COMRADE KWESI PRATT JNR.

Comrade Kwesi Pratt Jnr. Issues Clarion Call for African Reparations and Liberation at the International Conference on the 80th Anniversary Commemoration of the 5th Pan-African Congress

By Socialist and Progressive World

Accra, Ghana – In a powerful and unflinching address marking the 80th anniversary of the Fifth Pan-African Congress, veteran journalist and activist Kwesi Pratt, Jnr, declared that the struggle for Africa’s true liberation remains unfinished, demanding concrete action for reparations and a final break from neo-colonial economic chains.

Speaking to an audience of comrades, thinkers, and citizens in Accra-Ghana, Comrade Kwesi Pratt reframed the commemoration not as a passive remembrance, but as a proactive “rallying ground for a new generation of Pan-Africanists,” echoing the revolutionary spirit of the 1945 Manchester Congress where figures like Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, and W.E.B. Du Bois declared that “Africa must be free.”

“We do not assemble to mark a date on a calendar; we assemble to claim our history and to shape our destiny,” Mr. Pratt stated, setting the tone for a speech that was both a searing historical indictment and a bold blueprint for future action.

“Naming the Crime”: A Record of Historical Exploitation

Comrade Pratt began by methodically outlining what he termed the “deliberate, calculated, systematic robbery” of the African continent. He forced the audience to confront the brutal arithmetic of the trans-Atlantic slave trade: over 12.5 million captured, nearly two million dying in the Middle Passage, their bodies “thrown overboard to the sharks.”

“The Atlantic became a cemetery without tombstones,” he said, emphasizing that the unpaid labour of enslaved Africans “built the modern world,” financing the rise of European cities and stock exchanges while stripping Africa of its most productive generations.

He highlighted the profound injustice of the abolition era, noting that Britain paid slave owners £20 million, equivalent to £17 billion today in compensation; a debt British taxpayers only finished repaying in 2015; while the victims and their descendants received nothing.

The advent of colonialism, he argued, was merely a new “mechanism of exploitation,” formalized at the 1884 Berlin Conference where Africa was carved up without African representation. Mr. Pratt catalogued its horrors: the 10 million killed in King Leopold’s Congo, the genocide of the Herero and Nama people in Namibia, and the millions who died in independence struggles from Algeria to South Africa.

“Colonialism stole not only our land and labour but our minds,” Comrade Pratt asserted, pointing to the estimated 90% of Africa’s cultural treasures, like the Benin Bronzes and Asante gold, that remain housed in foreign museums. “What civilisation parades the bones of those it murdered?”

A Global Double Standard on Justice

In a pivotal moment of his address, Comrade Pratt pointed to the global precedent for reparations to highlight the hypocrisy meted out to Africa. “Germany pays reparations to Holocaust survivors; the United States to the Japanese for the atomic bombings; Britain to Kenyan veterans of the Mau Mau rebellion,” he stated.

“Yet when Africa demands justice for four hundred years of slavery and a century of colonialism, we are told to forget, to move on, to be ‘practical’,” he continued, his voice echoing with defiance. “Yes, we will be practical but our practice must lead only to the defeat of neo-colonialism and the building of a new Africa free from degradation and all forms of poverty.”

The “Illusion of Sovereignty” and the Neo-Colonial Trap

Moving to the post-independence era, Mr. Pratt argued that freedom brought “the illusion of sovereignty without substance.” The borders drawn in Berlin remained, and trade routes continued to point outward. He paid tribute to leaders like Nkrumah, Lumumba, Sankara, and Cabral, who sought to break this pattern and were, consequently, “overthrown or assassinated.”

“Imperialism does not forgive defiance; it kills it,” he stated bluntly.

He laid bare the ongoing economic exploitation, citing that Africa loses over $80 billion annually in illicit financial flows and that more than $1.3 trillion has left the continent this way since 1970. “For every dollar of aid, twenty-four leave our shores in interest and profit,” he declared, lambasting institutions like the IMF and World Bank for imposing Structural Adjustment Programs that decimated social services and saddled African nations with crippling debt.

“In 1970, Africa owed $11 billion; today it owes more than $1 trillion. We spend more on debt servicing than on the education of our children,” Comrade Pratt noted, painting a picture of an economic system designed to perpetuate dependency.

A Blueprint for Action: From Demands to a Continental Tribunal

Mr. Pratt’s speech culminated in a concrete call to action, urging a transformation of the “cry for reparations from a chorus of scattered voices into the demand of a united people.”

He proposed the establishment of a continental tribunal empowered to prepare legal claims against former colonial powers, supported by a continental reparations fund financed by African states and diaspora contributions. He stressed the importance of coordinating with the Caribbean Reparations Commission, forging a united trans-Atlantic front.

However, Comrade Pratt made it clear that reparations are not solely about financial compensation from the West. “They are also about what we owe ourselves, the responsibility to rebuild, to heal, and to ensure that Africa shall never again be a playground for external powers.”

He called for a cultural and educational revolution to “reclaim the narrative” and “restore the dignity of African knowledge.”

A New Pan-African Vanguard

Mr. Pratt ended with a direct charge to every sector of African society. He called on governments to adopt reparations policies, parliaments to debate them, schools to teach this history, and diplomats, economists, and lawyers to carry the fight into international halls of power.

“Let our people carry it into the streets, into the farms, into the hearts of the youth who will inherit the struggle,” he concluded, his voice resonating with conviction. “We shall definitely win this struggle and Africa will become a centre of excellence it once was. There is victory for us.”

The address has been widely hailed as a significant moment, likely to reinvigorate the debate on reparations and Pan-Africanism, pushing it from academic circles and activist forums into the mainstream of continental political discourse.