REDEMPTION SONG
Bob Marley's seminal track Redemption Song is the anthem of Africans in the Caribbean. It is the story of our longing for true emancipation, which continues to elude us to this day, and a promise that it will come.
Born violently out of the Western Europe's genocidal wars against the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, fuelled by their lust for gold and sugar and their trade in captured Africans, the Caribbean was, and is still a colonial construct. One big plantation, made up of various peoples. One people, the Africans, had no say in their arrival; while others, to one degree or the other, negotiated their arrival with the colonizers.
In 2015, Africans in the Caribbean remain in a position similar to that of the captured African of yesteryear - we are not negotiating anything on our own terms. If we do, like the few exception to this rule, Cuba, Haiti under Aristide or Grenada under Maurice Bishop, then we must be prepared to face the full wrath of White Supremacy. While it is true that non-Europeans anywhere in the world organizing on their own terms, terrifies western powers, Africans, either in the Caribbean, the US or Africa, organizing on their own terms, is something that sends Empire into a frenzy. The 2011 US and European invasion and destruction of Libya can best be described as a frenzied move to halt the attempt by Africans to unite on their own terms, with a single currency based on their own gold reserve, and take back what is rightfully theirs.
Western Fallacies
Yet, if we do like Caribbean client states, then we accept our continued subservience. Western ideologies and corrupt values have so deeply penetrated the affairs of Caribbean countries, that even after decades of so-called independence, invisible chains still bind us, and the old slave masters continue to humiliate us. Europeanised Negro elites act as conduits of western ideas and interests in the region, and this, more than anything else, is preventing us from taking the great leap towards true independence and total emancipation.
Our emancipation does not lie in western notions of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. We are not, as Muammar Qaddafi said, “entranced by these words that mean nothing.” We, the descendants of captured Africans, know only too well that western notions of freedom and democracy amount to freedom and democracy for a select few.
Our journey towards true emancipation can only be achieved when we are permanently freed from any further imposition of Europe's image of us, on us. If not, then we will permanently wear a jacket that simply does not and cannot fit.
Returning to the Source
A vital part of our redemption lies in our ability to reclaim that which has been lost – our culture and traditions. However, rediscovering our past is not enough - we must redeem it. We need to reposition ourselves and consciously act from this relocation. This is Afrocentricity in a nutshell.
Amos Wilson, in his groundbreaking work, 'The Falsification of African Consciousness' explains: “When African culture and tradition becomes a part of us, we are going to have an intellectual explosion such as this world has never before witnessed. When we rediscover ourselves, our creativity is released. One of the reasons European history is written the way it is, is to restrict our creativity to music, dance, games and things that do not directly challenge Europeans. When we re-internalize our culture we are going to gain our genius again; we will regain our analytical skills and use them in our interest.”
The challenge then, in the words of Dr Wade Nobles, “is to rescue and reconstruct the best of ancient African culture and use it as a paradigm for the renewed, modern African culture and community'.
Revolutions begin in the Mind
A vital component of our redemption lies in our ability and power to recover from historical trauma, defeat and dislocation. Implicit in this part of our recovery is our ability to recuperate Black/African authentic values. My favourite verse in Redemption Song is when Bob Marley, who came as a 'warner', warns: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery – none but ourselves can free our minds.”
Malcolm X said “Revolutions begin in the mind. The mind is a terrible thing to waste”.
I believe that true emancipation continues to elude us primarily because of our continued conceptual incarceration, The African revolutionary, Franz Fanon said 'If you hold onto the tail of a drowning cow, you will drown.'
This is the redemption song that is presently being played - and played hard - in the Caribbean region and throughout the Americas. We are today witnessing a major shift in terms of Africans struggling to recapture their power. Each generation begins with the memories received from the past and this generation stands on the shoulders of some of the greatest Afrocentric thinkers of all time, many of them from the Caribbean.
We have been guided to this moment in history, from the tradition of the early Maroons, Marcus Garvey and the Rastafari movement, to today's rebel youths. There are pockets of resistance throughout the entire Caribbean region, rejecting the liberal-democratic deception and all its accessories. Our young people have lived and survived in its ocean of hypocrisy and that is one thing we have in common with the rebellions spearheaded by young people around the world – the young people have had enough and too many of them have nothing left to lose. The system accepted by their ‘Afro-Saxon’ overseers has left them destitute.
In Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and throughout the region cells of resistance are sprouting and establishing liberated zones. We need more. We call these cells 'kilombos' which is an African word used by slaves who managed to escape, to describe a methodical and organized group of Africans who refused to submit to the exploitation and violence of the slave system. The zones being liberated are not only geographical – in fact, for geographical liberation to take place, other zones must be liberated first, namely the psychological, cultural and intellectual. As we say in the Caribbean – 'everything is everything'.
And so today, resistance is emerging in different zones – some cultural, some political and economic, In an effort to minimize African resistance movements in the Caribbean, organised ghetto youth, whether fighting on Haiti's streets in support of Aristide, or in Jamaica or in Guyana, are portrayed as gangs of marauding criminals and bandits. This vulgar representation provides cover for the systematic assassination of African youths, gunned down in the streets in a number of Caribbean countries with impunity, by legal and illegal arms of the State.
For Africans in the Caribbean and worldwide, along with the whole of humanity, these are serious times. We must not miss our redemptive moment of truth and freedom. Our collective redemption concerns every single one of us – no matter what our zone. Franz Fanon reminds us:
'Everybody will have to be compromised in the fight for the common good. No one has clean hands; there are no innocents and no onlookers. We all have dirty hands; we are all soiling them in the swamps of our country and in the terrifying emptiness of our brains. Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor'.
The day of our redemption is coming – slowly but surely – “and none of dem can stop de tide.” However, too many of our people remain onlookers, passively awaiting that day. In Creole we say, “It don't wuk so” - each and every African, man and woman, must be an integral part of our redemption song.
Zuka (Arise)!
-Gerald A. Perreira is a writer, educator, theologian and activist. He is chairperson of the Guyanese organizations Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG) and Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP). He is an executive member of the Caribbean Chapter of the Network for the Defense of Humanity. He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al-Fateh revolution and was a founding member of the World Mathaba based in Tripoli, Libya.-
