The motion to have the transatlantic slave trade declared as “one of the gravest crimes against humanity” is ready, President John Dramani Mahama has disclosed.
This , he said was in fulfillment of a hint he gave at the UN General Assembly in September last year that Ghana, in its role as Africa’s champion on reparations, would table a resolution before the Assembly to demand reparations for slavery, colonization, the exploitation of natural resources and the looting of cultural heritage.
That motion, he announced at a high level panel on reparations, a side event at the Africa Union Summit in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital on Friday, was ready and would be filed next month.
“The zero draft of the resolution [is ready and] will be circulated to all member states for consultation and coordinated advocacy,” he stated and asked AU member states to “lend full and unflinching support” to the resolution.
According to President Mahama, “the evidence [that transatlantic slave trade is a crime against humanity] is compelling, the legal foundation firm and the moral imperatives undeniable”.
The move, President Mahama explained is not a symbolic diplomacy but a necessary moral clarification of history.
On Africa’s sacred objects, royal regalia, ancestral artifacts and ceremonial relics, President Mahama stressed that they were violently severed from the spiritual and civilization ecosystem that gave them meaning.
Mr Mahama mentioned that the artifacts have since found a new home in displayed glassed showcases in distant capitals in Europe and America, becoming aesthetic curiosities stripped off context detached from community and divorced from their original identities.
In his view, restitution was not all about arts and culture alone. “It is about justice. It is about sovereignty. It’s about restoring memory without distortion and reclaiming Africa’s rightful voice in the history of the world.
“We cannot speak of development without identity. We cannot speak of unity without acknowledging historical erasure. Restitution is not symbolic. It is about civilizational repair. It is the healing of deep historical wounds and Africa narrating her own story on African terms.”
For too long, the story of Africa has been told through foreign lenses, he noted adding that its past has neither been forgotten nor buried in centuries of distortion. “It lives in our collective memory and breathes in our cultural expression and echoes in our demand for dignity”.
If global cultural governance is to retain its legitimacy, it must rest upon equity, inclusion and redress, he proposed.
“Together we must design new instruments, agreements and institutions rooted in mutual respect and full African agency. Restitution mechanisms must be restorative and not extractive.”
President Mahama made a case for the empowerment of African museums, universities, archives and research centres to interpret and preserve its heritage; urging the youth to stand at the heart of this movement so as not to experience their heritage as something that is located in foreign glass showcases.
“Therefore as AU champion, I call upon all member states, regional economic communities, local authorities, cultural institutions, and our international partners to move from moral aspirations to binding frameworks with clear timelines and measurable outcomes.
“We must speak with one voice until every African object that is unjustly held abroad is returned. Not merely to a location but to a people, returned to a living culture and rightful spiritual origin.”
FROM JULIUS YAO PETETSI, ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA
