Anguilla Day is celebrated annually only five days following African Liberation Day (ALD) and this year as I celebrated ALD with the Pan-African community in St. Croix, it was impossible not to think about the destiny of these two countries, caught as it were in the time warp of colonialism in the 21st Century. I’m not sure why it took me so long to return to St. Croix after my first visit twenty-five years ago but after last week-end’s experience, it will not be so long before I visit again.

The theme of the African Liberation Day (ALD) conference that I was invited to address was Building African Nationhood in the 21st Century and my presentation was called Voices from the 6th Region as it focused on current initiatives being taken to have Africans in the Diaspora participate with the African Union as a 6th Region. I go to St. Thomas often enough and so I know there is a core of conscious African people there who also advance the Pan-African agenda but St. Croix has that and more. St. Croix has land and there is a sense of space and history that I do not feel so readily in St. Thomas. Also, St. Croix must be the Caribbean island with the highest number of Rastafari operating in important and influential offices.

One of the organizers of the event was Senator Terrance (Positive) Nelson – a more committed, Pan-African politician, well-grounded with his grassroots people. Senator Positive is a tall, slim, Tae Kwon Do expert with a high energy level that had him dancing energetically all night after coordinating and chairing energetically all day. Also participating was Brother the Honourable Louis Petersen, Ph. D., Commissioner of Agriculture, and another Rastafari Brother who is the Territory’s Director of Energy. Another very vocal brother is one of the Constitution Commissioners and Constitution was very much in the air during the two days of deliberation. The situation of the people in the US Virgin islands has many parallels with those of the people in the British Overseas Territories like Anguilla. Once again I cursed colonialism for the separation of the peoples of the region but more fairly cursed our collective carelessness at not communicating and networking more effectively with other colonized peoples in such close proximity. I learned that the US Virgin Islands are unincorporated territories of the United States of America. That means colony. Some may disagree but for me, in spite of the name change from British Dependent Territory to Overseas Territory, we are also still a colony.

The discourse at the ALD gathering in St. Croix turned time and time again to the matter of Status and the US Virgin Islands Constitution. Congresswoman Donna Christensen also addressed the gathering, focusing on the road to having a USVI Constitution by March 2009 and identifying some barriers to Nationhood. She emphasized the need for grassroots discourse on a change of status for the US Virgin Islands and cautioned the gathering not to let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Congresswoman Christensen is one of the 46 Black members of Congress and one of the 15 Black women in Congress. She was one of the few Caribbean politicians who participated in the UN Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Other Related Intolerance. In the subsequent discussion, there was some uncertainty about whether the US Congress would have to approve the Virgin Islands Constitution and the implications of that were also pondered. They want a Constitution they can call their own just as Anguillians do. In Croix I learnt for the first time, the various options for nationality, citizenship and residence in the USVI and noted with glee that in the consideration of Free Association, there were some ready to become part of CARICOM and other regional communities. This is also an option for Anguilla. Matters of land tenure, development that alienates “natives” from their land, tensions between economic development and environmental management – I could well have been in Anguilla – only I and I in Anguilla are not so active collectively in determining Anguilla’s political destiny. Even in my presentation at the conference, I shared the difficulty of contemplating and engaging in anything called Nation Building from a political context devoid of Sovereignty. My personal sense of Sovereignty comes from the culture and livity of Rastafari but I remember the mocking laughter of regional colleagues when I reminded them that in Anguilla we still have to stand and sing the British National Anthem. They didn’t even understand that even they, were not in a position to laugh.
Unfortunately, another commonality was the absence of an independence movement indicating a popular lack of vision of life without Big Brother Uncle Sam and the shared love affair with the US dollar. We all need to educate ourselves and while St. Croix seems to be taking a more structured approach, Anguilla seems to be ahead in the process of public education.

During the first day of what was dubbed the Nation Building Summit, keynote speaker Professor Horace Campbell made a riveting power point presentation entitled Humanizing the Universe: Location of Pan African Liberation and Pan Africanism in the 21st Century. Brother Campbell, author of the well-known book, Rasta and Resistance, is a solid Caribbean scholar and Rastafari Brethren who does not carry the dreadlocks covenant. His newest book Reclaiming Zimbabwe is a must read. He teaches at Syracuse University and was accompanied by his beautiful Queen Makini who also teaches at Syracuse. Dr. Campbell’s entire presentation can be made available electronically on request. His brilliance and more so his conclusions made me recommend that we fundraise to have this illustrious brother take sabbatical leave for a lecture tour of the Caribbean Region that would serve to enlighten us all. I will try to paraphrase. According to Brother Campbell, the occasion of ALD cannot be just about celebrating our blackness but must be about defending our HUMANITY in a context where economic systems are destroying planet Earth and young African populations are the targets of 21st Century destruction.

The biggest task of Pan-Africanism in the 21st Century is the liberation of Black people in the South American continent. Brazil is the country with the largest population of Africans outside of Africa but only 2% of this population gets a university education. We need to move away from the ways in which Africa and Africans are currently presented, i.e. as tribes – We need to practice speaking of and referring to NOT TRIBES BUT PEOPLE and we need to be honest and truthful about what actually takes place in African by serious study and not merely by television images. This must be among the short-term tasks of African Liberation. Among the long term and permanent tasks must be the embrace of the concept and great spirit of UBUNTU which is represented in every African language. He noted that Barak Obama is presenting Ubuntu as his platform for change in the US presidential campaign. The Humanity he advocates is a requirement of HUMILITY before the universe for the outcome of a planetary civilization in which we reorganize our thinking to oppose War, Racism and Repression to deliberately create spaces of Peace and Hope to repair the damaged Human Spirit. This he posited can be the result of the fusion of radical thinking, 21st Century Physics and the Natural Mystic of Rastafari. Plenty of food for thought on this Anguilla Day.

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