Liberation Struggle; we address our paraphrasing of the remark of Amilcar Cabral that, by taking to the revolutionary path of self-determined Struggle for Afrikan Liberation, the masses of our people are not fighting for ideas in anyone’s head; they are fighting for a true National and Social Emancipation that will guarantee them such concrete benefits as will ensure their material and spiritual prosperity! That is why the AASU-E [All-Afrikan Student’s Union in Europe] sees Reparations, from the perspective of Afrikan youth, as the actual conscientization of the objectives of our whole people’s Liberation Struggle under the banner of revolutionary Pan-Afrikanism. Therefore the Reparations we the youth of Afrika are demanding must restore to all people of Afrikan origin throughout the World full sovereignty, the absolute ownership of the whole of our Homeland, including all its resources, and the Renaissance of Maat and other value of our classical civilisation, in order to give us the concrete basis for independently achieving our own material and spiritual prosperity.“
Antonieta Carla Santana, ‘Our Struggle for Reparations in Afrikan Youth Perspective’: A Draft Paper for Presentation to the 11th December 1993 Birmingham Working Conference of the African Reparations Movement (ARM-UK)
“Too often our standards for evaluating social movements pivot around whether or not they ‘succeeded’ in realizing their visions rather than on the merits or power of the visions themselves. By such a measure, virtually every radical movement failed because the basic power relations it sought to change remain pretty much intact. And yet it is precisely those alternative visions and dreams that inspire new generations to continue to struggle for change.”
— Robin D.G. Kelley —
The best way to keep abreast of the activities and achievements of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) is to be part of it!
We will not get a sense of the totality of the work just by turning up for one day and then lamenting the lack of numbers or vibes on the day. The UK has always had a Pan-Afrikan approach to this grassroots movement to effect and secure holistic reparations; which means fighting for our power base in Afrika and her Diaspora wherever we are. We cannot be concerned just with our people in the UK, a mere 3% of the UK population. Neither can we NOT connect our quest for reparatory, environmental and cognitive justice (referred to collectively as Planet Repairs) to our homeland and power base Afrika from which much or the resources that prop up the greedy inhumane global North, come from. So, it is necessary to have a glocal (local and global) approach which the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide! Campaign (SMWeCGEC) and her affiliated structures has been operating with.
Securing Planet Repairs requires us to use all methods at our disposal including, social, legal, extra-legal, political, economic, parliamentary, and revolutionary means. It has meant taking our fight into hostile institutional spaces often led by people racialised as ‘White’, educational institutions, community spaces, social media spaces and taking up space on the streets. It has meant numerous instances of advocacy, public speaking and media appearances, attending conferences and public meetings, lobbying elected officials and making representations, providing reparations education and training to NGO’s, creating and disseminating our own messages and challenging power structures on their own turf.
You will not see all this work that goes on just by turning up on 1st Mosiah and cannot be achieved just by People of Afrikan Heritage talking amongst ourselves! There is a need to hold perpetrators to account (the external dimension of reparations) and challenge ourselves to be the reparatory justice change-makers we are seeking (the internal dimension often referred to as community self-repairs).
Since the first Reparations March in 2014 the SMWeCGEC, in partnership with the AEDRMC and other supporting organisations has:
• Stewarded the organising processes for the annual Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March with the formalisation of the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC), consisting of a diverse array of Afrikan heritage groups, organisations, movements and individuals. Most of the committee members, both individual and organisational, have been involved with the March from its inception in 2014.
• Advanced reparations social movement-building of various constituencies within and outside our Afrikan Heritage Communities locally, nationally and internationally. The reparations movement led by Afrikan Heritage Communities is known as the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) and the ISMAR is part of a wider internationalist movement of other peoples who have reparations struggles known as the PRIM (Peoples Reparations Internationalist Movement). In this regard, priority is given to mobilising our own individual and people’s collective ‘power to’ effect and secure reparatory justice through community organising, reparations social movement-building and institution-building. Social movement-building is the long-term, coordinated effort of individuals and organised groups of people to intentionally spark and sustain a (reparations) social movement. It entails: “the creation of movement infrastructures required for sustained organising and mobilisation, including social relationships, organisational networks and capacity, affective solidarity, as well as movement-related identities, frames, strategies, skills, and leadership.”
• Partnered with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) to develop aims and objectives for the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March on the 1st of Mosiah (August) which took place between 2015-2019. These aims (below) became necessary so that as co-organisers of the 1st Mosiah activities that we could provide a clear rationale for why we were marching.
• Strengthened the programme for the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March itself by introducing to the programme of the day the People’s Open Parliamentary Session on Afrikan Reparations (POPSAR) which occurred in between 2016 and 2019. The POPSAR at Parliament Square was a mass consciousness-raising forum for public debate and discourse on manifestations of the Maangamizi necessitating Afrikan Reparations. It was a public forum where Afrikan people rehearsed our arguments in pursuit of the ‘Battle of Ideas’ on obstacles to the realisation of holistic reparatory justice. The purpose of the POPSAR was to engage audiences in action-learning on participatory democratic parliamentary debate and the ‘Battle of Ideas’ on critical issues such as how to stop various manifestations of the Maangamizi as part of the process of effecting and securing Afrikan Reparatory Justice.
• Helped to consolidate the emergence of an independent ground-up Pan-Afrikan inspired, and initiated, transnational process of facilitating grassroots leadership as well as mobilising and organising Afrikan people to advocate for reparations on their own terms, which goes beyond the statist CARICOM Reparatory Justice Programme and their Ten-Point Plan. Despite the fact that reparatory justice organising in the UK goes back centuries, there has been little recognition of this by Afrikan heritage social, political and economic elites within and beyond Britain who, for many decades, have chosen, (contrary to our indigenous Afrikan traditions of exercising people’s power), not to identify with the ground-up initiated and led ISMAR.
• Collected over 25,000 signatures for the Stop the Maangamizi petition which calls for the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice into the LEGACIES of Afrikan enslavement, colonisation and neocolonialism. Have you read and signed it? Click here to read and sign it.
• Established the Maangamizi Educational Trust (M.E.T) in 2018 as the educational, training and other activities conducive to fundraising arm of the SMWeCGEC.
• Through PARCOE, established an Afrikan Reparations research partnership working between grassroots scholar-activists and establishment scholars at the University of Boston and the University of Edinburgh – who came together to form the International Network of Scholars and Activists for Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) and its youth wing INOSAAR Rep-Afrika. We recommend you also download and read the INOSAAR Principles of Participation as a good model of how reparations activists should engage in co-production with power institutions.
• Co-initiated the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings with the AEDRMC in 2020. The main purpose of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Rebellion Groundings is to showcase our Afrikan Heritage Communities self-repairs initiatives locally, nationally and internationally.
• Worked with Green Party members to co-produce the ‘Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Trafficking of Enslaved Africans’ motions now passed by Lambeth, Islington in 2020 and Bristol City Council in 2021 and continues to work with Green Party members through the Green Action for Afrikan Reparations Dialogue (GAARD). Through collaboration with members of the Green Party of England and Wales and INOSAAR, SMWeCGEC contributed to the impetus for the party to be the first and only major UK party to commit to seeking reparatory justice for the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Afrikans (TTEA) in 2020. Green Party Members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the E3 motion ‘Atonement and Reparative Justice For African Enslavement‘ on the final day of their Autumn Conference on the 11th October 2020. Proposed by Green Councillors Cleo Lake (Bristol) and Scott Ainslie (Lambeth), and supported by the Greens of Colour and the Young Greens, the motion calls on Parliament to establish an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth and Reparatory Justice.
• Through the M.E.T, worked with Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP to establish the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations (APPGAR) as promoted in the SMWeCGEC postcard campaign. Since the establishment of the APPGAR, the M.E.T has shared the running of the secretariat with the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD) and the Glocal Afrika Reparations Forum of London (GARFOL). The APPGAR gained new members in 2023.
