Page 232 - A People Called Afrika

A PEOPLE CALLED AFRIKA

connection to nature and its healing power. The list is end-
less. Take the example of Ethiopia. Once they announced
that they would have visas on arrival for Afrikans, they seem
to have popularized it somehow in their country, because
a visit we made to Addis and its environs was filled with
warm greetings and smiles, and friendly shouts of, “Afrika!”
wherever we went. That should be the standard we aim for.

The issue of reparations for Afrika’s days of woe

The question of reparations for the period of slavery in Af-
rika and the woes of colonization has been under review for
quite a long time, particularly in European countries. It is
not clear whether this debate is taking place in Arab coun-
tries who took slaves from the East Afrikan coast for cen-
turies. Not every country in Europe is warm to the idea,
though, particularly the former British Empire which ben-
efited greatly from its colonial pursuits around the world.

This reluctance is understandable, from the perspective of
the high cost financially and perhaps even socially, that these
countries would have to pay seeing that most of their econo-
mies were built on and bolstered by their various slavery and
colonial activities. This quote from Pambazuka News website
is quite telling: In the light of the former British Prime Min-
ister’s dismissal of reparations, activists must push the debate
further by detailing what reparations should entail. Funda-
mental to a reparations programme must be the fact that we
transform the system of Capitalism which slavery gave birth to.

Quite frankly, it is necessary to advance the debate that Brit-
ain and the West in general (i.e. all those slave trading na-
tions such as France, The Netherlands, Spain, the USA,

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