With no end to the Coronavirus lockdown until at least the middle of May, the UK government is saying that five tests have to be met before it can occur:
- “Making sure the NHS can cope
- A “sustained and consistent” fall in the daily death rate
- Rate of infection decreasing to “manageable levels”
- Ensuring supply of tests and personal protective equipment (PPE) can meet future demand
- Being confident any adjustments would not risk a second peak” (1)
Many are speculating what life after lockdown will be like. One thing that the statistics seem to make clear is that less of us, compared to other communities, around to experience. Perhaps the Labour Party inquiry headed by Baroness Doreen Lawrence will provide some answers. (2)
However, the current estimates suggest that in addition to the disproportionate number of deaths there are reports that the “Black community” (as well as it’s unwanted “AME” appendage) are being hit “twice as hard” by the lockdown:
“Black and minority ethnic (BAME) households were twice as likely to report having lost income or jobs in the wake of the pandemic. The poll also found workers under 35 were more likely to have been “furloughed” or made unemployed than their older colleagues. It follows reports that BAME communities as a whole appeared to be more vulnerable to the virus.” (3)
These challenges are also highlighted in a recent Business In The Community Factsheet.:
“Black and minority ethnic groups are more likely to be unemployed and in precarious work than their white counterparts. A recent report from the UCL Institute of Education (IOE), Carnegie UK Trust, and Operation Black Vote revealed that BAME millennials are 47% more likely to be on a zero hours contract. They are also 4.17% less likely to have a permanent contract than their white peer group.” (4)
The government has announced the ways it says it will support the population cope with the lockdown measures for the employees, the unemployed and the self-employed including access to Statutory Sick Pay, for Universal Credit or new style Employment and Support Allowance, 80% of wages for furloughed workers and support for rent costs. (5) They are also offering relief from business rates for some sectors and cash grants of £10,000 to £25,000 for small businesses that are eligible. (6)
Another growing concern is the impact of the extension of police powers during lockdown, and they will be maintained afterwards. So far, the statistics reveal that Afrikans are only slightly (as opposed to the wildly) more disproportionately affected by police stops, thus presently, as one journalist observed, “White people are discovering what police harassment feels like for the first time.” (7) For legal experts, he actions of the police continue to raise a number of concerns with regards to their compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”) and the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA”). Under Section 6 HRA. (8)
The extent to which the Afrikan community will benefit from the support measures or impacted by the legal ones remains to be remains to be seen. Regarding the former, in addition to offering a range of practical financial tips in his March 2020 newsletter, author and leading critical thinker Bro. Ifayomi Grant, who was planning to unveil an economic development initiative at an event in May that has now been aborted due to the lockdown, offers this perspective:
“The question is after the crisis will we return to African economic business as usual. Will we act as individual economic players in the team sport of inter-ethnic/racial economic competition? You have no doubt heard of all the price gouging that has been going on from large corporations who manufacture ventilators hoarding them and driving up the price to corner shops selling 70 pence sanitisers for £6.99. Be in no doubt our economic competitors are ruthless and without mercy. It’s time to choose a team, stop being a spectator and get on the field of play.”
As I often repeat we don’t need to convert anyone we just need the converted to live up to our ‘conscious/pro-Black/African-centred’ etc. rhetoric. Once a biological virus takes hold of 1% of a population it starts to spread uncontrollably. I think this may well be the case with ideas. We only need 1% of Afrikans to get on board with Team African/Black etc. and we can gradually infect the 99% with a healing virus!” (9)
As far back as March 20th, at the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement/Mariandina Research Foundation Health Seminar, – Coronavirus: How To Protect Yourself, Sis. Kai Ouagadou-Mbandaka raised the necessity for a community strategy, that some have only recently begun to take up:
“As a community we need to be discussing this and having a community response. The community has not called an urgent community meeting. We should have done one already, but some of us are so scared we probably wouldn’t even turn up to it. This is the time when we need to pull together. We need to have a community strategy of how to deal with this because as I said, it’s not just about health, it’s also about housing, it’s also about our jobs. We are the ones that are on zero (hours) contracts, we are the ones that are the nurses, we are the ones that are renting, we are the ones that have the restaurants, the hairdressers. All of these things that are feeding our families are going to go to a standstill. What is our strategy? How do we protect, how do we care for our community in these times? We’re going to have to meet and strategize our way through this.” (10)
These are wide-ranging concerns that do not necessarily require the participation of those with the highest profile or even the hottest (or smoothest for that matter) rhetoric. Ideally, such strategies should be developed by those with a track record of service to the community and regard themselves as accountable to it. The lack of communal structures means that those with long (or short-standing) transgressions against the community merely need to reinvent themselves or sit out until there has been a sufficient turnover of activists for them to re-emerge.
