I still remember the sense of excitement that ran through activist circles in Brussels when the king of Belgium expressed his regret for colonial violence in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020, and suddenly it felt like the mask of collective amnesia over Europe’s colonial past was starting to crack, setting us on a path towards real, reparative justice.
But three years on, the fight for justice seems more fraught than ever. In recent weeks, heads of state from Germany and Great Britain have addressed the colonial crimes committed in Tanzania and Kenya respectively. King Charles III, on an official visit to Kenya in early November, expressed his “deep regret” for the colonial abuses perpetrated by British forces. The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, asked for “forgiveness” for the crimes perpetrated by the German army in Tanzania against up to 300,000 people during the Maji Maji revolts at the beginning of the 20th century.
