PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has called for reparations for victims of slave trade in the form of the adoption of special measures, including affirmative action programmes and targeted financial assistance, as restitution to communities whose ancestors were sold into slavery.
Ramaphosa was speaking at the General Debate of the 76th Session of teh United Nations General Assembly via video link on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.
He said with the country’s constitution South Africans were called upon to build a society based on social justice and fundamental human rights to correct the injustices of the past.
Ramaphosa said slavery was one of the darkest periods in the history of humankind and a crime of unparalleled ‘barbarity’, saying its legacy persists in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and in Africa itself.
“Millions of the descendants of Africans who were sold
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