Once again Barbados is host of another significant gathering of the African family, this time under the auspices of the Government of Barbados’ Commission for Pan-African Affairs, the African Union and the Government of the Republic of South Africa.

It has been quite a personal blessing to share working relations with some of the Caribbean’s outstanding sons and daughters such as His Excellency, Ambassador Dudley Thompson (now in his 91st year); Marcus Garvey scholar, Professor Rupert Lewis; author of one of the best books written on Rastafari, Professor Horace Campbell; diplomats and high level representatives from various African and Caribbean governments and a fair selection of non-government organizations. I am representing both the Caribbean Rastafari Organisation (CRO) and the Caribbean Pan-African Network (CPAN). The challenges of too long a separation from our brothers and sisters on the Motherland are being recognized and overcome with a requirement of much learning on either side. The Right Honourable Owen Arthur, Prime Minister of Barbados, earned himself new respect among the Rastafari representatives and the entire gathering with an inspiring feature presentation in which he cited Haile Selassie I. It was also quite gratifying to hear South Africa’s Minister of Social Development, Dr. Zola Skweyiya, quoting Marcus Garvey and to hear the resounding call for Reparations from everyone. Two short excerpts from the Prime Minister’s presentation and the Honourable Minister’s presentation are shared immediately below and a much longer excerpt from my panel presentation on the role of religion in the atrocities follows.

‘If we leave this place and this Dialogue, having taken the first concrete steps to begin in earnest to systematically repair the mortal wound inflicted upon Africa and her Diaspora by the Trans-Atlantic trade in Africans during the era of chattel slavery – history will not forget us…The task that confronts us, then, is to build new and enduring corridors of trade and cultural exchange between the African continent and its Diaspora and, from our point of view, the Caribbean, in particular…The point is, as we turn our eyes at this troubled yet exciting hour of world history to Africa for trade, for new markets, for spiritual replenishment, we are fulfilling a long-nurtured wish of our people to embrace the land from whence they originally came.’ (The Rt. Hon. Owen Arthur, Prime Min.)

‘Amongst you my sense of propinquity suggests that I am still at home. This is particularly so because Africa and the Caribbean have shared an enduring and special bond of kinship, friendship, solidarity and comradeship for many centuries. It is quite obvious that our bond is very special and strategic because our common origin is defined by a common soul which is intertwined and finds its source since the beginning of time. In President Leopold Sedar Senghor’s observations: “…what binds us is beyond history, it is rooted in pre-history. It arises from geography, ethnology and hence from culture. It existed before Christianity and Islam, it is older than all colonisation. It is that community of culture which I call African-ness.” The challenge now, is for Africans both within the Continent and in the Diaspora to act together in unity and to courageously and diligently implement the Continental Directive spelt out in the Accra Declaration. (RSA Hon. Minister of Social Development, Dr. Z. Skweyiya.)

My presentation advocated a return to African spirituality as expressed in the religions of our choice but noted that the religions brought by non-Africans to the African continent and the Diaspora do not seem to have served us well. I also sought to remove some of the myths and have shared some research findings that should help Anguilla to make a more realistic assessment of the experience of African enslavement on our island.

“The Arab conquest of North Africa…was characterised by excessive brutality, pillage, plunder, destruction and desecration of churches, temples, places of worship and other sacred places, erosion of cultures and languages, and either wanton massacres, enslavement, especially of woman and children, or their conversion of the inhabitants to Islam. Nyaba’s graphic description of the African-Arab encounter can be aptly applied to the Native American-European and African-European encounter.

Don E. Walicek, researching the The Founder Principle and Anguilla’s Homestead Society, refers to ‘…the 1661 “Act for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes,” which legalized and institutionalized the rigid separation of persons of African descent. It established that European masters were responsible for the feeding, sheltering and clothing of slaves, whom it describes as “heathenish,” “dangerous” and “brutish.” The 1661 Servant Code indicates that its purpose was to protect masters’ investment in servants, facilitate their social and political suppression, and protect slaves from the excesses of brutal masters. Further evidence of a social gap between Europeans and Africans in the British colonies, in 1676 the Act of Barbados forbade religious instruction to slaves on the grounds that it would lead to “notions of equality.”

Court records from 1700 show that in Anguilla an indentured servant of European ancestry but not an African could bring charges against his master in a court of law, pointing to severe whippings, forced labour, inadequate food, and “working in the fields as a slave […]” as cruel and inhumane treatment….[1], it seems that social stratification, the unequal distribution of limited resources, and ideological precursors to modern racism (e.g., heterophobia, prejudice, xenophobia, religious chauvinism) that Wrightson (2002:146-147) identifies elsewhere under British colonialism also existed in Anguilla in the seventeenth century.”

My reflection is that Anguilla was not a very profitable colony and was certainly no Barbados or Haiti, yet somehow, in Anguilla today, we have romanticized the experience of the African enslavement and the popular work of at least one expatriate artist, shows happy looking children chewing cane being harvested in most benign images of the adults in the plantation scene. So Anguilla remains a colony – a Christian colony - whose first settlers divided up the island for Anglicans in the centre and the East and Methodists in the Centre, South and the West. There is one Roman Catholic Church and other late comers, such as the Church of God, Baptists and Seventh Day Adventists ,are spread all over the island. The Christian community has two umbrella organizations suggesting something less than harmony in religious outlook. However, they are all invited to participate in the prayers on National Days of Prayer but not Rastafarians, Muslims and people of other faiths that are the latest arrivants and minority groups. Anguillians cross the water and go to St. Martin/St. Maarten for their obeah, and unfortunately, drugs and guns.’ (Me)

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