GOVERNMENT OF BARBADOS

HISTORY WILL NOT FORGET US

ADDRESS BY

THE RT. HON. OWEN S. ARTHUR PRIME MINISTER OF BARBADOS

AT

THE OPENING OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA GLOBAL

CONFERENCE

HILTON HOTEL, BARBADOS

AT 9:00 A.M.

ON

AUGUST 27, 2007

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This morning, in the bicentennial year of the Abolition of the British Trans-

Atlantic Slave Trade, as leaders of the proud people of the African continent and

its Diaspora, we stand together not just on the global stage, but before the

conscience of the world. Around us in this hall are gathered the spiritual

messengers from various faiths – Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Bahai, African

Hebrew Israelite, Orisha, and Rastafari among others – who remind us that on

such an historic day we constitute ourselves as a common humanity in the

presence of the ancestors and indeed before our common Creator.

In our midst is the spirit of many of those who have gone before us, who suffered

and shed their blood, and are today revered as Africa’s advocates for freedom

and unity. Toussaint L’Ouverture, Bussa, Marcus Garvey, Nanny of the

Maroons, Kwame Nkrumah, Steve Biko and countless unnamed others – these

men and women held unswervingly through the darkest night of colonization

and slavery to the vision of an emancipated Africa. Their deeds are recorded in

history to guide and inspire us today.

We have been summoned here today, therefore, by a cause, a will and intent that

are far greater than any of us. We are here not just to speak, although words

must be spoken, but above all to prepare ourselves to act. For this African

Diaspora Global Conference is first and foremost about developing a common

programme of action. And the action we take or fail to take here will stamp our

efforts with honour or dishonour.

For in the words of one of perhaps the greatest African statesman of the 20th

century, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie the First of Ethiopia:

“Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the

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indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of

justice when it mattered most, that made it possible for evil to triumph”.

This morning, my only message to us is that 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 on Africa and her Diaspora by

the Trans-Atlantic trade in Africans during the era of chattel slavery – history

will not forget us.

The last time the international community came together – at the United Nations

World Conference in Durban, South Africa in 2001 – and affirmed that the

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and New World Slavery were crimes against

humanity, the major offending nations in that iniquitous episode in history opted

to not accept responsibility for the actions of their forbears, even though they are

the beneficiaries of a legacy of wealth and world power which ultimately may be

traced to that infamous source.

Tragically, within days of the closing of that conference, the United States of

America, and by extension the whole world, received a staggering blow on that

unforgettable morning of the ninth of September, 2001.

That single moment of infamy was to plunge our world into its most profound

and protracted crisis since World War Two. Even now the spectre of a third

world conflict of unimaginable proportions are lancing across the stage of world

affairs, particularly the spectre of an intensified war in the Middle East coming

to its awful conclusion.

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The roots of the crisis in the Middle East are deeply planted. But they are

modest as compared to roots of the crisis which faces the civilization of Africa’s

people.

At the root of this is the festering sore of a monstrous historical crime whose

pervasive damage has been left largely unaddressed and unrepaired, which will

not fade away but rather get worse, and which, in fact, was only recently

officially acknowledged at the highest level – some 200 years after it was finally

brought to a halt throughout the domains of the British Empire.

Mankind has yet to properly make amends for the crimes committed against

Africa and her children. I need hardly remind this august assembly that the

German Jews, the Native Americans, the Japanese who had been interned in the

United States during the Second World War, the Maori of New Zealand, and,

most recently, the Chinese and Koreans, have all received reparations for the

terrible losses they suffered. Ironically, even the former white slave-masters were

granted twenty million pounds in compensation for the loss of their so-called

property after the emancipation of their African slaves in the British territories

in 1833. What, then, of the untold millions of African people who suffered the

unspeakable fate of the Maafa – the name given to the genocide inflicted on our

foreparents who descended into the abyss of a sub-human bondage without

precedent in human history?

Happily, despite an adverse history, today, African people on both sides of the

Atlantic have been reborn as free men and women. And the facts of geography

that once divided us, the propaganda and divisive policies of our former

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colonizers that sought to estrange us from each other, are beginning to give way

to a new dispensation of engagement, reconciliation and reconnection.

It was towards this end that my Government in November 1998 established a

Commission for Pan-African Affairs, with a specific mandate to foster cultural

and economic linkages with Africa and the wider Diaspora. We recognize that

there are still differences of culture, of tradition, of religion among us, but unity

has been achieved by people in history even against apparently insurmountable

odds.

It is for this reason that we salute the valiant efforts of the Government of South

Africa and the African Union to draw our two regions closer together with this

important series of conferences.

The task that confronts us, then, is to build new enduring corridors of trade and

cultural exchange between the African continent and its Diaspora, and from our

point of view, the Caribbean, in particular.

While we are small in size, we in this region take pride in having invested

considerably in our human resources. It is no idle boast that our people are

among the most educated, the most resourceful in the world. Our standard of

living attests to this, as the reports of international agencies repeatedly confirm.

And our historical experiences, our ways of life, our music, our indigenous

religions, our distinctive cuisine, all trumpet to the world that we and the African

people at home are one in spirit. Now we must build the bridges and create the

infrastructure that can pave the way for the economic integration of our two

regions, to make us both stronger economically, more independent politically,

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and thus more secure culturally as sovereign nations in this highly competitive

era of globalization.

As you are aware, the Caribbean is itself presently in mid-course from the

insularity of yesterday to the regional unity of tomorrow under the rubric of a

Single Market and Economy, We draw strength from the fact that Africa

herself is moving toward greater unification under the auspices of the African

Union.

