AFRICAN DIASPORA DIPLOMACY AND HURRICANE IRMA

The continent must do more for its kin in the diaspora, writes Okello Oculi

Television pictures taken from the air and at ground level showed horrendous devastation to homes and community institutions inflicted by hurricane Irma. The category five hurricane started its safari of winds travelling at 175 miles per hour from Anguilla and Barbuda islands. By the time it broke power lines, roofs and snapped trees across the tip of Cuba, it was roaring at 160 miles per hour. A CNN reporter noted that it was wide enough to cover the whole of Florida State.

The prime minister of Barbuda, Gaston Browne, reported that 50% of its population of 1,500 had lost their homes; while 90% of buildings ‘’had been destroyed’’. Roads and communication systems were ‘’ravaged’’; and the cost of damage was huge. Antigua ‘’escaped major damage’’. British and American Virgin Islands had five and four deaths, respectively.

Unlike Cuba which moved one million Cubans and 10,000 foreign tourists away from the path of Hurricane Irma, the officials in Haiti admitted not ‘’being prepared’’ ahead and were reportedly lucky to escape with some damage to roofs and farms . They had not evacuated people as a precaution. Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were spared this horror of nature at a feast of rage. With its omelette-shaped face: not blessed with a mountain range for a pimple, tiny Barbados might have lost grass and crickets on her soil if Irma had done her cruel dance of a witch across the island country.

It is appalling that even in solidarity of danger from nature’s habit of enraging waters and winds of the Caribbean, the Netherlands, Britain, France and the United States offered help only to islands they occupy. The Turks and Calcos with a population of 35,000 will share, with Anguilla, a British ‘’relief fund’’ of 42 million pounds sterling. St Martins, an island parcelled by Holland and France, had a French minister fly over with relief resources. The French side with low level of investment from Paris, had 95 per cent of their rickety buildings destroyed. The American government evacuated 860 Americans trapped on the island. Television pictures showed the sturdy red-roofed buildings on the Dutch sector standing firm. Dutch marines were rushed over to prevent further looting from the poor French sector.

On the Virgin Islands the American used ‘’amphibious assault USS Wasp’’ to take patients in hospitals in St Thomas Island to safety in Puerto Rico and St Croix. Meanwhile, a Norwegian tourist ship evacuated 2,000 tourists from St. Thomas, a nightmare that is bound to reduce the number of northern Europeans travelling to the tropical blessings of the Caribbean, thereby weakening the region’s economic growth.

Victims of African descent remain relatively invisible on the African continent; while the Euro-American media resolutely reports the continent to them as totally horrible. When Bob Marley sang to Jamaicans the words: ‘’WE AFRICANS’’ will fight and liberate Zimbabwe, he was using a huge axe in his voice to cut through centuries of propaganda that made his people and other Caribbean blacks ashamed to have Africa in their blood and identity.

IT IS APPALLING THAT EVEN IN SOLIDARITY OF DANGER FROM NATURE’S HABIT OF ENRAGING WATERS AND WINDS OF THE CARIBBEAN, THE NETHERLANDS, BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES OFFERED HELP ONLY TO ISLANDS THEY OCCUPY

The GLEANER newspaper brazenly supported European immigrants all across Southern Africa, especially Ian Smith and John Vorster as champions of oppression over Africans. When Prime Minister Michael Manley invited liberation warriors like Samora Machel of Mozambique and Oliver Tambo of South Africa to stir up minds of the county’s 95 per cent Afro-Jamaicans, the paper’s cultists were livid with rage and panic.

In 1968 the Guyanese historian Walter Rodney was deported from Jamaica for using street corners in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital, to tell stories about West African kingdoms of Oyo, Benin, Songhai, Ghana and Zimbabwe, etc. Stories about ancient universities in Timbuktu and Alexandria; and that Ethiopia developed a unique alphabet that is still in use in the 20th Century were considered dangerous’’; attracting enthusiastic crowds. He lit pure fright in souls of ancestors of slave owners. The government deported Walter Rodney. He ended up in Tanzania after Fidel Castro urged him to write a book that tells contours of history from an African revolutionary mountain top

Walter Rodney’s taking Africa to the Caribbean has not been replicated by African scholars bringing knowledge about the Caribbean to Africans; including school children. Nollyhood is following Rodney’s example. Miriam Makeba sang her ‘’CLIK SONG’’ and Robert Serumaga took a drama ‘’RENGA MOI’’ to Jamaica. The print media; radio reports and television documentaries that bring Afro- Caribbean, Afro-Brazil and Afro-Peru in the far west are severely malnourished.

‘’Hurricane Andrew’ struck the Caribbean in 1992; destroying property worth $47 million, killing 61 persons. ‘’Hurricane Sandy’’ in 2012 destroyed property worth $689 million, and left 159 dead victims. Afro-Caribbean portions of that collective pain remain unreported by the African media and scholars. This silence cripples the possibility of an aroused public all across Africa pushing their governments and Euro-Americans to offer support for reconstructing livelihoods.

A team of historians at Kings College London have dug up data about thousands of British businesses, institutions and families who claimed REPARATIONS for slaves freed from working on their sugar plantations in the Caribbean. From Denmark, Sweden to Holland and Britain economies were built by slaves who produced sugar on these islands. The slaves are still owed their Reparations. At times of turbulent anguish like this, Hurricane Irma may be the angry voices of all those Africans who perished on slave ships and were thrown into the Atlantic Ocean: rising to demand their due. African diplomacy must carry their case to treasuries of their Euro-American debtors.

The human development of these peoples is also critical. Cuba has offered free education up to university level to descendants of slaves. African diplomacy must export this example across the Americas from Brazil to Peru. As Samora Machel still says from ‘’After-Africa’’: Aluta Continua/ the struggle for their development must continue. Prof. Oculi is a member of THISDAY Editorial Board