Reparations: Who Owes Who?

[Nat Quinn]

 

Hannes Wessels,

As a delegate at the recently held Cop 28 climate conference in Dubai, Ndileka Mandela, Nelson’s granddaughter, grabbed headlines when she denounced Britain and the Royal family, for its imperial past and demanded they pay reparations.

“If there can be an acknowledgement of what was done to countries to colonise because we are still suffering a great deal from colonisation, in as far as our culture as Black people is concerned,” she said. Asked if she would want to see reparations from the royal family, she replied: “Yes, I would. That’s where healing begins.” With a grovelling King Charles in attendance, pleading for forgiveness for all manner of real or imagined sins, Ms. Mandela may well get what she wants. In the event compensation is paid, one can only hope she acts more honestly than the organisers of the Black Lives Matter movement who trousered most of the contributions. And will any of the proceeds reach the  Khoi San peoples, who were wiped out by Ms Mandela’s Bantu forebears in their genocidal migration southwards from the Congo Basin.

But what always gets my attention with this all too familiar refrain about the ‘evils’ of colonialism is reference to the inevitable ‘suffering’ caused by this event as if all the colonists did during their tenure in Africa was to be beastly to ‘the natives.’

In the context of South Africa where Ms Mandela resides, that ‘suffering’ included the construction of roads and railways, harbours, hospitals, schools, universities, towns, cities and the introduction of a grid providing cheap and abundant electricity that powered the country’s economy into the First World of developed nations and brought light to virtually every dwelling in the union. Arguing this was all about entrenching white privilege at the expense of poor Black people is simply not true; every single person, regardless of race or ethnicity, benefitted in some shape or form from what transpired during that period.

I’m not sure if she, or any of that multitude of like-minded ‘victims’ repeating this fatuous demand give it any thought, but if they did, they might well ask themselves how did this all happen? Would the Khoi San, who were present at the Cape when the first Europeans came ashore, have gone on to build the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station? And if it had not been for the colonisers and their successors, would the Bantu settlers of southern Africa have multiplied exponentially thanks to modern Western medicine, or benefited from the multitude of technical advances, virtually all of which were introduced to the world by people associated with the dreaded ‘colonisers’.

What is also conveniently ignored or forgotten by Ms Mandela and the millions of moaners like her, is that these developments only transpired through incurring massive expenditure and the deployment of human capital, most of which originated in Europe.

While some funding was provided by the private sector, the bulk of it was sourced from the nation’s fiscus and that was filled, in the main, through the hard-working endeavours of millions of mainly white South Africans, most of whom were associated in some way with the ‘colonial’ exercise.

These people were generally happy to contribute to the exchequer because they could see the revenues were being put to effective use, the economy was growing, and the quality of life of all was improving. They thought that the infrastructural development they were helping to finance, would be there for the benefit of their progeny and successor generations. I know that in Rhodesia, the country where I grew up, a similar mindset prevailed. Few people dodged taxes because they were confident they were investing in a brighter future for everyone. And in Mozambique, a country very dear to me, the colonisers toiled resolutely over centuries to try and build a Portugal in Africa that would boast the style and sophistication of the homeland.

There are scores of similar examples that one could mention, the length and breadth of the continent; from Algeria to Angola, the Congo to Kenya; details vary, but in every instance, colonial powers invested significantly in trying to build and improve infrastructure; and in every instance that infrastructure has been recklessly destroyed. The question is, are the people who conducted this senseless destruction unaccountable; are reparations not payable to those who invested so heavily; it would appear that is a stupid question.

A recent example of how one-sided and racist the reparations debate has become is provided in Zimbabwe following the violent seizure of over 4,000 farms from white farmers beginning at the turn of the century. Most of them had acquired their land with the consent of the government of Zimbabwe, all were law-abiding citizens contributing to the national wealth and the biggest employers in the private sector, but because they were White, they were summarily stripped of everything they owned and, in many cases, rendered destitute. Their pleas to the world for some sort of compensation to rectify the injustice visited upon them, elicited no response and even less sympathy.

Maybe the saga of the Zimbabwe farmers and the callous response to their plight explains the indifferent world-wide reaction to the catastrophic, post-colonial damage done, mentioned above.

The world was happily persuaded the displaced farmers were simply racist supremacists enriching themselves at the expense of a downtrodden Black majority and so their demise was deserved. The Boer farmers of post-uhuru South Africa have been murdered and tortured in their thousands; but the ‘democratic’ nations of the world have uttered no words of condemnation. Influential politicians openly call for their killing but the international community is happy to accept the sons of Apartheid are only receiving just retribution for the sins of their fathers.  The same applies to the legions of colonists; the popular view that they all came to Africa to do little more than rape and pillage has prevailed and so their well-intentioned endeavours aimed at improving the territories they were posted to are cynically ignored.

 

source:Reparations: Who Owes Who? – Africa Unauthorised

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