Making a case for reparative justice

Jun 21, 2020 APNU Column, Features / Columnists, News

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(A review of David Granger’s Crime without punishment. The Caribbean case for reparative justice.)
David Granger’s Crime without punishment: the Caribbean case for reparative justice makes a compelling and convincing case for reparations for African enslavement. Even though the resounding arguments which he advances are not necessarily original, they have been assembled and delivered here concisely and with cogency.
Millions of mostly young Africans were victims of what has been described as The Trans Atlantic Trade in Captive Africans. The Trade was abolished after over three and a half centuries in 1807 but the system of enslavement persisted in the Americas and the Caribbean for decades thereafter. Enslaved Africans in the British West Indies, for example, had to wait for another three decades until 1838 for their Emancipation. Africans in America, Brazil, Cuba and elsewhere had to wait even longer.
The freed Africans were offered nothing for their centuries of compulsory and cruel servitude. They were thrust into a hostile social, political and economic environment without recompense or resources. The slave-owners, in contrast, were enriched with immediate financial compensation for the loss of their so-called ‘property.’ It is this failure to address and redress the inhumane treatment inflicted on the enslaved persons and the consequences of the system of enslavement on generations of persons of African descent in the western hemisphere, particularly, which has driven the demand for reparations.
Reparations are based on a simple notion: there should be restitution for the high crimes and injuries which were perpetrated. It is a means towards ensuring equitable justice for victims of crime. A former President of Trinidad and Tobago, Sir Ellis Clarke, arguing for reparations to be a part of the granting of political Independence, said:
An administering power is not entitled to extract for centuries all that can be got out of a colony and, when that has been done, to relieve of its obligations by the conferment of a formal but meaningless – meaningless because it cannot possibly be supported – political independence.”
African human enslavement has been acknowledged as the “…greatest crime against humanity.” Yet, even the appeals for an apology have been denied and ignored, particularly in the rich capitals of the countries which perpetrated and prospered from that crime – Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands and the United States of America.
The demands for an apology and for reparations were iterated at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. The Conference called on the leaders of the United States and Europe to apologize for their countries’ role in the slave trade and slavery. Cuban President Fidel Castro described reparations as an “unavoidable moral duty to the victims of racism.”
The Conference’s final ‘Declaration’ was tepid. It acknowledged that slavery and the slave trade were appalling tragedies and a crime against humanity but did not offer either an apology or the promise of reparations.
The descendants of the victims of the Trade still suffer dispossession and disempowerment traceable to enslavement and its consequences. The international community has acknowledged that Africans still suffer from racial discrimination and are disadvantaged by the legacy of underdevelopment. They have taken steps to highlight the unique identity of persons of African descent and the challenges they face. The United Nations proclaimed 2011 as the International Year for People of African descent and the decade from1st January 2015 to 31st December 2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent.
The Caribbean has been in the forefront of agitation for reparative justice for Africans. These efforts gained greater impetus following the 34th Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community which was hosted in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in 2013. The ‘Conference’ gave unanimous support for the case for reparations for African enslavement and Native genocide. The Heads agreed to establish national reparation committees and “…to use all reasonable avenues to reach and an amicable solution” to this issue.
A Guyana Reparations Committee (GRC) was established in 2013. It launched the local leg of the International Youth Reparations Rally in May 2016 and invited President David Granger to deliver the feature address. The address constitutes the text of this book – Crime without punishment: the Caribbean case for reparative justice.
The President bases his case for reparative justice on the four grounds that human enslavement constituted a crime punishable under international law; resulted in the illegal expropriation of wealth; bequeathed a legacy of structural underdevelopment and that precedent exists for reparation to be made.
David Granger has made two important interventions in the discourse on reparations with this book. He has insisted that reparative justice was not a mere moral precept but, more so, a legal obligation. Second, he has shifted the case for reparative justice from a mere appeal to a demand. He writes:
The Caribbean is not begging for hand-outs or aid. The Caribbean is not soliciting sympathy. The Caribbean is not seeking favours. The Caribbean is demanding ‘reparative justice’ for the greatest crime against humanity in the history of the world – the Trans-Atlantic trade in captive Africans.
This book advances logical, practical and rational arguments to support the case for reparative justice but avoids regurgitating some of the discredited claims made by other advocates of reparations.
The reprint of Crime without punishment is timely and topical. Protests are exploding at present across the world because of the outrage over the murder, at the hands of the police, of yet another African-American citizen. The protestors are demanding greater racial equality. They have begun to deface, dislodge and demolish the monuments and statues of former slave traders and others who benefitted from the Trade. The protestors have made the link between racial justice and correcting historical high crimes perpetrated during the era of enslavement.
The protests are sowing the seeds for the emergence of a new order – one that may be more accommodative of the claims for reparative justice for the victims of the Transatlantic Trade. It has been 182 years since African Emancipation was legalized in the Anglophone Caribbean during which time the case for reparations has been ignored by the successor governments of the perpetrator states. Those who will be asked to carry forward the case for reparative justice will need to continue to marshal persuasive arguments to support their cause. They can find a creditable catechism in David Granger’s, Crime without punishment: the Caribbean case for reparative justice.
This book, published first in 2016, is based on several contemporary sources including Hilary Beckles’s Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and native genocide, Alfred Brophy’s ‘The case for reparations for slavery in the Caribbean’ and others. It is concise and written in simple language suitable for all age groups.
John Milton, the 17th century English poet, observed once, “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond. David Granger’s, Crime without Punishment is such a book, perceptive and persuasive and providing irrefutable arguments in support of the case for reparations.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

 

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