by Philip Rutledge, The Indianapolis Star

February 16, 2004

What do The Washington Times and the AfricaFocus Bulletin have in common? In editorial policy, they are miles apart. Yet, both published articles during this Black History Month likely to kindle heated discussion about a controversial but curious link between reparations for American descendants of African slaves and cancellation of African debt.

The Times, a conservative daily in the nation’s capital, carried a piece by black Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist Clarence Page, who observed, “At last the highly charged issue of reparations for the descendants of slaves has had its day in court – and the court threw it out again.”

He added that, “as a descendant of former slaves, I was neither surprised nor disappointed by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle’s ruling in Chicago (Jan. 26).” Page went on to largely dismiss the arguments made by former TransAfrica President Randall Robinson in “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” although he never mentions it directly. Robinson’s book is seen as a cogent brief for the reparations cause.

A few days later, William Minter’s somewhat crusading AfricaFocus Bulletin arrived, with the headline, “Africa: Who Owes Whom?” In addition to Minter’s own analysis of the debt situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the electronic Bulletin reposts extensive material from the Web site of the American Friends Service Committee (www.afsc.org/africa-debt) and other sources, painting a sordid picture of “odious debt” and alleged misdeeds by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, with some myopia by U.S. officials.

Minter reports that on Jan. 28 the American Friends Service Committee, an international Quaker social justice organization, launched its Life Over Debt campaign to have Africa’s debt canceled. It urged reflections during Black History Month not just on history of the African diaspora, but also restitution for Africans in Africa today.

Curiosity about this linking of Africa debt cancellation to reparations led me to visit the Web site. Three articles caught my eye. The most striking was Gerald Lenoir’s “Debt and Reparations,” but “Africa’s Debt Crisis – The Need for Cancellation,” and “Africa’s Debt: Odious and Illegitimate” round out provocative arguments for an unanticipated alliance.

A few points jump out at you:

• African countries spend up to three times more on debt repayments to wealthy countries and institutions in the West than they spend on health care, food, and education for their sick, illiterate and hungry millions.
• Most of Africa’s debt is illegitimate and odious. Creditors should accept responsibility for helping to create the debt crisis. African people should not be forced to pay debts that did not benefit them and that were, for the most part, bribes to despots used to suppress and kill them.
• Most of Africa’s debt has been paid many times over. For example, Nigeria borrowed $5 billion, has so far paid more than $16 billion and still owes $32 billion on the same debt.
• African nations pay $1.51 on debt service for every $1 received in foreign aid.They also observe that, “Suddenly, the U.S. is pushing to cancel Iraq’s $400 billion total debt. The Iraqi people certainly deserve it. But why is it proving so hard to cancel the $300 billion that sub-Saharan Africa owes?”Both Robinson’s book and AFSC tell us of the concerns that the Organization for African Unity (now Africa Union) has had with this issue for decades. They both cite a proclamation coming from a 1993 pan-African conference on reparations, which declared that “the injury caused by slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism is not a thing of the past, but is painfully manifest in the damaged lives of contemporary Africans from Harlem to Harare, in the damaged economics of the black world from Guinea to Guyana, from Somalia to Surinam.” The proclamation went on to say that a moral debt is owed to African peoples and called for “full monetary payment through capital transfer and debt cancellation.”

  Page argues that claims for reparations, for the Jewish Holocaust or the Black Holocaust, are not matters for a court of law, but may be amenable to a court of public opinion, as our experience since World War II has shown. If so, perhaps legislation calling for a study and dialogue on the reparations issue should be debated again.

  Rutledge is professor emeritus at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.