• In order to develop autonomous Afrikan Heritage Community participation in the work of the APPGAR, the SMWeCGEC, co-founded together with GARFOL, the APPGAR community link known as the APPGARL action-learning circles where Afrikan Heritage Communities learn to critically engage with state bodies and the UK Parliament as communities of resistance, e.g., the Education and Reparations Circle and the Mbuya Nehanda Afrikan Women & Reparations Circle.
• Raised awareness, popularised and increased public recognition of key concepts and knowledge produced by the ISMAR including: the Maangamizi, Maatubuntujamaas, Sankofahomes and Maatubuntudunia in Ubuntudunia.
• Been instrumental in the development of Maatubuntumitawo – Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council (Maatubuntumitawo – GAFRIC) by promoting glocal relation-building in association with Vazoba Afrika & Friends Networking Open Forum and Maatubuntumitawo – GAFRIC with indigenous Afrikan communities of resistance on the continent of Afrika. In this way, contributing to the concretisation of Maatubuntujamaas in the UK and internationally in link with emerging Sankofahomes in West Afrika with a view to the eventual building of Maatubuntudunia in Ubuntudunia.
• Co-initiated the Glocal Afrikan Reparations Forum of London (GARFOL) to glocally promote Afrikan Heritage Community engagement with the British public and local and central government structures in London from the standpoint of enhancing efforts towards building Maatubuntujamaas in link with Sankofahomes as part of the building process of Maatubuntuman in Ubuntudunia.
• Contributed to establishing the Afrikan Reparations Transnational Community of Practice for Action-Learning about Reparations (ARTCoP).
• Developed the ISMAR Advocates Training Course and other reparations action-learning, education, learning & teaching initiatives and co-facilitated with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC), several reparations awareness and orientation workshops across the UK.
• Developed a version of the petition for lodging at the European Parliament and had it translated into Dutch, French and German through working as part of the Europe NGO Consultative Council for Afrikan Reparations (ENGOCCAR).
• Developed a critical analysis of the CARICOM Reparations Initiative, through the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition of Europe (PARCOE)
• Contributed to developing a position on the CARICOM Reparations Initiative alternative approach to reparations in association with PARCOE and the Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament.
• Co-convened, in association with Esther Stanford-Xosei, a meeting with UK based reparations activists of International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) to interface with the CARICOM Reparations initiatives of the Jamaican National Council on Reparations regarding how best to jointly work together recognising differences in our respective reparations strategies and tactics.
• Supported the candidature of SMWeCGEC Co-Vice Chair, Kofi Mawuli Klu who championed programmatic aspects of the SMWeCGEC in his campaign as independent candidate in the 2019 European Parliamentary elections as part of the ‘CEE the Truth’ Campaign, (#CEEtheTruth). One of the 3 aims of #CEEtheTruth was to “develop National Citizens Assemblies on Climate & Ecological Justice to oversee policy making, including those of Planet Repairs embracing Reparations, and have a leading role in shaping a zero carbon Europe”.
• Established organisational links with the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation (Namibia), N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (USA) and the UBAD Educational Foundation (Belize) through PARCOE. The SMWeCGEC Coordinator-General, Esther Stanford-Xosei was selected to become a board member of N’COBRA when she was appointed Co-Chair of the N’COBRA International Affairs Commission in 2022.
• Contributed to the establishment of the University of Repair co-initiated by Decolonising the Archive in partnership with Esther Stanford-Xosei (SMWeCGEC), Professor Gus John (Gus John Associates) and Professor Patricia Rodney (Walter Rodney Foundation).
• Supported the formation of the Global Majority Vs Campaign and leant to their legal case knowledge and expertise in advocacy and critical legal praxis, particularly in developing the extra-legal dimension of the case from a law as resistance perspective.
• Co-initiated, the Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN) and the Extinction Rebellion Being the Change Affinity Network (XR-BACN) as an organised way to work with non-Afrikan allies in championing Planet Repairs and PRIM-building. In addition, the XR-Ubuntunovisi (bridge network of Afrikan Heritage Community activists developing critical resistance engagement with Extinction Rebellion).
• Has been instrumental in co-founding and developing the Majority World Internationalist Solidarity Coordinating Council of Communities Of Resistance (MWISCCCOR) which currently embraces Afrikan and Abya Yalan Heritage (so-called Americas) community activist circles working within and around XR-Ubuntunovisi and XR-Aylhcan (Abya Yalan & Latinx Heritage Communities Affinity Network).
Pempamsiempango – Glocal Reparations Action Plan For Planet Repairs Alternative Progression
Pempamsie is the Adinkra symbol for sewing together in readiness -preparatory actions for reparatory justice. building our future out of our principled operational unity despite our diversity. Indeed, part of the repair process is about Afrikan heritage communities developing our own community capacity and power-base as well as our own Afrikan Heritage Community Self-Repairs Plans. Mpango is the Kiswahili word for plan.
Maatubuntuman is the name of a self-repaired Afrika and means a global Afrikan polity which consists of a Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities. Coined from the conjunction of ‘Maat’ (the holistic justice concept from Kemet, Ancient Egypt, with ‘Ubuntu’ (the Bantu concept of the communion of humanity from Southern Afrika) and ‘Oman’ (the Akan concept of egalitarian polity from West Afrika). Upon the initiative of the Pan-Afrikan Forum of Ghana (PAFOG) in conjunction with the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE) and adopted by the Global Afrikan People’s Parliament (GAPP) and the Maatubuntumitawo-Global Afrikan Family Reunion International Council, it has been adopted as one of the key rallying objectives of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice.
The process of Pempamsiempango (reparations planning) should occur within the context of a glocal framework which is establishing repaired Afrikan Heritage Communities which are referred to as Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination (AHCs-NSDs)/ Maatubuntujamaas in the UK and other parts of the Diaspora which organically builds links with such Communities of Resistance and Communities of Reparatory Justice Interest on the Continent of Afrika which are known as Sankofahomes.
Maatubuntujamaas are Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination that are regenerating themselves to become autonomous polities of national self-determination in the Afrikan Diaspora integrated into Sankofahomes. Sankofahomes (literally meaning a return to one’s Motherland) are indigenous communities in Afrika that are regenerating themselves purposefully to facilitate the integration of Maatubuntujamaas in the Diaspora. These Maatubuntujamaas are a form of non-territorial autonomy whereby we as a people build autonomous institutions of self-governance focusing on areas of Afrikan Heritage Community Self-Repairs such as education, healthcare, and community cooperative enterprise, for example.
Establishing Maatubuntujamaas is a Afrikan Heritage Community self-repairs effectuating work-in-progress for the holistic regeneration of Afrikan communities; mindful of the fact that such Afrikan communities at present exist in the UK as a multiplicity of different and sometimes even conflicting nation-state, ethnic, racial, class, gender, age and other socio-cultural configurations brought from all over the World; therefore, this Maatubuntujamaa regeneration of Afrikan communities is being done in such a radical changemaking way and manner of Intersectionality so as to enable the Pan-Afrikan Reparatory Justice development, out of their multifariousness, of a one distinct new type of Afrikan communion of people to serve as a living prototype of the component bodies of the future Maatubuntuman Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities throughout the continent and Diaspora of Afrika.
Not yet Uhuru in Barbados, is the transition to a republic more symbolic rather than substantive?
By Esther Stanford-Xosei*
A version of this article was published on Self-Help News on the 30th November 2021. Uhuru means freedom in Kiswahili.
On 30th November 2021, Barbados transitioned from a parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the hereditary monarch of Barbados (formerly Queen Elizabeth II) to a parliamentary republic with a ceremonial non-executive President as Head of State elected by members of parliament and not the people. The Prime Minister, Mia Mottley EGH, OR, QC, MP remains Head of Government.
However, the question that I and many other citizens of Barbados have been discussing is whether this transition to a republic is more symbolic rather than substantive. Whilst much of the corporate whitestream media is hailing this move as some huge achievement, questions remain about whether selecting the existing Governor-General, Dame Sandra Mason GCMG, DA, QC, who had been Queen Elizabeth’s II’s representative in Barbados since 2018, to serve as Barbados’s first President and Head of State is really the kind of substantive change one would expect when a country transitions to a republic. Queen Elizabeth II bestowed on Mason the Dame Grand Cross in the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George when Mason was appointed Governor-General.
