By Elizabeth Sitotombe
FOR centuries, Africa has borne the brunt of European colonial brutality.
The story, our story, is carved in blood, sweat and tears. It is a sad story no longer told on dark wintry nights around fires.
It is a story best relegated to the dustbins of history by those who would rather assuage their conscience by telling us ‘where we come from does not matter; what matters is where we are going’.
Ours is a sad story where we are told Africa was a dark continent before the white man shone his torch of syphilisation (read civilisation) and emphasised that darkness was not a subject of history (Trevor Roper).
Ours is sad story of generational genocide, rewritten history, erasure of our collective memory and reprogramming of our minds to worship a foreign god whose teachings encouraged docility in the face of abuse.
While all men are said to be born equal, slavery — the precursor to colonialism — imposed a hierarchy that relegated the black man to second-class citizen.
South Africa’s very own Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years, for fighting for a just cause, but when he finally emerged from prison, he made a statement that was both profound and contentious:
“As l walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if l did not leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”
White people applauded him for choosing peace, but according to the ground Mandela was walking on, such a declaration was an acceptance of defeat. Mandela went in prison for a just cause, but when he got out, he was more apologetic for that same cause. His statement was contentious in its ambiguity.
Mandela died a man more endeared to the enemy than the just cause he suffered and sacrificed for.
“In 1884, European powers gathered in Berlin to divide Africa among themselves without a single African representative present. The Berlin Conference formalised the Scramble for Africa, where colonial powers drew arbitrary borders, ignoring ethnic, cultural, and historical realities. These artificial divisions sowed the seeds of modern conflicts: Rwanda’s genocide, Nigeria’s civil war, and the Congo’s endless bloodshed. The entire Western economy is soaked in African blood. Every gold bar, every diamond ring, every oil barrel owes a debt to this continent.
“European powers extracted Africa’s wealth — gold, diamonds, rubber, ivory — while leaving its people in engineered poverty. King Leopold II of Belgium turned the Congo into his personal space, where millions of Congolese were slaughtered or worked to death for rubber. Those who failed to meet quotas had their hands chopped off.”
Germany, not to be outdone, committed the first genocide of the 20th century in Namibia (then German South West Africa). Between 1904 and 1908, German forces exterminated 65 000 Herero and 10 000 Nama people. Survivors were herded into concentration camps, where they were worked to death and subjected to inhuman experiments. Their skulls were shipped to Germany as trophies.
Today, Europe positions itself as the guardian of human rights, yet its wealth was built on African suffering.
When Namibia demanded justice, Germany refused to call its payment ‘reparations’ fearing this would set a legal precedent while acknowledging the genocide. Its €1,1 billion ‘development aid’ offer (spread over 30 years) was a humongous travesty of justice — how do you put a cost on human life; indeed, how do you quantify human suffering!
Meanwhile, descendants of the Herero and Nama were excluded from negotiations.
No figure is adequate to compensate for the loss of life, but what the Germans offered then was an insult to the very God they purport to worship.
In his State of the Nation Address in June 2020, then Namibian President Hage Geingob said that Namibia rejected the US$11,7 million offer by German as reparations for the genocide perpetrated by German settlers.
“First, they offered €10 million . . . Honestly, it is an insult. We said that’s an insult,” the Namibian President was quoted as saying in media reports.
Africa has not been compensated for losses, both material and human, incurred during colonialism. Instead, they are the ones asked to pay for demanding back their resources such as land. For instance, the British gave Kenyan land to third parties and it is now owned by multinational tea companies.
In Zimbabwe, from 1890 when the Pioneer Column, armed with rifles and imperial arrogance, hoisted the Union Jack over Salisbury and declared the land theirs, we see the same script of savage dispossession replaying.
For over a century, white settlers, backed by British guns and draconian laws, stole Zimbabwe’s land, and crushed resistance with genocide. Millions of blacks were confined to overcrowded, infertile reserves.
The blood of those massacred cries out from mass graves strewn all over the country and beyond our borders; they can be heard from Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Tembue, Mkushi, Freedom Camp, Chibondo and many others too numerous to mention. They demand not just remembrance, but reparatory justice.
And yet, for years, Zimbabwe has been suffering under a punitive sanctions regime for reclaiming their own land. President Emmerson Mnangagwa called on the British government to issue an apology to Zimbabwe for the brutality and colonial violence meted to Zimbabweans during the colonial era during a launch of a study by the Zimbabwe National Elders’ Forum (ZNEF) titled: “Land Displacements: The Untold Stories of Crimes, Injustices, Trauma and Losses Experienced by Indigenous Zimbabweans During the Colonial Era (1890-1980): A Case for Reparations”on October 31 last year in Harare.
Much as this was a good start, it falls short of national expectations. Our sovereignty and self- determination is all the mandate we need to boldly state: We are done talking; we are taking what belongs to us.
In South Africa, we see a replay of the same tragic drama. The US recently cut aid to South Africa for even discussing land reform, and falsely claimed white farmers were under threat yet the real threat has always been on black people demanding justice.
In 2009, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi (now late) stood before the African Union (AU) demanding US$7,77 trillion in reparations from Africa’s former colonial powers.
Gaddafi, instead, became a villain in the Western media and in 2021 his own people were used to end a life of a hero who was fighting against the suppression of Africa’s reparations movement.
We again see the same pattern emerging at continental fora. The AU declared 2025 the ‘Year of Reparations’ — are we, as the wronged party, backing this call with action or simply playing to the gallery with hollow platitudes!
The first pan-African conference on reparations for the enslavement, the colonisation and the African neo-colonisation was held in Abuja, Nigeria, as far back as 1993.
It was sponsored by the Committee of Eminent Personalities and by the Reparations Commission of the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now AU.
This “. . . Abuja Proclamation (called) upon the international community to recognise that there is a unique and unprecedented moral debt owed to the African peoples which has yet to be paid — the debt of compensation to the Africans as the most humiliated, exploited people of the last four centuries of modern history. (It argued for) the Organisation of African Unity to call for full monetary payment of repayments through capital transfer and debt cancellation. (It also) convinced that the claim for reparations is well grounded in International Law, (urged) on the organisation of African Unity to establish a legal committee on the issue of reparations. (It served) notice on all states in Europe and the Americas which had participated in the enslavement and colonisation of African peoples, and which may still be engaged in racism and neo-colonialism, to desist from any further damage and start building bridges of conciliation, co-operation, and through reparation . . .”
The facts highlighted in this document would have taken African nations far by now had the contents been recognised by the concerned parties.
Zimbabweans need reparations, so does South Africa and many other nations on the continent — bygones cannot be bygones until justice is served and justice delayed is justice denied.