Of conversations on slave trade reparations

The growing call for reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade raises an uncomfortable question, that many moons ago I raised somewhere. Can’t remember where. The question was and remains. Why does the debate so often treat Europeans as the only perpetrators?

History tells us an uncomfortable truth. Some African kings, chiefs and merchants were not innocent bystanders. They captured, bought and sold fellow Africans. In kingdoms such as Asante, Dahomey and Kongo, political elites organised or profited from warfare, raids and the sale of captives. European ships may have carried the enslaved across the Atlantic, but some African rulers and merchants helped fill those ships. They were not merely victims of European manipulation. Some were willing participants, exercising power, making choices and accumulating wealth from human suffering. Their African identity does not diminish their culpability.

However, acknowledging this complicity does not mean responsibility was equal. European traders and states helped create and sustain the vast Atlantic market. European interests dominated the shipping, finance and plantation systems that turned human captivity into an international commercial enterprise. The long-term economic rewards were also profoundly unequal.

To me, the distinction is clear. Culpability must reflect what people did, how freely they acted, how much power they exercised and what they gained. African collaborators bear responsibility for their choices. European institutions bear responsibility for the larger system they built, financed and profited from.

There is another uncomfortable question. Some African royal dynasties and merchant families involved in the slave trade have ancestral lines, some of which remain traceable today. If historical responsibility is to be examined seriously, the African side of the trade should not be exempt from genealogical and institutional scrutiny. Why should historical accountability stop at Europe's shores? This is not about holding descendants personally guilty for the sins of their ancestors. It is about applying the same standards of historical scrutiny to all who participated in, sustained and profited from the trade.

If reparations are to rest on historical justice, we cannot afford selective historical amnesia. We cannot condemn European profiteers while conveniently overlooking African collaborators. Acknowledging African complicity does not absolve Europe. Equally, condemning Europe does not absolve African perpetrators. Historical justice cannot be built on selective outrage. Unfortunately, that is increasingly what some commentators on the reparations’ conversations seem to suggest.

Kozo.