Lest we not forget, the hitherto Governor-Generals of Barbados are appointed by Queen Elizabeth II supposedly on the advice of the Prime Minister of Barbados. Nevertheless, the fact that two thirds of the Barbados Parliament selected the (former) Governor-General to become the first President of the Republic of Barbados could be seen as an attempt to hoodwink the people into believing that there has been a changing of the power structure, when that is clearly not the case. Indeed, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Any new president of a republic, should be directly elected by the people of Barbados.- a point that was made months ago by Dr Ronnie Yearwood, a law lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus who has cautioned against a: “president formed in the backrooms of the Parliament functioning as an electoral college for choosing a president, likely one of the same political class.”
Significantly, Following the end of the Dame Sandra Mason’s term as president, future presidents will be elected by either a joint nomination of the Prime Minister and leader of the opposition or if there is no joint nomination, a vote of both houses of the Parliament of Barbados where a two-thirds majority is required. The electorate will therefore have no meaningful say. As Opposition Senator, Caswell Franklyn has also argued, there are flaws in the republic process. To raise legitimate concerns about the manner in which Barbados is transitioning to a republic does not mean that one is against republicanism, this is indeed long overdue. Nevertheless, it is prudent to raise the fact that the process we are embarking on in Barbados appears to be more symbolic rather than substantive. It reminds me of when President Obama became President of the United States and people got caught up with him being reported to have been the so-called first Black President of America (which was not true), rather than looking at how his presidency impacted on people of Afrikan ancestry and heritage.
Many are also getting caught up with the symbol of a first President of Barbados who also is a woman rather than critically examining the substance of how meaningful these changes will be. Whenever it comes to women in power and the tendency to see women in positions of (neocolonial) state power as emancipatory, I always question to what degree such women are or act, in ways that is described by Dr June Terpstra, as Women of the Hegemon. To find out more about what this means see here and here. In a global system of imperialism and neocolonialism, the Hegemon is ever-present even when it may be difficult to see because of the tendency to use a single lens of analysis when assessing reality rather than embracing an analysis of power on intersectional grounds.
I like many other agree that we should have a new constitution fit for purpose of what it means to be a republic drafted with input from our people who have up until now not really been given a say about what type of republic they want Barbados to be. Only then could it be said that there is a fair and equitable process which reflects a real intention to break with the coloniality of power of ‘Global Britain‘. Instead, Barbados’ republic status is premised on retaining links with European coloniality by simply making amendments to a constitution that came out of the Barbados Independence Act of 1966 passed by the UK Parliament, which gave Barbados “fully responsible status” (independence) within the Commonwealth. This Act has not been repealed.
According to the UK House of Commons Library Section 5 of that Act allowed Queen Elizabeth II, by Order in Council to:
“…provide a constitution for Barbados. This took the form of the Barbados Independence Order 1966, which was laid before the Barbados Parliament on 22 November 1966 and came into force on 30 November. The Constitution of Barbados formed a schedule to that order. This was drafted by a Constitutional Conference comprising political parties in Barbados and the then UK Secretary of State for the Colonies.”
In a recent article Dr Yearood & Professor Cynthia Barrow-Giles opined:
“….Barbados will move inexorably to republican status but with the status quo remaining, and with the symbolic change associated with the national head of state both practically and theoretically representing the citizens and not theoretically a foreign head of state. The real issue is therefore not about whether Barbados becomes a republic, or whether the Constitution is patriated, but about the relationship between the people and the Government as articulated in the Constitution. Is Barbados going to change its Constitution or be content with tinkering around the edges, masquerading as change?“
It would be far more transformatory, if an entirely new constitution was drafted instead of trying to seemingly ‘repair’ this colonial Westminster instrument. There is a long-standing need for constitutional review and reform which enables the electorate to have a greater degree of participation in accountable governance of the country. In order to become a republic, the Barbados Parliament had to revoke the Barbados Independence Order 1966 as an Order in Queen Elizabeth II’s Council via the Constitution (Amendment Bill) 2021, while keeping intact the existing Barbados Constitution. The amendment transfers the functions and powers of the Barbados Governor-General (Queen Elizabeth II’s representative) to the new President of the republic, amending the official oaths of Barbados to remove references to the Queen Elizabath II, as well as ensures continuity in all of the other aspects of the functioning of the state of Barbados.
The UK Parliament will have to pass consequential legislation “to avoid any confusion in its domestic law” as has been the case on previous occasions when Commonwealth Realms have become republics. The last time ithe UK Parliament passed a similar bill was the Mauritius Republic Act 1992. It is this aspect of the process thus far to republicanism that is most indicative that for now, Barbados will become a republic in name only. When a nation is seeking to establish true independence on the road to sovereignty, it cannot do so by maintaining relics of the colonial power that has ruled and influenced its institutions of governance for centuries. No wonder Prince Charles was invited as a guest of honour to make an address at the ceremony marking Barbados’ transition to a republic.
The cockily confident, Prince Charles felt it necessary in his public messaging on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II to emphasize those things “which will not change” such as the: “close and trusted partnership between Barbados and the United Kingdom”, the “common determination to defend the values we both cherish and to pursue the goals we share; and the myriad connections between the people of our countries.” He was even awarded the Order of Freedom of Barbados, which is now the country’s highest distinction. Quite rightly, the contradictions inherent in this decision has been condemned. In a recent facebook post Dr Tyehimba Salandy, a sociologist and scholar-activist based in Trinidad & Tobago says: “There is something very problematic about proclaiming Republic status and at the same time instead of pressing home the case for reparations awarding the creators of some of the worst crimes ever in human history with the Order of Freedom.”
Not surprisingly, Prince Charles’ visit has generated condemnation from across civil society, campaigners from the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration and the 13th June 1980 Movement had planned to stage a protest in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados yesterday. However, the government refused to grant permission for the protest. Clearly, such campaigners in Barbados, need support in amplifying their voices especially in the UK to present a counter narrative to this celebratory tone which is smothering those voices who are challenging the dominant state approaches to republicanism which are obfuscating the most fundamental issues of Global Europe and the continuance of Afrikan powerlessness in the Caribbean and elsewhere around the world. That is why the UK contingent of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations campaign, driven by the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign, to establish a UK All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice which prompted the establishment of the UK All-Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations (APPGAR), will become of increasing importance in this regard.
The Secretary General of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, David Denny is right to say that Prince Charles’ visit is an insult! According to a recent report in the Daily Mirror: David Denny who felt the opportunity should be used to call for an apology and reparations, said:
“Barbados should not honour a family who murdered and tortured our people during slavery. The profits created the financial conditions for the Royal Family to increase their power.”
Kevin Cahill provides good justification of this last point when he uncovers in his 2007 book: ‘Who Owns the World’, the world’s primary feudal landowner remains Queen Elizabeth II. She is monarch of 15 countries in addition to the United Kingdom, head of a Commonwealth of 54 countries in which a quarter of the world’s population lives and holds legalised title to about 6.6 billion acres of land, one-sixth of the earth’s land surface.
Wherever one stands on this issue, deeper questions remain; like how will the centuries old accumulated benefits acquired by the British Monarchy be dismantled in Barbados? What will the rulership do to free the country of imperial influences, the Maangamizi of neocolonialism and its attendant neoliberal economic reforms?, which are not only raising the cost of living for ordinary people and exacerbating income inequality; but also furthering the dominant model of maldevelopment worldwide which has implications for effectively tackling the genocidal and ecocidal glocal impacts of the worldwide Climate and Ecological Crises and the necessity for charting alternative paths of progression in Barbados premised on transformtaive adapatation as an aspect of Planet Repairs. Will there be widespread land, wealth and resource redistribution?, especially since (prior to becoming a republic) the British Monarch owned all state lands and state-owned companies etc. I really doubt it!
