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The Portfolio Committee on International Relations and Cooperation today received a briefing from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation on South Africa’s implementation of the 38th African Union (AU) Summit theme for 2025: ‘Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparation.
 
The intention of the AU is to encourage Africans and people of the African descent to vigorously engage in the conversation around reparations, which includes both local and global reparations including historical acknowledgement of the injustices of slavery and colonialism.
 
The committee proposed that the conversations around financial reparations, land restitution, cultural preservation, policy reforms, international accountability, community empowerment and continued advocacy should be on the agenda for next year’s Africa Day commemoration, not only in South Africa but for the rest of the continent, as well as the colonisers.
 
The Chairperson of the committee, Mr Supra Mahumapelo, said parliaments of neo-colonisers and colonisers must be urged to consider debates on issues of reparations and their contributions towards correcting the injustices of the past.
 
The committee also called for the currencies of the former colonisers to be used to offset the trade imbalances resulting from currency disparity, as the rand should not be pegged to the level of the pound or the euro.
 
The committee noted that the AU has a non-functional standby force and called on member states to contribute to it so that it can stand against any threat. Mr Mahumapelo also called on the coloniser countries to finance the operations of the standby force to make it functional.
 
He also advised that African Development Bank be capacitated to handle reparation awards for dissolution by the AU.
 
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation has acknowledged that the issue of reparations is cross-cutting and does not lie solely with it. Reparations will require a multidisciplinary task team comprising all the relevant departments to deal with the complex issues of reparations and it will report back to the committee when the task team is formed.

Issued by the Parliamentary Communication Services on behalf of the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on International Relations and Cooperation, Supra Mahumapelo