BLACKHERBALS.COM
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 29, 2007
Part 1 -Excerpts on speech by His Excellency Dudley Thompson at the Barbados
Bicentennial Global Dialogue on the 25th Day of August 2007.
The most Honorable Thompson was recently elected President of the Diaspora at the Jamaica Pan African Summit.
Let me explain what that word stands for and its relevance. Pan
Africanism is a socio-political movement, Afrocentric in nature, firmly opposed
to racism and endeavoring to ensure Black empowerment, politically, socially,
economically, technologically, and otherwise to accomplish our destiny as a
people the Black Renaissance which will achieve the establishment of a new
global order based on justice and equality for all.
Pan Africanism is the modern name of a Black universal movement,
added to the political dictionary by a Black Trinidadian lawyer named Sylvester
Williams in 1900 when he led a delegation of some 30 African, Caribbean and
African Americans to the Archbishop of Canterbury in London to advocate greater
respect for Black people all over the Diaspora, the two elements notable were
the request for the right to be treated with equal dignity and the secondly it
was on behalf of all Black people over the world. This meeting suppliant in
nature was attended by such leaders as Dr. WEB Dubois, Benito Sylvain of
Ethiopia, Bishop Johnson of Nigeria and others.
The subsequent congresses were led by WEB Dubois was highlighted by
the important Pan African Congress of 1945. The 5th Pan African Conference in
Manchester, England marked the high water of the movement. It differed from the
previous ones in that it had much greater attendance and composed of activists,
intellectuals, trade unionists, students, workers, etc. Secondly, it was
militant in tone and directly attacked the colonial system. Thirdly, it no
longer included white sympathizers who usually attended. From now on the
Africans were determined to take matters into their own hands. Finally and most
importantly, it issued a single message, a united call for independence from
colonial status. It is to be noted that of the hundreds that attended, only
three countries were independent, Ethiopia, Haiti and Liberia.
I was present at that 5th Pan African Conference in 1945. saw Kwame
Nkrumah rise from his seat two chairs away from me and delivered a heart
stirring speech that electrified the audience “ Go back to your colonies and
fight for political independence by all means at your disposal” His voice
rang out “seek ye the political kingdom and all things will follow.” The
entire meeting was galvanized in silence, I was there. I saw those leaders
leave that meeting silently, thoughtful men, I saw Ken Hill from Jamaica,
Grantley Adams form Barbados, Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya, leave for their own
respective countries with determination in their hearts and minds. Within two
score years of that meeting over fifty countries got their independence.
Leaders like Solanke and Nnamdi of Nigeria, and first of all Kwame Nkrumah
succeeded in their struggle for independence. Little did I dream as a I saw
Jomo Kenyatta walk our of that meeting nor could I know that in little over 10
years I would be his lawyer defending him with others in a court of law at
Kapenguria charged with leading the Mau Mau, an insurrection which eventually
brought forth Kenya’s independence.
Pan Africanism is a movement which had started like a flame for
freedom in the hearts and minds of our ancestors when they were cruelly
wrenched from the heart of Africa, their homes and their families, they could
not be put out by the bloody waters of the Atlantic as they were horribly
chained and packed like goods in those ferries o f infamy that made them slaves
fro planters who worked them mercilessly under the lash. Men, women and
children were scattered throughout the Diaspora. Barbados sugar planters grew
rich of their labour and blood. The cotton fields of America, the coffee
plantations and mines of Brazil and South America made the white slavers
wealthy while our ancestors remained in poverty for generations our ancestors
built the rich cities and universities of Europe and America our women and
children and men chopped sugar cane and reaped tobacco in the sun until
darkness fell upon them. They got not a cent for their labour, this went on for
years, but in their song and suffering that spark for freedom that God put
within them refused to go out…
There are millions of us in the Caribbean, millions more live in
North America, and Canada, Millions in Brazil and other parts of Central and
South America and other parts of the Diaspora. Today, the Government of
Barbados has given everyone here today a great opportunity to send a message to
these brothers and sisters in the Diaspora. Barbados gives you the opportunity
to use this platform to ensure that they force that invincible chain of
millions to give that strength of unity which would enable us as a most
powerful family in world affairs to solve our own affairs to solve our own
challenges. Each of you here and beyond must drop our habit of dependence. This
is a time of many dangers. Among them is the growing spectre of globalization
designed to maintain the status quo, leaving us at the bottom of the totem
pole.
Are you training our youth to assume their responsibilities, to
keep the flame alive by creating a conscious of solidarity? Where is the voice
of Pan Africanism today? Are they responding to the fire of freedom in the
strident call for unity from that great Pan Africanist as he brought his
country into independence in March 1957 stating that “The independence of
Ghana if it is meaningless not linked with the freedom of a united Africa.
”Has the blood of our ancestors turned to water in our veins. The truth is
that our scattered millions consist of several small groups promoting
incongruous ideas seemingly determined to remain victims of division and
necrophobia. One hundred years ago, Marcus Garvey called upon us to unite under
mother Africa. It is your individual duty to fan the flames within you.
For your children’s sake organize in the Diaspora wherever you
are, in clubs, associations in Churches, lodges and any other association which
will make this Diaspora strong enough to support a single government of Africa.
It is our only hope. Ask yourself today, each one of you what can you do to
raise the awareness of our race? How can I organize and build the solidarity
of our people? How can I make this world a better place for my children and
their children and their children to come? It is not sufficient to give
ovations at meetings, we need immediate commitments and actions now. The Durban
conference succeeded in placing reparations on the main agenda. It is no longer
a footnote for history. That conference further produced a plan of action. It
appealed to us to mobilize and unite.
I am approaching the ninety first year of my life. As a veteran Pan
Africanist, I implore you in the last years of my life to unite the Diaspora and
make yourself worthy of becoming the sixth region, a province of the African
Union. I long for the day when I shall obtain my united African passport. I long
for the day when we shall have our own African international news service. I
long for the day when our women will be treated as equals in all respects and
full dignity. I long for the day when our Black mothers all over the world will
smile upon the Black babies in their arms, happy confident that they will never
again grow up in the shadows of injustice and inequality.
May God Bless you all!
(The next meeting of the World African Diaspora Union (WADU) is October 27,
2007.
To participate and support, please contact Mama Anna Swanston at 404-527-7756
in Atlanta, GA).
Contact: Rev. P.D. Menelik Harris @ 404-527-7756/http://www.rhawpam.org/