Despite becoming a Republic, Barbados remains one of the most important offshore financial centres in the Caribbean and one of the world’s top 15 according to Oxfam. Accordingly, there is a link between financialisation and the growth of top incomes. In an article written whilst he was a PhD researcher at the London School of Economics, Scholar Dr Collin Constantine argues that: “Barbados’ status as an offshore financial centre also contributes to rising inequality in Western Europe and the USA by allowing wealthy foreigners to shift income and wealth into a low-tax jurisdiction. Yet while OECD countries are attempting to reclaim their “hidden wealth”, Bajans face growing inequality alongside austerity measures and weak tourism.” Constantine provides an important perspective on how the ‘idea’ of Barbados as a beacon of democracy in the Caribbean persists. He argues that this is in part the same issue studied in other contexts by Thomas Piketty: “When you have large wealth, you cannot just consume like other people. You start to consume influence, consume politicians, consume academics, you consume power; this is what high wealth is here for.”
Constantine goes on to state: The enormous concentration of income in Barbados historically meant that the most powerful and prestigious positions were reserved for colonial elites. In present-day Barbados, economic elites use grants, media ownership, campaign contributions, and so on to influence public policy, public opinion, and key actors to forge societal buy-in on policies that protect and reinforce elites’ economic interests. Even more than in OECD countries, part of the problem is a lack of transparency about top incomes in Barbados, with a severe lack of studies on wealth and income distribution. But this is compounded by deliberate attempts to shift the blame onto the most visible participants in the local economy, namely migrants.
The above arguments put forward by various commentators demonstrate that there is still a long way to go before we can say that we have overcome the tyranny of gradualism and effected as well as secured Uhuru in Barbados and across the Caribbean region. The struggle to transform our material, spiritual and cultural realities naturally leads to the path less travelled; i.e. that of continuing to build and strengthen movement-building for Pan-Afrikan Liberation at home in our Motherland Afrika, as well as across the Diaspora. This is concretised by the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign’s advocacy of the necessity to prefigure decolonial post-Afrikan Reparations futures epitomised by the establishment of Maatubuntuman in Ubuntudunia built from the emerging Community Resistance Zones such as Maatubuntujamaas (Afrikan Heritage Communities for National Self-Determination) in the Diaspora, organically and indivisibly linked to Sankofahomes premised on our indigenous Afrikan Communities of Resistance throughout the Continent of Afrika.
As Pan-Afrikan Reparationist Kofi Mawuli Klu, my fellow co-vice chair in the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe asserted in 1993:
“Unless our struggle for Reparations leads to the Pan-Afrikanist revolutionary consientization, organization and mobilization of the broad masses of Afrikan People throughout the Continent and the Diaspora to achieve first and foremost, their definitive emancipation from the impeding vestiges of colonialism and the still enslaving bonds of present-day Neocolonialism, to smash the yoke of white racist supremacy and utterly destroy the mental and physical stranglehold of Eurocentrism upon Afrikans at home and abroad, delinking Afrika completely from imperialism of any sort whatsoever, we shall have no POWER to back our claim for restitution and to give us the necessary force of coercion to make the perpetrators of the heinous crimes against us to honour the obligations of even the best fashioned letter and spirit of International Law.”
*Esther Stanford-Xosei is a Motherist and Pan-Afrikanist Jurisconsult, Community Advocate and Reparationist. As a ‘new abolitionist’ emphasizing the need to ‘stop the harm’ and effect Planet Repairs, Esther serves as the Coordinator-General of the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign, among other responsibilities.
Ourstory continues to be made: APPG on African Reparations (APPGAR) established today
Please note where you see different spellings of Afrikan this is because we in the SMWeCGEC use the spelling of Afrikan with a K but have preserved the spelling of African with a C when that is used by others.
Today we in the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign and our educational arm the Maangamizi Educational Trust were participating stakeholders to the historic establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on African Reparations (APPGAR) which was launched in the British Houses of Parliament (via an online AGM) at 10.30am this morning, Wednesday 20th October 2021. The APPGAR is chaired by Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, the Vice Chairs are Marsha De Cordova MP and Caroline Lucus MP, the Assistant Secretary is Sir Peter Bottomley.
On behalf of the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign, the Maangamizi Educational Educational Trust will be sharing the running of the Secretariat for the APPGAR. Other organisations who will also be part of running the secretariat are the Glocal Afrikan Reparations Forum of London, (GARFOL) and The African Foundation for Development, (AFFORD).
The APPGAR will be officially launched on 27th October 2021.
Esther Stanford-Xosei, Chair of the Maangamizi Educational Trust and Coordinator General of the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign who was honoured to speak at the AGM made the following speech:
Good Morning
My name is Esther Stanford-Xosei and I speak as the Chair of the Maangamizi Educational Trust (MET) which is the educational arm of the Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC). Because of the historic importance of the AGM of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on African Reparations (APPGAR) today, the MET/SMWeCGEC has agreed a written speech from which I shall read.
First of all, we would like to acknowledge countless generations of Afrikans in the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) on whose shoulders, struggles and sacrifices we stand, whom since the mid-1700s in the UK specifically, have advocated for holistic reparations. In this regard, we particularly highlight the role of people like Ottobah Cugoano and other members of the Sons of Africa.
This idea for the APPGAR comes out of the campaigning efforts of the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign and our charitable educational arm, the Maangamizi Educational Trust. Maangamizi is the Kiswahili term for the continuum of chattel enslavement, colonialism and neocolonilaism.
We have been pleased to see this campaign develop with the solidarity of elected officials which has resulted in ‘Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans‘ motions in the London boroughs of Islington and Lambeth in July 2020 as well as Bristol City Council on March 2nd of this year.
We see the establishment of the APPGAR as a continuation of the work of the late Bernie Grant MP who was the first member of the British Houses of Parliament to take up the issue of Afrikan Reparations following on from the ‘First Pan-African Conference on Reparations for Chattel Enslavement, Colonisation & Neocolonisation’ which took place in Abuja, Nigeria in 1993 and resulted in the establishment of the organisation known as the African Reparations Movement UK as well as the Abuja Proclamation Early Day Motion 1987. It is in continuity of this work that we in the Maangamizi Educational Trust and the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign take our duties within the secretariat of the APPGAR very seriously. For this parliament has played a major role in legalizing, historical and contemporary injustices against Afrikan people worldwide including the passing of the Slave Compensation Act of 1837, which compensated our enslavers rather than Afrikan people. It has been very instrumental in legalizing our dehumanization, and continues with justifications being provided by this government for the discriminatory impacts of its extractivist policies in the Global South to supposedly avert the climate and ecological crises.
Our ‘overstanding’ of the term reparations is the conceptual framework offered by Professor Chinweizu in his Reparations and A New Global Order: A Comparative Overview paper presented at the 1993 Abuja Conference of systemic and ‘holistic repairs’ of every type, social, cultural, political, economic, environmental as well as the United Nations Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to A Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. The specific meaning given to Afrikan Reparations as advocated by Professor Maulana Karenga is that Reparations are a process of the repairing and remaking of a people who are in the process and practice of repairing, renewing and remaking the world.
In terms of our MET/SMWeCGEC vision of the APPGAR, we see its purpose as: “bringing together parliamentarians, campaigners, communities and other stakeholders to examine issues of African Reparations; explore policy proposals on reparations and make recommendations to Parliament on how to redress the legacies of African enslavement, colonialism and neocolonialism today“. In this regard, a key objective of the APPGAR being to facilitate, work towards establishing the UK All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ) which is a key demand contained in the Stop The Maangamizi Petition and forms one of the main purposes of the ‘Atonement and Reparations for the United Kingdom’s Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans’ motions being passed by local and city councils.
