By Jomo Thomas
Activities to mark the 186 anniversary since the abolition of slavery in the English-speaking Caribbean took place at two points in Kingstown last Saturday. Dubbed Taste of Africa, the Sion Hill, Emancipation Day event was held with the theme: Understanding our past and shaping our future for an empowered future generation.
Delivering the feature address, Jomo Sanga Thomas, chairman of St Vincent and the Grenadines Reparations Movement and head of the government organized SVG reparations Committee, told the audience that while he was honoured to do the feature address, it was important for organizers of these events to realize that ‘all-important activities, all important revolutionary activity and the struggle for reparations, all of the great task were led by young people.’
To bring home the message, Jomo Sanga pointed to several historic figures who made outstanding contributions to all aspects of our struggle for freedom, democratic rights and progress. ‘When Malcolm X was assassinated, he was only 39 years old; Martin Luther King was 39 years, and Maurice Bishop was 39 years old,’ Sanga told the crowd. ‘Franz Fanon, who give us such outstanding works of scholarship such as Wreathed of the Earth, Dying colonialism and Black skin, White mask was only 36; Bob Marley was 36 at his death, and Fidel Castro, the great Cuban revolutionary leader, was all but 32 years old when he led the Cuban people to victory over the mighty US Imperialism.’
‘The struggle for emancipation is a youth project and that’s why we need to train a new cadre of young people to take up and carry the struggle forward. The struggle for reparations is fundamentally a struggle for power. Therefore, this struggle for reparations and the advancement of our people is going to be long and hard. It will be a marathon and not a sprint. And that is why we need young people because the youths never get weary.’
Sanga Thomas pointed to the seminal role played by black people in the march for freedom. He noted that Haiti became the first black republic in the western hemisphere in 1804. This fight against the French, English and Americans was led by enslaved African men who vowed to be free. Toussaint, Dessalines, Christophe and Boukman led the Haitian fight fought and defeated the mighty Napoleonic army.
The defeat in Haiti forced Napoleon to sell over 15 million acres of lands in what is now the USA because France lost its most profitable piece of real estate in the New World. The Haitian victory in 1803 led to the abolition of the trade in enslaved African bodies in 1807, much in the same way the Sam Sharpe led rebellion in Jamaica in 1831 compelled the British to rush to parliament in 1833 to sign the emancipation proclamation, Sanga Thomas told his audience.
African people demand reparations because the reparations experiment was first tried and perfected in Haiti. In 1825, when the Haitians were celebrating their 21 anniversary of independence, British, American and French warships showed up on the Haitian coastline. The French demanded that they are paid the modern-day equivalent of $21 billion in reparations for the audacity of freeing themselves from slavery and reclaiming their land. Haiti never finished paying the ransom until 1947. ‘The sin of president Aristide,’ Sanga Thomas told the crowd, ‘was his demand that France repays the reparations money it stole over 6 generations.’ For this act of audacity, the Americans and French governments kidnapped President Aristide and exiled him in the Central African Republic. That theft of Haitian wealth explains the persistent poverty we witness in that sister country today.
Sanga Thomas told his audience that there was a time when the Caribbean was the most valuable and profitable piece of real estate in the world. In the 18th century, at the height of slavery, a worker in Europe, North America and Jamaica was valued at 42, 64 and 2,200 pounds respectively.
Sanga Thomas gave that historical narrative to lay the context for the wise 2013 decision of the CARICOM to engage the English, French and Dutch in a developmental dialogue which will lead to the payment of reparations for the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of millions of Africans. The leaders of CARICOM also committed to taking the formers enslavers to the International Court of Justice if the refrain or refuse to commit to negotiating a settlement based on reparatory justice.
Sanga Thomas reminded his audience that at emancipation in 1834, the British government paid the former enslavers 20 million pounds which carries a modern value of about $300 billion. He noted that when people say that slavery ended a long time ago, they must be reminded of the fact, that this 20-million-pound loan, borrowed almost 200 years ago was only finally repaid in total in 2015. The 20 million pounds in 1833 amount to 40 percent of the British budget.