In the USA, some are casting the response to COVID-19 as a reparations issue, including two academics, Rashawn Ray and Andre M. Perry, both of the Brookings Institute, regarded most influential Think Tank in world. (11) Ray and Perry’s tenure at Brookings further underscores the apparent lack of capacity within the Afrikan community to harness our thinkers and academics to develop policy proposals to feed into our development agenda. (12)
The two who are respectively, David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies and Andre M. Perry is a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution respectively, argue that endemic structural inequalities leave Afrikans in the USA at an inherent disadvantage. This is most manifest in the wealth gap between Afrikans and Europeans and can only be addressed by a reparations policy that includes: Individual payments for descendants of enslaved Black Americans; College tuition to 4-year or 2-year colleges and universities for descendants of enslaved Black Americans; Student loan forgiveness for descendants of enslaved Black Americans; Down payment grants and housing revitalization grants for descendants of enslaved Black Americans and Business grants for business starting up, business expansion to hire more employees, or purchasing property for descendants of enslaved Black Americans. (13)
There is a long-standing reparations movement in the USA and interest has intensified in recent years due the advent of #ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) as well as Foundational Black Americans (FBA) Tangibles. Yet some observers regard the language used by some of the most high-profile advocates such as Antonio Moore and Yvette Carnell as “increasingly hyperbolic, divisive and vituperative,” raising the real concern that:
“…ADOS is being used as a Trojan Horse for some other agenda. In Moore’s case I think it is about cosying up to the Democratic Party. In Carnell’s case I think she is using the longstanding Marxist strategy of promoting Marxism without naming it Marxism.” (14)
One also has to wonder if, should the demands of the reparations be met, does the Afrikan community in the USA have the institutional formation to ensure its gains are maintained. The same could argued for the UK.
Arguably the most high-profile reparations related activity in the UK is the annual march from Brixton to Parliament on the first of Mosiah. Certainly, the movement could benefit from a unified approach encompassing some operational coherence. Currently, there are efforts to develop an intellectual praxis around reparations in the UK but there is a tendency its written accounts to be selective, replete with critical omissions and indicative of personal allegiances (or lack thereof) rather than a commitment to broad based movement building. (15) Nevertheless, the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Afrikan people in the UK does appear to be consistent with a reparations approach.
The most effective way that the Afrikan community in the UK can meet the challenges, not only of post lockdown but while it continues in the present is to galvanise its most active and creative elements to advance a comprehensive vision. Such a framework was advanced by the interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament. Using the framework of assemblies, committees and departments and working in conjunction with existing Afrikan community groups, organizations and institutions of varying social, ideological and religious persuasions, iNAPP’s stated objectives were to:
“1. To be an effective, progressive and mandated ‘voice’ for Afrikans in the UK.
2. To define, defend and develop the best interests of Afrikans in the UK (and globally).
3. To build the infrastructure for Afrikan self-governance, economic self-reliance and social development, including independent institutions (education, health, science).
4. To campaign, lobby and hold to account the government and other state institutions, vis a vis the rights and justice of Afrikan people: including reparations for the Ma’afa.
5. To mobilize all Afrikans in the UK to join and actively, progress the vision of the NAPP.
6. To forge principled and operational unity across social, organizational, ideological, religious and gender lines for Afrikan community cohesion and advancement.
7. To operate at local, regional, national and international levels.
8. To investigate causes and implement solutions to the social injustices and maladies disproportionately affecting the Afrikan community: especially our youth.
9. To develop constructive engagements within British society and raise the profile of the Afrikan presence (past and present), so as to progress the aims of the NAPP.
10. To ensure that NAPP vision is perpetuated through succession planning via youth engagement and development.” (16)
Although a 2015 leadership implosion seemingly put this vision on hold, (17) the framework is there to be utilised by another formation, for example the Summit Of Solutions. One of the questions reverberating around the Afrikan community presently is what are now going to do differently? It might be re-formulated to say, why have we not been doing what we said we were going to do and what will make us do it now?
(1) BBC News (25/04/20) Coronavirus: UK hospital deaths pass 20,000. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52424413
(2) Ashley Cowburn (25/04/20) Labour launches review into coronavirus impact on Bame people with Doreen Lawrence at helm. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/doreen-lawrence-labour-review-coronavirus-bame-impact-keir-starmer-a9481776.html
(3) Mikey Smith (14/04/20) Coronavirus lockdown hits black and minority ethnic Britons twice as hard. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/coronavirus-lockdown-hits-black-minority-21863842
(4) The Prince’s Responsible Business Network (2020) Factsheet: Ethnicity and The Economic Impact of COVID-19. Business In The Community. https://www.bitc.org.uk/fact-sheet/covid-19-ethnicity-and-economic-impact/
(5) Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (07/04/20) COVID-19: guidance for employees. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-employers-and-businesses-about-covid-19/covid-19-guidance-for-employees
(6) Pat Sweet (31/03/20) Covid-19: guidance on small business and retail sector grant schemes. https://www.accountancydaily.co/covid-19-guidance-small-business-and-retail-sector-grant-schemes
(7) Ned Simons (22/04/20) Police Must Not Unfairly Target Ethnic Minorities During Lockdown, MPs Warn. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-lockdown-police-emergency-powers_uk_5ea00785c5b6a486d0819a21; Moya Lothian-McLean (11/04/20) White people are discovering what police harassment feels like for the first time. https://www.indy100.com/article/police-coronavirus-uk-lockdown-racism-stop-and-search-9459246
(8) Edward Hodgson (06/04/20) Policing under lockdown: a “common sense” approach? https://www.bindmans.com/insight/covid/policing-under-lockdown-a-common-sense-approach
(9) Ifayomi Grant (2020) COVID-19 – Keeping Your Mind, Body and Wallet Healthy. The Navig8or Newsletter.
