(Headline USA) Former South African President Nelson Mandela’s granddaughter is demanding that the British government and its royal family pay reparations to African nations to make up for the past “colonization” of the continent, Breitbart reported.
Ndileka Mandela, a South African political activist, was asked in an interview with the BBC about King Charles III’s state trip to Kenya last month, during which he apologized for British colonization.
“The wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret,” the British monarch said in a speech during the state visit. “They were abhorrent, unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans, as they waged a painful struggle for independence and sovereignty. And, for that, there can be no excuse.”
Mandela said in response that acknowledging the harms of “colonization” was a good place to start, but she argued that only monetary reparations could help Africans moving forward.
“If there can be an acknowledgment of what was done to countries to colonize because we are still suffering a great deal from colonization, in as far as our culture as black people is concerned,” she claimed. “So there has got to be the first admission of the fact that, yes, we acknowledge that we displaced you as a people. Then we can talk of reparations.”
Asked whether the reparations should come from the royal family, specifically, Mandela said, “Yes … that’s where healing begins.”
South Africa was considered a British colony until 1961 and continued to live under the Apartheid system of segregation between white and black South Africans until the early 1990s.
Nelson Mandela, who had been jailed for 27 years as an anti-Apartheid activist, went on to become its first black leader.
Nonetheless, skeptics contend that British colonialism also had a positive impact on Africa’s history. For example, the British government played a vital role in ending the transatlantic slave trade, becoming the first country in the world to abolish slavery.
The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron captured more than 1,600 slave trade ships and is estimated to have freed more than 150,000 African slaves.
CNN’s @DonLemon tells royal commentator Hilary Fordwich the royal family should pay reparations — immediately regrets it pic.twitter.com/LotCfBoAym
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 20, 2022
