Timothy Musila

Here is another fraudster masquerading as a politician. Why does it so often seem to be the children of immigrants who volunteer for the dirtiest political work of the far right? Imagine arguing that human trafficking is abhorrent, but that apologizing to the victims would be dangerous because they might demand compensation from their traffickers. What kind of moral bankruptcy produces such reasoning? What is the value of acknowledging a crime if you insist that its perpetrators should never be held accountable? This is precisely how these crooked recycled conservatives manipulate public opinion. They deliberately present reparations as an impending financial punishment against ordinary British taxpayers, frightening people into believing that acknowledging historical crimes will somehow bankrupt their country. Yet British taxpayers spent over a century financing compensation for slave owners rather than the enslaved. Why is Braverman not discussing the immense fortunes accumulated by sections of the British aristocracy, merchant families, financial institutions and corporations through slavery and colonial exploitation? Why is she not asking how much of that wealth has survived through inheritance, property, financial assets and institutions that continue to exist today? Why should the descendants of those who accumulated fortunes through human suffering enjoy the protection of historical continuity while the descendants of their victims are told that history is irrelevant? Reparations do not automatically mean increasing taxes on ordinary British workers. They can involve restitution of stolen assets, contributions from institutions that profited from slavery, debt cancellation, fairer trade arrangements and the return of cultural property. And the supreme absurdity is that she invokes Britain’s role in abolishing slavery as though ending a crime somehow extinguishes responsibility for having committed and profited from it. Since when does a criminal deserve compensation or moral absolution for eventually stopping the crime?

When you talk about reparations, some of the first people who come to oppose them are ignorant Africans whose confidence far exceeds their intellect telling you, “We don’t need reparations.” Do you people even understand what you are rejecting? Do you think reparations mean a workers’ compensation cheque, that we are all going to queue at the bank and receive $100 or $500 for the suffering inflicted on our ancestors? Or that those our corrupt leaders receiving a $1billion check to acquire their next mansion in Dubai or Monaco? Is that really the extent of your imagination? Reparations mean repairing structural harms left by the slave trade and its immediate child colonialism and it takes multiple forms. Economic reparations include changing trade laws and agreements that keep formerly colonised economies supplying cheap raw materials while making it difficult for them to develop industries of their own. They can include preferential access to markets, removing tariffs that penalise processed goods, supporting local manufacturing, and changing procurement rules so African businesses can compete for valuable contracts. Reparations can include tax advantages for building businesses: tax credits for productive investment, relief for new enterprises, incentives for research and manufacturing, and measures that help businesses owned by affected communities accumulate capital. They can include debt cancelation, investment funds and ownership stakes that help people build lasting wealth. They can include returning identifiable stolen assets, millions of acres land, mines, confiscated gold reserves ( More than 2/3rd of the French gold reserve was taken from African countries since the colonial era). Cultural reparations can mean returning looted artworks, sacred objects, royal treasures, manuscripts and human remains ( The German are still holding onto tens of thousands of African skulls they massacred in Namibia for ex), with the resources necessary for their preservation under the authority of the communities to whom they belong. You cannot steal somebody’s heritage, charge admission to see it, and then present a temporary loan as generosity. Repair can also include funding museums, libraries, publishing houses, theatres, film and cultural institutions whose development was obstructed or whose work was treated as inferior. Historical reparations can mean opening colonial archives, returning records, identifying burial sites, documenting atrocities and supporting research led by the communities concerned to restore the names and lives of people reduced to numbers in those shipping registers. Linguistic reparations can mean investing in reinstating African languages as languages of education, science, administration and intellectual life. That includes training teachers, producing textbooks, and recovering knowledge that colonial institutions dismissed because it was transmitted in a language they refused to respect. Our nations have been so tied by debts that the IMF and our western debtors slash our educational budgets leaving our schools underfunded, making such reforms financially impossible. And this was intentional! Reparation means our Children should be able to learn through their own languages and acquire other languages without being taught to despise the first words through which they understood the world.Reparations means revising our school curriculums, both in formerly colonised countries and in the countries that profited from their subjugation. These measures require negotiation, enforceable commitments and public accountability. But listen to how quickly some of you ignoramuses dismiss the entire demand before making the smallest effort to understand it. The ignorance is sickening !