04/04/2026
The Christian Church owes Afrika Reparations
"If you look at the world today, the richest institutions, the most resourceful institutions as well, ask how they came to accumulate that wealth? It came through our exploitation, through the transatlantic slave trade.
You take an institution like the Catholic Church. Where does the wealth of the Catholic Church come from? The wealth of the Catholic Church comes from the fact that. That the Catholic Church was a partner to Portugal in the adventurism, which eventually led to the transatlantic slave trade. Indeed, the justification
for slavery and colonialism was provided for in the Papal bull of 1452 signed by the Pope, authorizing King Alfonso of Portugal to go around the world civilizing us and so on. That's where the justification is. So that led also to the building of institutions, institutions which denigrated our science, we destroyed our science institutions, we devalued our spirituality, and so on and so forth. So many
things we need to reset.
Look, fast forward, fast forward. All of us have heard about this big bank, Barclays bank. When you hear
about Barclays bank (Absa) , you look at it with awe. Now after, yeah, you go there and you see them, you know, in their suits and white shirts and so on, looking premium proper. And so Barclays bank was established by the Barclays brothers, who are slave traders. The money which established Barclays bank, is a slave trade in money. Are we not entitled to it? We are entitled to it. The Catholic Church is one of the biggest, richest spiritual institutions in the world. Where did the wealth come from? It Came from us. We are entitled to that wealth.
Just imagine that 12.6 million Africans ended up on the plantations and so on as beast of burden and worked for hundreds of years without pay. Compute that. The resources for the development of the capitalist countries was accumulated through the transatlantic slave trade. And that is why I reject these calls
on Africa and Latin America and so on the Caribbean that if we want to develop, we should be like Germany. If we want to develop, we should be like
Britain and so on. That option is not available for us."
~Kwesi Pratt Jnr