The world treats reparations like some radical demand. It’s not.

It’s like we’re asking for favours. Like it’s some kind of extra, a nice-to-have, a gift if the right people feel generous. That’s not what this is. Reparations are not charity. They are justice. They are what’s owed.

When countries talk about historical injustices, they love using words like “tragedy” or “unfortunate past” as if colonialism and slavery were natural disasters, not deliberate systems of theft, violence, and exploitation. They say it was “a different time” or that “we must move forward”. Convenient. But the descendants of those who built Europe’s wealth with their blood are still suffering because of what was stolen.

Africa wasn’t just robbed of gold, diamonds, and labour. It was robbed of futures. Generations of people had their lands taken, their cultures erased, their economies gutted. And then, when independence came, it came with a catch: neocolonialism. Former colonial powers never really left. They kept their grip through debt, trade policies, puppet governments. Reparations aren’t just about the past. They are about the ongoing theft.

And let’s talk about wealth. Europe and the US didn’t become rich through hard work alone. They built their economies on the backs of enslaved and colonized people. They extracted, looted, exploited. And today, they tell those same nations to “develop” and “pull themselves up by the bootstraps”. With what? With resources that were taken? With economies designed to fail? With debt that never ends? Reparations mean returning what was taken so these countries can actually thrive on their own terms.

There are people who say it’s too late. That paying reparations now is punishing people who weren’t directly involved. That’s not how justice works. If you inherit wealth built on stolen labour, you inherit the responsibility to make it right. And let’s be honest, no one says it’s “too late” when it’s time to collect debts from the Global South. No one says it’s “too late” when corporations demand profit from former colonies. But when the demand comes from the other side, suddenly there’s no money. Suddenly, it’s complicated.

Apologies don’t change systems. Memorials don’t fix economies. Education alone doesn’t return stolen land. Justice does. And justice means reparations. Not in the form of aid, not as some symbolic gesture, but as real, material restitution. Full acknowledgment of the crime, followed by actual compensation. Because until that happens, colonization isn’t over. It just evolved.