Comrade Chairman, Hon. Kofi Attoh,
Prof. Akilagpa Sawyerr,
Hon. Regional Minister;
Hon. MPs,
Staff, faculties and workers of Ho Polytechnic,
Colleague students,
Friends from the media,
Ladies & Gentlemen.

Scope of paper
This paper looks at the issue of reparation to Africa for the crimes against the continent as a result of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. The paper gives a broad introduction to the concept of reparation by focusing on effects of slavery and colonialism including: economic and moral degeneration, depopulation (referred to as a demographic catastrophe), crime wave of slavery and colonialism. The paper further argues the legal basis for reparation and delves into the avalanche of evidence of compensation and reparation payments and offcourse how Nkrumah came in. It establishes that reparation to Africa cannot be treated lightly because the consequences of the delay especially in the face of Africa struggling to catch up with the rest of the world in development terms may become too unbearable for a free world. 

Introduction
I wish to start this paper with news report by BBC News (Link) on April 29, 1999.
“The African World Reparations and Repatriation Commission, at its first conference in Accra, Ghana, issued a report that demanded substantial reparations for the historical exploitation of Africa by Western Europeans and North Americans. These reparations include $777 trillion (USD), full and unconditional cancellation of all African debt, and repatriation assistance to all descendents of Africans who wish to return. The figure of $777 trillion (USD) is based on an estimate of lives lost during the slave trade and colonialism, as well as the estimated value of all resources extracted from Africa from the fifteenth century onward”. The Commission plans to pursue a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice. It represents at least the beginning of putting figures to this abominable crime against humanity.
The debate has being long and sometimes emotional, sometimes invoking extreme passion. There is yet to be a determination on the direction and may be conclusion of a subject that has engaged humanity for many centuries. Somehow a solution must be found and appropriate apologies rendered, and logically, compensation or reparation and repatriation made to the victims or survivors of the victims.

For many people of European descent, slavery is little more than an unpleasant memory of a bygone and distant era; largely remembered more for the glory of empires lost and faded dreams of conquest and exploration. For many Africans and African Americans, however, slavery remains an unhealed wound that is frequently, if not constantly, reopened by feelings of continued oppression, manipulation, and discrimination. Paying reparations would help heal the wounds.

Throughout the debate, what is not in contention is that slavery and colonialism took place, that it had devastating and irreparable consequence on a continent and that it had extreme inhumane character, and above all that the resources (Material and human), natural wealth of the continent of Africa were pillaged for the growth and economic growth of other continents especially Europe and the Americas, and that is a crime of unimaginable character that must not recur anymore and anywhere in the world. But what is in contention is whether the present countries of Europe or America should pay for these actions?

Moral and economic break down
There was indeed economic and moral break down occasioning an adverse path of dependence of African peoples. Europeans and slave masters capitalised on powerful African chiefs (exploited) and further empowered them with arms (sophisticated) so authoritarianism was created to enable them to compel people into the trade and through constant wars of superiority mainly perpetuated by tribal chiefs so as to expropriate the gains of selling conquered tribes into slavery. Corruption and all sorts of morally unacceptable traits were incorporated into the fabrics of society and this trend is still prevalent in Africa countries. No wonder that the canker of corruption and dictatorship, the vestiges of slavery and colonialism are still a dominant trait of the continent Africa- but who caused it?

These tribal wars were responsible for strained horizontal trade ties among Africans and continue to be. This became a major impediment to inter-regional trade patterns while at the same time fostered unbridled importation of European manufactured products. Depopulation through slavery contributed in no small measure to the destruction of native manufacturers and the hardening of authoritarianism.  Surely, trading between Africa and Europe substituted for horizontal trade patterns in Africa. Africa by this has been denied the development of robust linkages between local economies. The prospects of “learning by doing” consequently evaporated from the African continent. Under colonialism, countries were coerced into producing and exporting primary products (mainly agricultural or raw material such as mineral and forest products). Colonial industry was ignored, as was the supporting matrix for industry, such as education, a financial system and or technical training. This trade pattern for a long time and still remain the basis for the ever deteriorating terms of trade and balance of payment debacles of almost all Africa nations.


Demographic Catastrophe
Slavery and colonialism led to a massive loss of African labour. Slave buyers preferred their victims to be between the ages of 15-35 and even more preferably in their early twenties with a captive-sex-ratio of two men to one woman. The most virile, productive and healthy were in high demand, and whenever possible, they took the trouble to “catch” those who had already survived an attack of smallpox, hence were immune from further threats or attacks of the disease which at the time was one of the worlds marauding killers. What was left of the African population was the aged who had little energy capable of reproduction and of kids who were not of the reproductive age. Thus, there was a huge gap and Africa’s population lagged dangerously behind her counterparts and especially in the buying countries. This trend of stagnation of the African population is vividly pictured by the table below.

