Steven Golding | Karmic debt of Maafa and curse of reparations plaguing the British Government

Maafa is a Kiswahili term meaning “Great Disaster”. It is used by Pan-Africanists today to refer to the “African Holocaust”, which defines the centuries of horrific suffering, systemic destruction, and forced displacement inflicted upon millions of people through the transatlantic slave trade.

This year marks exactly 500 years since the very first slave ship traversed the Atlantic Ocean from the west coast of Africa to Brazil. This half-millennium milestone commemorates five centuries since the initiation of a brutal machinery that systematically stripped millions of Africans not only from their motherland but of their very humanity.

Since meteorological records began in 1851, every year, a relentless procession of hurricanes rises from West Africa, tracing that same Middle Passage before tearing through the Caribbean as if propelled by the spiritual forces of this tragedy, demanding a cosmic settling for this 500-year-old crime against humanity.

A curiously striking pattern has emerged in British politics: since 2007, the pivotal year marking the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade and the reignition of the CARICOM reparations movement, every prime minister who has refused to acknowledge the debt owed to the children of the Maafa has subsequently faced political ruin, forced resignation, or swift electoral defeat:

• Tony Blair (1997-2007): Expressed “deep sorrow” in 2007 but withheld a full legal apology; forced to step down prematurely months later.

• Gordon Brown (2007-2010): Prioritised financial aid over historical reparatory justice; his administration ended in a messy election deadlock.

• David Cameron (2010-2016): Told Jamaica to “move on” in 2015; his career was shattered by the Brexit referendum within a year.

• Theresa May (2016-2019): Bypassed CARICOM’s appeals; her premiership disintegrated under intense parliamentary deadlock.

• Boris Johnson (2019-2022): Routinely dismissed reparatory claims; cast out by a rapid succession of scandals and a Cabinet mutiny.

• Liz Truss (2022): Ignored global equity appeals; her chaotic government imploded in a record-breaking 49 days.

• Rishi Sunak (2022-2024): Stated that “trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward”; led his party into a catastrophic electoral wipeout.

• Keir Starmer (2024-2026): Insisted “reparations are not on the agenda”; forced by Commonwealth leaders to sign a dialogue communiqué before his turbulent term ended by 2026.

Could this modern reckoning be linked to the same unseen forces and spiritual armour that have fuelled the fight against slavery from its very beginning? Enslaved Africans tapped into ancient, sacred, hidden traditions to organise, revolt, resist, and eventually shatter the machinery of Europe’s transatlantic trade.

The pattern now places Prime Minister Andy Burnham in immediate political jeopardy. Following a historic legal petition laid directly before King Charles III by Jamaica to refer questions on the legality of chattel slavery to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Burnham’s negative response from 10 Downing Street may land him in the same trap and trigger his political demise.

The Jamaican delegation delivered its petition on the exact anniversary of the slave ship Zong leaving the Gold Coast of West Africa in 1781. The specificity of the day carried immense spiritual significance, deliberately tapping into the unseen ancestral spirits and energies that still cry out for the souls lost in the Zong Massacre, when 132 bound Africans were thrown into the ocean for insurance profit. By rejecting this deeply calculated spiritual and legal move, Burnham’s spokesperson bluntly declared, “Our position on reparations is clear, and the UK does not and will not make reparations”, walking straight into the same political crosshairs that decimated his predecessors.

Further, King Charles III faces a perilous constitutional and spiritual crossroads. The Crown’s ties are deep and bloody. King Charles II granted the royal monopoly to the Royal African Company, appointing his brother James, the first Duke of York, to oversee an enterprise that saw thousands of enslaved Africans branded with the letters “DY” for over a century. In a profound echo, as the modern reparations movement gathered momentum, the current Duke of York (Prince Andrew) was stripped of his military affiliations, royal patronages, and public office.

To those watching the spiritual ledger, this sudden humiliation is the same unseen ancestral current striking the title that once branded stolen humans. King Charles III’s recent decision to refer Jamaica’s petition to the Privy Council could reflect the Crown’s awareness of the risk of invoking these same African ancestral destabilising currents.

During historical uprisings like Jamaica’s Tacky’s War in 1760 and the 1791 Haitian Revolution, freedom fighters gathered in secret, invoking ancestral protections believed to make them impervious to colonial forces. These hidden practices provided a sanctuary that superseded the brutal whims of the planter class. The British plantocracy feared these unseen networks so deeply that they explicitly banned all practices of African spirituality, recognising that these sacred connections were synonymous with revolution.

As Jamaica aggressively presses for accountability, the intangible legacy of those uprisings endures. The continuous collapse of those who protect the empire’s ill-gotten gains suggests that the spiritual forces of resistance have not faded. Like the annual tempests crossing the Atlantic, they are still balancing the scales of justice. Indeed, Buckingham Palace and Downing Street should beware!

Steven Golding is the president of the Universal Negro Improvement Association & African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) in Jamaica, and a member of the National Council on Reparations. Send feedback to reparation.research@uwi.edu.