At the seafront in Liverpool, the Africans remember their enslaved ancestors
rica”, to jointly take the reparations struggle forward. In an exclusive interview with New African, the mayor of Liverpool, Frank Prendergast, said “reparation should mean finding ways to end human suffering and the exploitation among the African people, which still persists”. Last year, the UK’s race and equality minister, Andrew Stunell, admitted before a hushed gathering that: “Freedom is a gift from God … and it is a crime to take it away from someone. Te new [UK] coalition government is highly committed against slavery.” However, in a later interview with New
African, Stunell appeared to backpeddle: “We don’t believe that reparation is a way of tackling the issue of the slave trade,” he said. “Rather, Britain has been working closely with other nations and international insti- tutions to tackle the effect of modern day slavery that has seen people being shipped to Europe from the impoverished countries of the world, most of them from Africa, for the sex trade, cheap labour, and the like.” Following the lectures, and the in-
ter-faith church services, and memorial processions, the traditional African liba- tion and invocation ceremony (marked by the breaking and sharing of cola-nuts and the pouring of dry gin) was per- formed. Te community leaders, led by the chairman of the event, Chief Angus Chukwuemeka, invoked the spirits of the African ancestors, as Dr George Etugo declared in Igbo: “Madu abughi ewu” (A human being is not a goat)! Visitors then threw roses into the sea
nated in the defeat of the Spanish, and the French under Napoleon Bonaparte. Many people attending the Liverpool
events agreed that the success or failure of what Africa stands to achieve in repara- tion lies hugely with Africans; and unless Africans in the Diaspora did away with complacency and spoke with one voice, the fight for reparation would come to naught. “For instance,” one speaker said, “when
Tony Blair was invited to an international conference on slavery hosted by South Af- rica, he delegated one of us [an African], Baroness Amos, to attend in his stead. And this is what Amos told the gathering: ‘Brit- ain cannot pay reparations because the
trade was legal at the time under review’.” Dorothy Kuya, who was one of the forc-
es that got the city of Liverpool to apologise for its part in the infamous trade, conceded that Africans too are to blame, because they got paid for the slaves. One speaker, however, switched the topic a bit: Noting that all the pressure has been on the former European and American slaving powers to pay reparations, he asked: “What about the millions of African slaves taken by the Arabs during the time of Julius Caesar?” It is not certain how far the reparation
advocates can go with their campaign, in- cluding the call for a coalition of countries to be known as the “United Nations of Af-
near the International Slavery Museum and the Merseyside Maritime Museum in remembrance of the “ancestors who were dumped into the sea in an undignified manner, and in unmarked graves in Liv- erpool and in other parts of the world”. It is a testament to the healing process
that today both the descendants of the of- fenders and offended can share the same platform, or face one another over tea and coffee, and deliberate on the spirit of for- giveness. As someone quipped: “Te spirits of our forefathers are beginning to forgive, because for the first time in the history of the annual event in Liverpool, it did not rain this year.” It is a debatable point.
New African | October 2011 | 55
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