Emancipation concert: A welcome initiative

In a week when the people of the Caribbean held activities to commemorate the legal end of slavery in the English-speaking Caribbean, pride of place must go to the women and people of Jamaica for keeping the Caribbean at the forefront of the global sporting arena.

The women of Jamaica have achieved the unprecedented feat of qualifying for the knockout phase of the Women’s World Cup in football. In so doing they denied Brazil, one of football’s perennial heavyweights, a magnificent achievement. Their netballing counterparts have also made it to the last four of the World Netball championships which wind up in south Africa on Sunday. What a way to celebrate the accomplishments of an emancipated people! We wish our Jamaican sisters continued success.

It was especially gratifying to witness the massive crowd which attended Tuesday’s ‘One People’ concert which combined the celebration of Emancipation Day and CARICOM Day, giving it a regional flavour. It is a pity that the venue for the concert, our beloved all-purpose Park, still carries the colonial name of Victoria Park, but this relic of the colonial past only serves to remind us that we have a great deal of emancipating to do still.

The concert, organized on an official level with state resources, has taken the Emancipation celebrations to a different level so we cannot afford to let it slip back to the unofficial and under-resourced levels of the past. We must also remember and pay tribute to those pioneers who have kept the emancipation flame burning all these years.

Yes, those of the nationalist and progressive movements of the 70s and 80, the “Black Power” advocates and artistes in such organizations as the New Artists Movement (NAM), Naked Roots, DRAGS and similar rural organizations. We recall with love and admiration too the thankless efforts of the organizers of the Diamond Village Emancipation Committee and Sister Ideisha of Sion Hill and her brethren who annually made sure that we never forgot Emancipation.

We owe them a collective debt of gratitude for keeping the flame burning.

The Emancipation activities stretched region-wide and those countries in which there are active Emancipation Day activities led the way. The heart of Trinidad’s capital city, Port of Spain, was graced by the presence of an authentic African king from Ghana, drawing huge crowd of onlookers and admirers. It also served as a reminder to those who still think that only Europe has kings and queens, that they still exist in Africa and other non-white countries. I am not a fan of “royalty” however.

The twinning of the Emancipation Day with CARICOM Day activities also served the purpose of making the necessary connection between Emancipation, national independence and regional integration, all parts of our liberation process. It also necessarily brought into focus, one of the most important areas of work of CARICOM and the regional integration movement. That focus is on the critical matter of reparatory justice for the Caribbean people.

All the people of the Caribbean, whether they be indigenous folk like the Kalinago and Garifuna, the African slaves, enslaved bodily and in the mind, and so-called ‘indentured servants’, Portuguese, Irish and Scots among them, were unfortunate victims of colonialism and slavery too and their levels of development were cruelly affected by colonial rule.

We all must therefore be part and parcel of the just demands for reparation. In Barbados this week, the demand for reparatory justice is being taken one step further in the form of a meeting of the regional reparations movement.

In order for it to succeed, a massive education programme at all levels needs to be undertaken with special attention on the schools and our youth. Reparations will never succeed unless our people fully support its aims and are prepared both to support it as well as to advance its aims. In this, volunteer work is necessary, and efforts must be made to involve retired folk and other willing elder citizens.

Now that the Emancipation initiative has been officially undertaken, it is imperative that the state and people do not allow it to be a flash in the pan. We must maintain it annually and incorporate activities to mark another special occasion in the month of August. The United Nations agency, UNESCO, has designated August 23 as international Day for the Remembrance of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and its

Abolition. This too has obvious global significance and can be incorporated into our activities. Let’s build on the good start!

• Renwick Rose is a community activist and social commentator.