Dear Editor,
In this UN Year of Peoples of African Descent, I would like to suggest to leaders and intellectuals that we in Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean establish contact with Africa and help them to deal with the new imperialism which is already targeting their resources in a more heartless manner than the 19th century European imperialists.
In making such a suggestion, I am thinking of early West Indian intellectuals like Padmore, Makonnen and others who went to Africa and helped to map out their liberation which was achieved half a century later. The Africans were very grateful for the part those West Indians played in their freedom struggle, and they are commemorated in the history books. Walter Rodney’s work in Africa and Guyana’s support for the anti-apartheid struggle was in this tradition.
In Africa today, the great Asiatic power is stripping Africa of its gold, oil, iron, coal, forests (wood), animals (for ivory and medicinal inputs) and other non-renewable resources, and some African leaders and bureaucrats are given bribes. To facilitate this trade, they build infrastructure such as roads, bridges, dams, and even power-generation. They do not employ many Africans, and where they have done so, there have been some cases involving complaints about treatment. In October last, for example, at the Collum coal mine in Zambia, the manager shot eleven African miners who were protesting against poor pay and horrible working conditions.
It is our duty, indeed historical duty, for Guyana and the West Indies to expose this plunder in the media, both local and international; they should use the internet and the diaspora to help. They should lobby understanding countries which are sympathetic and friendly to Africa, such as Brazil, Cuba, and Venezuela, as well as the universities and the various humanitarian groups in the major Western countries. They should expose any African leaders and bureaucrats who are known to be hand-in-glove with the new imperialists, and congratulate those Western companies such as the Brazilian
ones which act fairly and respect the Africans and their environment and which make a profit but do not plunder.
Leaders, governments and intellectuals must seize this historic opportunity; the UN Year would have more meaning.
Yours faithfully,
Henry G Niles
