Akala's broadcast on BBC Radio 4 earlier this month is not just noteworthy but refreshing. Have a listen...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000wlfw

Refreshing: A British television or radio broadcast in which the truth is told not only of the greed of the British state in its more than 200 years of kidnapping people going about their lives in Africa then shipping them to the Americas, including the Caribbean, to spend the rest of their lives being “blacks” in enslavement, but the sheer brutality and cruelty involved.

Refreshing: A person who is a least in part a descendant of those forcibly displaced and enslaved Africans given the floor to tell the British public and anyone listening anywhere in the world that Britain committed not only state-sanctioned torture and mass-murder of Africans there, and on the high seas - the Zong massacre of 1781 (one of many depictions of this is the above image) is merely one of many atrocities that occurred there - and chiefly on the lands to which survivors were forcibly displaced.

http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php-option=com_content&view=article&id=373&Itemid=236.html

Refreshing: That he was able to report without dilution the extent to which the British state not only committed genocide and crimes against humanity for over 200 years, but followed this with a systematic policy of propaganda, peddling the narrative of “benevolent Britain” had a  "moral epiphany” and was “the first to abolish slavery” purely through the kind actions of “the “black” slaves’ saviour”, Britain’s William Wilberforce.

Refreshing: That he was able to reveal the extent of concealment, attempted concealment from and indoctrination of it’s own population that underpinned not only this but other acts of genocide, such as that committed in Africa itself, in what is now Kenya, in the 1950s, during Britain’s colonial era, as it fought to preserve its empire and prevent the emergence of the peoples there from life under complete British control and ownership.  

And most refreshingly of all: 

• That he was able to debunk and ridicule another myth and British conscience-clearing exercise that has been been a deliberate and staple part the false British historians’ and politicians’ narrative: that Africans routinely sold their own people to the British and other European kidnappers and enslavers.
• That British historians, politicians, archivists and other custodians of the “benevolent Britain” narrative were happy to conceal the fact that there are more than 480 historical records not only of Africans on the coast of that continent actively trying to fight off the marauding British enslavers but recording that African families quite naturally wishing to find and reunite with their kidnapped relatives, including children, took the intrepid step of making the perilous voyage across the Atlantic ocean to the lands of African enslavement, determined to retrieve and bring back home those enslaved relatives.
• That he pointed out the hypocritical and sanctimonious way in which Britain has been happy to rub the noses of Germany and Japan in shame constantly for their own genocidal activities against Jews during World War II and (indeed against Africans in what is now Namibia in south-west Africa in 1904 and in what is now Tanzania during World War I) in the case of Germany, and against British prisoners of war in what was Burma in World War II) while happy to conceal their own genocide against Africans from the 17th to 20th centuries

Well, they say the truth sets you free. 

Feeling guilty is one thing, and there is plenty of that behind the British post-colonial desperation to conceal, suppress and encourage public amnesia. But public amnesia means no compassion, and worse, no reflection by the ordinary person about their own history. That in turn produces a void in compassion, perpetuates ignorance… and racism feeds on that.

Rather than constantly reminding the Germans and Japanese about their atrocities, the British state should look a lot closer to home at it’s own record, then take a leaf out of Germany’s book and:

1) Have a proper memorial for the Africans it tortured and murdered for nearly three centuries by way of both an annual commemoration (after all it has one for the Jews on 27th January every year, even though it wasn’t Britain that committed the atrocities against them of World War II) and, rather than commemorating its slave traffickers and colonialists - Colston and Rhodes among others - by means of a physical memorial just like Britain has, again, for the Jews. What’s the difference? Both Africans and Jews suffered a holocaust, only the African one lasted centuries rather than six years. We’re not comparing notes on persecution here; we’re talking specifically about mass torture and mass murder by drowning and other means, as well as the gas chambers Akala refers to the French having committed with British acquiescence.

2) Admit that it committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Africans, just as the Germans have finally done this year in the case of what is now Namibia:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57279008

Of course there’s a fear of The Hague and of reparations but you cannot be on the run for ever. In any case the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague cannot try crimes committed before its inception on 1st July 2002. So, rather than thinking narrowly about lawsuits and about having to pay money to governments and peoples, do the morally right thing.

A good place to start would be genuinely to disclose, then stop to think and reflect on: 

• the lives you destroyed, the sheer numbers and the methods used, recognise that they were human beings, human lives, not “black lives” or property for the countless insurance payouts made when slavery was abolished
• the families and cultures and languages and histories decimated
• the ongoing effects today on African and African diaspora populations in the Americas, in Europe and chiefly in Africa itself which has been impoverished and continues to be exploited today, including by way of depletion of cocoa, oil and minerals

When you have done that, you’ll realise that financial reparations, that so many demand, is not enough. There are many in what is now Namibia dissatisfied with what Germany has offered even though the Namibian government has accepted it. Here's one example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-57306144

Restoration dignity and respect is what people of African heritage require, because lack of dignity and lack of respect, even down to how they are labelled, is what they continue to suffer to the present day.

© Allswell E. Eno