OPINION | 38th AU Summit’s reparatory justice and racial healing agenda was long overdue

The focus of the 38th African Union (AU) Summit, just concluded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was on reparatory justice for Africa.

The summit sought to heighten the long overdue call for reparations in Africa by holding former colonial powers to account. The approach to this entails several mechanisms and approaches that include policy reforms, cultural preservation, land restitution and financial reparations in pursuit of doing away with the legacy of the harsh past the continent endured.

Given the lack of accountability from former slaveholding countries and insufficient documentation of these impacts, comprehensive reparations are not only historically justified but are also morally and economically essential for addressing these lasting inequalities.

The nexus between colonialism and reparations

The effort to pursue reparatory justice and racial healing for African societies and those in the diaspora stems from the need to address the historical effects of colonialism, apartheid, genocide and the continued effects of the transatlantic slave trade in the 15th century until the 18th century, displacing a number of African people.

Africans were forcibly taken and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved in the parts of Europe and the Americas, along with valued artefacts which hold significant connection with African ancestry and spirituality. European museums continue to use these artefacts for touristic purposes without compensating the descendants of the previously enslaved and colonised.

This remains the case while African countries continue to grapple with the effects of the harsh past, including foreign discrimination, intra-African conflicts, diseases, extra-continental dependence and poverty-induced humanitarian crises.

According to the AU, reparatory justice for Africa entails promoting healing that can be achieved through the acknowledgement and recognition of African history. This means documenting the impacts of colonialism and slavery on African societies.

Public acknowledgement of these atrocities will bring a sense of responsibility for the immoral acts to the former slaveholding countries, thereby promoting and restoring dignity to the people who were/are affected by these historical injustices.

Not much has been done to ensure that former slave-holding countries bear the brunt of these human crimes, though the UN Human Rights Council has taken a few initiatives, such as the International Decade for the People of the African Descendent (2014-15), with the aims to promote the human rights of people of African descent and combat racial discrimination. As such, the pursuit of reparations and racial healing for Africa should be undertaken with much consideration of the role of coloniality on with the continent.

The merit underlying the 38th AU Summit’s theme of 2025

Addressing this historical injustice is not just a moral imperative; it is also a crucial step towards economic empowerment, cultural and historical restoration. So the African heads of state and government’s convention at Addis Ababa this year was long overdue.

Africans do not only associate land to wealth but it also holds crucial value for culture, one’s origin and spirituality. Africans lost a part of their being when they were dispersed to different parts of the world, and lost access to tombs of their loved ones, which are crucial for culture and spirituality

To start with, financial reparation, highlighted as one of the key approaches of colonial and the slave trade redress, remains fundamental in pursuing economic justice for Africans, and reversing economic disfranchisement of the West’s continued and historical role within Africa. Through financial reparation, issues of poverty, the effects of climate change — the causes of which Africa barely accounts for — and infrastructural lag could be things of the past.

This implies using the economic reparations for infrastructural development and to better the living conditions of African in education and health. Moreover, with some of the African land still under former colonisers’ influence and control, its restitution remains essential considering how multinational corporations exploit minerals, which in turn inflict violence among indigenous populations, such as in some parts of West Africa, where Nigerian oil exploration continues to spark insurgency, and in Southern Africa, where gas projects in Mozambique continue to spark violence and displace people from their indigenous land.

Accompanied by effective policy reforms as witnessed in South Africa, African leaders could adopt the country’s approach of land restitution through the Expropriation Act to address injustices over land use and ownership. Africans do not only associate land to wealth but it also holds crucial value for culture, one’s origin and spirituality. Africans lost a part of their being when they were dispersed to different parts of the world, and lost access to tombs of their loved ones, which are crucial for culture and spirituality. This has led to a depletion of African cultural practices and wealth.

Today African states remain poor and immensely dependent on aid because the majority of people do not own sufficient land. As is in the case of South Africa, only the few own arable land that can produce for commercial purposes, which prompted the need to review land ownership because of how it has caused vast economic inequality.

Cultural and historical restoration is important as the transatlantic slave trade not only displaced Africans but denied them cultural heritages and historical rites of passage.

History has the facts in abundance — the rich civilisations of Egypt, Kush and Axum, the great empires of Songhai, Kanem-Bornu, Oyo, Ashanti, Ife, Benin and Zimbabwe.

Bronze heads, plaques and other artefacts from the kingdom of Benin, for example, located in modern southern Nigeria, are testament to their advanced political system, which was centralised and hierarchical and working perfectly before the British destroyed it in 1897. Returning the Benin bronzes would make the society of descendants feel connected to their history and proud.

Cultural and historical restoration is important for Africa so that future generations may learn African history, not Western history. 

Beyond the summit and the theme of the year

While the theme of this year managed to unite almost all African heads of states and governments to speak in one voice in pursuit of colonial redress, the acknowledgement and the willingness of the former colonial rulers remains key towards full reparative justice and racial healing in Africa and its diaspora.

This requires making use of South Africa’s chairmanship in the G20, and the AU’s admission to that multilateral body to not let this year’s theme be a futile exercise but to bring about reparatory justice and racial healing within the continent.

Similarly, the UN General Assembly and Security Council must be platforms to heighten the call for reparations for Africa and its diaspora.

• Hlubelihle Makhanda, Katlego Papalagae and Gontse Skosana are graduates of BSocSci (Hons) in international relations from North-West University (Mahikeng campus)

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