Carribean nations are limping back and forth between the African identity that defined the slave trade and the abyssal blob that has emerged from our imitations of every thing that is not African.  I am sure that Caribbean island leaders know that people have long ago used Africa as a reason for carnival and other lucrative ventures, until now that reparations have become a serious suit.  Do people in Africa care whether or not reparations are being sought?  Are people in the Caribbean going to keep saying they’re not Africans while seeking justice to right the wrongs of the slave trade?  I hope they do, and the money received burns a hole through their bank accounts, just like Africa’s stupendous wealth has failed to end the misery of African peoples.

God bless the child that has his own

The one thing every one seems to want is money.  Feel free to stick a pin in the land to which every islander has a right. Go right ahead: prop up the heads of state who are so eager to keep the exploitation of island people in place. What became of “each endeavouring, all achieving”? Do politicians think people do not know what poverty and oppression look like? Let justice begin with land and taxation without loopholes for all the former slaves. Anything short of that is simply more slavery.

A piece of earth

If there is one thing most African people treasure it is a garden, a forest, a desert, as long as they can call it their own. We have been had by the labour movement, the civil servants, and legal minds, and all kinds of mighty military types, who all know what families having no piece of earth means for the foreseeable future. The people will never be, on the terms of all the political parties, anything more than workers and recipients of meager rations, exactly what the colonial powers have always wanted, exclusively.