Senegal's leader blasts idea of slave reparations

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (August 29, 2001 8:20 p.m. EDT) - A descendant of generations of slave-owning African kings himself, Senegal's president on Wednesday ridiculed demands for financial reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade as both impossible and insulting.

Almost every nation was once one of slave-owners, President Abdoulaye Wade said ahead of debate on reparations at the U.N. racism conference in Durban, South Africa.

What they owe today, he said, is lasting recognition of the wrong done.

"If one can claim reparations for slavery, the slaves of my ancestors, or their descendants, can also claim money from me," Wade said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Because slavery has been practiced by all people in the world."

Advocates of reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade in particular are asking the West "to give us money to forget our ancestors, and the suffering they went through," Wade said. "And I find that insulting."

The Senegalese leader, outspoken on both African involvement in the slave trade and the need for European and American acknowledgment of their role, spoke by telephone before Friday's opening of the conference.

A campaign driven by African activists is asking the conference to endorse proposals for an apology and financial compensation from nations that benefited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

By the most widely accepted estimate, the trade saw 12 to 15 million Africans shipped across the ocean into slavery in the Americas and Europe.

Although many African countries have signed past statements of support for reparations and an apology, African leaders have largely been silent in the run-up to the conference.

On Wednesday, Wade joined the Vatican and South African President Thabo Mbeki in urging acknowledgment of the slave trade as an injustice.

Pope John Paul II already has asked divine forgiveness - a gesture made during the pontiff's visit to an old slave barracks on Goree Island off Senegal, and still much remembered by the people of that nation.

The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said Wednesday that a calculation of compensation for slavery could be difficult.

It suggested an "apology or expression of regret to the victim state by the state responsible for the wrong.

In South Africa, Mbeki said Tuesday he hoped for "a measurable commitment within countries and among all nations that practical steps will be taken and resources allocated ... to eradicate the legacy of slavery, colonialism and racism."

"A necessary first step in this regard is an unqualified acknowledgment of the fact that slavery, colonialism and racism represent chapters and practices in human history that cannot but be condemned unequivocally as unjust," Mbeki said.

Wade angered reparations activists in his own country by saying he would go to Durban to make the case against financial compensation.

What Wade wanted, he said Wednesday, was declaration of the slave trade as a crime against humanity.

"About reparations, ... it is not possible to evaluate the damage, the injury to Africa for 300 years," he said.

"What I want is for Europe and the Americans to recognize that their ancestors, by practicing slavery, deeply injured Africa ... to make contrition, and also to teach the new generations, the boys, the girls, at schools, universities, the reality of slavery, the slave trade - in order to preserve the memory" of slaves.

"In Europe, they were sold as goods, and that's what's important, and that's what should be considered a crime against humanity," Wade said. He cited Catholic priests who once decreed Africans have no souls, "so you can sell them like beasts."

"By teaching that in books, it doesn't mean that Africans want to take revenge against Europeans and Americans," the Senegalese leader said.

Wade's own family numbered thousands of slaves among its royal army, he said. His own family held slaves up to the mid-19th century, he said.

"It's not the Europeans of today or the Americans of today who brought slavery," he said. "It's the ancestors. Me, personally, how can I be responsible for what my ancestors did, in the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th centuries?"

-- Anonymous, August 30, 2001