People of Afrikan Heritage have been denied their right to be heard on what we mean by reparations, and what solutions we are already working on as part of Community Self-Repairs so that is what we are calling for a mechanism which can facilitate the dialogue between Afrikan Heritage Communities and the British State and society; which for us is the APPCITARJ. We therefore see this APPGAR as an important step in the process towards establishing such a mechanism of such vitally necessary dialogue. For it is only then that we can truly make appropriate policy and other programmatic types of redress by way of remedies to repair ourselves here in the UK and extending into the Afrikan Heritage Communities globally; and in the process also catalyze the repair of the entire British society and of course, of all peoples and societies, within and beyond in the UK.
It is necessary for the APPGAR to invite people to honest dialogue on this issue of Afrikan Reparations, because this struggle to effect and secure holistic reparatory justice, like all our struggles, begins with the need for, as advocated by Professor Karenga, a clear conception of what we want, how we define the issue and explain it to the world and what is to be done to achieve it. However, on this we should be guided by Afrikan Heritage Communities and the movements they have created to effect and secure holistic reparatory justice which have been operational over centuries.
We in the MET/SMWeCGEC want to emphasize that the grassroots of our Afrikan Heritage Communities across the world should be driving this work. It is up to this APPGAR to demonstrate that there is a leadership that will be of service to our communities at this time when there are big questions about what kind of leadership we have and even some of the state and non-state actors active on issues of reparations, being heavily scrutinised in terms of their credibility and commitment to our people in what some see as a tendency to want to make elitist deals under the guise of reparations which do not benefit the masses of the people. We should all be clear that Afrikan Heritage Communities have a right to participate in reparations programme and policy development and must be in the driving seat of such processes best summed up in the mantra: Nothing About Us Without Us for Anything About Us Without Us is Against Us. Furthermore, participation rights are individual and collective human rights under customary international law. They are enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and further established in states’ legal obligations as spelled out in the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
That is why for us in the MET/SMWeCGEC, the emphasis should be on Afrikan Heritage Communities Self-Repairs as was recognised in the Bristol ‘Atonement and Reparations’ motion which states: reparative justice should be driven by Afrikan Heritage Communities experiences, voices and perspectives to ensure that advocacy messages not only reflect but also respond to the real needs of the community in order to recognise inequalities. Also, that Afrikan Heritage Communities in collaboration with wider stakeholders, should be supported to develop their own glocal ‘reparations plans‘ to tackle issues of community disrepair as a result of the Maangamizi, locally, nationally and internationally. These issues of disrepair rooted in conquest, dispossession, structural racism as well as intergenerational oppression and trauma include in the UK: gun and knife crime among young people, kidnapped and missing children, the discriminatory impacts of the criminal justice system, the education system and the issue of Afrikan heritage maternal death-rates and inequalities of primal health of people of Afrikan heritage and ancestry etc as a result of the continuing impacts of the Maangamizi.
Research of people like Professor Carlton Waterhouse shows that much of the reparations policy-making, scholarship and public discourse pays little attention to the quality of past reparations programmes implemented around the world and whilst the emphasis is placed on former and contemporary wrongdoers to make apology, recompense, or other types of restitution, very little attention is paid to results, the end result of any reparations process should be the restoration and recovery of those that have experienced enduring injustice and harm, as well as the critical role that communities and individuals suffering from past abuses should play in establishing those programmes in order to re-establish their personal well-being and societal standing. Similarly, a lot of attention gets placed on state initiated reparations programmes; but this is based on a false and outmoded notion of international law as just being about the law of nation-states or governments rather than peoples and/or affected communities.
As much as this APPGAR has been centuries in the making, we must also recognise the context within which this struggle to effect and secure holistic reparatory justice is unfolding as historian Professor John Henrik Clarke advocated, we must be conscious of what political and cultural time of day it is given our locations as Afrikan people on the map of human geography. At a time when the extent of the Maangamizi is now imperilling all life on Planet Earth and some of us are threatened with literal extinction; an approach to effecting and securing holistic reparatory justice is required which brings about Planet Repairs which means: when safeguarding the rights of past, present and future generations; the need to proceed from a standpoint of Pluriversality that highlights the nexus of reparatory, environmental and cognitive justice in articulating the impetus to repair holistically our relationship with, and inseparability from, the Earth, Environment and the Pluriverse. Such an approach recognises there is urgent need for us all to compel the stopping of the Maangamizi of Neocolonialism and its inbuilt manifestations of genocide and ecocide and for Afrikan Heritage Communities to engage in deep and transformative adaptation given the certainty of intensifying climate and ecological crisis which is already impacting all life support systems as we know it rapidly-changing Planet Earth; doing so in ways and means that repair and transform our existing failed institutions in all spheres of people activity, locally, nationally and internationally. Such repair and transformation being anchored in the ancient Afrikan ethical imperative of Serudj ta, i.e., healing, repairing and remaking the World, making it more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
For these reasons, an essential part of our communities self-defence is transformative adaptation which is also about us beginning to make Pempamsiempangos, an Adinkra symbol, which encapsulates the necessity to knit and sew together in readiness for our community self-repairs; these are Glocal Afrikan Reparations Plan for Planet Repairs Alternative Progression being drawn up locally, nationally, internationally as well as globally. Alternative Progression plans become necessary given the contested nature of currently dominant processes of globalized development as highligted in Pluriverse: A Post Development Dictionary, given its structural roots in the Maangamizi, modernity, capitalism, state domination, and exclusively masculinist values which have often ended up being instead maldevelopment.
Finally, it is important to note that we who have been struggling to effect community self-repairs over centuries have built up an extensive knowledge base about the kind of system-change reparatory justice policy and programmatic measures are required. It follows that reparations education and conscientisation is part of the preparation for effecting and securing reparatory justice and this requires the APPGAR to also facilitate intense study about this issue as well as recognising that there is such a thing as reparations ethics. In this regard to acknowledge the INOSAAR Principles of Participation which promote equity between the knowledges produced by Afrikan Heritage Communities on Reparations and all other stakeholders.
We in the MET and the SMWeCGEC commit to disciplined, proactive work in the APPGAR secretariat and in fulfilment of this vision and we are keen to work equitably with partners who recognise the principles of Afrikan agency in determining what is best for our people.
We thank Bell Ribeiro-Addy for taking up this challenge by taking this historic step in initiating this APPGAR and agreeing to chair it and of course also to all of you who have agree to be the other executive officers.
We look forward to supporting and working with you all in the APPGAR.
The orginal proposal for the APPGAR as proposed by the MET can be found here.
“Accepting our responsibility and obligation to our Ancestors for ensuring that the African identity is proclaimed, maintained and developed; and that Africa is restored to its rightful place at the centre of world politics; call upon all people of African origin in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, the Americas and elsewhere to support the movement for reparations and join forces with a view to forming a strong united front capable of exposing, confronting and overcoming the psychological, economic and cultural harm inflicted upon us by peoples of European origin.”
Birmingham Declaration, Africa Reparations Movement (UK), 01/01/94
“Reparations is a process of the repairing and remaking of a people who are in the process and practice of repairing, renewing and remaking the world”
Professor Maulana Karenga, Black Power Encyclopaedia: From “Black is Beautiful” to Urban Uprisings, 2018
GHANA Stopping the Harm of Electoral Theivery Violence with the Reparatory Justice Promotion of Planet Repairs!
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).
(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.
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!
Akuffo-Addo and his NPP order shooting of peaceful assembly of citizens protesting against the stealing of their votes!
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!
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!
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!
Not far from personal residence of Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo in Nima, Accra.
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!
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.
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.
“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!
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!
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!
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?
An Analysis of EC’s 2020 Results Declared on Dec 9 & 10, 2020
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!
These are some further links:
EC’s computational errors have tainted the credibility of 2020 polls – Research Group (ghanaweb.com)
Gunmen attack MP elect for Keta at his residence (ghananewspress.com)
Don’t trust the Electoral Commission – IMANI Africa tells Ghanaians (ghanaweb.com)
Tell your hoodlums to stop attacking our elected MPs, supporters – NDC to Akufo-Addo (ghanaweb.com)
Open Statement of Reflection on the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Rebellion Groundings 2020
The 1 August Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Rebellion Groundings were organised by the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign in partnership with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee. Both formations have, since 2015, been co-organising the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March on the 1st August. This year however, we decided to organise the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Rebellion Groundings as a form of peaceful non-violent direct action.
