Barbara Blake-Hannah, journalist and reparations advocate, looks back 20 years on the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, which she attended as a member of the Jamaican delegation. Her reflections, published in her book, Growing Up – Dawta of Jah, was a highlight of last month’s virtual seminar commemorating the event and hosted by the P J Patterson Africa-Caribbean Centre at The University of the West Indies in association with the National Council on Reparations.

Here is a lightly edited version of Blake-Hannah’s piece:

I was at home one day in 2011 when the phone rang. “Mrs Hannah, I am calling from Canada on behalf of the United Nations. We have been trying to contact you for three weeks. We have money for you to buy your ticket to South Africa immediately to attend the World Conference Against Racism.”

I hardly remembered that I had applied as the Rasta Information Service to cover the world conference because, as a Rasta I knew reparations was going to be a major issue. I deeply wanted to add my voice to the many voices I knew would be there, but it was almost like putting a message in a bottle and casting it out to sea with hope.

I arrived in Durban in the midst of delegates from all over the world, people wearing national dress of many styles and colours. Before leaving Jamaica I had informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of my invitation. To my great delight and honour, they invited me to be an official member of the Jamaican delegation, glad to have a Rasta in their group.

The most senior member of the Jamaican delegation was Ambassador Dudley Thompson, one of the creators of the famous Abuja Declaration and an international pioneer of the movement for reparations, who was very well known in Africa and pan-African circles as the lawyer who defended Jomo Kenyatta at his Mau Mau trials. I had known him from I was a child, and he was glad to see me and proud of my Afrocentric activities.

The Jamaican delegation’s seats in the conference assemby hall were beside Japan, whose delegates hardly showed up each day. To the left of their empty seats was the delegation from Israel that included a brown-skinned lady, whom I assumed was one of the many Ethiopians who had migrated to Israel…

A problem that kept arising at the conference was that every debate on every topic on the agenda soon brought the issue of reparations to the surface and, when this problem eventually seemed likely to derail the entire conference, the topic of reparations was moved into a new plenary containing the most passionate African and Caribbean supporters of reparations, as well as the representatives of European enslaving nations who were being called to answer.

Ambassador Thompson and I were delegated to represent Jamaica in this plenary and I found myself in company with delegates from the Caribbean, including Ras Iral Jabari, David Comissiong, and Hilary Beckles of Barbados, as well as delegates from Africa. The plenary contained many angry verbal confrontations between representatives of the black people who had been enslaved and the white people who had enslaved us, with many attempts to bargain for commitments from the white nations, which they were determined not to give.

It was a hard struggle, but by the end we finally managed to agree on what should be included in the conference’s statement on reparations. I am proud to report that, at my insistence, with support from Ambassador Thompson, we were able to have the list of forms of reparations include a special recognition of reparations with repatriation and the words: “The welcomed return and resettlement in Africa of descendants of enslaved Africans” added as the very last item on that important and historic list.

Being in Africa was a special and wonderful experience and Durban was beautiful. It was good to see black people moving about in control of such a developed city, just as it was shocking for me to see poor, ragged white people begging at the stop lights… To have touched my feet on the motherland was very special to me. It was African earth, I realised. I was here in Africa with my feet on the earth of my ancestors! I really had to think about that.

As I was thinking, a woman with her head covered in a flowing scarf came into the tent, saw us, and came over to us with tears streaming down her face. She bowed down before us, saying over and over: “Thank you for coming to South Africa, my sister. Thank you for coming to South Africa my brother. Thank you for coming to South Africa.” I looked at her, but she wasn’t mad. She really meant it. “Thank you for coming.”

Tears rolled down my face and my heart was overwhelmed by the fact that it was many, many generations ago that people related to me had lived in Africa, had touched their feet to this African earth, but had never known me, their stolen daughter. I cried for all the family in Africa I had never met, and I cried for the family who had been taken to Jamaica who I also had never met.

I felt alone and lonely, my mother and father were dead, I had no more link with Africa. All I had now to link me with Africa was my son. I hoped I had made the African blood in his multiracial mixture strong enough to endure and keep the link alive.

Heading into the conference centre in the morning that the final report was presented, walking towards me was the conference chairman, UN Ambassador Mary Robinson, former prime minister of Ireland. To my surprise, as we passed each other she looked me in the eyes with a smile and winked.

It wasn’t till I saw the conference daily newspaper a little later that I realised she knew who I was because she had seen my photo on the paper’s front page in an interview in which I had said: “I am the first member of my family to have touched foot in Africa for 300 years. I cried when I arrived. We need reparations so we can return home.”

The World Conference Against Racism turned out to be an unofficial sitting of the United Nations, as senior diplomats and politicians of every country were present. Of them all, the presence of Cuba’s Fidel Castro was the most historic, but the most newsworthy personality was US Secretary of State Madeline Albright who headed the American delegation that the world had expected Colin Powell to lead.

The fight against racism took another road at the conference in an incident that made big news – the walkout of the US and Israeli delegations after disagreeing with the continued hammering of a resolution that equated Zionism with racism.

In a coincidence that needs to go on record, the walkout took place at the same time as a meeting I had arranged – with approval of Ambassador Stafford Neil – for the Israeli delegation to formally meet with the Jamaican delegation to discuss ways I believed Jamaica could help in bringing a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian situation. As we sat waiting, Ambassador Neil’s phone rang cancelling the meeting without giving a reason.

We all left the meeting room and went to the lift – only to find as the doors opened that we had to step back to give way to Madeline Albright and her US delegation walking out of the conference. We soon discovered the Israeli delegation were doing exactly the same thing.

Leaving Durban, the flight stopped at Cape Town en route to London. An hour later they informed us that the flight was cancelled and would be rescheduled for two days later… A kind airline person booked me into a lovely hotel suite and I woke the next morning to a beautiful view across the sea to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned. Then the kind lady booked me on a flight that day to Fort Lauderdale, telling me the only problem was that it took 17 hours. It was the longest flight I have ever held my breath for, but I was glad to be going home. I went to bed and fell asleep immediately.

I was still deep in slumber next morning when I was awakened by my son shouting and calling me to the television. There before our eyes a plane flew into the Twin Towers, and exploded in flames. Minutes later another one did! It was 9/11 – the most famous day in aviation history.

In the global crisis that followed, all air travel was halted for days. I would have been stuck somewhere in the world for days if I had not taken the 17-hour flight back home.

Looking back on 20 years, it seems that so little has happened that so many good people worked so hard to achieve in Durban. Racism is still a monster devouring the hearts and lives of black people everywhere, reaching from the poorest to the highest families. The war for reparations for Caribbean slavery is still being fought with no end in sight.

But the enslavers’ monuments are being destroyed, one by one and more and more of the crimes of our black, slavery, colonial history are being revealed to educate black and white people globally of the wrongs so they can be put right. This, I believe, is the only way we will ever end racism.

The World Conference Against Racism was a bright light along our path and a lifeline onto which we can still hold firmly today. Let us press on, brave soldiers, let us press on!

Pics: Barbara Blake-Hannah; Dudley Thompson; Nelson Mandela; Fidel Castro

Durban poster