ACCRA, Ghana — Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves arrived Ghana, on Monday, for a five-day official visit.
Gonsalves heads a delegation which includes SVG’s High Commissioner to London, Cenio Lewis and SVG’s Ambassador to the Republic of Cuba, Ellsworth John.
Gonsalves is also accompanied by wife, Eloise Gonsalves, and Adrian Francois of the prime minister’s security detail.
Vice President of Ghana, Mahamudu Bawumia met Gonsalves on arrival at Kotoka International Airport.
Today, Tuesday, Gonsalves will hold discussions with African Caribbean personalities in Accra, participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, pay a visit to the George Padmore Library and later pay a courtesy call on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House, the seat of government.
The visiting Prime Minister will hold discussions with Yaw Osafo-Maafo, the Senior Minister, Afriyie Owusu Akoto, minister of food and agriculture and Madam Catherine Abelema Afeku, minister of tourism, culture and creative arts.
On Wednesday, Gonsalves will pay a historic visit to the Elmina and Cape Coast Castles, the two historic places that played significant roles in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which saw thousands of Africans shipped to the Americas to work in sugarcane plantations.
On Thursday, Gonsalves will pay a visit to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and later hold a private discussion with former President John Agyekum Kufour at his private residence in Accra.
Also on Thursday, Gonsalves will deliver a lecture titled “Rebuilding the African-Brazil-Caribbean Movement for Trade, Cultural and Diplomatic Enhancement” at the University of Ghana.
The event is hosted by the Institute for African Studies and will be open to the public.
While in Ghana, Prime Minister Gonsalves hopes to strengthen the relationship between both countries, form cultural linkages, look at avenues for tourism and investment promotion and help St. Vincent and the Grenadines enhance its Cocoa Production and research.
Gonsalves departs Ghana on Friday.
Why is the PM visitin Elimina? Elimina is a sybol of the atrocities that his race who have wreck havoc on the African population. He has no reason to visit Elmina, it has no significance to him. His ancestors should now hide their face in disgrace. During the Holocaust over 75 million Africans lost their lives. It is,said that present day survivors are still experiencing post traumatic stress syndrome resulting from slavery. We tend to forget that is why we have elected this very white man Gonsalves to lead us. Something is definitely wrong with us as a people.
Jose please get help for your post traumatic stress disorders.
Slavery and the very sad consequences that we here in the Caribbean still experience today was the subject of a recent series of very informative documentaries.
( https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2018/08/slavery-routes-gold-world-180813075335977.html ) Note:
(At the end of the Middle Ages, Europe opened up to the world and discovered that it was at the margins of the world’s main area for wealth generation, Africa. Portuguese explorers were the first to set out to conquer Africa’s gold.
When explorers reached the coast of West Africa, they saw its people as a supply of labour and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade was established.
Economic ambition coupled with a religiously driven effort to expand Christendom Pope, Nicholas V morally endorsed the Portuguese enterprise and a legal framework for the enslavement of Africa.
“This was an extremely violent economy of predation,” explains Antonio De Almeida Mendes, University of Nantes, France. “The Portuguese would disembark and rush arms in hand to capture the inhabitants of these African coasts, starting with Mauritania and then Senegal, where poor fishermen lived. They were captured with nets.”
The Portuguese set up a triangular trading system off the coast of West Africa – between Elmina, Sao Tome and the Kingdom of Kongo. They traded European goods for slaves in the Kongo and slaves for gold in Elmina. Sao Tome was developed into a sugar plantation. 4,000 Africans were brought to Sao Tome as slaves to work the sugar plantation every year.
It was the start of a system that later expanded across the Atlantic and thrived in the Americas.
The Portuguese were the uncontested masters of the slave trade by 1620. European ships picked up slaves from West Africa, transported them to Brazil and the Caribbean and then returned to Europe with vessels full of produce for sale.
By 1789, 7.7 million Africans were deported to the Americas. All of Europe joined Portugal to take control of African gold and slaves including Flemish, German, English, Genoese and Venetian merchants.)
The Question is why is he, or for what is the purpose, is it for a joy ride to spread his bullshit to on tax payers backside? This man has been all over the world,getting loans and Grants,and yet nothing new to alleviate or to help the unemployed. For eighteen years, every thing seems to be in a downward spiral,rising crime rate, pimps prostitution, Rapes, murders, robberies of all sorts, health care, maybe the worst in the entire Caribbean, businesses going under, banking etcetera, roads, schools Government buildings, and a whole host of things, homeless people, we’ve become a beggar nation,where hands out and dependency bribery has become the thing of the day. The people has a Government they deserved. Sorry to say, but, the situation will never get better unless or until this dictatorship of Ralph Gonsalves, becomes nonexistent.
