From: MARIE-THERESE BELISLE NWEKE theresenweke>
To: evan x Hyde

Thursday, August 22, 2024

It was Marcus Garvey who said that until Continental Africa is free, Diasporan Africans, like himself, will not be “free” notwithstanding our best efforts. That is why he directed much of his message not only to his followers in Harlem, New York, and other parts of the African Diaspora, but also to Africans in Africa. In this way Garvey made key African leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Nigeria’s Nnamdi Azikiwe fervent disciples of his. Garvey’s “Black Star” is still widely used today as a national symbol in Ghana of Africa’s rising. The Ghanaian national football team, for example, is known as “The Black Stars of Ghana”. Garvey also believed that Continental Africa will, in the fullness of time, lead the fight for the true emancipation of the entire Black race and shall be victorious. My familiarity of African politics and the ongoing desperate rat race for Africa’s huge resources by old and new foreign enemies, in cahoots with Africa’s stupid and selfish political, military and economic elites and its huge, deliberately kept ignorant and impoverished under class, all make me to despair of this ever happening in my lifetime. 

Others have disagreed with Garvey, and believe that salvation will only emanate from Diasporan Africa, because of its educational capacity and the various advantages it gained by being physically outside of Africa all these long years. Emeka Anyaoku, a former Commonwealth Secretary-General (1990-2000), is an Igbo-Nigerian, who at a public lecture some years ago, disagreed with me when I said that I supported Garvey’s position. I explained that because of my close proximity to both Diasporan and Continental Africa, and the fact that I am no casual observer, I do believe that Continental Africa, despite its profound divisions and various weaknesses, will in the end free itself from these centuries old yoke. It also has a decided advantage in its vast natural, cultural and human resources; and once it gets its act together, its course will be unstoppable. If China was eventually able to free itself, why cannot Africa do the same; and its far-flung Diaspora will then come into its own. 

It should be obvious by now that no matter how great our achievements are as individuals, Black people will never be perceived as the equal to whites, Chinese, Asian Indians, Arabs, or even Inuits. George Price, a light skinned Creole, despite his non-African features and predisposition towards his Maya Yucateco ancestry, met with racism as a young Catholic seminarian in the US. We have incidents of “would-be-white” Belizeans, while on their way to Britain passing through the US to join in the WW 11 effort as volunteers, encountering American racism because they were simply not “white enough”. Even a homeless white tramp inhabiting American and British cities, sleeping rough on pavements or shop doorways, sees himself as “better” than the suited Black office worker living in his own home and putting alms in his begging bowl. If the Americans and Europeans can humiliate at their airports the Nigerian writer, Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Laureate of Literature, and they damn well know who he is, our singular and individual achievements mean nothing to them in the end. 

Another example is that of the Barack Obama presidency, which I do not need to go into here. But one example suffices. If Obama had been white, there’s no way Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a US satellite and beggar nation, would have insulted him in a 2016 joint session of Congress while he was still sitting in the White House! And, what was Obama’s response? He instead gave Netanyahu a $38 billion package in military aid over the next 10 years, the largest of its kind ever. And all this was despite his fractious relationship with Netanyahu, and involving as one example a key matter to the Obama administration such as the Iran nuclear agreement. 

There are so many principles and practices throughout Africa that are far superior to what exists at home in Belize, the Caribbean and the US, etc. Then, we at home, have our own way of thinking and behavior that are different, and some of them do make more sense than some of Africa’s. I KNOW that I am still Belizean, but have added some valuable “original African” attributes which have greatly enriched my persona. The Nigerian persona is even more “advanced” or progressive than that of other Africans, yet within it are vast differences, depending on ethnicity, and at times religion. Indeed, Africa represents a sociologist’s feast! And the sociologist in me has had much to confront, understand and at times assimilate or reject. Perhaps that is why the embassies of the US, Britain, Europe, China, Russia, India, Australia and those of the Arab states fervently tap into the knowledge and expertise of their citizens who have lived for many years in those African states in which they are sited and are also in sinc with their own countries’ values and goals. Meanwhile, the embassies of the Caribbean and other Third World states generally restrict their interaction to the mundane level of cocktail and dinner parties, national day observances and consular activities.  At the end of the day, they represent a waste of scarce money their countries can ill afford. 

I believe my father and your maternal grandfather were Africanists without really realizing that they were. All the things I know about them lead me to this conclusion. They had their own rules of integrity and behavior which did not always align with those of other Belizeans. I want to think that they were somehow outliers or exiles. I learnt a lot sitting at my father’s feet, so I didn’t have much trouble fitting into the Nigerian and African narrative.  

But YOU more than any Belizean, dead or alive, made us to look deeply inwards to discern whom we actually are and to demand our place at the table. The undiscerning will dismiss this as just “old hat” and merely about a phase of our history in the 1960s and ’70s, but history never repeats itself, only its mistakes do.  I don’t think we even up to now fully grasp your VALUE! Though this is not to accept that everything you did was perfect. For nothing this blinkered side of eternity is perfection. But in other places, your image would be on our currency! At times, I am truly amazed at the huge tragedy and missed opportunities Belize at times connotes, but in our arrogance, ignorance and mañana mentality we think we are doing just fine until we wake up one day to find that The Jewel has gone – gone – gone! It has already begun on that fateful journey – or do we even know? And, all we can do in the end is to voice the eternal axiom and lament of the fool – “if only I had known!”