Our share of the world

Africa Claims Us

A recent statement that “(our) words bury truth under garbage” spoke directly to me, so this week I will try to write plainly without cleverness or oblique strokes.

Today, May 25, 2012, the African Union Commission – which is Africa’s equivalent to our Caricom Secretariat – is holding the first Global African Diaspora Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.{{more}} On the African continent, Africa’s leaderships, prompted by South Africa, are moving to reassemble and unite the overseas fragments of the homeland to contribute to the continent’s development. Using the difficult words of the Girls’ High School anniversary lecture, Africa wants to “Re-drain its Brains” and mobilize its shares of the world. On Africa Day, today, leaders from Africa’s Diaspora worldwide, both political and civil, will challenge each other to contribute to 4 Diaspora Initiatives. These are: A Diaspora database of human capital, A Diaspora volunteer service, A Diaspora Investment Fund, and A Development marketplace for the Diaspora.

Continental Africa is looking at us in SVG (we who have so much of Africa in our blood, brain and economy) as part of its share in the world. I would like us to go one step further and ask us to affirm that our connection with Africa is part of our share of the world.

When I assessed briefly our share of the world’s territory, it came over, I hope, that we have an inferiority complex and a low “self-esteem” when we evaluate and define our Vincentian land, marine and atmospheric territory. We use it badly at home and we “sell” it cheap to the world. “We” the Vincentian state and Vincentian society. Today is a good time to access our share in Africa and our partnership with the continent, blasted as it is by history, leadership and hardship.

Opportunity DENIGRATION

The African Union (Africa’s CARICOM) and the Government of South Africa have reached out to beckon us in our region to see ourselves as Africa’s Diaspora. I remember when they organized a Diaspora conference in Jamaica at which some Vincentians like Caspar London, Audrey Butler, Cecil Ryan and others perhaps were present. Prime Minister Gonsalves made one of the keynote speeches there and my friends shared their documents with me. Another time, at a Summit meeting of the African Union, Caricom was invited to take its place as Africa’s only Diaspora state organization. There too, Prime Minister Gonsalves spoke, representing CARICOM. We know well that our Prime Minister has used opportunities at the United Nations to draw attention to the scandal of the genocide which was transatlantic slavery and the need for justice and reparations. It is worth noting too that former Prime Minister Mitchell invited Zambia’s first President, the late Kenneth Kaunda to be with us in SVG, and he did one time call at the United Nations for a fund to mitigate Africa’s environmental woes. The visit of a member of Ethiopia’s royal household on the invitation of Prime Minister Gonsalves and his own tour of Ethiopia are part of our recent show of interest as a state in things African. It sounds promising and so to build on these precedents, I would have expected to hear of our preparations to make proposals at the Africa Day Diaspora Summit in South Africa. What an opportunity to share with Africa and its Diaspora a turning point conference to confront the effects of the 1889 European conference to share out Africa among themselves. But no, I have not heard of the SVG or the CARICOM delegation to the Diaspora Summit.

Call it the “Black World’s (or Africa’s Diasporal) Solidarity Summit for Africa’s Development” for that is what it is, and it hardly makes news except for Searchlight’s Renwick Rose and Global Highlights’ Luzette King on Saturday 26. I do remember that Arnhim Eustace once told me that the word “denigration” when applied to black people, means “depriving the negro/ nigger of any station or value”. It does seem that the way we as Vincentian state and society are treating Africa’s outreach is just that: Opportunity and Outreach Denigration. While those in position – Mitchell and Gonsalves – posture, they leave the continent to flounder.

Do you know what a minimum programme for our share of the African process might have been? Something like this:

A Vincentian delegation with ambassadorial status, led by Renwick Rose, with Invest SVG, Nzimbu Browne, Debra Providence, a spiritual Baptist person and Andre Liverpool. Of course, a “Prep Com” would have designed the delegation’s positions. If that would be more costly than the Prime Minister, his wife and son, then cut the team down to Rose and Invest SVG. Rose would become our AU Ambassador.

Better still, Prime Minister Gonsalves might have encouraged a potent state-society CARICOM delegation to the Summit.

Forty plus years ago, late Caribbean economist George Beckford asked why British and European people were taking West Africa’s cocoa and Caribbean sugar to Europe and making European chocolate for us and the world. Couldn’t Africans and Caribbeans do it for the world? Today, Beckford’s’ younger colleague Dr Gonsalves is inviting the British trading Co. to take Vincentian cocoa for transformation to cocoa products in Britain. What a way to denigrate our share of the world. Fine speeches and words often bury the truth under garbage. On Africa Day, let us reflect on our share of Africa’s wealth and woe.