TODAY, May 25, is celebrated in different parts of the world as Africa Liberation Day, African Unity Day or Africa Day — but by whatever name, it observes the various long and bitter struggles for the liberation of Africa’s now independent states from the colonial clutch created by the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, that divided Africa among European nations.
The independence movement started in March 1957 with Ghana becoming the first African nation to raise its own flag under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah – and from then until now, the Caribbean has featured as a constant partner in the growing up of Africa.
Jamaica’s Marcus Garvey’s influence led to the creation of Ghana’s Black Star Line shipping company and Saint Lucia’s W. Arthur Lewis helped draw up Ghana’s first national economic plan; and since then, a host of other Caribbean figures – from Trinidad & Tobago’s George Padmore and CLR James, to Guyana’s Walter Rodney and French West Indians like Martinique’s Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire – blazed the trail for further cooperation from the present Caribbean region.
The Caribbean’s role in Africa’s liberation became known worldwide in 1975-76, when Cuban airplanes transited through Barbados and Guyana to help fly thousands of Cuban soldiers through ‘Operation Carlota’ (named after ‘Black Carlota’, a leader of a historic slave uprising in Cuba.)
African Liberation Day started in 1963 when the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was formed and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie delivered the speech made popular nearly two decades later by Caribbean reggae music icon Bob Marley, titled ‘War.’
The speech Marley sang predicted: “Until the philosophy that holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; until there are no longer first class and second-class citizens of any nation; until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race — until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained…”
Approaching six decades, Africa is independent, but the rule of international morality is still a dream.
African nations have established their political independence, but lingering economic dependence and the interconnectedness of global economies today have brought new realities that have long forced free African nations to adjust and readjust in the virtual economic slavery of the post-independence period.
While racist rulers have been replaced in Africa, racism still remains a scourge on the world, particularly against people of African descent.
The reality of 21st Century racism in Europe and North America reached a high point two years ago today on May 25, 2020, when George Floyd was killed and the Black Lives Matter movement led to the call for Reparations for African Americans, as had been done seven years before (in 2013) when 14 Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments together called on Britain and the European Union (EU) for Reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide following the arrival of the Europeans in the Caribbean and The Americas in 1492.
Today, the United Nations has established a Decade of Observance and a Permanent Forum for People of African Descent; the African Union (AU) and CARICOM in 2021 held the first annual AU-CARICOM Summit and designated September 7, as Africa-Caribbean Day; and AU member states, as well as India, are also actively considering how to join and globalize the CARICOM call for Reparations from Europe.
Next year will mark 60 years since African Liberation Day was born and the solidarity between Africa and the Caribbean continues to flourish with Ghana, Kenya and South Africa leading the way in development of bilateral ties across the Atlantic, reversing slavery’s so-called ‘Middle Passage’ to one of deepening friendship and cooperation between the continent and people of African descent worldwide.
The cooperation between Africa, India and the Caribbean on Globalizing the Call for Reparations is also a new chapter in the everlasting cooperation between the descendants of the enslaved and the ensnared, brought to the Caribbean on the same slave ships from Africa and India.
In the 21st Century, historical concepts of Abolition and Emancipation, Apprenticeship and Indentureship, are being revisited to reveal and share what each truly meant to the enslaved and those ensnared into indentureship.
But, all in all, CARICOM’s Reparations call has over the past eight years given birth to a new stage in the continuing struggle to take Bob Marley’s sterling advice to “Emancipate ourselves from mental slavery,” not just from the Caribbean to Britain, but to the entire world, to a stage when, for the first time, the actual mechanisms and mechanics of reparations are being discussed globally — from CARICOM’s 10-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice to preparations for several Reparations Summits among the Caribbean Africa, India and Europe that will further deepen and unite transcontinental cooperation in pursuit of European repair for centuries of damage bequeathed to people of African and Indian descent by the same colonial powers between Trans-Atlantic Slavery and Indentureship.