PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – The Ghanaian Ashanti King, the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Tuesday questioned the relevance of emancipation. It urged Caribbean countries to continue building a society representative of what their forefathers had envisaged.
In an address to thousands of people assembled at the Emancipation Village on the outskirts of the capital, the Ashanti King said it was not until 130 years after the emancipation of enslaved Africans that “both the mother continent of Africa and the countries of the Caribbean, in which they (the slaves) were domiciled could gain independence from their colonial masters beginning with Ghana in 1957”.
But he said even then, “We continue to ponder what emancipation is.
“What emancipation when every government in Africa is still struggling …on how to lift their people from grinding poverty? What emancipation when we are still obliged to look to our former colonial masters for support and survival and when their descendants of the formerly enslaved people still cannot walk the streets of the greatest nations on earth free from fear for their lives”?
The visiting African King questioned emancipation for people like the American George Floyd “and the endless lines of our descendants who have fallen to the feet of racial bigotry across Europe and the United States.
“And what emancipation when even our sportsmen cannot perform without confronting the tongues of hatred…because of who they are,” he asked, adding that despite these challenges, as well as the walls of history and distance that separate the countries, “we remain one people with one common destiny.
“It is in that spirit that we also recognize the need to go beyond the …moment to try to understand the lessons of emancipation and the challenges it poses to every descendant in the diaspora.
“Giving people the freedom to wallow in poverty cannot be true emancipation, nor can it be when the emancipators sold us into an environment with racial discrimination and injustice.”
He said the problems facing the governments in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America as they struggle to have a better standard of living for their populations “not only determine our emancipation but now pose a mortal danger to our humanity.
“I believe that over 180 years after the Emancipation Act, it is time for a universal effort to give meaning to emancipation, and I invite our leaders to pursue the proclamation of a new universal declaration against racial, which will have, among its elements, the elimination of racial discrimination into a crime against humanity”.
The King, who will on Thursday be giving an open lecture at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), said he was also inviting governments to pay attention to the education of young people, particularly about “our shared heritage.
“The history of our glorious past through the millennium of great empires that ruled in the world long before the onset of the European civilization and their intrinsic values that have shaped us as a people and have survived …storms of the past.
“We need this to debunk the obnoxious narrative that has affected us, a deficiency complex over the years, and reconnect us with the wisdom…from which our forefathers sprang.”
The King called on Caribbean countries to engage in a “period of introspection for each one of us to ask themselves what am I doing for my country, my community, my family and myself.
“No nation is built by magic… the sweat and labor of the people makes nations. Two centuries ago, your forefathers were extracted from their homes and compelled to bring their work to serve others.
“Today, you can freely build a nation of your own, create wealth for yourselves, and live the happy lives your forefathers were denied. What I ask could be more glorious than this,” he said, adding that he is not unmindful of the complexities of the challenges facing the populations from which generations are still smarting.
“But we should not simply surrender to its ills. We should accept it is a historical challenge to strive to eliminate the scars of the past and boldly create new conditions for the wealth and well-being of our families and nations,” he added.
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