Reparations & Gender

This roundtable, held in partnership with Nawi Africa, explored why feminist and gendered perspectives must sit at the center of reparations movements across Africa.

The conversation brought together Nombuso Mathibela, Omolara Oriye, Grace R. Namugambe, and Dr. Lebohang Liepollo, and was moderated by Lavender Namdier. Together, they examined how colonialism, patriarchy, and racial violence have shaped the lives of Black and brown women, and what meaningful repair demands in response.

Speakers reflected on anti-colonial work as an act of creation. Not as abstraction, but as sustained political, epistemic, and embodied resistance. It is the insistence that lived experience is real. That what is felt and witnessed carries truth.

The discussion challenged narrow understandings of reparations as financial compensation alone. Reparations were framed as collective and deeply personal. A process of restoring dignity, agency, and wholeness. A reconstitution of being, especially in the face of the infinite time taken from Black and brown women through unpaid care, labor, erasure, and control over their bodies.

Panelists emphasized that a feminist reparative framework must address reproductive and bodily autonomy as central harms of colonial and postcolonial systems. They called for concrete reparative measures including free reproductive healthcare, legal reform, and the recognition of indigenous knowledge systems.

This roundtable was part of the broader Wakati Wetu Festival conversations on justice, memory, and repair. It reflects an ongoing commitment to centering women’s experiences, knowledge, and leadership in shaping reparative futures.