The reason being that we are not being heard in our demand contained in the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Petition that the UK Government establish an All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice and commit to holistic reparations according to the UN Framework on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. The theme for the Groundings was ‘Uniting to Stop the Maangamizi: For Our Very Survival – Planet Repairs Now’.
Although our plan could not be fully executed because of unfair UK Government and police impositions, our overall assessment is that of success in the fact that most of what we had planned was carried out.
- We did occupy Brixton Road intermittently.
- We did disrupt the normal ecocide business as usual that occurs in Brixton.
- We did contribute to less air pollution by traffic.
- We did challenge environmental racism and other manifestations of Maangamizi crimes of genocide and ecocide in Britain.
- We did facilitate the co-organisation of a powerfully unifying commemorative and inspiring protest event, in tribute to our illustrious Revered Ancestors on whose shoulders we stand resolute in our sacred quest to effect and secure holistic Planet Repairs, for all our generations who have resisted the Maangamizi, including guarantees of non-repetition for future generations of ‘Beautyful Ones Not Yet Born’.
- We did have a powerful array of Pan-Afrikanist and internationalist contributors to our event, who participated in the Movement of Movements Internationalist Solidarity Groundings with the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement, which took place at Max Roach Park, that reflected Pan-Afrikan dimensions of the struggle to effect and secure holistic Reparatory Justice.
- We did compel public attention to be paid to our cause of asserting our legitimate intergenerational demand that the UK Government commit to holistic reparations, with the first serious step being that of establishing the UK All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry For Truth & Reparatory Justice.
Support Received
We received extensive support from diverse sections of our Afrikan Heritage Communities, including many supporting and contributing community based organisations, who came out in their thousands, (not hundreds as many of the media reports are mis-reporting). We take pride in the fact that despite fearmongering and threats from the police and the entire British State machinery, our people still came out defiantly in support of our call to unity for Reparatory Justice action.
We acknowledge the fact that, because of the government and state anti-terrorism policing impositions imposed within less than 24 hours of our Reparations Rebellion Groundings, a few shortcomings made what we had planned as co-organisers not to be fully realised. Such short-comings, some of which were due to interferences and obstructions from central government were taken advantage of, by the British state machinery, to falsify and create situations of make-believe conflict that resulted in 3 arrests and threatened to provoke our Black communities in attendance, into what could have degenerated into rioting.
We have good cause to say so because on the morning of the 1st of August, a member of the public who was driving in his car in the vicinity of where the Reparations Rebellion Groundings were meant to be taking place, observed police officers piling bricks into a police van. The member of the public described the bricks as being “proper house bricks” so Leo Muhammad, a longstanding member of the Nation of Islam, but who was not working in an official capacity, but rather participated in the Reparations Rebellion Groundings as a longstanding member of the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee, reported this incident to Superintendent Ian Howell (Lambeth Borough), Police Liaison Officer Sergeant Simon Hearn and Community Liaison Officer, Lance Edmondson, based at Brixton Police Station. Leo Muhammad was accompanied by the eye-witness and a security officer supporting our security and stewarding operations for the Reparations Rebellion Groundings, who was wearing a body camera and therefore such reporting of this incident was recorded.
As co-organisers, we in the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee up till now have not received a satisfactory answer to the request to know why police officers were seen piling bricks into a police van. The explanation provided was that the local authorities, Lambeth Council had been doing some “cleaning up”. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, as co-organisers, we would like to express our appreciation to Extinction Rebellion Police Liaison, Paul Stephens who brilliantly helped us in working reasonably well with the police in general but also particularly with Police Liaison Officer Sergeant Simon Hearn and Community Liaison Officer, Lance Edmondson who genuinely tried to help and facilitate us to ensure that the Reparations Rebellion Groundings ran peacefully according to our purpose.
Through the increasing level of awareness and collective discipline that we are cultivating in our Afrikan Heritage Communities and in the building of cross-community alliances and ‘movement of movements’ cooperative relationships, such provocations, were pre-empted and resisted from our peaceful standpoint of non-violent direct action. We are grateful to our own Afrikan Heritage Communities and all who came in solidarity for enabling us to defeat the shenanigans and machinations of the British state machinery and other white supremacy racist agent provocateurs so that our activities on the day were held successfully in accordance with our ancestral Afrikan visions, values and principles of Ma’at and Ubuntu to ensure a peaceful success in tune with our Reparatory Justice demands for Planet Repairs.
We are appreciative of our youth and student contingents from the Tribe Named Athari (TNA) and Rhodes Must Fall Oxford (RMFO) who contributed immensely to ensuring that the participation of the younger generation manifested the ethos of our Afrikan Emancipation Day commemorations as those of Reparations Rebellion Groundings in their real community educational meaning promoted by Dr Walter Rodney. We express our highest regards to various allies particularly those from Extinction Rebellion (XR) who demonstrated some of the best traditions of internationalist solidarity long displayed by progressive forces in Britain by acting in strict accordance with roles we had agreed that they would play, in contributing to the success of our activities on the day, through the facilitation of the Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN).
We also express our gratitude to Councillors like Cllr. Scott Ainslie, and Cllr. Cleo Lake, who have been leading our engagement with the Green Party in getting ‘Atonement and Reparations’ motions passed by Lambeth Council on 15th July 2020 and Islington Council on the 9th July 2020. We particularly commend those in Lambeth Council whose version of the motion passed highlighted our need for the UK Government to establish the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ). The APPCITARJ is what we, as co-organisers from the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations see as the essential starting point for British state action in facilitating the masses of our Afrikan Heritage Communities across the World to access just hearings; which is in itself a reparative measure in accordance with the UN Framework on a Right to a Remedy and Reparations.
We are encouraged by the growing support from our Afrikan Heritage and other Black Communities, as well as wider sections of society in Britain, including diverse communities of the Global South Diasporas. We are glad that many in these communities are increasingly recognising the need for all of us to build the kind of principled unity that will enable the prolonging resistance efforts of our communities in the Global South to merge into the Global Rebellion that will deliver victory to all of us in ways that will not only make us win our specific community Reparations goals but also ensure the achievement of all the necessary Planet Repairs. For it is such holistic repairs to Peoples and Planet that will guarantee a cessation of violations and non-repetition of what we refer to as the Maangamizi (Afrikan Hellacaust), so that we shall have a New World of enduring Global Justice for all.
The Way Forward
We shall continue to work in advancing the momentum reinvigorated by the 1st Mosiah (August ) Afrikan and support the likes of A Tribe Named Athari (TNA) and allies who are working to earn for themselves places of honour in the front-ranks of the International Social Movement Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) and the Peoples Reparations International Movement (PRIM) respectively.
We encourage community members, supporters and allies to do any of the following 4 things:
- Sign the Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Petition, https://www.change.org/StopTheMaangamizi
- Write to elected officials to request their support for the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign demand for the establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice at the level of the UK Parliament.This is a link to an article we have on our website, with a template Stop The Maangamizi Postcard and template letter which can be amended from the perspective of allies supporting this demand.
- Lobby elected officials to initiate council motions on ‘Atonement and Reparations for the Transatlantic Traffic of Enslaved Africans’ utilising the template of the Lambeth Council motion.
In accordance with the Afrikan visionary ethical framework of MA’AT, we are supporting XR, through XRISN, to work towards the successful holding of its next phase of rebellion ‘We want to live – The Rebellion returns to Parliament on 1 September amidst warnings of a 4°C world‘; doing so in ways that will take shared learning from our 1st August Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Rebellion Groundings into their own manifestations of non-violent direct action – ‘From Brixton Lockdown to Parliament Lockout’. We are planning to organise an interfaith human chain to surround the British Houses of Parliament with ceremonies to exorcise the criminal demons of genocide and ecocide out of such a Maangamizi crime scene to prepare this institution to host the APPCITARJ. Such spiritual cleansing ceremonies will be conducted by Indigenous spiritual practitioners of liberation theology from Afrika and other regions of the Global South assisted by interested people of all faiths in the Global North. By so doing, we shall be strengthening People-to-Peoples Internationalist Solidarity in order to move all progressive forces of Humanity harmoniously towards our common objective of ‘Planet Repairs!’ as expressed in our Reparatory Justice slogan of ‘Stop The Maangamizi – We have Ubuntudunia to Win’.
