Zimbabwe’s president launches study into slavery reparations

Source: Zimbabwe’s president launches study into slavery reparations

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has launched an academic study into the impact of colonialism on the African country that will culminate in a demand for reparations from former colonial power, Britain.

The study is being conducted by the Zimbabwe National Elders Forum led by Dr Felix Mukonowengwe and other members include academics and clergy.

Mukonowengwe told University World News that some of the academics involved in the presidential initiative are vice-chancellors at Zimbabwe’s universities.

They include “vice-chancellors such as Professor Paul Mapfumo of the University of Zimbabwe and Professor Eddie Mwenje of the Bindura University of Science Education. We also have Professor Kuzvinetsa Dzvimbo [CEO of the Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education]. Our researchers are coming from our universities and some of them are professors like [Mark] Nyandoro from the University of Zimbabwe,” he said.

The commissioning of the study comes shortly after a meeting of 55 Commonwealth countries held in Samoa late in October ended with a communiqué that said: “The time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity”.

The Commonwealth is a grouping composed of Britain and its former colonies, but Zimbabwe withdrew from the bloc in 2003 after the then president, Robert Mugabe, launched a programme to seize land owned by white farmers, leading to Western countries imposing sanctions on the African country.

What the study will focus on

At the recent launch of the study, Mnangagwa said it will be focused on colonial injustices suffered from 1890 to 1980, the year that Zimbabwe got its independence.

“The proposed study, as I am reliably informed, will put forward recommendations that will explore options to assist in the long-term healing of affected communities as well as for rekindling and recreating goodwill between the Zimbabwean society at large and the former colonial power,” said Mnangagwa.

“We have observed and, indeed, quite recently, former colonial powers the United Kingdom apologising to the Mau Mau of Kenya, and Germany also apologising to the Mbanderu, Herero and Nama people of Namibia. Therefore, we ask, when are the rest of us in the former colonies going to receive similar apologies, we wonder.”

The Zimbabwean president said the time has come to engage Britain to seek what he termed the much-delayed, yet important, post-colonial gestures of reparations, restorations, apology and reconciliation.

“Equally, the subject of reparations is not new, but the calls for restitution continue to grow louder and louder,” added Mnangagwa.

An academic who is part of those leading the initiative to conduct the study, Professor Mandivamba Rukuni, said they will also hire experts to gather evidence.

Is foreign aid a form of payback?

In an interview with University World News, Professor of World Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Stephen Chan, who was recently deported from Zimbabwe, said the presidential initiative is part of a rhetorical foreign policy and will lead nowhere.

“It also has fundamental flaws as Britain never ruled Rhodesia directly for much of its 20th-century history. You can view the 2,000 farm seizures as reparations for the policies of what was essentially an autonomous white government not directed by Britain. Britain might, at some stage, say that the multimillions of foreign aid should be taken into account in any rhetorical war,” he said.

Dr Knox Chitiyo, the associate fellow, Africa Programme, at Chatham House, a global think tank on international geopolitical matters, and a former senior lecturer of history and war studies at the University of Zimbabwe, said the proposed study is important as it will build on existing work on Zimbabwe’s history and historiography.

Chitiyo said the study may also be a useful addition to wider African and global research outputs on colonialism and land.

“Whether the study can, or will, be used to demand reparations remains to be seen. What is likely, however, is that, once concluded, the project will be an important addition to Zimbabwe’s history, and it might also become an important background or contextual document regarding future Zimbabwe-UK relations,” he said.

Asked what could be the role of academics or scholars in such a study, he added: “It is vital that this study be research-driven and evidence- and memory-led. The information would come from various sources, including oral, primary, anecdotal, secondary sources, and so on. Academics or scholars [alongside communities] would, thus, need to have a major role – perhaps a primary role – in this project.”

On whether or not Britain should pay reparations for colonialism, Chitiyo said this is a complex issue and is part of a wider global debate on slavery and colonialism.

