A week ago, the film, “12 years a slave” won the Best Picture award at the Hollywood Academy Awards – the highest accolade in the industry and one that will guarantee the film cinematic. But it will do more than that: it will for the very first time, tell the story of a slave from the point of view of the slave. Solomon Northup was a free citizen of New York who had been sold into slavery in Louisana and endured the 12 years of slavery, he wrote of in harrowing detail, in 1853.
The fore parents of Director of the film, Steve McQueen, a Black Briton of Grenadian descent, had been slaves. He was the first man of African origin to have won the Oscar for directing the Best Picture. All of this publicity is rather serendipitous since today, Hilary Beckles, the historian who is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies in Barbados, will be presenting the specific demands for reparations for the horrors of slavery to the Heads of Government (HoG) of Caricom against several European nations – including the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
In an ironic historic twist, the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, playing the role of a plantation owner in “12 years a slave” is descended from the family that owned the plantation in Barbados to which Beckles’ ancestors had been enslaved. The HoG had already approved the plan for reparations last year, which has now been distilled into 10 demands and are almost certain to be approved unchanged. Since last year, there have been meetings by the several national teams on reparations in the various territories of Caricom.
One of the demands expected to be most contentious would appear to be on the surface, the most innocuous one: an unqualified apology for inflicting the institution of slavery on people shipped across from Africa. There is not a European nation mentioned that can deny their involvement with either the slave trade or slave ownership, nor can they deny the horror of slavery.
Yet there are fears that an apology would lead to an acceptance of “guilt” from which monetary reparations would flow. The contention that restorative justice for the descendants of the victims would at last be given does not seem to be persuasive.
Some of the other demands would be to provide diplomatic help to persuade countries such as Ghana and Ethiopia to offer citizenship to the descendants of people from the Caribbean who “return” to Africa. Some 30,000 have made such a journey to Africa and have been offered generous settlement packages, but lack of citizenship rights for their children is causing difficulties.
Specific to the Caribbean would be proposals designed to change the structural factors inherited from the days of slavery and which have conspired to keep the Caribbean in a state of underdevelopment. One of these calls upon the European nations to craft a development strategy to help improve the lives of poor communities in the Caribbean. This development strategy, for instance, would have to take into consideration the question of capital for development since during slavery the slaves received no money they could save.
There is also the demand that cultural exchanges between the Caribbean and West Africa be fostered to help Caribbean people of African descent rebuild their sense of history and identity. Without this strong sense of identity, they will always remain defensive. In tandem with the preceding, there would have to be support for literacy drives designed to improve education levels that are still dire in many Caribbean communities.
Even more specific, the plan calls for medical assistance to the region that is struggling from high levels of chronic diseases, such as hypertension and Type two diabetes that have been linked to slavery. The claims are being channeled through the UN Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