Sanga Thomas concluded by expressing confidence that with the international rise in consciousness around the white supremacy, Euro-centrism and anti-Black racism, best reflected in the Black Lives Matter movement that the 21st century will be the century when African people will win the fight for reparatory justice.
Brother, I Man I Hypolite of the Rastafarian Order of Nyabinghi, also brought greetings to the gathering. He cautioned the people to be on guard against the seductively attractive impulses of organized religion and politics. I Man I emphasised the need for African people to get back to African spirituality and love.
The event at Sion Hill was dedicated to the youths. Books donated by many persons including Vincentians abroad were distributed to the first 50 young people to assembly. There was poetry, singing, fashion, food, drinks, music and the pulsating sounds of African drumming. The people came and the spirit of the African Holy Ghost filled the air. The event was fulfilling, uplifting, satisfying and successful.
The Emancipation celebrations at B
2 Comments
Jomo you are such a dangerous man to society. If I had any influence I would have you locked up. This is typical Marxist style rubbish containing inventions by you to fool ignorant people. I consider you a menace to society. Your piece is full of lies and twisted truths. If the editor lists my coments I will then come back and list what you have lied about. Most people who listen to you or read what you write have little or no knowledge about the subjects you bring to them, I do. In the past I have shot you down and proved you more than just wrong but decieptful and dishonest. Remember the article you wrote in th newspaper when you listed a man who was an evil slave master. You had read a story somewhere and used the name of the town thinking it was a man. What you write is not from your own knowledge base, it is generally something you read about and try and reinvent and embroider.
Jomo, when you are relating to events in the past, you must be honest and truthful, cut out the reckless statements. Taking facts and repeating them in part, or embroidering them, or twisting them in any way whatsoever is the same as telling lies.
The truth is there is no law in the World today by which any country can be sued for events in slavery before 1945.
That is why the Jews got reparations, the Mau Mau got reparations, and the Caribbean got none. When the Jews got reparations, many of those people were still living, the same with the Mau Mau, nobody who was a slave in America, or the Caribbean was/is living.
The matter of reparations for past slavery events in the Caribbean and America have been tried and tested in several courts throughout the World and have all failed.
The British paid the World to end slavery. They also paid all the slave owners in their colonies for their slaves; they did so because until that time slavery had been legal and they made it illegal and as part of that process undertook to compensate the slave owners. But the whole World, did the same thing when they emancipated their slaves, they paid the owners. Some countries went even further and made the slaves pay for their freedom, whereby those that could not pay remained slaves, but their children were free. This method saw people who were half and a quarter owned and still half or a quarter slave.
The British paid countries to end slavery vast sums of money. They paid African kings and chiefs and endowed them with projects and signed treaties. They also policed the seas against slavery for a hundred years, stopping every ship and inspecting the holds and rest of the vessels for evidence of having previously carried slaves, evidence of being prepared to carry slaves, and found many to be carrying slaves. In all those circumstances they sent the ships to British Mixed Courts, when convicted the ships were burnt.
To enforce the end of slavery in Brazil, the British government blockaded Brazilian ports and forced the ending.
When the British emancipated the Caribbean slaves, the ex-slaves soon ended up building villages and growing their own crops, supporting themselves. The free slaves, despite the nonsense written, were watched over by Magistrates, educated by Church’s who were funded by the British. In the 1890s the British government sold the land to ex-slaves and other black people in Saint Vincent for 5/- a lot which ranged from 14 acres down.
I had just finished reading a complimentary copy of the book ‘When the British Paid the World to End Slavery’ by William Harriss [[email protected]] it just about blows reparation claims from the British right out of the water—written from public records and other source’s it is fully referenced. Every date and statement can be instantly checked.
Sorry Jomo but this book is a must for you to read to save yourself from being made to look silly again.
Then your recent statement Jomo, “it was important for organizers of these events to realize that ‘young people led all-important activities, all important revolutionary activity, and the struggle for reparations, all of the great tasks.” What on earth are you talking about, what revolutionary activity, what struggle? All of that may be on your Marxist wish list but is untrue.