(10) Afrika Speaks with Alkebu-Lan on Galaxy Radio (23/03/20) Princesses to Queens: How well are we nurturing our girls? https://www.mixcloud.com/AfrikaSpeaks/princesses-to-queens-how-well-are-we-nurturing-our-girls-230320/
(11) Dr. Amarendra Bhushan Dhiraj (31/01/17) Most Influential Think Tanks In The World For 2017 (US & non-US). https://ceoworld.biz/2017/01/31/100-influential-think-tanks-world-2017/
(12) Afrika Speaks with Alkebu-Lan on Galaxy Radio (04/02/19) How can Think Tanks help build our community? https://www.mixcloud.com/AfrikaSpeaks/how-can-think-tanks-help-build-our-community-040219/
(13) Rashawn Ray and Andre M. Perry (15/04/20) Why we need reparations for Black Americans. https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/why-we-need-reparations-for-black-americans/
(14) Ifayomi Grant (2019) Is #ADOS a Trojan Horse? The Navig8or Newsletter.
(15) Esther Stanford-Xosei (2019) The Long road of Pan-African liberation to reparatory justice in Hakim Adi (Ed), Black British History: New Perspectives. Zed Books. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/740606/Surveillance_of_influenza_and_other_respiratory_viruses_in_the_UK_2017_to_2018.pdf
(16) iNAPP Interim National Organising Committee (28/11/15) ‘Constitution: Working Draft For Community Consultation. interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament. p. 7-8
(17) iNAPP Council of Elders (15/05/15) Statement From iNAPP Council of Elders. https://web.archive.org/web/20150515165628/http://www.inapp.org.uk/
We ask the question:
How will the COVID-19 lockdown affect the Afrikan Community?
1) Have you accessed any government support during the lockdown?
2) Can we make nation-building go viral?
3) What would a community strategy look like?
4) Is the impact of the pandemic a reparations issue?
Our Special Guests:
Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka: Resident guest who is Spiritual Leader of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement and UNIA-ACL Ambassador for the UK and national co-Chair of the interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament. Bro. Ldr is a veteran activist of over 30 years standing, a featured columnist in The Whirlwind newspaper and author of Mosiah Daily Affirmations and Education: An African-Centred Approach To Excellence.
Bro. Paul Ifayomi Grant: in addition to operating his own consultancy firm Paul Grant & Associates Ltd, Bro. Ifayomi is the author of a number of exciting and dynamic books ‘Niggers, Negroes, Black People and Afrikans’ and ‘Blue Skies for Afrikans’, ‘Saving Our Sons’, ‘Sankofa the Wise Man and His Amazing Friends’, ‘Why Willie Lynch Must Die’ and ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’. He is an active member of the Afrikan community and is involved in a number of community groups some of which he founded or co-founded:Nubian Link www.nubianlink.org.uk a community education group, ABDF Ltd (www.abdf.co.uk), a community economic development company, Nottingham Black Families in Education Parent Support Group and Brother II Br
Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka: Resident guest who is Spiritual Leader of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement and UNIA-ACL Ambassador for the UK and national co-Chair of the interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament. Bro. Ldr is a veteran activist of over 30 years standing, a featured columnist in The Whirlwind newspaper and author of Mosiah Daily Affirmations and Education: An African-Centred Approach To Excellence.
Bro. Paul Ifayomi Grant: in addition to operating his own consultancy firm Paul Grant & Associates Ltd, Bro. Ifayomi is the author of a number of exciting and dynamic books ‘Niggers, Negroes, Black People and Afrikans’ and ‘Blue Skies for Afrikans’, ‘Saving Our Sons’, ‘Sankofa the Wise Man and His Amazing Friends’, ‘Why Willie Lynch Must Die’ and ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’. He is an active member of the Afrikan community and is involved in a number of community groups some of which he founded or co-founded:Nubian Link www.nubianlink.org.uk a community education group, ABDF Ltd (www.abdf.co.uk), a community economic development company, Nottingham Black Families in Education Parent Support Group and Brother II Brother an Afrikan men’s group. He is an executive member of the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of Africa (FOSDAF) www.fosdaf.org an international group promoting grassroots Afrikan economic empowerment. In addition to his www.houseofknowledge.org.uk that houses writings, information and resources, Bro. Ifayomi has also launched a the website: www.blackfinancialfitness.com as a learning platform to facilitate economic empowerment.