Veteran journalist Kwesi Pratt Jr electrified delegates at Day Two of the Pan-African Progressive Front (PPF) conference in Accra with a dramatic retelling of Africa’s long struggle for liberation and a powerful reminder that the fight for justice is far from over.
He opened with a historical reflection on the Fifth Pan-African Congress of 1945, describing its leaders as people who “have no armies, no treasuries, no offices of state, only conviction, intellect, and an immutable faith.” Their defiance, he said, overturned centuries of domination. “Freedom will never be given, it must be taken.”
Drawing on stark historical detail, Pratt revisited the horrors of slavery and colonial rule. “From the 15th century to the 19th century, over 12.5 million of our ancestors were captured, shackled, and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean,” he said. “Nearly 2 million died in the middle passage.” The suffering, he argued, financed the rise of Western power. “The Atlantic became a cemetery without two graves.”
Pratt insisted that reparations must be the centrepiece of Africa’s political mission. “Economists have tried to estimate the value of Africa’s state, some say 770 trillion. A number that still cannot measure the cost of living in Africa,” he said. The injustice of compensating enslavers rather than the enslaved, he recalled, still stains global history: “It was not the enslaved who were compensated, but the enslavers.”
This year’s conference, organised by the Pan-African Progressive Front, is expected to issue a major declaration on reparations. Delegates spent the opening days establishing actionable steps, including a Continental Tribunal, a Continental Reparations Fund, and customs duties on goods from former colonisers.
Pratt urged full mobilisation across governments, unions, youth groups and the diaspora. “Let our people cry and carry it into the streets, into the parks, into the hearts of the weak, into the heavens.”
He also called out the role of modern institutions in perpetuating inequality. “These institutions were designed to keep us in the system,” he said of the IMF and World Bank. “Those who do the same thing over and over and over again, expecting different results, must have problems with their mental capacities.”
Key developments emerged on the sidelines. Monsieur Emile Parfait of SIMB held discussions on creating a unified Pan-African media holding. Libya’s Foreign Minister announced Benghazi’s interest in hosting the next PPF forum. Former President Mahama revealed a plan by seven African states to remove visa requirements among themselves.
