From a land so far…
In this season of erasure and the whitewashing of historical facts, it is a warm salve to witness what can only be described as a watershed year in the global reparations movement.
In March of this year, on the occasion of the International day of Remembrance of the victims of slavery and the Transatlantic Slave trade – The UN adopted a resolution that the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and the racialised slavery that followed constituted ‘the gravest crime against humanity.’
In June, leaders in the Global reparatory justice movement convened in Accra, Ghana to discuss next steps to the Landmark UN Resolution. A 19-point Global Strategic Framework for Reparatory Justice was launched.
By July, the Caribbean Community launched its revised Ten-point plan for Reparatory Justice: A Manifesto for the coming Enlightenment.
This September, Barbados hosted the 3rd CARICOM Regional Conference on Reparations convening thought leaders, activists, advocacy groups and historians to collaborate and align strategies towards “the next phase of coordinated reparatory justice action.”
What seems like a trickle in years gone by now roars like a flood.
The King of England (!) is set to visit the Caribbean region later this month prior to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Antigua and Barbuda.
Last week the Palace released a statement saying that the King “will not shy away from the darkest days of our past.”
I spent the past weekend in those dark days reading about capitalism and slavery; confronted with words like brutish, savage, heathen to describe my ancestors.
Graphic instruments of torture, humiliation and control were described with words like branded with hot irons, whipped, castrated, raped, bred and hung.
Words associated with human beings like mortgages, taxes, insurance, property and chattel.
All used to dehumanise and legitimise the trafficking and enslavement of millions of human beings.
There is no remoteness in those dark days - this history and our present reality are deeply intertwined.
The physical and psychological burden still lives within the bones of the descendants of the enslaved.
It is the burden of the African Holocaust.
I have no words other than Reparations Now!
“I'm a slave from a land so far
I was caught
And I was brought here from Africa
Well it was licks like fire
From de white slavemaster ” - Slave by The Mighty Sparrow