As we approach another Emancipation Day, I take this opportunity to give you a sneak preview of some thoughts for my presentation on Reparations at the Emancipation Day celebration in Guyana on Monday August 1st 2005. Increasing demands for reparations disturb our former and present enslaving and colonizing masters who like vampires continue to benefit from the blood of our ancestors and their children.

Ijahnya Christian

It is right for those powers to be disturbed because much as they like to tout justice as a hallmark of democracy, there seems to be no justice in sight when it comes to the matter of reparations for the African Ma’afa that robbed a continent and a race of people of the capacity to survive and develop sustainably. Since I know that the old pirates who rob I are not about to impoverish themselves in the name of reparations and really do not like it when people like me start pestering them for the money owed, the cultural and human resources to be repatriated and the long list of means by which reparations can be made, I also know that the main reason Haiti’s President Aristide finds himself exiled in South Africa today, is his bill to France. How then can I be excited by the G8s and Live 8s and debt “forgiveness” on the part of those sinned against rather than those who continue the sin of enjoying profits from the control Africa’s resources while putting themselves up as our lords and saviours once again? As one African scholar has noted, Africa will always have something that everyone wants and there will always be those who will not ever be particular about how or what they take until we stop them and stop the thought from forming in their minds that they can take from us in the first place. We cannot do that until we get deep inside ourselves and repair the damage done there.

Another misconception is that reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade means reparative action on the part of Europe only. However, we had better go and claim the land being offered by descendants of the Africans on the supply side of that trade in practical repentance as they seek forgiveness for their hand in the genocide committed against their ancestors. We also cannot escape the fact of reparations due to the remnants of the exterminated indigenous peoples of this Region. The Arabisation of Africa makes the situation even more complex and connects the continent with those for whom human life has become a cheap sacrifice clothed in the dirty robes of religion and ideology. I can write angry articles and the terrorists and their little copycats can continue to make all our lives miserable but neither anger nor terrorism will help us to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, for “none but ourselves can free our minds…” In that context, we would be foolish not to recognize the critical importance of self-repair.

As I write this, I am mourning the loss of two people who passed away on Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd respectively. One was a young former student of mine who may not have valued the gifts of traditional knowledge because they are not included in our formal curriculum. The other was my Buddhist friend, Canadian Professor Carole Yawney, one of the foremost researchers on Rastafari culture who worked at York University and helped to tell the story of Robert Athlyi Rogers and the role of the Holy Piby in breaking the bands of mental slavery among Africans at home and abroad. Below is an excerpt from one of her emails to me dated October 18th 2000. “…But I did trod to Pretoria, a Rastafari trod in fact it was because I drove all the way there from Cape Town with Ras Elphy a South African idren and Momma B a self repatriated sister from Jamaica. On the way there we spent time in Kimberley. In fact, we had a celebration in Kimberley welcoming the Holy Piby home. We even found the original Church of the Holy Piby building and videotaped it. There’s such a story here I don’t know where to start. We also had our own private meeting with the Holy Piby at Sol Plaatje’s memorial in the cemetery. I am taking a week off next week to write a report on my SA trod for a conference coming up so maybe I can tell it there....The return of the Black Man’s Bible got a BIG write-up in a major Cape Town paper.”

The experiment is not quite successful because colonial cruelty, poverty and neglect served to keep us close to Africa. Haiti, which I think of as Africa in the Caribbean is the least creolised of all the Caribbean because the brutality meted out on the slave plantation meant that life expectancy was short. The more I listen to Anguillian elders, who against all odds made themselves into men and women of substance from childhoods much akin to those of the rural African child today, the more I realize that Africa is never far away. The stories of the elders give me a deeper appreciation of what it means to be Anguillian and fill me with great hope. This is the African oral tradition and in the telling is the transmission of how Africans use our wits to solve our problems, take our education from the world around us, work hard, save and through collective effort – jollification – partner hand - sustain ourselves. That knowledge and experience still resides in our living ancestors whose legends shape and mould and make our Anguillian identity strong. It is right now that we need to create an environment in which Anguillian children and youth will develop a strong sense of roots and rootedness and in which we can recognize our young people for the awesome force that they are.

Without fundamental change, terrorism will appear to be an attractive option and one that will command our collective attention as nothing else can. The weapons I propose for the confrontation are those of an alternative education oriented to self-knowledge and culture and a development thrust that recognizes the role of the family in sustaining social stability. New approaches to development that are grounded in ancient cultural values and that are gender sensitive will empower us to ride the tides of globalization if we cannot resist them. We cannot speak of emancipation when we continue to debate matters that should have been long decided. We cannot speak of emancipation when we are still afraid to say the word “Black” In We Borning Land (title of my 2005 calypso). We cannot speak of emancipation in a Hollywood democracy where so many of us cannot speak at all. And if we cannot even speak for Africa, why should we believe that we are free? I know that all roads lead to Sandy Ground on August Monday but I invite you to pause even for a moment on that auspicious date August 1st to give thanks to the Most High and to our Ancestors who have prepared us well for this journey.

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