Table 1: Population Change of 3 Continents (1650-1900)

Period	1650	1750	1850	1900
Africa	100	100	100	120
Europe	103	144	274	423
Asia	257	437	656	857

Source: Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa P. 111

It is evident that from the 15th century to the 17th century, it is only Africa’s population that did not grow and had a marginal growth in the 19th century while Europe and Asia had tremendous increases to the population. What could account for this strange and shocking trend? This is a demographic catastrophe. The demographic crises of nearly 400 years are indeed intriguing. Quoting from Cypher & Dietz in their book – the process of economic development, 2nd edition page 72, “the slave trade furnished one part of the colonial world with labour to fill the vast lands acquired by colonial powers, at the cost of depopulating Africa. Between 1600 and 1900, approximately 12 million Africans were sold into slavery and brought to the Western Hemisphere, with an additional 36 million dying as a result of constant warfare throughout Africa, or on the long march to the coast, or in slave pens awaiting shipment across the Atlantic (stavrianos 1981:109) and between 1650-1850, Africa’s share of world population fell from 18 percent to 8 percent”. Evidently these approximations excluded those who were smuggled out of Africa and into slavery.

Crime against humanity
As a result of the Berlin conference to partition Africa in 1884, Belgium’s king Leopold II seized the vast territory of the Congo Free State in Central Africa. To draw out the coveted red mahogany, ivory, and rubber of the Congo, Leopold built a 241-mile rail-road from the mouth of the Congo River to Stanley Pool, eliminating three-week porter-age. In the first two years of the construction project an estimated 3,600 of the 60,000 workers died.
“The railroad was a modest engineering success and a major human disaster. Men succumbed to accidents, dysentery, smallpox, beriberi, and malaria, all exacerbated by bad food and relentless floggings by the two hundred-man railroad militia force. Engines ran off tracks; freight cars full of dynamite exploded, blowing workers to bits…sometimes there were no shelters for the people to sleep in, and the recalcitrant labourers were led to work in chains….when bugles sounded in the morning, crowds of angry labourers laid at the feet of European supervisors the bodies of their comrades who had died during the night” (Cypher & Dietz, 2004:82)
The French got Africans to start building the Brazzaville to Point-Noire railway in 1921, and it was not completed until 1933. Every year of its construction, some ten thousand people were driven to the site-sometimes from more than a thousand kilometers away. A 25 percent of the labour force died annually from starvation and disease, the worst period being from 1922-1929 (Rodney 1974:209,166)
Per the tenets of The Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, crime against humanity was defined in the most charitable words "Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population.... whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country here perpetrated" The Charter also gave jurisdiction to the Tribunal to try cries against Peace ('planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression...'), and War Crimes ('violation of the laws and customs of war... including murder, ill-treatment, or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory..')
It is considered by international lawyers that the Nuremberg Charter did not create new law, but declared and confirmed concepts of international criminality which had been accepted over centuries. As one writer puts it: "The tribunal found that acts so reprehensible as to offend the conscience of mankind, directed against civilian populations, are crimes in international law"


Legal basis for reparation
The cause of Reparations to Africa and Africans in the Diaspora is rooted in fundamental justice - a justice which overarches every struggle and campaign which African people have waged to assert their human dignity. Reparations are locatable within a framework of law and justice. If this were merely an appeal to the conscience of the White world, it would be misconceived. For while there have been many committed individuals and movements of solidarity in the White world, its political and economic power centre’s have evidenced a ruthless lack of conscience when it comes to Black and African peoples.
But progress has been made when the powers that rule in the white world have been reminded to recognise that the rights of non-white peoples are founded in justice. It is then that forms of legal redress, which may not have existed before, have been devised.
So it is with the claim for Reparations. Indeed, once you accept, as I do, the truth of three propositions

• That the mass kidnap and enslavement of Africans was the most wicked criminal enterprise in recorded human history,
• that no compensation was ever paid by any of the perpetrators to any of the sufferers, and
• that the consequences of the crime continue to be massive, both in terms of the enrichment of the descendants of the perpetrators (Barclays Bank link to slavery is a testimony), and in terms of the impoverishment of Africa and the descendants of Africans then the justice of the claim for Reparations is proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Precedents of Reparations
There abounds substantial and undisputable literature on the payment of reparation for the destruction of property, buildings, ships etc. But the principle is just as valid in the case of illegal actions on a larger scale which affect whole peoples. Indeed there are direct precedents for the payment of reparations in such cases: Britain Prime Tony Blair is quoted to have said on 31 January, 2001 “Justice done on Lockerbie” this was after a court ruling on the Lockerbie plane crash involving 259 passengers masterminded by a Libyan government official. Robin Cook also said “the Lockerbie bombing stands among the most brutal acts of mass murder” and expects Libya to pay at least $700m compensation and take responsibility for the actions of Abdel-baset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. The Libyan official was convicted of murdering all 259 people on the plane and a further 11 who died on the ground (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1147194.stm). Without watering down the issue, if the death of 259 people can be said to be among “most brutal acts of mass murder” deserving compensation, what can be said about the death of more than 38 million Africans through the axes of slavery and colonialism?

• In 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany reached agreement with Israel for the payment of $222 million, following a claim. Israel which was limited to the costs of resettling 500,000 Jews who had fled from Nazi controlled countries. Much later, in 1990, Austria made payments totaling $25 million to survivors’ of the Jewish holocaust.

