Chief Charumbira’s Appeal to the Pan-African Conscience on Africa Day 2025

READ HERE PAN-AFRICAN PARLIAMENT PRESIDENT CHIEF FORTUNE CHARUMBIRA SPEECH ON AFRICA DAY 2025

As Africans across the globe mark the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), the President of the Pan-African Parliament, H.E. Chief Fortune Charumbira, has delivered a thunderous wake-up call to the conscience of the world, as well as, to Africa’s own sleeping elite.

In Pan-African Parliament’s Africa Day solidarity statement, Chief Charumbira stripped away the rhetoric of diplomacy and spoke the truth too many are afraid to utter: that reparations are not charity. They are justice. They are owed. They are a right born of centuries of plunder, genocide, slavery, colonial theft, and racial apartheid, among many other crimes against humanity that have enriched empires while impoverishing Africa.

“Reparative justice is not simply about compensation,” he declared. “It is about truth, healing, and transformation… about acknowledging historical crimes, holding accountable those who benefited from them, and ensuring redress that restores dignity, rebuilds trust, and reforms the systems that continue to perpetuate inequality”, said the PAP President.

For far too long, African leaders have been content to beg at tables where they should be leading the charge. For too long, the Global North has treated Africa’s pain as a footnote, while African economies continue to bleed through structural debt, resource looting, and external control over finance and trade.

 “We assert that the demand for reparations is not a plea, it is a right grounded in international law, moral conscience, and historical evidence” said Chief Charumbira.

He is right. The time for appeasement is over. Africa’s youth, our streets, our scholars, our traditional leaders, and our diaspora must rise and act in concert. We must stop pretending that development aid is anything but hush money. True justice demands reparations not in promises, but in land, capital, and political restructuring of the global system.

It is no coincidence that this righteous call for reparative justice comes during the 21st anniversary of the Pan-African Parliament. An institution still battling for its own power, still hemmed in by weak mandates and colonial-era state boundaries, PAP under Charumbira’s leadership seems to be reawakening a revolutionary mission, which is to speak boldly with one voice for the African people.

“We will continue to amplify the voices of the marginalized, champion inclusive policies, and advocate for the integration of the African diaspora in our development agenda,” H.E. Chief Charumbira affirmed .

This is the language of liberation. This is the agenda that must drive every summit, every AU meeting, and every street protest. Africa is not a continent of victims; we are survivors. We are builders. But justice must come before reconciliation. Unity must come before diplomacy. And reparations must come before so-called partnerships.

As we reflect on the sacrifices of Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Selassie, Mwalimu Nyerere, Thomas Sankara, and all our revolutionary forebears, let us remember that they did not die so we could simply join the global order but fought to death for change.