Ralph Gonsalves has an extremely bad economic policy, everyone that is not hypnotized by his deceptiveness knows this, to include many in the ULP. His policy of going all over the world to get loans to make it appear that things are fine in SVG when in truth he is adding fuel to the fire by creating more debt and a fake appearance of prosperity, has brought us to our knees! Even if we suddenly get any profitable industry established in SVG it will take more than a generation to get back to where we were when he became Prime Minister.
We have become so conditioned to easy money that we really do not want to work anymore. We do not know what it is to work for something when it seems we just want everything given to us. Our pride of accomplishment is gone and with it we have lost our work ethic. Handing out free building materials and some free houses to get votes is an example of what we have become. How do we get back to being a people with pride instead of people that want everything for free and have forgotten what it is to work?
Poverty has caused our crime rate to get out of control, in spite of the tremendous resources the ULP puts into trying to convince us otherwise, the people know that unemployment and poverty is a major influence.
José, its even worse than that. Ralph Gonsalves ancestors, the now defunct [House of Braganza 1640–1910] Portuguese royal family [now succeeded by the Portuguese government] and the Catholic Church were responsible for creating the Atlantic slave trade.
https://kentonxtchance.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/gonsalves-calls-for-apology-and-reparation-for-slavery/
Below is a comment on that article by Peter Binose
The Portuguese sea captain Antonio Gonsalves took 8 Africans into slavery fro the South West African Sahara coast. He was part of the Gonsalves of Madeira family, ancestors of Ralph E Gonsalves of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Also, a member of the Gonsalves family of Madeira by marriage was Christopher Columbus, who was responsible for the deaths of millions of Caribbean and indigenous American Indians. And after that the shipping of African slaves to the Caribbean and the Americas.
1418 –
Madeira Portugal:
This was the beginning of the Portuguese slave trading era that much later affected Saint Vincent and changed the World. The official history of the Portuguese Island of Madeira and the following Caribbean slave trade starts with the discovery of the island of Porto Santo by João Gonçalves (John Gonsalves) a Jew (1392-1460). Also called O Zarco “the cross-eyed” and his fellow officers Bartolomeu Perestrelo and Tristão Vaz Teixeira in 1418. The next year they settled Madeira island which was just 38 kilometers (23 miles) away from Porto Santo.
The Portuguese claimed the island of Madeira.
John Gonsalves (João Gonçalves ) discovers Madeira.
As a reward for this Prince Henry nominated him the first donee captain of Funchal. On Madeira, he named a certain area “Câmara de Lobos” due to many sea lions found in a cave there.
(Note: In Portuguese, the sea lion is Lobo Marinho, which translates literally as sea wolf.)
1441 –
Africa:
In 1441: Off the West African coast, an occurrence that later affected the World this was the year that the international slave trade began with Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, when his sea captain Antão Gonçalves (written as Gonçalves but pronounced Gonsalves [Antonio or Anthony Gonsalves] took the first slaves from North West Africa Coast. [In this recorded historical fact Antão can be found both as Gonsalves and Gonçalves, variations in the name due to anglicizing, etc.] Search the internet under either spelling with the same results. Gonsalves is a modern phonetic spelling of the name Gonçalves, historically there was no such spelling as Gonsalves) Gonsalves kidnapped ten Africans as slaves and delivered them to Prince Henrique (Henry) of Portugal at Lisbon, who gave them to the Pope as gifts.
Antão Gonçalves (Antonio or Anthony Gonsalves), intending to acquire a cargo of animal skins and oil to sell in Europe, landed on the shores of West Africa. The ten Africans he abducted were almost an afterthought. While trading glass beaded necklaces for skins with the Africans, he beckoned to them and said: “Vindo ao papa” (come to Papa), when they approached they were overpowered and manacled and taken aboard his ship. When he returned to Portugal, Gonsalves delivered the captives to Prince Henry, who in turn presented them as a gift to the Catholic Pope, then as much a powerful political figure as the religious leader. The gesture so pleased the Catholic pontiff that he granted Prince Henry license to a large chunk of West African territory for slave taking. Hence the start of the African/European commercial slave trade. For some time after that, the Portuguese dominated the African/European slave trade with the continent of Africa and the peddling of its inhabitants. Long a part of history throughout much of the world, the practice often enslaving others now entered a new era, the so-called “Commercial Age.” Thousands of Africans during this period were herded into cramped, unsanitary quarters and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean for sale. Within two decades of Antão Gonsalves’ voyage, the African slave trade had become a highly profitable venture for the Portuguese. [The Portuguese shipped more African slaves than any other Nation, that includes Britain]
Antão Gonçalves (Anthony Gonsalves) a Portuguese captain and son of João Gonçalves (John Gonsalves), abducted ten Africans at Rio do Ouro on the West African coast. Antão Gonçalves (Portugal, dates unknown) 1441: Travels to Rio de Oro and brings the first cargo of African slaves to Portugal. In 1443, 1445, 1447, Anthony Gonsalves makes three more voyages to Rio de Oro.