Slavery reparations and country relations

He noted that UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves have both stated that the UK will not pay slavery reparations, adding that this probably also applies to colonial reparations.

“The question of whether the UK should pay financial reparations for slavery and colonialism is a very contested and highly polarising issue within the UK, and between the UK and former colonies. Nevertheless, the UK government has acknowledged the need for further dialogue,” said Chitiyo.

He said an apology from the UK on slavery and colonialism would send an important signal regarding the UK government’s willingness to seriously engage on this issue as some other former colonial governments, including the Netherlands and Germany, have apologised for slavery and their colonial past.

He said reparations and reparatory justice can range from the symbolic apology, to debt relief and financial reparations. But, the current and previous UK governments have not been willing to contribute financially to reparations.

The scholar said that what is also clear is that the slavery and colonialism debate is not going away and is now a high-level diplomatic issue and one which is significant as regards relations between developing nations and the UK, and also the evolution of the Commonwealth.

“On taking office, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy spoke of his desire for a ‘reset’ in the UK’s relations with the Global South.

“The Global South are, in turn, exerting greater agency and influence in global affairs and agenda-setting.

“It is clear that the question of reparations is now a significant factor in the UK’s relations with developing countries, particularly the Caribbean and Africa. If the UK does want a genuine reset in its international relations, particularly with its former colonies, it will have to engage more meaningfully on this issue,” he added.

Initiatives from the Caribbean

Godfrey Mtindi, a Zimbabwean international development consultant, told University World News that a precedent had been set for reparations to be paid to Zimbabwe.

“From the historical context of white monopoly capital, which exploited slaves and was compensated when slavery was ‘banned’, the English compensating the Afrikaners in South Africa for the inhuman treatment during their [Anglo-Boer or South African] war (and skipping the blacks), Germany being made to pay reparations after having been adjudged of having started the First World War by the Versailles Treaty, [and] Germany compensating the Jews after the genocide by the Nazis, Zimbabwe’s compensation is within international law,” said Mtindi.

He said the academics who are part of the study could collect primary and secondary data on the system of the systematic and violent removal of blacks from their land and destruction of the African economy.

He said they could do a comparative study of similar historical cases of colonialism, slavery and quantify the loss Zimbabwe incurred developmentally from 1890 to 1980, “and trace the specific companies which were formed in the UK with Zimbabwean resources and money that was laundered there”.

In 2017, Zimbabwe’s then minister of higher and tertiary education, science and technology development Professor Jonathan Moyo commissioned research on the economic impact of sanctions imposed by Western countries on the country after it launched its land redistribution exercise.

Preliminary findings said Zimbabwe lost about US$4.8 billion worth of revenue in the manufacturing sector in 2010 and US$2.1 billion in 2015 due to Western sanctions, according to the preliminary results of a government-funded academic study to probe their impact on the country.

But, following the decision by Commonwealth countries to have a conversation on reparations last month, Lammy said the concept of reparations for former colonial nations affected by slavery “is not about the transfer of cash”. Lammy said the UK would, instead, look to develop relations with African nations through sharing skills and science.

However, Caribbean nations under their regional grouping called Caribbean Community (CARICOM) who led the reparations call within the Commonwealth came up with a 10-point plan (for reparatory justice in which they called for a full formal apology, education programmes, healthcare, debt cancellation and direct monetary payments).

In its plan, the group said that, at the end of the European colonial period in most parts of the Caribbean, the British, in particular, left black and indigenous communities in a general state of illiteracy. Some 70% of blacks in British colonies were functionally illiterate in the 1960s when nation states began to get their independence, they added.

They said the transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in human history and has no parallel in terms of man’s inhumanity to man.

“Generations of Caribbean youth, as a consequence, have been denied membership and access to the science and technology culture that is the world’s youth patrimony. Technology transfer and science sharing for development must be a part of the CARICOM Reparatory Justice Programme,” reads part of the 10-point plan.