A number of agreements have been made under the British Foreign Compensation Act of 1950; lump sum settlements were made by Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Egypt and Rumania, and a Tribunal was set up to make awards from the sums made available, so as to do justice as between many thousands of claimants whose property had been expropriated. A US-Iran Claims Tribunal was set up in 1981 for a similar purpose.
Japan has made reparation payments to South Korea for acts committed during the period of invasion and occupation of Korea by Japan
Most recently, the United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution, binding in international law, requiring Iraq to pay reparations for its invasion of Kuwait.
It is therefore clear that the concept of reparations is firmly established and actively pursued by states, on behalf of their injured nationals, against other wrongdoing states.
In addition, one can identify a second category of reparations which is of great relevance. This is where a state has accepted the responsibility to make restitution, not just to other states, to groups of people within its own borders whose rights had been violated.
In 1988 the United States Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which was designed to make restitution to Japanese Americans in respect of losses brought about by "any discriminatory act of the US Government...based upon the individual's Japanese ancestry during the wartime period when Japanese Americans were interned in great numbers. A Commission was set up to investigate' claims. 

A total of $1.2 billion, or about $20,000 for each claimant, was paid.  Surely these are but few cases where compensation and reparation has been paid alongside unqualified apologies. Germany still uses every opportunity to apologise for crimes of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.
So with the avalanche of evidence of reparation payments, how come that the atrocities committed on Africa and people of African descent vis-à-vis crimes against humanity, genocide, economic crimes, devastated population with attendant identity crisis, the issue of reparation to Africa has been reduced to a footnote? Identity crises of the kind that still face Democratic President and US President, Barrack Obama continue to surface. Obama is said to be a Blackman in America, yet to the African, Obama is not a Blackman, so where does this young man belong?
There were no entry restrictions as Europeans immigrated to Africa, though they used the occasion to enslave, colonise, exploit and rape the economy and people with audacity to even partition Africa in 1884 in Berlin. The reverse is true of Africans getting to Europe today. The emergence of Independence in Africa was reluctantly accepted. Even then, atrocious crimes including masterminding the despicable murder of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of Congo and the CIA role in the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), first generation leaders of Africa is regrettable

From the brief characterisation, there is incontrovertible moral, economic, legal and precedential justification for reparation. The agonies of slavery are fresh especially that it is inexorably linked to the underdevelopment of African peoples. That slavery and colonialism are the worse for of crimes against humanity.  It is must be restated that the struggles of mankind has been that of seeking without respite the accordance of equal, fair and equitable share of justice. Germany has paid reparations for the “sins” of their forebears’ consequently smooth edging relationship with affected countries and people. So should Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, Britain, America etc accept that their forebear degraded a continent and make for the crimes so that justice would have been done. These reparations must be paid to the African Union. That struggle for Africa cannot come to an end unless the crimes against her are adequately recognised, apologised for and reparation and compensation paid by the perpetuating entities including; Europe, America and indeed the church. Payment of reparation to Africa for slave trade and colonialism is long overdue and should be realised now.

Nkrumah
Nkrumah like Marcus Garvey, W.E. B. Du Bois came face to face with the truth of the world in their sojourn to the USA.The reality and the stress that Africans went through and are still going through, catapulted people like Nkrumah to dismantle the shackles of exploitation of Africa by conduit of colonialism. Clearly, the strenuousness of the era required real men. Nkrumah was a real man of character, man of purpose, man of enormous confidence and above all a man of unshakable faith.       At his time he came across many weaklings who professed to be leaders, but in the test he found them to be slaves of nobler class. These weaklings, who constituted themselves into a movement, were concerned about reforms and not achieving political sovereignty. They could not sacrifice themselves for the just course of the masses. They belonged to the aristocratic order. It was this feeble mindedness that ensured that Kwame Nkrumah broke links with them. Nkrumah is the man who will never say die; the man who will never give up; the man who will never depend upon others to do for him what he ought to do for himself; the man who will not blame God, who will not blame Nature, who will not blame Fate for his condition; but the man who will go out and make conditions to suit himself.

Just after attaining political independence, Nkrumah’s efforts were to achieve economic independence, break the barriers to the vertical trade pattern that was introduced and bring on board horizontal trade (trade among Africa). This informed his call for an African Central Bank, African High Command etc.

That Nkrumah put in place his industrial agenda 1st by establishment of Akosombo Dam to provide energy for industry, education, agriculture, mining etc, was not only visionary, but a clear demonstration of the selflessness and sacrifice of leadership that is lacking in many a present day leadership of African countries.

Whilst we collectively rekindle in ourselves the passion for demanding justice through our unending call for reparation, like Nkrumah, the path to independence and self-reliance is an arduous yet attainable dream.

The times we live in is a CALL TO SERVICE; A CALL NOT TO BE SERVED,
A CALL TO BE LIBERATED; AND A CALL TO LIBERATE.
OUR DESTINY LIES WITH US!!!!!!

Arise Ghana youth for your country
The Nation demands your devotion….

I thank.