The Africa exception: the slavery reparations debate was once ‘unthinkable’. Now it is unavoidable

The architect of the African Union’s reparations framework for the historic UN resolution explains why demands for historical justice are inseparable from the struggle for Black sovereigntyLast month, at commemorations marking the 25th anniversary of France’s Taubira law recognising the trafficking of enslaved Africans as a crime against humanity, Emmanuel Macron did the unthinkable: he became the first French president to publicly utter the word “reparations”.Since 1825, when France punished Haiti for daring to declare itself the western world’s first Black sovereign republic by extorting 150m francs in compensation for the loss of what it regarded as enslaved “property”, reparations to Black peoples and nations have been politically “unthinkable”.