The Africa exception: the slavery reparations debate was once ‘unthinkable’. Now it is unavoidable
The architect of the African Union’s reparations framework for the historic UN resolution explains why demands for historical justice are inseparable from the struggle for Black sovereignty
TL;DR
- Emmanuel Macron became the first French president to publicly use the word "reparations" in relation to historical injustices against Black people.
- France historically extorted Haiti for 150 million francs after its declaration of independence, treating enslaved Africans as 'property'.
- Macron's use of "reparations" is seen as a pre-emptive move before the African Union adopts its common position on the issue.
- The article highlights an "Africa exception" where Western nations pay reparations for lost assets (enslavers) but not for the loss of African people or nations.
- Examples include British reparations to enslavers and payments to Mau Mau survivors, and Germany's settlement for the Nama and Herero genocide.
- The international legal order, since the Chorzów factory case, requires victims to be recognized as sovereign to receive reparations, a condition undermined by the historical destruction of Black sovereignty through slavery, colonialism, and apartheid.
- Haiti's demand for restitution for the 1825 indemnity and the subsequent coup exemplify the denial of Black sovereignty.
- Ghana's UN resolution on trafficking of enslaved Africans invoked the principle that "a crime does not rot," but was met with dismissal by the EU as "regional jurisprudence."
- The article traces the origins of modern sovereignty and the racial capitalist system to 1441 and papal bulls, codifying African people as property.
- The principle of *partus sequitur ventrem* (status follows the womb) made enslavement hereditary, turning Black women's wombs into sites of capital reproduction.
- The global reparations movement must shift from moral persuasion to geopolitical cost imposition, leveraging Africa's critical minerals and south-south cooperation.
- The cost of refusing reparations must be made higher than the cost of providing them for the issue to become "thinkable".