By Fredrick Wolf

Copyright namibian

When the African Union launched its 38th summit in Addis Ababa this year, it marked one of the continent’s boldest moves to demand accountability for centuries of slavery, colonialism and exploitation.

But words carry consequences, and some cannot be used.

Terms seem to be a taboo subject with former colonial powers, especially the words apology and reparations.

Former African colonies face stubborn, prideful recalcitrance from former colonial powers when such subjects are mentioned.

Nowhere is this truer than with Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

“The demand for reparations is not about charity or financial aid. It is a call for justice,” Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed stated at the summit.

This is a call that has been answered with vastly different outcomes, from rare success to outright denial.

To understand this complex landscape, one need look no further than the disparate experiences of Libya, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

ITALY’S TREATY OF FRIENDSHIP

The taboo surrounding reparations, though powerful, has been demonstrated to be neither absolute nor unbridgeable.

Consider Italy’s 2008 Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation with Libya. It serves as a unique and groundbreaking precedent – the first of its kind between a former colonial power and a former colony.

The treaty represents a categorical recognition of Italy’s “dark” colonial misdeeds, which included brutalities like aerial bombardment of the population and the use of concentration camps decimating roughly one million Libyans.

For decades, Italy had determinedly suppressed this history.

Yet, a combination of relentless diplomatic efforts and public awareness laid the ground for a historic use of the taboo term – apology.

In fact, the treaty went beyond it. As a concrete form of reparations, Italy agreed to pay US$5 billion over 20 years to finance infrastructure, educational and medical projects in Libya.

Beyond financial compensation, it committed Italy to fund scholarships, resume pension payments to Libyans forced into the fascist Italian army and to the return of pilfered artefacts.

Then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi hailed the treaty as an “important historical precedent that proves that compensation entails condemnation of colonialism regardless of the amount paid”.

While the treaty’s implementation has been stalled by Libya’s post-2011 instability, precipitated by the West’s efforts to destabilise the country, its existence sets an important precedent for former colonies and a declarative challenge to Western nations continuing to reject all manner of colonial accountability.

GERMANY’S TEPID RESPONSE

During the German occupation (1904-08) of what is now Namibia, the German Empire conducted the first genocide of the 20th century against the Herero and Nama peoples.

An estimated 80% and 50% of the Herero and Nama populations, respectively, were destroyed.

German forces, led by General Lothar von Trotha, used brutal tactics to crush a rebellion. Von Trotha issued a chilling “extermination order” against the Herero population, and drove tens of thousands into the desert to die of thirst and starvation.

Those who survived were placed in concentration camps – subjecting them to forced labour in chains.

Unlike the clear-cut settlement between Italy and Libya, Namibia’s push for reparations from Germany highlights the deep-seated pride, legal manoeuvering and refusal of former colonial powers to offer full accountability for their actions.

After years of negotiations, Germany and Namibia reached an agreement in 2021.

Germany acknowledged its responsibility for the genocide but refused to use the terms ‘apology’ or ‘reparations’ that would have legal consequences.

Instead, it offered €1.1 billion (US$1.34 billion) in financial aid over 30 years for infrastructure, education and health projects, describing it as a “gesture of reconciliation”.

Moreover, the compensation was not paid directly to the victims’ descendants. Instead, the funds were earmarked for state-run projects.

While the Namibian government accepted the agreement, descendants of the victims rejected it outright.

Even when a former coloniser admits to genocide, the demands for true reparatory justice can be circumvented in favour of a politically palatable financial aid package to the benefit of the government – not the people.

BELGIUM’S DEEP REGRET

The brutal colonisation of the Congo is arguably one of the most egregious colonial plunders, a history that Belgium has yet to acknowledge.

For more than two decades, the vast territory of the Congo, over 70 times bigger than Belgium itself, was actually not a state-run colony but the ‘personal property’ of King Leopold II.

His rule was a harrowing experience of utter misery involving forced labour and unspeakable violence – responsible for the demise of millions.

Belgium’s response to its dark history is a study in both selective amnesia and selective atonement.

While the current king, Philippe, has expressed his “deepest regrets” for the “violence and cruelty” of the colonial era, he and the Belgian government have consistently refused a formal apology – the one gesture that could open the door to legal reparations.

In 2022, Belgium was eventually forced to submit to a symbolic yet gruesome gesture: the story begins in 1961 with a Belgian police commissioner named Gerard Soete, who (in league with the Western powers) helped assassinate and then dissolve in acid the body of the DR Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba – taking a single gold-capped tooth as a “hunting trophy”.

After a decades-long struggle by Lumumba’s family, Belgium returned this macabre relic.

This bizarre and chilling act of “restitution” serves as a quintessential example of a former colonial power attempting to ‘assuage its conscience’ with a vacuous gesture, rather than confront the enormous debt (morally and financially) it owes.

PRIDE AND MONEY Vs RESPONSIBILITY AND MORALS

For decades, reparations for historical injustices like slavery and colonialism has been debated extensively at the United Nations and other international forums.

The UN General Assembly has adopted several resolutions calling for reparations since the early 1960s.

However, these resolutions are largely non-binding and continue to face strong resistance from former colonial powers.

Apparently, apologies are rejected because they open a path to legal reparations – and that means financial restitution. Colonisers err on the side of money not morals.

* Frederick Wolf is director of The Fulcrum Institute, a new organisation of current and former scholars, which engages in research and commentary, focusing on political and cultural issues.