Then your misleading statement written in such a way that the ignorant believe all those named were assassinated while fighting for reparations, they were not.
“When Malcolm X was assassinated, Martin Luther King was 39 years, and Maurice Bishop was 39 years old,’ Sanga told the crowd. ‘Franz Fanon, who give us such outstanding works of scholarship such as Wreathed of the Earth, Dying colonialism and Black skin, White mask was only 36; Bob Marley was 36 at his death, and Fidel Castro, the great Cuban revolutionary leader, was all but 32 years old when he led the Cuban people to victory over the mighty US Imperialism.”
Here is the truth
Malcolm X, Malcolm Little (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), better known as Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister, and human rights activist, during the civil rights movement. He was assassinated by rival black Muslim members of his previous Mosque, one of the gunmen, Nation of Islam member Talmadge Hayer (also known as Thomas Hagan). Witnesses identified the other gunmen as Nation members Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. All three were convicted of murder in March 1966 and sentenced to life in prison. Malcom X was murdered by blacks with whom he was previously religiously associated.
Martin Luther King Jr., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 at 6:01 p.m. King traveled to Memphis, Tennessee in support of striking African American city sanitation workers.
In 1961, Tunisian, Franz Fanon died from natural causes, he was diagnosed with leukaemia, and was sent to the United States for treatment. At the early age of thirty-six, Frantz Fanon died in Bethesda, Maryland on December 6, 1961. His body was sent back to Tunisia to be buried.
Bob Marley died of natural causes, Marley died on May 11 1981 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami (now University of Miami Hospital), aged 36. The spread of melanoma [cancer] to his lungs and brain caused his death.
Maurice Rupert Bishop (May 29 1944 – October 19 1983) was a Grenadian revolutionary and the leader of New Jewel Movement – a Marxist-Leninist party which came to power during the March 13, 1979, Coup. Bishop headed the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada from 1979 to 1983, when he was dismissed from his post and shot during the coup by his ex-colleague Bernard Coard. He was a tyrant to the Grenadian people and is responsible for atrocities.
Fidel Castro, the former First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Council of State, died of natural causes in the evening of November 25 2016. He was a Marxist dictator over the Cuban people and lived a life of luxury while the Cuban people earned $1 a month and starved.
Not one of the people you mentioned in your speech was ever involved in the reparation’s movement. Absolutely untrue even if only inferred. Besides that, only one was assassinated, and that was by his own people.
You said at the speech “The struggle for emancipation is a youth project and that’s why we need to train a new cadre of young people to take up and carry the struggle forward”. The struggle for what emancipation? What are you talking about and in doing so attempting to incite the Vincentian youth? This is typical Marxist rhetoric.
“This struggle for reparations and the advancement of our people is going to be long and hard. It will be a marathon and not a sprint. And that is why we need young people because the youths never get weary.” What struggles for reparations, there is no court in the World and no law in the World that will support or enforce reparations? You are filling the youth’s heads with untruthful and unachievable nonsense.
The French never made any claims against Haiti for a couple of years after they conceded defeat. The reason they made Haiti pay was the revenge demanded to pay the estate owners families in France for the estates and property grabbed in Haiti, but not just that, because the ex-slaves killed every white man, woman and child in Haiti, that was the real trigger to the amount demanded.
Napoleon Bonaparte sold the American land because he needed money for the Great French War, the British had re-entered the war, and France was losing. The French could not fight the Haitian Revolution and defend Louisiana during this time, so conceded Haiti and sold Louisiana to the American government.
“There was a time when the Caribbean was the most valuable and profitable piece of real estate in the world.” Quite simply an untrue statement.
Jomo there is so much mendaciousness woven into your article which is based on a speech you gave at Syon Hill, the people should find some way of punishing you.
If you would like me to look over your future speeches and articles for mendacious statements and correct them for you, please let me know.
It is a worry to me as it must be to most decent Vincentians, that the way you write you may be corrupting the minds of the Vincentian youth.