Colonial apartheid atrocities rightly elicit claims to redress past harms
But the ball is in reparatory scholars’ court to prove historic injury, sufferance
Unjustified injuries inevitably trigger demands for remediation, almost always, at some point.
If so, colonial-apartheid atrocities rightly produce claims to redress.
This face of reparative justice claims is easily cognisable. But it hides a deeper and larger claim to wholeness. Wholeness returns something to its original condition, or nearly there, and compensates for intervening fissures.
Return and reparation are thus key remedies for colonial-apartheid harms. Wholeness builds on such ideas as replacement, atonement, restoration and restitution. Wholeness concepts recognise, enable and propel national reconstruction, an essential for shattered nations.
This logic is perfectly compelling. Appreciation of colonial-apartheid depredations may be faint. However, colonial-apartheid harms equate to major world system shocks. Think of natural and ecological disasters, public health crises and material armed conflict.
Picture post-1945 Germany. Imagine postBelgian genocide Congo. Take Rwanda post-genocide. And on, we could continue.
Reparative justice scholarship must frame the imperative of global justice. The fundamental justice thrust of reparatory scholarship is as eternal, of course, as is unremedied unjust injury. This intellectual and political ambition fuels the University of the Free State (UFS) Africa Reparation Hub.
Reparatory scholars must prove the historic injury.
This is not a tool of attack, discomfiture, or division. It merely grounds the justice claim. The Reparation Hub helps formulate AU reparative claims across conceptual, legal, political and diplomatic realms. The hub is assembling a Panel of Experts on Africa Reparations Experts (PEAR). It’s creating a comprehensive Africa reparations information archive and resource repository.
Reparative scholarship inhabits an ethically and morally attractive moral universe. Subjugation of former colonists does not belong there.
That would be wrong. Reparation must, among other things, reverse at least those development deficits connected to colonial exploitation.
Reparation, in the material form, can restore some extracted economic value. As both end and means, reparation is essential for post- colonial human liberty and fulfilment.
Accordingly,long decoloniality and reparations inherently drive quality post-colonial human rights outcomes.
Instrumentally, decoloniality and reparations enhance global South human rights realisation.
Dark peoples legitimately claim and truly enjoy, human rights and human dignity. That eminent scholar, Michael Riesman, illustrates acutely. Human rights and human dignity are not myth system. Human rights and human dignity are operational code, reality.
The forecast multipolar, decolonial and reparative conditions present a signal world system opportunity. The timing seems apt.
And the opportunity promises much. The constitutive work is currently underway. The architecture is difficult to imagine, design and assemble. But our dreams are crisp and bright.
We want and deserve to inhabit that new world. We, the Africans, have for too long been disposable, forgettable. A world order warm to African, Africandescent and post-colonial peoples prizes multipolarity, decoloniality and reparation. Post-colonial human rights fulfilment presupposes this system design principle.
The principle fuels African human rights and human dignity. So, its inherent priorities represent the world we want. The dreams of our children and their children.
I previously claimed that “our children are the force behind the waves of history still to come”.
I repeat that claim.
Our descendants can shape human history and human rights. We want better. We must behave better.
Decoloniality, multipolarity and reparative justice promise and demand better. Then, post-colonial human rights actualisation might be optimal.
‘‘ We, Africans, have for too been disposable