"EUROPEANS and IMMIGRATION"
By Woldezghi Alem 28/4/20005
( PART FUOR)
REPARATIONS FOR AFRICA AND Africans
Slave Trade and Colonialism: a root of contemporary African Crisis
"HISTORICAL MEMORY"
"The past is what makes the present coherent" and the past, "will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to access it honestly".
The african continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara,through the Red Sea, from the Indian ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the ninnteeth).
Then more than four centuries (from the end of the fifteenth to the ninteenth) of a regular slave trade to build the American and the prosperity of the christian states of Europe.
The course of human history is marked by appalling crimes.
A tragedy of such dimensions has no paralel in any other part of the world.
Italy is not alone in being responsible for the enslavement, exploitation and colonization of Eritrea and Eritreans, there is no doubt however Italy played a major role in Eritrea for 60 years.
The demand for reparation is made not only of Italy but of all nations engaged in the Slave Trade and subsequent colonization of Africa. Those of us based in Italy who are of Eritrean - African origin have a duty at the very list to understand why are in Italy and what part these events have had in the creation of Italy's history and wealth.
Africa continues to be economically exploited and abused and its checkered history of so called self rule as evidence of an intrinsic inability of Africans to govern ourselves.
What I contend is that there is little democracy in Africa and that this is the direct legacy of imperialism. The hasty pull out by Belgium, Britain and France of colonies that were ill prepared for self rule has created a climate in which corruption and maladministration have became widescale in many countries.
Then has been no apolgy for the enslavement of millions of African people, and there are some today that continue to argue that slavery was generally a good thing because it "introduce us to civilization". This presuposes that there was no culture of civilization in Africa before the onslaught by Europe.Even if one accepts Europe's version of what constitutes civilization there is ample evidence that medicine, mathematics, complex social organisation, engineering were but of few of the achievements of Africa and Africans in the centuries prior to contact with Europe.
The 19 th century is replete with attempts to both deny and destroy evidence of African culture. It was in this century as capitalism expanded and consolidated that ideological justification began to be developed for the oppression of African peoples and resources.
It was the belief that Africans were (are) inferior human beings that justified not only the absence of financial compensation for slavery to African peoples but the curve up of Africa by the 5-European powers in the 1880's. When Britain abolished the slave trade in 1834 slave holders were paid
£20 millions in compensation not a penny was paid to former slaves.
In many instance the rights and opportunities for former slaves was made worse when slavery was abolished which indicates a punitive and inhuman relationship with Africa peoples, a legacy which I believe still persists. We know that the old, the disabled were not taken, only those young fit and active. What must the impact have been to African villages to loose its most economically and socially active?
We cannot begin to put a momentary figure of this but if we are to repair the damage of enslavement we must begin to consider the whole legacy of enslavement.
When we have raised the issue of Reparation publicly we have encountered a European concern solely with money. They ask how much will it cost?
I consider, this an offensive question which yet again reduces African peoples to the level of commodities. Is it not enough that Europe created a whole social institutions out of buying and selling African people now they can only see us in terms of money.
When I speak of reparations I speak of mear' repair. I wish to repair the damage to us psychologically, economically, historically and financially. When demand, the return of our Artefacts stolen, misinterpreted and abused Museums and collectors in the West.I demand the creation of free and fair commodity markets for African goods and the ending of Cash Crops for the benefit of Europe and not local communities.
I demand democracy in Africa and not leaders supported and sustained by Governments and Corporations in whose interests corrupt rulers govern.
I demand the creation of a Continent fit for African people in which we can discover and develop skills and resources that are sustainable and in keeping with our best African tradition.
Reparations means that as peoples of Africa origin we can value ourselves as highly as others value themselves, the psychological damage to us of skin lightening and of elevating thing European over things African can only do us harm. There may be things to be learned from Europe and Europeans but there are things that Europe could usefully learn from Africa and Africans.
A new relationship must be forged in which there is mutual respect and equality, this cannot happen whilst there is no repair to the devastating damage done by enslavement.
Africa, Africans and Europe must understand and repair the basis of the current relationship.
There are very pressing reasons for a new relationship with Africa. African peoples in Europe are increasingly finding ourselves subject to overt persecution and discrimination as the barriers go up
around fortress Europe.And as the trading blocks of North America and the Pacific Rim develop and Eastern Europe is brought closer to the West so the economic isolation of Africa is seen to be manifest. For well over a hundred years Africa has been seen only in terms of a repository of raw materials of the West to be plundered and exploited as they wished.
We would be ill advised to ignore the wider global perspective of current economic and political
Developments. If Africa is to survive we must play over part in its survival.
Is it possible for Africa to be economically self sufficient, especially if this includes trade with the African Diaspora? What would be the impact on local environment if rather that cash crops Africa produced food staffs for its own population with the majority of its trade internal rather than external to Africa?
What would an Africa wide transportation system look like that connected Sierra Leone to Zambia without having to fly first to London or Zurich.
There are not irrelevant or inpracticable questions but they are ones that are not currently being addressed.We need to put our skills and energies into Africa. We need to reverse the Brain Drain from Africa and the Caribean to the US, Canada and Europe. Our own self interest demands that we have somewhere to go when the going gets tough and we should look very seriously at recent European history as we witness the rise of fascism in Italy,France, Germany, Belgium and Britain.
There may be little point in us saying we were born here or that we are really British or French.
German jews protested as they were pushed into INCINERATORS that they were German.
This is very bleack scenario and it is one that we hope will not rise but it would be foolhardly to imagine that it could not happen. What are our options? And are we playing into the hands of fascists and racists by saying that we should leave Europe. We believe that there are sound pragmatic reasons why we should want to make Africa a place fit for Africans. First it would be an insurance policy against risin fascism.
