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The 20th anniversary of the United Nations World Conference on Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, will be celebrated in August. There was a lot of talk at the conference on reparations to Africa for the transatlantic slave trade, during which millions of Africans were captured to provide free labor to North America and South and the Caribbean for more than four and a half centuries.
Sadly, the conference was overshadowed by the September 11 attacks on the United States several days after it ended. The question of whether reparations should be paid to the African continent for the transatlantic slave trade is still under debate.
The former western slave-trading countries are unlikely to engage in reparation measures in the near future. The turn to authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that even well-meaning governments will offer reparations to Africa.
But, despite these political changes in slave trading nations, there remain good reasons why the struggle for reparations should not be abandoned.
Apology for the slave trade
A 2005 United Nations document examines different aspects of reparations, including apologies for past wrongs, the right to know the truth, and financial compensation.
Over the past 15 years (following the 2005 United Nations report), no progress has been made on these issues, not even on the apology.
At the 2001 conference, a Dutch representative spoke of his government’s “deep remorse” for trafficking and slavery. In 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement expressing his “sentence” for the slave trade, without apologizing.
None of these constituted an excuse. The United States has not published one either. President Bill Clinton acknowledged the horrors of the slave trade in 1998 during a visit to Uganda. But he didn’t apologize. During a visit to Senegal in 2003, President George W. Bush declared that the transatlantic slave trade was one of the greatest crimes in history. Again, there were no excuses.
Some people might object to their government apologizing for the slave trade on the grounds that neither they nor their ancestors were involved. But as the late Kenyan-American researcher Ali Mazrui argued, if you are a citizen of a country, you must take responsibility for its responsibilities as well as its benefits.
Western slave-trading countries have a moral, if not legal, obligation to apologize.
A truth commission on the slave trade
One way to identify the responsibilities of former Western slave trading states might be to create a Slave Trade Truth Commission.
Critics might argue that such a truth commission should discuss all actors in African slavery. About 14 million people were taken from Africa as part of the transatlantic slave trade, but another 10 million were taken in the Arab slave trade.
Africans also participated in the transatlantic trade and held their own slaves. Nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was shocked to learn that her great-grandfather was a slave trader, selling slaves in Cuba and Brazil after trade was abolished by the United States and Great Britain. Brittany. When his great-grandfather died, six slaves were buried alive with him.
Recognizing both Arab and African participation in slavery, a truth commission on the slave trade could explain that internal African slavery was generally much more benign than American slavery. Slaves in Africa were frequently incorporated into the families of their owners. Likewise, Arab slave owners were more likely to free enslaved children than Western slaves.
This type of information would contradict arguments that the transatlantic slave trade was no worse than internal African slavery or Arab slavery.
In any event, the fact that other entities have committed similar wrongs is no excuse for an author State not to apologize.
Financial repairs
One problem in discussing financial reparations for the transatlantic slave trade is which former slave and slave-trading countries might owe Africa financial reparations. About a quarter of a million enslaved Africans landed in the United States between 1626 and 1875, while 5.1 million landed in Brazil between 1401 and 1875. Does Brazil owe Africa reparations? Or does Portugal, a slave-trading nation, owe reparations to Brazil, which was then its colony?
Likewise, do Arab countries and African slave traders owe reparations for their participation in the slave trade? The case of the philosopher Anthony Appiah is instructive. He is of mixed Ashanti (Ghanaian) and British ancestry. His British and Ashanti ancestors traded in slaves. Do the Ashanti owe reparations to other ethnic groups in Ghana from whom they have taken slaves?
As with the apologies, however, these issues do not relieve the negative powers of the West of their particular responsibilities. The US, UK, Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal still bear collective ethical responsibility for the wrongs their societies have committed in the past.
Yet even if these countries are responsible for paying financial reparations, critics might wonder who should be the beneficiaries of reparations. Yet it is now possible through genetic research and research on slave trade ships for Western slave trade countries to determine where the bulk of their captives came from (e.g. Ghana, South Africa). Nigeria, Senegal or Angola). Western states could then compensate these countries.
Western critics might still wonder why they should pay reparations to Africa. The transatlantic slave trade ended in the middle of the 19th century.
In response, some academics and activists argue that without the slave trade Africa would be much more developed today. Moreover, the West could not have developed without transatlantic trade. According to this argument, Western slave trading states should compensate African states because the West developed while Africa was actively underdeveloped.
Western countries willing to pay reparations could fund specific projects related to the slave trade. They could donate funds to maintain African museums and historic trade sites. They could also fund educational programs to study transatlantic trade or fund a truth commission on the slave trade.
Small amounts spent on this type of repair would not satisfy lawyers who advocate for billions or even trillions of dollars in reparations. But they would at least be a material recognition of the wrongs caused by the slave trade.
The question of whether aid should be part of the equation also raises a host of difficult questions. Western countries, as some might say, haven’t they already offset the slave trade with foreign aid? And what about the misuse of stolen aid by corrupt governments?
Whether it is reparations or aid, the same problems of mismanagement, lack of transparency and corruption emerge.
Make amends
Whatever celebrations the UN holds to mark the 20th anniversary of the Durban conference, the former Western slave-trading states have a moral responsibility to offer reparations to Africa.
An apology, a truth commission on transatlantic trade, and token financial compensation will not solve the problems of Africa’s continued underdevelopment. But they would finally constitute an admission that the West should never have engaged in this trade. It would also be a recognition of the West’s responsibility to try to remedy the continuing legacy of the slave trade in Africa.
Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the research of her book, Reparations to Africa (2008), from which part of this article is taken.
By Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University
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