We are inviting all from our Afrikan Heritage Communities and allies to join us in responding to the internationalist solidarity gesture of the New Tribe and their supporters from the communities of resistance of the South Abya Yalan (so-called Americas) Diaspora, who participated in the edutainment activities of our Reparations Rebellion Groundings in Brixton to support their own forthcoming commemoration of 12th October, as the International Day of Indigenous Resistance. Together, in such actions of true internationalist solidarity, we all shall win.
For us in the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign and others in our ‘coalition of the willing’, preparation for 1st August 2021 Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Rebellion Groundings start from today, 3rd August 2020. Such Groundings will take place in the same area we were meant to lock-down in Brixton from Windrush Square to Max Roach Park including Brixton Road.
Esther Stanford-Xosei
Coordinator General, Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide Campaign (SMWeCGEC)
Esther is also the official spokesperson for the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) and Co-founder of Extinction Rebellion Internationalist Solidarity Network (XRISN)
See our response to Nigel Farage’s disparaging remarks here.
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:
https://twitter.com/bristolgreen/status/1281195994219241472?s=20
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!
SMWeCGEC & GAPP Statement on Roger Hallam’s Shoah Comments & Their Relevance to the Maangamizi
‘Stop the Maangamizi We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign & Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament
Statement on the Relevance of Roger Hallam’s Comments Regarding the Shoah to Recognising, Counteracting & Preventing the Recurrence of the Maangamizi
Songs we would never hear! Histories we would never know! Art we would never see! Because the European had the capacity to destroy and didn’t have the moral restraint not to.
Professor Maulana Karenga
As an Afrikan Heritage Community-based formation engaged in building an affinity relationship with Extinction Rebellion (XR), our ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC) and its sister body the Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament (GAPP) feel compelled to say for history something about the globally significant conflict now brewing in Extinction Rebellion (XR) pertaining to one of its co-founders, Roger Hallam.
In the English-language interview in Die Zeit published on the 20th November 2019 it is reported that Roger Hallam said: “The fact of the matter is, millions of people have been killed in vicious circumstances on a regular basis throughout history.” He listed other mass killings in the past 500 years, including the Belgians’ slaughter in the Congo Free State; which was a corporate state in Central Afrika that King Leopold II of Belgium claimed private ownership of and evolved into evolved into a colony (the Belgian Congo) in the land now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Roger Hallam pointed out: “They went to the Congo in the late 19th century and decimated it.” For the information of those not yet aware of this conflict, it is necessary to note that he was also quoted as having said that, seen in this context, the Jewish Holocaust was “almost a normal event … just another fuckery in human history”.
Nsala, the man in the picture, was photographed by English missionary Alice Seeley Harris after he arrived at her mission in The Congo (1904) clutching a parcel that contained what was left of his five-year-old daughter. She’d been killed and dismembered as a punishment when his village failed to meet the rubber quotas demanded by the imperial regime. The Harris Lantern Slide Show © Anti-Slavery International
For some context about Roger Hallam’s reference to the Congo see:
• “A Nightmare in Heaven” — Why Nobody is talking about the Holocaust in Congo
• How Belgium cut off hands and arms and killed over 15 million in Africa.
• Belgium begins to face brutal colonial legacy of Leopold II.
Children who had been mutilated through amputation under the regime of King Leopold II
It is also important to read King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa written by Adam Hochschild, of which a documentary version is available. Just last week it was announced Ben Affleck would be producing and directing a film inspired by this book.
As organisations campaigning on our Afrikan Heritage Community experience of the particular manifestations of a special type of genocide and ecocide that we refer to as the Maangamizi, which is not only in the past but continues into the present, and to which Roger Hallam was making reference to, we cannot keep silent on this matter. For us, the issue that is being missed, if you read Rogers comments in context, and which none of the statements being issued officially by XR have recognised or commented on so far, is the reference to the genocide of Afrikans in the Congo which is only one of the many heinous crimes of what we in the SMWeCGEC and GAPP refer to as the Maangamizi. The Maangamizi has represented an existential threat to the peoplehood, self-determination and agency of Afrikan people for the past 500+ years of world history.
This is not a Genocide Olympics. In the rush to condemn Roger Hallam for his comments there is an equally epistemically and structurally violent denial of the omnicides against Afrikan, Aboriginal and Indigenous Humanity, (non-European humanity in short). In the reactions to Roger Hallam’s quoted comments in newspapers, what is inferred is the view that the Shoah, (Jewish Holocaust) was exceptional above all other Holocausts and genocides. Whilst it is true, as the axiom goes “no one cries more than the bereaved”, from the quoted comments, it is clear that Roger Hallam, like many others especially from the affected communities take the view that other genocides also need recognition prevention and redress. To do so is not to deny, denigrate or reduce the significance of the Shoah.
At the International Conference on Genocide Prevention that took place in Brussels from 31 March – 1 April 2014, Yehuda Bauer stated that “The Holocaust is not unique; it is unprecedented, and that means that it is a precedent that can be repeated (though not in the same way), unless we prevent that ”
A Matter of Comparison, The Holocaust, Genocides and Crimes Against Humanity: An Analysis and Overview of Comparative Literature and Programs by Koen Kluessien & Carse Ramos, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
Incidentally, the Committee on the Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) was established to work on how best to support teachers who choose to relate the Holocaust to other genocides and crimes against humanity. According to the above report: A Matter of Comparison, the Holocaust, Genocides and Crimes Against Humanity a central accomplishment of the Committee was the publication of the series of documents including The Holocaust and Other Genocides which offers ideas and recommendations to educators teaching about the Holocaust and its relationship to other genocides and crimes against humanity. In the Why relate the Holocaust to other genocides and crimes against humanity?
section of the aforementioned report, the authors “summarise a number of important reasons why it can be valuable to offer such a comparative approach, points out some challenges, and concludes with some reasons or agendas that should not lie behind a comparative approach.”
So, we in the SMWeCGEC and GAPP are making this statement to highlight the fact that whilst not in favour of the unacceptable type of language that accompanied the main point in Roger’s original statement, we seek to highlight the most important fact is drawing attention to the currently ongoing genocide and ecocide, of which our continuing present-day Maangamizi is part of. This is the first time that someone racialised as white in a prominent campaigning organisation in Europe, a campaign that is currently in the global mainstream media limelight, has dared to lend support to something that our Afrikan Heritage Communities across the world has been drumming up for centuries. Our Maangamizi is one of the most horrendous, traumatizing and long-enduring up until now special types of genocide and ecocide of over 500 years duration. It continues into the present, even though the white supremacy racist establishment of Global Apartheid has terroristically compelled even some among our own Afrikan Heritage Communities and most Peoples of the world to be in denial of it.
The Shoah has quite rightfully been recognised and there are laws that protect against Jewish Holocaust denial. Yet people deny the Maangamizi of the past and present every day with impunity. We in the SMWeCGEC partner with the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee to co-organise the annual 1st August Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March and hand in the ‘Stop the Maangamizi!’ Petition to the Office of the UK Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street simply with a demand supported by thousands that we can have a dialogue with the British state and society via the establishment of the All-Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice (APPCITARJ).
Yet from 2015 until now, we have been denied a fair hearing and consistently been told “we do not believe that reparations are the answer” by officials of the British State. Speaking about the Afrikan case, we have no recognition and no justice!!!, even in this United Nations declared International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), in which the United Nations on behalf of the international community recognises that that people of African descent represent a distinct group whose human rights must be promoted and protected. Despite this progressive declaration the British State has said it will not recognise the Decade. Even within XR our demands for recognition of our Afrikan humanity gone unmet, with some pushing unto us the unfairly homogenizing descriptor ‘People of Colour’ as a way of not recognising the specific experiences of People of Afrikan heritage.
