Dear Editor,
Richard Madeley’s name hardly rang a bell to Guyanese until a few days ago when he made headlines for his disrespectful interview with the President of Guyana.
The scorn with which he treated President Ali and the unbridled manner in which he was allowed to do it, is a poignant reminder of why reparation remains a profoundly relevant priority today. If Madeley allowed Guyanese to respond, we, like our President, would tell him that we do not want to be bestowed with a castle which embodied the historical pretence that its occupants had the divine right to enslave entire African nations for generations to come. Reparation does not equate to short-lived handouts and fleeting compensation.
Reparation means ensuring that the children descended from enslaved Africans can enjoy the same freedoms, social privileges, and economic opportunities accorded to their British counterparts. Instead, our children have inherited the trauma of generations of enslavement, denial of basic human dignity, and systemic discrimination and racism.
Theirs is a legacy of brutality premised on the dehumanisation of African families who have had their cultures, languages, identities and ties with their ancestral lands whipped out of them. One of the many historical disadvantages was the decimation of traditional African family structures where the authority of elders, parents and heads of households was stripped away.
This, coupled with the separation of African men from their families, their physical abuse and psychological degradation have left an intergenerational imprint on the mental health and identity construct of African families. This is the historical injustice that holds the walls of England’s castles together, and it is this historical injustice that requires reparation. In a time of shifting global power dynamics, the question of reparation is now more than just a grievance; it is a pressing development priority for countries in the region. Conversely, it represents an opportunity for former colonial empires to shed the weight of their historical shame and lay the foundation for an equitable future.
Sincerely,
Anna Correia de Sά
Omattie Madray