From the Archive: Chief warns of Africa's marginalisation

Chief Emeka Anyaoku called for renewed “solidarity” in the fight against African marginalisation at a seminal lecture in Trinidad and Tobago exactly 14 years ago today.

Speaking just five years after the release of Nelson Mandela, the then Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and former Nigerian foreign minister praised the Caribbean community for its “unswerving” support for the oppressed black majorities in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa during past decades.

“The end of colonial rule and racist minority regimes in Southern Africa should not mean the end of the need for solidarity between Africa and the Caribbean. New challenges have emerged,” Chief Anyaoku told gathered luminaries at the seventh annual ‘Emancipation Distinguished Lecture’ in Port of Spain, on 29 July 1995.

“There is the continuing marginalisation of Africa in world affairs. Arresting and ending this trend of marginalisation is, of course, the responsibility of the governments and peoples of Africa in the first instance.”

“Intellectuals of the African Diaspora can make a contribution in the effort to restore Africa to centre stage in world affairs,” he added.

In his speech, Chief Anyaoku retraced the history of African slavery in the Americas and noted how slaves and their descendants across the West Indies and Africa - freed in the nineteenth century due to the efforts of the British abolitionist movement – continued to face economic and political hardship.

“Over 150 years after the abolition of slavery and some three decades of independence, the legacy of slavery, colonialism and racism remains with us,” he said. “The most enduring of that legacy has been the failure of most Africans and peoples of African descent to achieve total psychological and intellectual emancipation.

“Clearly this cannot be achieved by the wave of any wand. It will take sustained efforts; but whatever it takes, that aspect of our reconstruction will have to be accomplished.”

The former Secretary-General also praised the cosmopolitanism of Trinidad and Tobago - the first country in the world to establish a national holiday to commemorate the abolition of slavery - as a “model and an inspiration” to other Commonwealth countries.

Emancipation Day, a commemoration of the abolition of slavery, is celebrated in Caribbean countries on 1 August.

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