The leaders arrived in Kingston this week and over the course of two days held a symposium and youth forum on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
The theme that marked the occasion was ‘Reparation and Royalty, Africa and Europe: Exploding Myths, Empowering Truths’.
There was a resounding call for history to be rewritten surrounding the transatlantic trade in Africans, particularly regarding the narrative that Africans and the European colonisers were allies or business partners.
Several Jamaican and Caribbean scholars including Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor for the University of the West Indies, Former Prime Minister of Jamaica, PJ Patterson and Stephen Golding, President of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and member of the National Committee on Reparations joined in the call with the African leaders.
The high-level delegation of royal African leaders joined in one unified voice against the dishonesty they say have been promulgated by European scholars.
The Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC) hosted the African contingent.
According to CRC traders and their allies, during the Western campaign in the 19th century, to legalise the transatlantic trade in Africans, argued that African commercial and political interests were their business partners.
The CRC said this narrative has gained global traction, particularly in the Caribbean and the Americas, where it is commonly believed that African elites were significant partners in European trading in Africans in Africa.
At the symposium, Princess Nikiwe Bam, Mpondomise Nation, Ngxabane clan charged young scholars and historians to educate future generations, take on the patriotic task and do a history rewrite.
“Our history has been written by the same colonisers and invaders. You have a task to rewrite this history and preserve it for the next generations to come,” she said.
Princess Bam quizzed how the European scholars could go to study Africa then return with a book about the indigenous peoples’ own history, adding that, contrary to what is written in those history books, “(African) kings would never have given away their own people to the whites or to the colonisers”.
According to Princess Bam, the Kings would resist and some were killed, captured or gone into exile.
She also noted that the colonists took advantage of conflicting factions in Africa to advance their interests.
Golding, in joining the push to rewrite history said that since last year the CRC has been having a series of consultations with the Ministry of Education and Youth to “empower teachers to begin to change the narrative in our curriculum that has been handed down for so many generations”.
“Very simple things like discontinuing the use of the word slave, replacing it with enslaved,” Golding said.
The discussion also involved the royal family, who among the discourse, were singled out for allegedly possessing African gold.
One of the African leaders disclosed that much of the gold at Queen Elizabeth tomb was stolen from Africa and questioned how it go to Europe.
Other African speakers at the event included Professor John Ayotunde Isola Bewaji, Queen Cynthia Khumalo and HRH Paul Sande Emolot III.
