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"Protecting the Legacy"

In our society now there is a deep sense of insecurity, in fact a deep sense of crisis that goes even beyond the insecurity. The sense of crisis is becoming ever more pervasive, among Africans and non-Africans. But Africans feel the crisis more immediately. We even think of ourselves and are seen by others as the main source of social disintegration. Because the disintegration is most obvious in our communities. When the coercive forces of the state are mobilized, supposedly to bring peace and stability, they are mobilized primarily against our communities. Laventille is a code word for the ills of the society. And too often and too conveniently we ascribe the crisis to the drift of our youth.

The analysis is too shallow and the proposed solutions, in thought and action, part of the problem.

If there is a sense of disintegration, there have to be factors in the legacy of the society that are prompting that disintegration under the current circumstances. It cannot all be driven by the influences of today. That is evident in the fact that there has been a continuous slide towards our present predicament. If the slide is more pronounced among Africans it means that within what we consider as a common national legacy, there are aspects that are more subversive to Africans than others.

So when we talk about preserving the legacy, what legacy are we talking about? In the context of emancipation, the commemoration of emancipation from slavery, where the main focus is obviously on the population that emerged from bondage, what legacy are we talking about? Do we want to preserve the inheritance of self-negation, the idea of a 500 year old people whose broadest and deepest collective identity, apart from being human, is nationality, without any ethnicity?

The focus of emancipation has always been on consciousness, preserving and protecting a legacy that predates our sojourn in the Caribbean by millions of years. We are about preserving and protecting a legacy that journeyed across the Atlantic from Africa in our hearts and minds, in our customs and values, in our languages and worship, in our memories and spirit, whether in the trading ships under our command in earlier centuries or later in the bowels of the slave ships.

We are talking about a legacy to build on and to disentangle from confusion, a legacy that started but did not end in Africa. Within our psyches we embrace a complex legacy, a legacy of glory, of pain, of pride, of repression and rebellion, of suppression and self assertion. It is Africa, it is the Caribbean and the diaspora. It is the legacy of pyramid builders, the foundations of science and medicine and mathematics, the legacy of iron smelters and leather workers, artists and agriculturists. It is also the legacy of captivity and enslavement, humiliation and debasement. On the other side of bondage ours is a legacy of endurance, resilience, determination, rebellion, the will to triumph against great odds. It is a legacy of creativity and invention, even when others sought to deny our humanity.

We have to find a path that centres our Being in a legacy that makes us whole, an inheritance that inspires with the spectacular and the symbolic, and guides with the way we organized our everyday lives in communal societies, the values of sharing and caring, the nurturing of family and community, co-operative economics, respect, values and traditions we sought to preserve even in the slave quarters.

 

All that we have experienced is a part of us, but we have to filter it with our own lens on history, not pass on the distortions, the caricatures of ourselves meant to enslave our minds. All of us Africans, and especially the young, need to draw on our legacy to confront the psychological challenges of our time. The reality is our young people are more burdened by the confusion and sense of displacement in a world of rising ethnic consciousness, uncertainty, cultural turmoil, ideologies of civilizational war and the celebration of the strong crushing the weak with overwhelming violence.

Our perspective has to be shaped by the knowledge that our legacy is not a legacy of 500 years, or even 5000. Humankind evolved for over 5 million years in Africa. Cultures sophisticated enough to engage in the mining of minerals emerged over 40,000 years ago in Africa. The earliest know agricultural complex is found along the banks of the Nile river in Africa dating back some 18,000 years....

We have to rescue our sense of time from the fog of mental war. When we shorten our view of the past, we diminish our sense of our capabilities and we limit our view of the future. We will no longer speak about crisis of our youth when they embrace the legacy, when as a people we are emotionally and psychologically buoyed by a sense of pride in centuries of achievement, a sense of confidence in our ability to achieve against all odds as we demonstrated in our endurance, continuing creativity and ultimately triumph over slavery.

200 years ago our brothers and sisters in Haiti liberated their society from the enslavers. They struck a blow for our Freedom. In so doing they gave us the right to proclaim who we are, to invoke the legacy of Africa and our African heritage in the Caribbean, to re-assert our humanity. On January 1st 2004, Haitians, Africans all over the world, and all peoples who cherish the meaning of the Haitian revolution, will observe that landmark in our history, in world history, the bicentennial of Haiti’s declaration of Independence. In that context we observe our own emancipation by reclaiming our legacy. We observe emancipation by ensuring that our youth know and protect that legacy. We say thanks to Haiti.