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Reparations to Africa and the Group of Eminent Persons* Cahiers d’études africaines 173-174 | 2004 Réparations, restitutions, réconciliations Reparations to Africa and the Group of Eminent Persons Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/4543 DOI: 10.4000/etudesafricaines.4543 ISSN: 1777-5353 Publisher Éditions de l’EHESS Printed version Date of publication: 1 January 2004 Number of pages: 81-97 ISBN: 978-2-7132-1823-1 ISSN: 0008-0055 Electronic reference Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, « Reparations to Africa and the Group of Eminent Persons », Cahiers d’études africaines [Online], 173-174 | 2004, Online since 08 March 2007, connection on 19 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/4543 ; DOI : 10.4000/etudesafricaines.4543 © Cahiers d’Études africaines Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann Reparations to Africa and the Group of Eminent Persons* In the last ten years, a worldwide movement has emerged for reparations to various previously subordinated groups for past wrongs. This paper dis- cusses the movement for reparations to the continent of Africa. It begins with a discussion of the United Nations-sponsored World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001. It then traces the dis- cussion of reparations to Africa back to the Group of Eminent Persons (GEP) established in the early 1990s by the Organization of African Unity to pur- sue reparations for slavery and (perhaps) other wrongs perpetrated on Africa. Only three members of this group are still active: they are J. F. Ade Ajayi, Ali A. Mazrui, and Dudley Thompson. The present author inter- viewed all three in December 2002. An essay by J. F. Ade Ajayi is included in this volume. After discussion of the GEP, this essay looks at precedents for the demand for reparations to Africa. It closes with an assessment of the likelihood that a large social movement for reparations will develop. The Durban Conference against Racism At the Durban Conference against Racism, it was suggested that the Western world owed reparations to Africa. These reparations would be for the slave trade and colonialism, and even for the post-colonial era. The Declaration issued as the Final Document of the Conference stated: “We acknowledge that slavery and the slave trade... are a crime against humanity, and should always have been so, especially the transatlantic slave trade, and are among * The author is grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the funds enabling her to carry out research for this article. She is also most grateful to her research assistants, Anthony Lombardo and Dan Milisavljevic. Cahiers d’Études africaines, XLIV (1-2), 173-174, 2004, pp. 81-97. 82 RHODA E. HOWARD-HASSMANN the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xeno- phobia and related intolerance... We recognize that colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”1. More- over, the Declaration stated that victims of violations of their human rights as a result of racism and related wrongs should have “the right to seek just and adequate reparation or satisfaction”2. Several African countries supported this claim. For example, Ali Mohamed Osman Yassin, Minister of Justice of Sudan, made a statement explicitly linking the slave trade to the current problems of Africa: “The slave trade, particularly against Africans, was an appalling tragedy in its abhor- rent barbarism, enormous magnitude, institutionalized nature, transnational dimen- sion and particularly in its negation of the essence of the victims. Africa’s economic marginalization started with the deprivation of its manpower by the slave trade, followed by uneven exploitation and the siphoning of its natural resources during the colonial era. It is culminating today in economic globalization, where Africa lacks the capacity to compete commercially in the world economy” (United Nations 2001: 8). Similarly, Enoch Kavindele, Vice-President of Zambia, demanded reparations: “We have come to Durban to liberate ourselves from the historical injustices of slavery and servitude and now want to emphasize that slavery should be remembered not only as an appalling tragedy, but also as a factor which for centuries deprived Africa of her human and natural resources. Africa requests an audience, so the world can take responsibility for the crimes of slavery and colonialism... [T]he slave trade was the greatest practical evil which has ever afflicted the human race. And though we agree that many other peoples and races have been victims of dis- crimination and intolerance, the cry on the continent is that while every one of those groups have [sic] been adequately redressed for wrongs committed in the past, Africans continue to suffer” (United Nations 2001: 4). Both these statements reflected the official viewpoint put forward prior to the Durban Conference by the African Regional Preparatory Conference for the World Conference. This Preparatory Conference affirmed that “[the] slave trade is a unique tragedy in the history of humanity, particularly against Africans—a crime against humanity which is unparalleled”. It made an explicit connection between the slave trade and Africa’s current problems, noting “the consequence of this tragedy [the slave trade] accentu- ated by those of colonialism and apartheid have resulted in substantial and lasting economic, political and cultural damage to African peoples and are still present in the form of damage caused to the descendants of the victims, the perpetuation of the prejudice against Africans in the Continent, and 1. World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, 31 August-8 September 2001), “Declaration”, pars. 13 and 14, available at www.unhchr.ch/pdf/Durban.pdf. 2. Ibid., par. 104. GROUP OF EMINENT PERSONS 83 people of African descent in the Diaspora”. The Conference also noted that “other groups which were subject to other scourges and injustices have received repeated apologies from different countries as well as ample reparations”3. Not all African leaders supported this viewpoint, however. Just prior to the Durban Conference, the President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, said that if reparations were to be paid for slavery, then he himself might be liable to pay them, as his ancestors had owned thousands of slaves. He found the proposal for monetary compensation for slavery insulting: “It is absurd... that you could pay up a certain number of dollars and then slavery ceases to exist, is cancelled out and there is the receipt to prove it” (Ba 2001). At the African preparatory Conference, he also angered participants by arguing that there was far more racism and xenophobic violence within Africa than against Africans in Europe (McGreal 2001). Wade’s minority view suggests that under the populist and rhetorical appeal of a call for reparations to Africa may lie an unwillingness to deal with far more complex issues of the real causes of that continent’s severe underdevelopment. Promotion of a bitter call for reparations is an easy way to deflect attention from internal African politics, and the many abuses of human rights by African dictators. The Nigerian Nobel-prize winning writer Wole Soyinka, for example, pointed out that M. K. O. Abiola, the founder of the reparations movement (see below), had himself become a prisoner of the then dictator of Nigeria, Sani Abacha. “Abiola... is today himself enslaved by one of the new breed of slave dealers, who actually boasts of power over the most heavily populated, most talented slave market that the African world has ever known. This mockery of history is complete even down to the underground railroad on which hundreds travel every day, this author [Soyinka] included” (Soyinka 1999: 73). Moreover, Soyinka argued, reparations began at home: “[R]eparations, like charity, should begin at home, and the wealth of the Mobutus, the Babangidas, the Abachas ... should be utilized as down payment” (ibid.: 86). The focus only on Africa’s relations with the West, but not on its rela- tions with other regions, also raises some uncomfortable issues. Not only the Western world, but also the Arab world, looked to Africa for slaves. For both Ali Mazrui and J. F. Ade Ajayi, the discomfort of focusing only on the West is easily solved. Mazrui believes that the Arab slave trade was qualitatively different from the Atlantic trade. The Western slavers were the most race-conscious, asserts Mazrui, whereas “Islam went further than others to encourage emancipation of slaves”, and also had several other customs which made it possible to integrate slaves into free society, for 3. “Draft Declaration of the African Regional Preparatory Conference for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Into- lerance”, WCR/RCONF/DAKAR/2001/L.1 Rev. 3, 24 January 2001, pars. 19, 20 and 38, available at http://www.africapolicy.org/docs01/wcar0101.htm. 84 RHODA E. HOWARD-HASSMANN example by recognized alliances between free males and slave women (Mazrui 2002: 41, emphasis in original). Ajayi (2002: 8) also argues that the trans-Atlantic slave trade “bred racism that was never a part of the Muslim Arab world as Arabs enslaved both whites and blacks, preached the virtue of manumission, and opened the possibility for some fortunate black slaves to rise to high positions as scholars, or diplomats or success- ful generals”. Other commentators are
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