Reparations! Reparations!

Last Thursday, August 17 was the birthday of Marcus Garvey and given the fact that we are into Emancipation Month I had planned to look at Garvey in the context of a second

Emancipation, borrowing from Grenadian historian Edward Cox (who incidentally is married to Vincentian Paula Nanton), whose lecture in Grenada in 2018 was entitled, “Towards a Second Emancipation: Garveyism in Grenada and Marcus Garvey’s Visit to the Island.”

I have opted this week to revisit the issue of Reparations. This was influenced by a discussion about REPARATIONS on Hot 97.1 Fm on Wednesday morning. I was really embarrassed by the level of discussion. First, I think it is the duty of hosts before discussing a topic as important as Reparations, to acquaint themselves with the issue. I say this because there has been so much written and spoken about it and I was recently, in fact on Sunday night, on a panel with Jomo Thomas and Zita Barnwell speaking on that topic.

First, Reparations is not about the distribution of billions or trillions of dollars to governments or individuals. CARICOM has since 2013 decided on a plan on which to base the discussion about Reparations. This I will deal with later. The issue of Reparations is nothing new. We have had examples of this with Germany’s compensation to the Israeli Jews, Britain compensation to the Kenyan Mau Mau for colonial terror acts of the 1960s and Germany’s acknowledgement of colonial genocide in Namibia and its pledge to fund development projects.

Reparation is about making amends for atrocities and horrors committed in the past, especially where it involved crimes against humanity as Slavery is labelled. CARICOM has established Reparations Committees/Commissions in most of its member states. If we were to focus on SVG we can look at the genocide against the indigenous people which ended with about 2,248 of 4,633 of them being killed at Balliceaux where they were held awaiting exile from their homeland to Ruatan off Honduras.

Those who escaped capture or refused to surrender went into the forests to escape battalions sent out to capture them. Some years after, 40 persons accepted the call to surrender and were provided with land at Morne Ronde. Lands of the Garifuna people were seized and parcelled into eight estates- Orange Hill, Tourama, Waterloo, Lot 14, Rabacca, Langley Park, Grand Sable, and Mt Bentinck. Those estates went immediately into the production of sugar and made St Vincent between 1805 and 1824 the second largest exporter of sugar in the West Indies, second only to Jamaica. Some of those who remained were allowed to live on borders of the estates once they provided labour for the estates, that is, transporting the sugar cane to the boats which were anchored outside the harbour. Others remained in the settlements which they had created away from the slave society. They were not slaves but also not free.

About the Africans who were captured and brought here to be enslaved, their story is a long one. I will not repeat the brutalities of living in a slave society since they are to some extent known. They were considered chattels, owned by the slave masters. They struggled in a variety of ways against the oppression that faced them. As I have stated on different occasions when the debate about ending slavery was being undertaken in the British parliament, they were greeted with news of disturbances on the ‘Carib Country’ estates in St Vincent. Parliament was unable to secure passage of the emancipation Act until it assured the planters of a £20 million compensation and provided them with a period of apprenticeship that forced the apprentices to provide them with free labour for a large portion of the weeks of Apprenticeship. The portion of the compensation grant that came to St. Vincent was £592,509. The enslaved, of course, were not compensated since they were considered the property of the planters. Having to work for four years, as it turned out, they were continuing to compensate the planters by working for them free for a large part of the week.

CARICOM’s 10 Point Plan involved – 1) A full formal apology from Britain and France. 2) Repatriation 3) Indigenous Peoples Development Programme 4) Cultural Institutions 5) Public Health Crisis 6) Illiteracy Eradication 7) African Knowledge Program 8) Psychological Rehabilitation 9) Technology Transfer 10) Debt Cancellation. I am unable to comment on the details of the Plan but must make the point that it has nothing to do with the payout of money to people through governments or otherwise. I see Number 3 as being very important to us in SVG where the indigenous people continued to struggle long after those in sister colonies had disappeared through struggles with the Europeans. Our society was turned upside down, with a large part of the population being exiled from their own country. I trace the problems we are having in the North Windward area, particularly after the last eruption to the destruction of forests and the physical transformation made to prepare the lands for sugar production. The Kalinagos and Garinagu preserved nature and protected their landscape. The European intruders destroyed the landscape as they went fully into the cultivation of sugar.

While the governments of Britain and France refused to get on board and to provide a full formal apology for slavery and genocide, individuals and institutions realising the ties of their ancestors to slavery have begun to make their own contribution to Reparations as we have seen recently with the Trevellyan family from Britain who owned 6 estates in Grenada. The University of Glasgow is contributing £20 million to make amends for their links with slavery. Denis O’Brien owner of Digicel has set up a Repair Campaign to work along with CARICOM and to prepare a Reparatory Plan to be funded over 25 years. ‘Reparations’ is very much alive. What is missing here is education to inform and get everyone on board.

Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian