SHAMEFUL - Pan-Africanist blasts Jamaica’s move to petition to King today on reparations guidance

Jamaica’s decision to lodge a petition today with King Charles to seek legal guidance on its slavery reparations claim from Britain has been branded as a disgrace by Pan-African advocate Dr Imani Tafari-Ama.

“It is embarrassing. It is so embarrassing,” Tafari-Ama told The Gleaner yesterday.

She noted that the Caribbean Community has already established a 10-point reparations plan to facilitate and guide the global African reparations movement.

The plan, promulgated in June, outlines the development priorities for the region as it demands reparations from the United Kingdom (UK), Europe, and all enslaving nations, for their role in over 400 years of native genocide, chattel African enslavement, and violent extractive colonialism.

Highlighting the atrocities of slavery, Tafari-Ama contended that seeking advocacy from the very nation responsible for the harm is not just misguided, but also ironic.

Culture Minister Olivia Grange will deliver the petition to King Charles III today.

“It is a contradiction for her to be enquiring of this person about the legality of anything because they are still the ones who are the head of Jamaica’s State, head of said Privy Council that she is talking about, and, therefore, it is a non-question,” she said.

The petition seeks to ask the King, in his capacity as Head of State of Jamaica, to refer three questions to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Jamaica’s highest court.

The three questions surround whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal under English law, whether it broke international law, and whether Britain now has a legal duty to provide redress.

The petition is not a demand for payment, and King Charles has no personal discretion in deciding whether to make a referral.

In explaining what she described as a “novel approach”, Grange said it “is being taken after years of deliberations and is intended to ensure the long outstanding settlement for the hundreds of years of the most horrific abuse that our African ancestors endured, the gravest crime against humanity”.

The demand for former colonial powers to pay reparations for slavery has been gaining momentum over the years.

In 2024, during a Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting in Samoa, King Charles acknowledged that “painful aspects of our past continue to resonate”.

Historian Reverend Devon Dick believes the petition will bring even more momentum to the reparations movement.

“This presentation to Charles will bring publicity to the rightness of reparations,” he told The Gleaner.

Nonetheless, Tafari-Ama believes that at this juncture, Jamaica should be more focused on removing the British monarch as head of State, “and then we could argue with King Charles on an equal footing”.

“We need to do what our first national hero, Marcus Garvey, said, and emancipate ourselves from mental slavery that would have invited us to even go genuflecting in front of the Crown representative,” she said.

When Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, it borrowed £20 million to pay compensation to slave owners for the “loss” of their enslaved human property. The formerly enslaved people received nothing.

Britain finished paying off the debt used to compensate slave owners in 2015.

Grange, who is leading the delegation to the UK, will also meet with officials of the British Museum to advance discussions on the repatriation of artefacts that were taken from Jamaica to the United Kingdom during the colonial era.

“They are priceless, they are significant to the story of Jamaica, they belong to the people of Jamaica, and we are working to bring them home,” she said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com