I envisage therefore a day coming soon when our Caribbean business persons,

our cultural workers, our educational, media and tourism institutions, in short,

our entire economies, will enjoy the tremendous benefits to be derived from a

Free Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement with the most richly endowed

continent, Africa – an agreement fortified and made viable by direct air and sea

links that will bring our scattered people together again.

Even as I speak, a joint business venture between a Barbadian and a Nigerian

company, based in Nigeria, is producing solar water heaters with Barbadian

technology, and marketing them across West Africa. This is but the continuation

of a long tradition of Barbadian solidarity with the people of Africa. It is a sign

of the things that can come.

It is true that not all of Barbadian history reflects this solidarity. Set slightly

apart from the chain of Eastern Caribbean islands by the geography of the

region, and further distinguished from them by the closeness of its long and

unbroken association with Britain, as the gem among British colonial possessions

in the West Indies, Barbados was derisively christened ‘Little England’ by her

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fellow islanders. And it is true that the strength of the British legacy here was

exceptional, and not all of it has been positive. As a result of having perhaps the

most severe historical experience of white domination and black subjugation in

the entire New World, black Barbadians were particularly subject to all the

neuroses of self-contempt that racism has engendered in so many people of

colour. Suffice it to say, however, that over the last three decades, our society has

undergone a gradual revolution in consciousness as the long submerged

Afrocentric culture has risen to the surface of our collective psyche.

Barbados’ relationship to Africa, then, is often paradoxical. How many people

today are aware that after the great slave revolution of Toussaint L’Ouverture

and Jean-Jacques Dessalines in the former French colony of Haiti at the turn of

the nineteenth century, it was here in tiny Barbados against all odds that the first

decisive blow against the British slave system in the early nineteenth century was

struck by an African-Barbadian warrior of unbending intent by the name of

Bussa, who led a massive rebellion in 1816 that shook the white slave-owning

plantocracy to its foundations – never to fully recover? This ultimately prepared

the way for emancipation seventeen years later. How many people know that it

was an indissoluble Barbadian husband and wife partnership – that of the great

Arnold Josiah Ford and his equally remarkable spouse, Mignon Ford – that

spearheaded the first Back to Africa Mission in 1930 to the court of the King of

Kings of Ethiopia? How many know that Ford was the creator of the treasured

Universal Ethiopian Anthem that inspired and continues to inspire the sons and

daughters of Africa everywhere: “Ethiopia thou Land of Our Fathers, the Land

where the Gods love to be…”? I could go on and on, The point is, as we turn our

eyes at this troubled yet exciting hour of world history to Africa for trade, for

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new markets, for spiritual replenishment, we are fulfilling a long-nurtured wish

of our people to embrace the land from whence they originally came.

But there are those, of course, who will soberly point out that long-established

patterns of trade are not easily or speedily reoriented. And we should certainly

not delude ourselves into thinking that we can shed our entrenched trade

arrangements overnight. Nor am I suggesting that our traditional partnerships

with the United Kingdom, Canada and North America, for instance, must now be

replaced. On the contrary, the thrust of my recent Wilberforce Lecture at Hull

was precisely that we need to revisit and reinvigorate those old arrangements,

many of whose protocols were rooted in a paternalist age of preferential

agreements that are now defunct.

Let it be clear, then, that even as we address the crucial issue of reparations by

formulating a new agenda for shared and equitable development between Africa,

the Diaspora, Europe and North America, we should eschew rigid and inflexible

postures which can only prejudice our position in the global community. The

common stance of Africa and its Diaspora on this issue should be affirmative, not

negative. We are for peace and development. We are for reconciliation with

justice. We are for an equal standard of living for all people. What we seek to

create should therefore be a moral force for the benefit of all humanity.

For tt is self-evident that we cannot impose our claims by force. But we do have

the redemptive power of moral persuasion. This is our strength – a great

strength – and we need to build a foundation of unity among ourselves so that we

can use it most effectively.

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Over the next few years, my Government’s Trans-African Centre for Trade

proposes to spearhead a Diasporic Census Initiative across this region that will

create an extensive data-base enabling Barbadian and other Caribbean business

persons to have a bird’s eye view of trade, investment, and other opportunities on

the African continent and in the Americas, and to match their own projects and

pool their resources with like-minded entrepreneurs on the other side of the

Atlantic. What can we do, then, to transform these aspirations into reality, to

advance to the destiny of a re-united people that we have marked out for

ourselves?

In facing the challenge of achieving these much sought after objectives, we may

draw inspiration from Africa’s glorious past. The lesson to be gleaned from the

history of what was one of the greatest civilization humankind has known – that

of Pharaonic Egypt – teaches us that when the Upper and Lower Kingdoms were

unified, Ethiopia and Egypt were unconquerable. In like-mind we must be

prepared to submerge our differences in the quest for common goals, as we strive

for the path to unity, collective security and true African brotherhood and

sisterhood for our peoples everywhere. For then and only then will the African

people be in a position to once again – as in antiquity – guide the fate of the

nations and restore an urgently needed balance to contemporary world

civilization.

And so it gives me the greatest pleasure, excellencies, honourable ministers,

dignitaries, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Barbadian

Government and people, as well as the governments and citizens of CARICOM,

to welcome you to our shores. I trust that your stay in our small version paradise

will be memorable, and that when future generations come to study the

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proceedings of this conference, it will be recalled for its solid achievements, and

for the spirit of boldness and maturity that marked the decisions taken here.

May those of us gathered at this Bicentennial Global Dialogue be endued with the

wisdom and clarity that will enable us to faithfully discharge our duty to the

great people and nations which have entrusted their fate to our hands.

I am obliged to you.

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