Secondly why should we not consider going to Africa if we can think of going to Canada or the USA. If as we believe we win the argument for financial compensation Africa would become a viable option for people of African origin to live and invest in. And when Africa is trong the standing of African peoples will also be strong.
We do not demand that all people of African origin should return to Africa what we seek instead is to make it a place of preference.
Some of us because of family and friends will want to stay here, this must be a right and that will continue to fight for.But we also want to dispel the lies and myths that make the idea of all things African so negative.
We did not come to Europe because of the weather we came because it was, we were told the matherland (or fatherland), we came because there were few economic choices for us if we wished to prosper.
Given our skills of survival and of creativety we can make Africa a place where all African peoples can be free to achieve our full potential. Reparations starts with ourself image. Let us be proud to be Africans.
"If there were no buyers thre would be no sellers". Most slaves sold by Africans- African rulers, traders and a military aristocracy who all grew healthy from the business. No doubt the shared responsability of Africans for the horrid business. A Long History of Corruption Ruling Class.
Some African writers, seeking to maximise the culpability of Europe in the slave trade minimise the part played by African rulers such distortion of history may make the moral case against European imperialism seem sharper, but it does nothing to aid the understanding by Africans of a critical period of their history. African slavers acted out of their own volution and for their self interest. They took advantage of the opportunity provided by Europe to consume the product of its civilisation.
The Triangular Slave Trade was a major part in the early stages of the emergence of the International Market.
The role of slave trading African ruling classes in this market is not radically different from the position of the African elite, in today's global economy.They loss traded the resources of their people for their own gratification and prosperity. In the process they helped to weaken their nations and dim their prospects for economic and social development.
The slave trade had a profound economic, social, cultural and psychological impact on African societies and peoples. It did more to undermine African development than the colonialism that followed.Through the Continent lost a large proportion of its young and able bodied population.
The loss of work-force was not more serious that the damage to the social and economic fabric of the society and the undermining of the confidence of Africans in their historical evolution.
I have not advocated repatration, nor I in favour of any crude policy of "paying blacks to go home" . What I am in favour of, however, is of black people talking among themselves frankly about how we go forward in an increasing hostile environment, and considering all the options.
The only problem with this is that we cannot do so in this society without our being overheard
by the white media,european governments who distorted our views for their own ends.
My own vision of the future for us as black people is connected with the campaign for reparations for Africa and Africans.
I need to understand that racism against black people grew up as a way of justifying the exploitation of Africa in centuries past. If black could be stereotyped as sub-human and worthless, then there was no reason why their land and raw materials could not be stolen from them through colonisation, why they could not be murdered in large numbers, and why they could not become the slaves of the white man.
The colonisation and exploitation of Africa and the enslavement of African people must be the biggest crime in the whole of history, and one from which we still suffer, both materially and psychologically.
This is of course, a long term goal but some thing that offers some hope to black people in a global sense. In this context, there are many black people who, if they were given the positive prospects of participating in the RE-DEVELOPMENT and RE-EMERGENCE of black countries, would wish to do so, especially if they were supported in a structural programme funded in the spirit of reparations by those who have exploited black people for so long.
This is a far cry from any idea of running away from our current situation or of reparation.
We have to begin the debate now,before things get any worse.
For 250 years you (europeans) robbed millions of enslaved Africans of the wealth their labour created. The wealth that was rightfully theirs, which they should have been able to pass down to their descendents.That is the root cause of the huge economic disparity between blacks and whites that exists in Africa. You also committed indescribable mental psychological, and spiritual brutality against these enslaved Africans in order to coerce them into submitting to your exploitation. You robbed them of their identity as a people as you stripped from them their MOTHER TONGUE, their TRADITIONAL reliogions,and original cultures, and forced upon them instead European language, religion and culture. You destablized their social structures, relations beween men and women, the family and did everything you could to break their spirit, set one against another, and demoralize them as human beings.
This is because the mind-set slavery was based on- the belief that a person of African descent is less than a white person - has not changed CENTRALLY.
Reparation will also have to take in much more than money: it will have to include AS A CENTRAL FEATURE the restoration of all human rights to the descendants of enslaved person.
They must have their identity as a people restored and recognised throughout the World with all the human rights attached to it.This restoration of identity is crucial: any offer of reparations that does not include that is totally inadequate.
So what does Africa require of the west which had in the past enslaved it, destroyed its tribal institutions its culture its custom its economy,social, tradition and dealt with its inhabitants with the utmost contempt and insolence? Justice is number one. Justice is economic, social and political dealings. Justice in atoning for the harm it caused the continent and its peoples over the past centuries. Respect for its national policies and ideologies. Respect for its customs and beliefs, its past history and its future aspirations. Respect as one would fit as a partner and fellow world citizen. With all this, the injustice is still continuing in the field of aid programs, cooperation, conflict resolution etc. Africa is not a place for dumping of sterile development projects, unsustainable aid programs, non-feasible economic ventures and fundamentalist garbage. Africa should find its own social and be led by its own vision and aspiration.
I believe foreign aid breeds both corruption and dependency. When people (states) become dependent on aid they stop helping themselves.Today Africa is a basket case of lethargy and poverty. Not one country has emerged from colonial status as a free and functioning democracy,free of corruption and ethnic rivalries,where human rights are respected and rule of law is paramount,where citizens feel secure, safe, content.
Eritrea is the only African country that actually refuses some International bank loans,not wanted to be saddled with a debt they can never repay.
Thank you very much indeed
News.Asmarino.Com