For the 14th year, the Committee for an African Monument in Berlin organised a march to commemorate the African victims of enslavement, trafficking enslaved people, colonialism, neo-colonialism and racist violence. It is growing every year and we were happy to join the call to take to the streets.
Jennifer Kamau from International Women* Space gave a speech:
Hello everybody, I am Jennifer from the International Women* Space
I congratulate the efforts of many here to rename Berlin streets and to fight the stigmatisation and racism against African people and people of African descent.
I want to say: as a migrant I am part of this fight! As a migrant self-organised with other migrants the realities of slavery and colonialism of the past and the reality of the new forms of slavery are at the center of our debate and work. Our struggle to come to Europe is a direct result of the exploitation of our natural resources. That is why we are forced to come to Europe.
And we say: we are here because you, Europe, destroyed our Lands! Namibia, Togo, Ghana, Tanzania and Cameroon were territories taken by german colonialists. In the past they invaded our countries and committed genocide. Now they close their borders and let us die in the Mediterranean.
The racism of then and now is producing new forms of slavery. As migrants, we live here in fear of deportation. Many of us live outside the existing systems of labour. Many of us women will enter Europe as victims of trafficking, victims of the sex industry, the forced marriages.
Many will experience slavery in domestic work, will be exploited as undocumented migrants, will live as second-class human beings, vulnerable to border controls, police, civil, and military officials.
Our answer to those who say that Germany’s colonial past is short, because it lasted 30 years, we SAY 30 years too many! Enough for creating the first concentration camp in Namibia, only a few decades of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Nazis that never paid for their crimes. Still, 50% and more of the land is taken by Germans from the ancestral people of Namibia. Return Namibia’s ancestral land!
The Nazi crimes have been incorporated in the post-war German society, who continue to inspire attacks on migrants and will continue if we don’t work in solidarity, if we don’t say it loud and clear, we’ve had enough of your structural racism.
No more divide and rule to weaken us. People of African descent, German or not, European or not: unite against racism!
Because like our late friend Sista Mimi used to say, If Europe wants to help Africa, start from here, start by helping those who are already here! We don’t trust your shady treaties with African countries anyway!