The first shipment of African slaves was sent directly from Africa to Portugal. With the complicity and blessings of the Catholic Church, the Portuguese would come to dominate the African gold, spice and slave trade for almost a century before other European nations became significantly involved.
Portugal: The Gonsalves (Gonçalves) family were Marranos [secret Jews because of Jewish persecution by the Catholic church] they played a leading role in introducing sugar cane cultivation to the Atlantic islands of Madeira
The start of the African slave trade as known in the Caribbean and Americas.
Later that year Portuguese captains Antão Gonçalves and Nuno Tristão capture 12 Africans in Cabo Branco (modern Mauritania) and take them to Portugal as slaves. Portuguese sailors entered the international slave trade, with African negroes at Cape Blanc.
African slaves were sold in the market at Lisbon, the slaves were taken to the marketplace and openly sold in the market at Lisbon.
The Arabs Moors had delt in Africa slaves for many centuries and possibly thousands of years. They also traded in white slaves, which is often forgotten, this white trade was at one period as significant or even more significant than the African slave practice.
I hope that PM Gonsalves can talk to the appropriate people and get an education on how to develop a nation. Ghana does it much like Singapore and how the USA did it for thier first 200 years, by giving incentives to the Private Sector. The PM of SVG, Gonsalves believes the way to do it is through excessive borrowing and heavy taxes. That is why so very many businesses close and the best trained and educated people leave the country to go to places that provide opportunity, which is too difficult to find in SVG.
Gonsalves is a smart man but he is incredibly stupid in all aspects of Economics. He only thinks about the benefits to the government and not to give the people a way to achieve thier own success. His systematic destruction of the Economy truely is a major contributing factor for our growing crime rate. I believe Gonsalves has lost touch with the country because he lives insulated from it more and more. The NDP has most all the answers at this time. Gonsalves also seems to care far more about his family, political party and friends, but very little about the country and its people. At voting time the people are only the means to and end for him.
The part played by Ghana in Gold, Silver, Slaves and The Atlantic Slave Trade, when 12 Million people were sent into captivity. Ghana indeed was a big market in the selling of Gold, Silver & Slaves.
As to the Slave markets, there were 65 slave markets in Ghana alone and where the children of slaves became slaves too, once those slaves were exported to the Americas and the Caribbean! Herein is “The birth of the industrial revolution”. Read Phyllis Deane “The first industrial Revolution” and watch; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7OqaMkymWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znwRJ5K85XI
The “Book identifies the strategic changes in economic organisation, industrial structure and technological progress associated with the industrial revolution, which took place in Britain over the century 1750-1850 and which marked a watershed in world economic development – the beginnings of modern economic growth for developed countries and an example of spontaneous industrialisation for third world countries”.
(https://archive.org/details/firstindustrialr00dean_0 )
Gonsalves will tell us that Ghana is a wealthy nation because they have more resources than SVG. Ask him to explain why Singapore is the wealthiest nation on earth and they have far less resources than SVG. Singapore even has to import its drinking water.
Truth is that Gonsalves has the intelligence of a bag of trash when it comes to economics. He plays the tourism card when he should have been playing agriculture. His excuse is because other countries are doing it. If his friend jumped off a tall bridge, would he do it? Instead of using the resources we have he has been playing the resources he WISHES we had.
The rooms of no return in Elmina castle,, Ghana, 536 years after being built to detain captive slaves. The Portuguese and Dutch have left their calling cards at Elmina, as did the many sad slaves incarcerated, auctioned and sold off there before being exported to the Americas and the Caribbean only to be auctioned and sold again, that is if they were able to survive the horrors of the Middle Passage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYuRhSE0Bpc
Olaudah Equiano a survivor of the Middle Passage
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/34285/the-interesting-narrative-and-other-writings/9780142437162.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano