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The fight for reparations for the gruesome atrocities committed against Africans has been intensified with
the convening of an “Expert Consultative Meeting” in Johannesburg, South Africa from August 20 to 21, 2025. The meeting was attended by lawyers, academics and activists from all over Africa to seek advisory opinion on the right to reparations.
It was convened by the Pan African Lawyers’ Union (PLU) and the Centre for Applied Legal Studies of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Participants resolved to request for an Advisory Opinion from the Africa Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The initiative is undertaken in accordance with Article 4 of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Establishment of an African Court on Human and Peoples Rights.
The reparations will be for slavery, genocide, land theft, colonialism and neocolonialism.
Speaking at the meeting, Ghanaian Journalist, Kwesi Pratt, Jnr said no amount of money can be sufficient
compensation for the crimes committed against the African people by the capitalist states.
He said, “what we seek is a complete reset of the world and its institutions to ensure the equality of all peoples and the building of new world in which poverty and all forms of exploitation will be banished
forever”. Pratt who also doubles as General Secretary of the Socialist Movement of Ghana (SMG) and a member of the Organizing Committee of the Pan African Progressive Front (PPF) asked all African leaders
to stand up for justice for “our people”.
The African Union has elected President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana as its champion for Reparations.
In the foreword to the book “Reparations; History Struggle, Politics And Law”, President Mahama wrote “The transatlantic slave trade, European colonialism and their religious, economic and political justifications were not accidental episodes in human history. “They were deliberate, coordinated acts of plunder. These acts were carried out with impunity and enabled global structures that continue to shape today’s inequalities and injustices”. President Mahama will launch the book authored by Kwesi Pratt, Jnr in Accra on September 9, 2025.