By Desirée Baptiste, CNW Contributor
New Zealand TV star Aidee Walker and her sibling Kate Thomas recently issued an apology in Jamaica for the role of their Scottish ancestors, Clan Malcolm of Argyll, in chattel slavery.
Five generations of the Malcolms profited from the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica during the 18th and 19th centuries. The sisters did not offer any financial reparations.
Instead, at the July 31st Emancipation Jubilee event in Saint Ann, they committed to taking “actions to repair injustices” and to “honor the memory” of their four-times great-grandmother Mary Johnson, a woman of African descent they described as a “housekeeper in the Malcolm family.” However, the sisters did not mention that Mary was an enslaver who received £371 in 1835 (equivalent to approximately £40,000 today) when slavery ended in the British Empire through the 1833 Abolition Act.
“It is an extraordinary omission,” said Dr. Nicholas Radburn, a historian at Lancaster University.
Aidee and Kate are descendants of Neill Malcolm, a mixed-race émigré born in Hanover, Jamaica, in 1825. He arrived in New Zealand in 1851. Neill’s father, John Malcolm, born in Jamaica to a Scottish enslaver, oversaw the executions of 11 Black insurrectionists at his Argyle Estate in 1824. That same year, John Malcolm’s fourth child with Mary Johnson was born. Aidee Walker expressed her distress at knowing so little about Mary’s life circumstances.
Historical Context and Omitted Details
The UCL Legacies of British Slavery website details Mary Johnson’s 1835 compensation award of £371 for the 15 enslaved people she owned. Another claim listed immediately before hers is by Mary Ann Malcolm, the daughter of Mary Johnson and John Malcolm, who was awarded £48 for two enslaved individuals. Documents found in the archives show John Malcolm acting as witness to official slave registrations by Mary Johnson across the period 1817 to 1829 and gifting Mary with four enslaved women in 1829: Cecilia Barnes, Hortensia, Susan, and Jane.
Mary Johnson is named in John Malcolm’s will as his housekeeper and mother of his five children, but “housekeeper” was commonly used as a euphemism for mistress. Historian Christer Petley has noted that white slaveholders “often developed close relationships with their non-white mistresses and children who stood to gain” from these connections. Mary Johnson’s circumstances reflect her status among the wealthiest of Jamaica’s free mixed-race individuals.
Questions Raised by the Apology
The omission by the sisters “raises questions,” said Radburn, about the emerging focus by descendants of white enslavers on the Caribbean’s long-standing reparations movement. Especially as their apologies, including those from the group ‘Heirs of Slavery,’ do not directly address the issue of reparations, as noted by social justice campaigner Patrick Vernon. The sisters took the spotlight at the annual Seville Emancipation Jubilee, where they pledged to honor an enslaver.
Reports indicate that the sisters are also working on a documentary about their experiences in Jamaica.
No financial reparations have been offered by the sisters, raising concerns about the appropriateness of their apology at a significant commemorative event for Jamaicans. The documentary adds another layer to this discussion, as it foregrounds their journey of apology.
The slide into self-interested atonement is troubling. Esther Stanford Xosei, a renowned reparations campaigner, expressed concerns to The Voice newspaper in 2023 about White enslaver-descendant families profiting from slavery. She emphasized that reparations are a “sacred and ancestral cause” and that any actions around it should be taken with the utmost respect.
Stanford Xosei also called out enslaver descendants profiting from “books and documentaries about their journey,” which was curiously prophetic, as the Kiwi sisters’ upcoming documentary centers on “the process of the family apology,” according to New Zealand news outlet ‘Stuff.’
This journey goes beyond mere navel-gazing and into a form of time-traveling, with Black Jamaicans and the land of wood and water being made “subjects” once again, providing an exotic backdrop to the film’s narrative. The only difference this time is that the residents of the island are seemingly on board (with not an insurrection in sight!). It helps that the sisters’ apology speech was delivered at midnight while most Jamaicans were asleep.
The sisters have expressed their desire for New Zealanders to reflect on how their country was colonized by Europeans who profited from the labor of enslaved Africans. This perspective is complicated by the fact that Neill Malcolm, their ancestor, was of mixed race and did not arrive in New Zealand with significant wealth. His trustee reportedly lost most of his inheritance, leading Neill to move to New Zealand in hopes of recovering his losses.
Additionally, the sisters’ apology describes Clan Malcolm’s involvement in “enslaving Africans within Jamaica,” neglecting the issue of trafficking. Key members of the Clan participated in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans, a practice that historian Sir Hilary Beckles has characterized as genocide. Beckles stated, “Slave traders brought 3 million into Jamaica, and at the end of slavery, there were just about 600,000. The survival rate of African people in the Caribbean was around 17 percent. It was horrendous.”
The Argyle rebellion of 1824 appears to be a focal point in the sisters’ narrative. While highlighting enslaved individuals acting with agency is important, it should not overshadow the broader context of violence and oppression faced by enslaved individuals during the period when Aidee and Kate’s ancestors owned enslaved people. Many unnamed individuals suffered under these conditions, including Clyde, a 47-year-old African-born man listed in John Malcolm’s slave records for 1829 as “sentenced to confinement for life in the Workhouse.”
Reparations claims can still be made regarding the enslavement of the more than 300 Africans forced to work on the Argyle estates for several decades. Coleman Bazelon, a Brattle valuator, who collaborates with Patrick Robinson and others on reparations valuations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery, calculates the reparations to be paid for the Malcolms’ enslavement of Africans on the two Argyle estates as approximately US$1.25 billion.
Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley recently described as “unacceptable” the Church of England’s failure to recognize the agency of Caribbean people when it launched its £100 million reparations initiative in 2023. “They never stopped to ask us or have a conversation with us,” she said, “as to what is appropriate.”
The New Zealand sisters’ pledge to honor an enslaver is raising similar concerns, as to what is acceptable, as well as raising questions about the appropriateness of descendants of enslavers apologizing without addressing reparations directly. Theologian Robert Beckford has commented that “perpetrator ‘reparations’ from the descendants are now, at best, neocolonial charity dressed up as social justice and, at worst, a business opportunity.”
Desirée Baptiste is a London-based interdisciplinary researcher and writer with Caribbean roots. Her 2023 play, “Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave,” explores the Church of England’s involvement in chattel slavery.