So, Afrikan Heritage youths, who have been raised in a society and world order where they are shown every day that their Black humanity and Afrikan lives do not matter have internalised this and are now the agents of what Black Panther Party Co-Founder Dr Huey P. Newton referred to as Reactionary Suicide (the act of Black self-murder) or what Scholar-Activist Psychologist Professor Amos Wilson refers to as Black-On-Black Violence: The Psychodynamics of Black Self-Annihilation in the Service of White Domination as was exemplified in the theme of the 2019 Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March: ‘Continuing Our People’s 500 + Years Reparations Rebellion – Stop Terminating Our People: Rebelling Against and Redressing Youth Mentacide/Ecocide!!!’
We therefore overstand why, to those insisting on this denial of our Maangamizi, particularly in its present phase of neocolonial enslavement, with all of its horrors of Afriphobic and anti-Black racism, Roger Hallam is being lynched for being a ‘white race traitor’.
We dare all those all those who are ganging up to lynch Roger Hallam, beyond assisting him to correct his errors, to act in accordance with the XR demand to ‘tell the truth’. This means to confess truthfully that, actually, the one unspoken thing they are ganging up to mercilessly assassinate the character of Roger Hallam for, without any of the XR compassion for his human errors, is his daring to put the case we are making about our present-day experience of life as Afrikan People across the world as being a Hellacaust of continuing genocide and ecocide; of omnicide crimes continuing for centuries into the present as our Maangamizi!
Yes, this open pointing to the current situation of Afrikans and other still oppressed and super-exploited Peoples of the Global South, who are still being terrorised with genocide and ecocide by those in the Minority World of the Global North holding the reins of so much Global Apartheid racist power as to be perpetuating the vestiges of colonialism and the ravages of neo-colonialism, including forms of eco-fascism, against the will of our Peoples of the Majority World, is his real offence to them and others of their ilk.
We are not deceived by the claims being made by some of these elements condemning Roger Hallam that they are doing so in pursuit of Global Justice. What we really mean in our long-standing, painstaking and experiential learning Pan-Afrikan Freedom Fighting for Global Justice bears no resemblance to what they are claiming. As Activist-Writer Alice Walker says: “No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.” A climate of fear is being created within and around XR to terrorise those who do not share views similar to those now putting out blanket condemnatory statements about Roger Hallam’s comments.
Part of the context in what is being claimed to be hateful anti-Semitism and Jewish Holocaust denial on the part of Roger Hallam by some, is the Maangamizi against the OvaHerero and Nama People (1904–1908) by Germany’s Second Reich, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, which was a precursor to the Jewish Holocaust. True champions of Global Justice would know that the OvaHerero and Nama People have an ongoing movement for genocide recognition and redress.
As the article: In Germany’s Extermination Program for Black Africans, a Template for the Holocaust in the Times of Israel highlights – decades before the Nazis turned to the Jews, German colonialists who seized land and made it into a colony they called German Southwest Africa, (now known as Namibia) dehumanised, built death camps for, and slaughtered tens of thousands of OvaHerero and Nama People in a systematic genocide which was the “odious precursor of the Shoah.” As stated by the Post Conflict Research Center:
“How far back can the roots of the Holocaust be traced? The events that took place from 1941 – 1945 bore a striking resemblance to atrocities carried out years before in German South West Africa. Many of the ideologies that fuelled the Holocaust, as well as the means of systematic confinement and extermination of a people, began at the turn of the 20th century with the Herero and Nama.”
Images of Survivors of the OvaHerero Genocide
Dr Ellen J. Kennedy, Executive Director of World Without Genocide at Mitchell Hamline School of Law also points out:
“Key perpetrators of this African genocide became high-ranking Nazis 30 years later. Names are chillingly familiar: Dr. Heinrich Ernst Goering was Namibia’s governor. His son, Hermann Goering, became a top Nazi leader. Eugen Fischer, a physician and professor of medicine, conducted experiments on the Herero that included forced sterilizations and injections of smallpox, typhus and tuberculosis. One of Fischer’s students was Dr. Joseph Mengele, known as the “angel of death” for sending people to the Auschwitz gas chambers and performing cruel medical experiments that he learned from Fischer. Franz Ritter von Epp commanded German troops against the Herero and later was a Nazi leader until he was captured by the U.S. Army in 1945. The list of names linking the Herero genocide to the Holocaust is horrifying.”
See also the following articles available on the worldwide web:
• The Holocaust Isn’t The Only Genocide That Germany Needs to be Held Accountable For.
• The Women Made to Boil Heads of Their Own People in Germany’s First Holocaust.
• The Herero-Nama Genocide: The Story of a Recognized Crime, Apologies Issued and Silence Ever Since.
• Namibia’s Long Fight for Justice.
• Article on ‘Black People’ and the Holocaust on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website.
• It is also recommended one reads Germany’s Genocide of the Herero: Kaiser Wilhelm II, His General, His Settlers, His Soldiers by Jeremy Sarkin in which he argues that the history of the OvaHerero genocide remains a key issue for many around the world partly because the German policy not to pay compensation for the genocide contrasts with its long-standing Jewish Holocaust reparations policy.
“We Jews champion the phrase “Never Again” in regard to the Final Solution. We also enshrine throughout our religion and culture the principle of remembrance or zachor. We should make every effort to hear the pain, and to validate the suffering, of other ethnic groups who also anguished under the nightmare of genocide. To do so is not to diminish our own tragedy. It is not to make comparisons or parallels. It is not to engage in an absurd exercise in gamesmanship over who suffered more terribly, us or them. It is, instead, to ennoble our own perseverance as a people. For if we fail to remember the genocides of the Armenians and the Herero, then we abdicate our own moral standing to ask the same of ourselves.“
It is clear to see that in the case of the Genocide of Afrikans in the Congo as well as that of the OvaHerero and Nama, Afriphobic racism belittles the memory of its victims and accounts for the differential outcomes of struggles for redress by their descendants.
These are photos from Esther Stanford-Xosei’s 2017 trip to Namibia as a guest of honour of the Ovaherero & Ovambanderu Genocide Foundation (OGF) for the 111th Commemoration of the Extermination Order which ushered in the OvaHerero-Nama Genocide
Our very track-record of activism on counteracting the Maangamizi demands that we do not succumb to this climate of epistemic and structural violence growing in XR at this time around this issue; but must rather truthfully speak in defence of those from amongst our allies who are seeking to do what the likes of: Abolitionists John Brown, Thomas and Lydia Hardy, Thomas Spence, Thomas Clarkson, Mary and John Estlin; Suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst; Scholar-Activist Historians Basil Davidson, Noel Ignatiev and Peter Fryer; as well as Black Liberation Army member, Marilyn Jean Buck have. Despite risking public condemnation we know, as Warrior-Poet Audre Lorde in her ‘Litany for Survival’ says, for those of us who have been “imprinted by fear“… it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.”
We hope the likes of Roger Hallam will be inspired and strengthened by such gallant predecessors and unswervingly walk their talk with striving even harder in internationalist solidarity with our Afrikan and all other oppressed Peoples, to finally put a full-stop to the Maangamizi and other continuing forms of genocide and ecocide. This is necessary to unify truly progressive forces in addressing the Climate and Ecological Crisis with holistic Planet Repairs in their Reparatory Justice meaningfulness; with a view to delivering the Global Justice for All that will enable us to win our own Maatubuntuman as one of the cornerstones for building Ubuntudunia together with all Humanity.
Stop the Maangamizi!
Build Maatubuntuman for Ubuntudunia!
Signed
Esther Stanford-Xosei
Coordinator General,
‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide!’ Campaign (SMWeCGEC)
Jendayi Serwah
Global Afrikan People’s Parliament (GAPP)
Leadership Facilitating Team
Kambanda Veii, Jendayi Serwah, Esther Stanford-Xosei & Utjuia Esther Muinjangue Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March (2017)