Dear Presidents
We are still waiting for that magical moment when we, the people, will look up to you, our presidents, and have the spontaneity, the love to call you our leaders. Until then, “Not yet Uhuru”.
Once more, you met this February in your annual summit. You elected the Chair of the Commission, and many of us are glad you did not elect Honourable Raila Odinga, for a variety of reasons, but two of which are central to us: at age 80, that gentleman, forged in the fierce politics of Kenya, should really rest and nurse his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Secondly, his country’s president counted on the elegant exile of this powerful national force from the country’s politics to be able to effect political manipulations in his absence. It is very convoluted politics, with many Kenyans showing both understanding and ignorance of the issues surrounding this election of the AU Chair. Water is beyond the bridge now, and let the domestic Kenyan politics play on.
Our point, however, is not Hon. Raila. It is about the central theme of your gathering this year: Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations[1]. A very noble objective and aspiration. But we need to get there only after we have worked out certain preconditions you have been asking for, and we share general agreement.:
1. A fairer international economic system[2]. We see work being done in this area, as highlighted by the October 1981 Cancun conference, but we all agree that this is a titanic task. It requires more resolve, imagination and solidarity among heads of state. Particularly in the way we deal with international financial institutions that treat us as poor, while promoting the extractive industry, enabling investments. And while they facilitate your participation in the spoils through what is euphemistically called the PPP. You have shown valiant efforts of stopping us from being the menu to sitting at the table. Except we are not yet sitting at that proverbial and elusive table.
2. A seat or two for Africa as Permanent members of the UN Security Council. During this your summit, the Secretary General of the UN also made a strong case for Africa to have a place at the high table. But he was cautious not to specify “with veto power”.
We do think that we are not ready for that or those seats. We analyzed this issue in an earlier article[3], and we suggested that if the two seats were to serve the policies of the countries occupying them, then we would not have achieved nothing, because the system works by co-opting the weak into adopting positions of the superpowers. If countries are there on individual capacity, then Africa will not have contributed to a new international order. We need to adopt positions of the poor African globally. In that sense, you still have to define for everybody to understand how the two seats will serve African interests, and how you intend to enforce that tenet.
3. We have been asking for reparations for some time now. One country, Germany, tried to pay reparations with money, and that raised a discussion between the government of Namibia and the people who actually suffered the colonial exploitation as a group, displacement and genocide, the Herrero, the Nama and others. Clearly, there was no agreement with Germany, neither had there been prior dialogue between the government of Namibia and its people. The people that suffered, and on behalf of which the government purported to talk for, were not involved, they were a pretext for some money to change hands.
We wish to reiterate to you our presidents: reparations should not be a question of money, because money will end in the hands of your families, your praise-singers and your ever-hungry parties. The risk is that in another twenty years, the next generation will forget that there was ever compensation and we will revive the same discourse of financial compensation - again. Therefore, compensation must be permanent and must close once and for all this vexing relational discourse. For that to happen, the financial demands need to be removed from the reparations formula, so we can focus on:
Return of our cultural objects. This issue requires no elaboration.
The removal of foreign forces and bases from African countries. Which requires also some form of diplomatic peer pressure between and among yourselves.
The relentless pursuit of a new international economic system[4] where our resources serve our people first, and the extractive industry is subjected, first, to domestic rules that can be aligned with revised international rules. That requires the end of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)[5]. The rules of the ICSID require that settlement of disputes over investments between States and nationals of other states be resolved through laws that are foreign to Africa, and over which our representations have no chance of winning. Fortunately, through the AU, you already have good legal initiatives that need to be taken to the international playing field[6].
A victory in these three fronts would change international relations into a win-win relationship devoid of colonial mentality, one that allows us all to overtake the collective post-colonial trauma.
Clearly, there are those countries in Africa whose economies remain hostage to a colonial arrangement of treasury control, monetary bondage and income retention by the colonial master, and are still paying for the “benefits of colonization”, a colonization they never asked for. Those should be taken separately from this reparation (individually or collectively) as crimes for a tribunal, not for reparation.
Still, what does reparatory justice for Africa entail? In the Concept Note released on the eve of the summit, your Secretariat insists, among others, on financial reparations on communities affected by colonial exploitation, that we just discussed above, and land restitution. In relation to land restitution, the concept note remains laconic because it is politically explosive, even without the colonial element. We wish to put on record that it is the responsibility of our generation to ensure that future generations, in an expanding demographic, do not inherit from our generation the lack of attention and the political opportunism we are giving to this issue. Our elites are selling and mortgaging land in the name of conservation, the environment, tourism, carbon and other green shady deals. We indict you who exercise the power.
As long as the international finance and imperialist forces know and take for granted: that you are our weakest entry point and strongest repressive force; that you will be very happy to get a villa in Europe or Dubai or South Africa; that your untouchable and self-entitled children are impressed by and can be satisfied with a $500,000 watch that measures time as efficiently as a $50 time piece or as a 1999 Nokia mobile phone; and that a $1 million Bugatti gets to your head even though it can hardly carry 3 persons. We are going nowhere because you, the generals, are busy getting comfortable, while the troops are waiting for a cogent command voice. We have no fighting chance.
Can you take us to a better position? This situation brings to our minds a system that you had devised and promptly forgotten: the Peer Review Mechanism of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) adopted the 37th summit in July 2001 in Lusaka, Zambia[7]. In very few words, it is about “shaming each other into good governance at your level and in private, without the ubiquitous invitees, the observers that finance the AU.
In fact, let us finance the AU ourselves and get the self-invited observers out, or demand reciprocity in their meetings and their processes, including elections. Reciprocity, equality, sovereignty. But I digress.
You may want to revive the concept of peer review mechanism as a precondition to demanding justice and reparations for Africa: practice peer review to allow us to first clear our house as a sine qua non to raising ourselves to a superior ethical position that allows us to confront other continents. Then we will be undoubtedly superior to other Continents. To help in that project, allow us to throw into the ring the opening questions:
What is your strategy for the welfare of the youth? Why this point first? If you are a president, we need not elaborate. Suffice it to say that the demography is not the enemy that is made out to be. Just plan with and for it.
What is you strategy for reindustrialization? Again, we need not elaborate on the importance of this to our economies, nor of the huge capacities of African countries to reindustrialize. We are not poor, we are impoverished.
What level of sovereignty is exercised on the extractives industry? Before we go out asking for reparations, there is ample room to improve our dignity domestically. Reparation or no reparation.
What are we doing about the wars in DRC, in the Sudan, in Mozambique, etc? We need proof of leadership before we approach others.
Why are our presidents’ and Minsters’ families rushed to give birth abroad while our mothers give birth by the roadside on the way to ill-equipped hospitals; and why your children study abroad while ours learn under the mango tree, sitting on the bare floor, come rain, come sun?
Is it fair that a president presides over other presidents and is congratulated in Addis Ababa while at home he treats his own people like you can see below?
Cleaning house requires a renewal of the social contract between the sovereign (people) and his mandated agent (state), to be able to provide leadership. To the world. Lead us, do not preside over us, it feels like black colonialism.
Canhandula
Tete, February 2025
[1] https://au.int/en/pressreleases/20250128/38th-african-union-summit-focus-reparatory-justice-and-racial-healing-under
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