Pambazuka News takes stock of the victories since WCAR in Durban, the political organising that informed the landmark conference, reparations and the tasks for the next 25 years.

With an examination of why the African Union’s own Protocol on Free Movement of Persons remains largely unratified, Elphas argues that this failure is directly linked to the recurring waves of xenophobic violence against fellow Africans, most recently in South Africa. The piece draws on the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, in the context of African Commission jurisprudence and the recent Gauteng High Court judgment against Operation Dudula, to assert free movement and migrant protection is central to reparative justice.

Reparations was one of the central questions at 2001 Durban Conference against racism and related intolerance. The Caribbean has been one of the Global African regions at the forefront of the struggle for reparative justice since the conference. Tennyson clinically examines the evolution, successes, and contradictions in the reparations movements in the Caribbean in the 25 years after the conference.

The demands for reparations arose from battles over the dignity of the African descendant, repatriation, self-determination and questions around land, labor education, political power, culture, white supremacy and black racism. Campbell explains the progressive forces forging repair and the cooptation and political expediency of the reactionary elements pushing back the efforts of the working class, women, grassroots and marginalized groups in Jamaica and other parts of Global Africa.

Zionism has discriminatory and racist roots that manifests in its treatment of Palestinians and other races. Elkorghli offers a historicity of the international recognition of the links between racism and zionism, and precedence and Pan-African solidarity for reparative justice.

The Durban 400 – 400 Black people from the US – mobilized by the December 12th Movement (D12) and the National Black United Front (NBUF) participated in the 2001 World Conference in Durban, South Africa, and contributed to the conversation on reparations. Brooks draws inspiration from Malcolm X and the leadership of the December 12th Movement to grapple with questions about what happened after WCAR 2001 and what needs to be done after the 25th anniversary.

Twenty-five years after Durban, Somalia's Jareerweyne minority is still paying for an unrecognised nineteenth-century slave trade — in its courts, marriages, and prisons. Abukar calls Pan Africanists to look inwards, including Somalia's forgotten slave trade and the need to expand reparative justice to such communities.

 The work on reparative justice is occurring in classrooms, in the community, in public squares, across the oceans, following the archives, forging collaborations, facilitating return to Africa, and providing a global research and education base for reparations work. The Centre for African and International Studies, at the University of Cape Coast, is working from Ghana to realise the principles of the Durban Conference and the gains in the reparative struggles in Ghana and other parts of Global Africa.

The Durban site as host to WCAR 2001 was a bold statement that reflected the honour of a country that had gained freedom from a racist, discriminatory, marginalising and violent apartheid regime. The years after Durban present complex local and international events around the country. Khamees interrogates the contradictions in South Africa’s diplomatic posturing and anti-African discrimination and violence against migrants in the country within the 25 years after the Durban Conference.

Serekberhan covers a half-day symposium packed with former Durban attendees, guerilla intellectuals, and the Syracuse community to commemorate 25 years since the Durban Conference. From how Durban was built and functioned to ongoing struggles for reparations in New York state and within the global context, the conference threaded many themes relevant to our fight for reparative justice.