Reparations: Will it ever happen?

The biannual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) was held last week in Apia, Samoa in the Pacific. Kenya was represented by Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi.

Samoa is famous for rugby and has a population of about 250,000 inhabitants. The CHOGM website says leaders “discussed how Commonwealth countries work together to build resilience, boost trade, innovation, growth and empower the Commonwealth’s 1.5 billion young people for a more peaceful and sustainable future.”

Beyond the usual pleasantries and speech by King Charles III, a hot-button issue cropped up. Reparations. The members of the commonwealth were former British colonies and felt it was time Britain paid reparations for the suffering of colonies before their independence.

It’s an emotional issue more if it’s extended to slavery. It’s also an economic issue. In the debate on reparations, I got a new term, ‘blackbirding’. Check it out. 

Reparations is an emotional issue because of the suffering the colonised people went through. From the destruction of their cultures to working on low pay under conditions that would not have been allowed in the mother country. If you talk to former mzungu workers, they have their story.

Beyond low pay, there were restrictions in movement. Remember the passbook? And why was it about Gikuyu, Embu and Meru—at least the ones I have seen? Remember removing your hat if you saw a mzungu? Remember ‘bwana’ and ‘memsahib’?

It is an economic issue because the workers were not allowed to compete with the master in growing cash crops. They remained at the subsistence level. Education was limited, ensuring no enlightenment came, centuries after Europe’s own renaissance. Why didn’t plantations have schools for their workers and their children? Check when your village got its first graduate.

With cheap labour and benefits from economies of scale, the plantation owners made lots of money. The palatial houses they built left no doubt they made money, or brought money. Some colonialists were quite affluent and came to Kenya for adventure and for some mischief like the Happy Valley lot.

Another question is where that money was invested. It’s likely at home, the same way Kenyan immigrants send money home. Tracing where that money was invested would be a good PhD thesis. But snippets suggest it was well invested and some families will enjoy it for generations to come. We have underrated the economic facet of colonialism. Was colonialism a gold rush? It was not just money from plantations, add money from forests, minerals and other wealth sources. I have wondered privately who professional hunters were and how much money they made from their kills.

We often forget about civil servants who ran the colonies. Were they well paid?

Should Britain pay reparations? Clearly, based on below-the-market rate wages and getting land for free, reparations make economic sense. How would we value emotional distress and other ravages of colonialism such as attenuating our self-confidence?

The British government is not keen on reparations. It would open a can of worms. The ‘reparations’ for Mau Mau veterans demonstrated the unintended consequences; it is hard to decide who to pay. It’s possible a few Mau Mau imposters were paid. Do all settlers have records for their workers? Getting enough data would be the major handicap in getting a fair value for reparations.

But UK has past data on salaries and wages and even interest rates both in UK and its colonies. We could even let AI do the number crunching for us. What of data on minerals, forests and other wealth? Technology exists to estimate that. We have statistics for colonies, check old copies of the Kenya gazette.

For UK it gets more complicated. It has been argued that Britain developed the colonies, giving them a semblance of modernity. They brought hygiene, modern medicine, schooling, and new institutions such as the government. Never mind they destroyed old institutions, some which worked. Remember our kingdoms? Ashanti in Ghana?

Should that benevolence be subtracted from reparations? What if UK asks for reparations for ending slave trade too? The biggest question is where the money to pay reparations would come from. Would there be a reparations bond? Would there be a reparations tax? How would citizens of UK or another coloniser react to that?

How far into the past would we go? Think of when Britons got into India, the Caribbean or South Africa. Would USA, Canada, Australia and even Ireland ask for reparations? Would UK ask for reparations from Romans? Would Spain ask for reparations from the Mongols? Would Balkan countries ask for reparations from the Ottomans or the Turks? Could we end up with a reparations war?

What would we do with reparations if paid? Will it be paid to families or governments? Can we trust the leaders to put it into good use? What percentage of GDP or budget would reparations be? Would we feel the impact?

Where do we go from here?

Reparations could even come home through historical injustices. Even families could start demanding reparations. My family lost ancestral land. Should we ask for reparations? From who? We can even demand reparations for misrule, miseducation and even corruption.

There is a better option out of reparations. Economics. China should ask for reparations from UK, remember the opium wars? But she is unlikely. She has grown her economy, it’s now bigger than UK. India is now a bigger economy than UK too.

Why can’t we grow our economy to a level that we don’t need reparations? USA is a bigger economy than UK, her former coloniser. Think of the national pride if we did that! We could even start lending money to our former colonial master. Check who are the key buyers of UK or US long-term bonds.

What if we ensured an annual economic growth rate of 10 per cent for the next 10 years? Should we not spend less time and energy on politics? What if all the energy in impeachment was focused on economic issues?

History flows one way. We can learn from history and make today and tomorrow better. What have we done with 60 years of independence?