Historical Injustice and African Reparations

FROM THE HEART OF AFRICA

In 1441, a Portugese sailor, Antam Goncalves, kidnapped 10 Africans from the African Coast. This date is generally accepted as the beginning of the Atlantic African Slave Trade. In 1808, Great Britain abolished the African Slave Trade (as distinct from the abolition of slavery itself, in the form of plantation slavery, as lasted until 1838 in the British Colonies). There has been historical consistency in the European exploitation of Africa, her peoples, and the resources of the continent. Pejorative as the word 'exploitation' is, such observation then begs factual credence.

The Atlantic African Slave Trade was a unique European led criminal commercial enterprise bequeathing two major legacies. Quantitatively, it enforced involuntary mass migration on an unprecedented scale of millions of human beings. Qualitatively, it reduced Africans to "chattels", institutionalised slavery which extracted centuries of free labour and subjected the Africans and their descendants to the status of an "under-class", discriminated against up to the present day.

An illustrative and instinctive example of the processes of injustice militating over time against the African, is provided in the history of the Congo.

THE SECOND AFRICAN HOLOCAUST

At about the mid - 1870s, Portugal, Spain, Britain and France had stakes in Africa, when about 80% of the Continent was under indigenous rule. Under the auspices of Germany's Chancellor, Bismark, on November 15, 1884, European powers assembled for the Berlin Conference. By February, 1885, at conference end, King Leopold II, more than any other interest or power was the major benefactor. His prize? The Congo.

The Berlin Conference did not itself partition Africa between the European powers, but provided a starting point for the process. Later treaties served to divide among the European powers the great spoils of Africa. In the two decades following the Berlin Conference, virtually all of Africa was colonially claimed.

CONQUERED IMITATES CONQUEROR

The Congo 'free state', as King Leopold's personal property was called, tells a tale in history of greed, manipulation, and exploitation on a vast scale to be mirrored again in later times.

In 1960 when the Congo gained independence from Belgium, Patrice Lumumba was democratically elected the country's first President, but the independent Congo did not enjoy a day's democracy. Neither has it had sustainable peace nor secured prosperity for the majority of its people. It is not that the Congo lacks vast mineral resources; nor is it impossible for these Africans to experience peace and prosperity. The powerful processes behind the Congo determined the fate of the Congolese people more so than the people were able democratically to determine their future.

King Badouin, then Belgian King in 1960, made patronising statements about Congolose freedom, at the time of the Congo's independence. Patrice Lumumba rebutted the insult on behalf of the brutalised Congolese people. His temerity was repaid by a conspiracy of 'evil' involving Dag Hammarskjold (Swedish UN Secretary General), Allen Dulles (CIA Chief), Dwight D. Eisenhower (President of the United States), French, Belgian and British interests, along with the confluence of American corporations as did seal Lumumba's fate. Dulles authorised Lumumba's murder, and a CIA success story emerged. Through agents, Lumumba was murdered. A then young man, Joseph Desire Mobutu, received blood money and became approved President, of whom it was later said: "A voice of good sense and good will" (President Ronald Regan's words of praise for Joseph Desire` Mobuto).

For over three decades, with the approval of those powers which installed him, Mobuto followed King Leopold's pattern of personal enrichment by extracting a people's wealth and appropriating it in billions to personal accounts. Private control of an entire nation's wealth was for decades neither the subject of European powers disapproval, nor the target of sanctions.

The exploitative misappropriation of the Congo's wealth with historical irony, mirrored the earlier practices of King Leoplold II. The conquered had learned well the conqueror's lesson.

AN EPITAPH TO INJUSTICE

The Congo's tale is one of systemic corruption, global injustice, and widespread greed sustained by abused power. Can such injustice ever be redressed?

At the end of the Twentieth Century, the same interests which supported the likes of Leopold and Mobutu, were engineering for 'balkanisation' of the Congo. Same objective - different means. The funding of rebel factions, sales of arms, international machinations for control of significant mineral wealth, misinformation operations, sustained measures for economic colonisation of Africa end in hegemony maintained by war and impoverishment.

It cannot but be called global systemic corruption and injustice to have deliberately installed and sustained a man such as Mobutu against the democratic wishes of the Congelese people. In 32 years of power, Mobutu amassed some 4 billion dollars from his country, and with his allies were where his interests and fortune were to be found - France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the like. When people of Africa and the African diaspora are afforded chance to write Mobutu's epitaph on his Congolese tombstone, the words might read as this - Leopold's wealth to Belgium - Mobutu's to European banks - may the remains of Mobutu Sese Seko along with the legitimate democratic aspirations of the Congolese people for peace with prosperity rest in peace!

A JUST CASE FOR REPARATIONS

The claim for African reparations does not arise in either a historical or political vacuum.

It is quite evident that the interests which supported a person such as Mobutu Sese Seko, made a conscious choice. In effect, European 'democracy' deemed desirable at home, willingly opted to substitute and sustain in Africa Mobutu's 'kleptocracy'. For this an account should be called and the debt should be paid by the perpetrators.

Global re-distributive justice will never be able to compensate adequately for the brutalisation and systemic corruption which have led to mass sufferings - but African reparations can be a start.

Historical and contemporary injustices unaddressed, leave few viable options when peoples's democratic wishes for peace with prosperity cannot be fulfilled. Sustaining global injustices imply lives of misery for the many, while the few have their unjust way.

In a world of injustice - African reparations can serve the just and legitimate cause of redressing wrong. If human rights are to have meaning then rights of groups who have consistently been disadvantaged must be placed in the forefront of the claim for legitimate redress. And addressing the wrong is not that difficult, but the global will has first to be found to do that which is right:

1. The Belgian government should apologise to the Congolese people for the atrocities advanced in the Congo before and during the twentieth century.

2. The billions deposited by Mobutu Sese Seko in European and Western banks as his personal fortune extracted from the Congolese nation should be returned to the Congolese people.

King Leopold's Congolese fortune was restituted to the Belgian nation, and from this precedent - Belgium cannot but justly say that an apology and support of return of sums as unjustly enriched Mobutu, at the expense of the Congolese people, is minimum reparation.