As political leaders of Commonwealth countries meet in the Pacific Island of Samoa throughout this week, reparations over the slave trade and apology from Britian over the issue constitute a divisive subject.
Although climate change is the main overriding theme at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on Friday, the issue of reparation has sneaked its way to the main working document of the summit despite protestations from the UK.
Small island nations in the pacific and the Caribbean have been pushing for it to be on the agenda of the summit but met with resistance from UK officials who hold that the summit would do better looking to the future and not dwell on a past which is long gone.
As a metter of principle Britain appears reluctant to toe this now popular line by smaller members of the Commonwealth who are keen to point out her role as a key player of the slave trade which lasted over 300 years from the mid 1500s to the latter hald of the 19th century.
African members of the Commonwealth which had bore the brunt of this indecent trade in their people who were chained and shipped to the Americas as slaves lend a sympathetic ear to the growing calls for reparation to be included in the official communique.
Two of the candidates vying to replace Patricia Scotland as secretary general of the 56-member organisation hailed from West African countries which were within the vortex of the trans Atlantic Slave trade.
Mamadou Tangara and Shirley Botchwey come from The Gambia and Ghana – two nations which were part of Britain’s colonial empire and bore some of the brunt of the slave trade in which millions were forcibly uprooted from their communities to work in plantations of the new world. The other candidate is Joshua Setipa of Lesotho who is also vocing support for reparations to be considered as a legitmate theme to be explored at the summit and subsequent ones.
Bordering on open defiance to the UK, these nations are banding together to explore the idea of including reparatory justice as a theme at the summit even if it would provide some uncomfortable moments for British officials who are resisting calls for an official apology and sums paid to countries affected by the slave trade.
The candidates for the leadership of the organisation favour the issue to be introduced to the Commonwealth conversation which would examine the nature or form such reparations will take.
Aside from the obvious logic of financial reparations, other forms of making amends for the atrocious wrng of the slave trade and slavery is an official apology from the British monarch, the waiving of foreign debt, and other kinds of assistance to countries whose poverty can be linked to the centuries-old explotation of their populations.
Britain forever reluctant to pay reparations, has been literally arguing with other members of the organisation over the nature of the CHOGM 2024 conversation.
If reparations would have to be paid to those countries and regions directly affected by the British monarch’s role in the slave trade, it would run into trillions of pounds and Britain by all indication does not seem willing to countenance this.
While these are estimates, the extent of the damage done as a result of the transaction in slaves is well documented, according to historians in countries in Africa, the Pacific and the Caribbean.
Meanwhile, while opening the CHOGM summit in Samoa on Friday, King Charles III’s speech tiptoed around the word reparations and lectured Commonwealth leaders about history is there from which lessons can be drawn.
The king implied in his speech that it would be an exercise in futility to try to change the past but urged members of the organisation to find ‘creative ways’ to right the inequalities which had their roots in such history.
The closest the monarch ever came to an apology of any kind for Britain’s role in African history was during his 2023 visit to Kenya where he stopped short of using the word despite calls for him to do so.
All the king did was to acknowledge the ‘pains and injuries’ associated with British history in East Africa including Kenya which endured more than 60 years of colonial bondage.
Sir Keir Starmer distinguished for being the first British prime minister to visit a Pacific island advised CHOGM leaders “acknowledge our shared history – especially when it’s hard”.
He expressed understanding of the ‘strong feeling’ for reparations from Britian for its part in the trade in humans, but stopped short of accepting his country’s responsibility for the untold consequences on communities, countries and regions of the world affected by it.
He was in sync with other British officials associated with the Commonwealth who had blocked plans for a separate declaration on the issue which would have been uncomfortable reading for Britain.
However a compromise was reached with the rebellious members of the Commonwealth who wre partially mollified by an inclusion of at least three paragraphs detailing the Commonwealth’s position on the thorny issue of reparation.
Thus part of the official working document during the CHOGM suggests that a majority of countries of the Commonwealth share the same historical experiences of the slave trade, which it referred to as chattel enslavement, and stripping some regions of their indigenous peoples.
Ahead of the summit the organisation protecting the interests of Caribbean nations known as Caricom, had campaigned spiritedly for a ”just and open” conversation about reparations to cover the Pacific region aside from the Atlantic.
There is a feeling among the officials from ‘reparation countries’ that even if CHOGM 2024 does not give room for much conversation about Britain apologising and paying compensation to those affected by the trans Atlantic slave trade, the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the Caribbean would make it the centrepiece of its agenda in 2026.
Countries in the Caribbean have been keen to carry the torch for reparations and African states are not far behind.
By that time an African would head the organisation and the clamour of smaller member states in respect of mitigating the impacts of climate change and reparations from the slave trade would no longer be perpatually ignored by Britain whose influential still looms large over many of its co-members.
WN/as/APA