In fact, the Africans have very good precedents to follow in terms of negotiating reparations. The companies include top names such as Volkswagen, BMW, Deutsche Bank, BASF, Daimler-Chrysler, Siemens and Dresdner Bank. So seriously are the companies taking the Jews' claims that they are being represented at the negotiations by the former German economics minister, Count Otto Lambsdorff. Whatever the precise numbers, they cannot come to within a thousandth of the innumerable millions of Africans sent across the Atlantic in the 400 years that the slave trade lasted. Barclays Bank in England has also reached a settlement with the Jews about money seized from accounts by Barclays branches in France.
New claims keep surfacing all the time.
But although these claims are relevant to Africa's demands, and go some way towards strengthening the demands, they are not as important as the new climate that has been created in the international community for the detection and punishment of crimes against humanity. And a warrant has gone out for the arrest of the Yugoslav leader, Slovobad Milosevic, to be tried on similar charges of carrying out ethnic cleansing against the people of Kosovo. Lord Gifford, a white man, is an activist who has campaigned on behalf of oppressed people throughout Africa, including those of Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and South Africa. He is also well known in the black community in Britain, where he served as the chairman of an enquiry set up to investigate racial disturbances at the Broadwater Farm estate in North London. Lord Gifford presented a submission on reparations to the first conference ever to be held on the subject in Africa.