THE NETHERLANDS is set to apologise for slavery and colonialism, but their government hopes to avoid paying reparations by offering a museum and a small amount of money for “awareness projects.”

The Dutch colonised 13 countries including Tobago, Suriname, Guyana, Angola, Senegal, Namibia and South Africa. The tiny European nation also captured dozens of ‘trading posts’ around the world such as Elmina in Ghana and what is now the British Virgin Islands.

Anti-racism campaigners welcomed the move by the Netherlands to be one of the few colonisers in the world to apologise, but some called for genuine reparations to be paid.

The Dutch still indulge in a blackface festival every year called Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), and the Far Right Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, regularly returns over 20 MPs in Staten-Generaal parliament over the past two decades.

There has been a big push for an apology from Suriname, which sits next to Guyana on the Caribbean-facing coast of South America, but many Surinamese have been clear they want compensation.

That does not look like it will arrive in the immediate future, with the Netherlands government only willing to contemplate £175m for awareness projects and pledged to spend £23m on a slavery museum.

15,000 Dutch moved to South Africa in the 16th Century and established apartheid through oppression including the Khoikhoi and others massacres, and shipped tens of thousands of South African slaves to the Americas.

The Netherlands is due to join Denmark and King Philippe of Belgium in apologising or expressing “deepest regrets” for slavery and colonialism. Last year a Dutch government-appointed board concluded that  “today’s institutional racism cannot be seen separately from centuries of slavery and colonialism.”

Romeo Bronne, a 58-year-old businessman in Suriname, told The Grio that an apology was needed but so were financial reparations. “We remained poor”, he said.