By *Jomo Sanga Thomas
(“Plain Talk” Oct. 18, 2024)
I was taken aback by residual doubts about the viability and significance of our struggle for sovereignty and national independence. I had no idea that 44 years after achieving political independence, some people still believe we would have been better off with colonial overlords.
To be sure, I belong to a school of thought that believes that achieving political independence is insufficient. Many of us in the progressive movement despised “flag independence” and the mere replacement of a white racist misruler with a black visage during the discussions on independence. The Trinidadian developmental economist Lloyd Best coined the term “AfroSaxon” to describe such a person. The more foresighted and visionary among us demanded genuine independence, people’s ownership, and control.
Progressives were clear that in order to chart a meaningful and sustainable developmental path, we needed to first wrest political control from the colonialists who disrupted our independence course, destabilised our culture, dehumanised our people, and mercilessly raped and exploited our country.
We were so convinced of our country’s development potential that when former Prime Minister James Mitchell opposed our country’s transition to independence with the bogus argument that “associated statehood with Britain protects us as well as sardines in a tin”, many laughed in his face and told him where to go.
As a result, it is disheartening to realise that there is nostalgia for our colonial past. The remaining colonies in our region, according to the argument, are better off economically and score higher on the social and developmental index. This argument ignores the reality that many colonies are similar to colonial showcases that arose in response to the regional independence movement that began in the 1960s.
The argument utterly ignores the fact that colonial officials hindered efforts to integrate the region and attempted to bring the West Indies Federation, which was created in 1958, to an end. More crucially, having “sucked the region dry”, as former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Eric Williams put it, Britain has consistently failed to engage the region in a reparatory debate that will lead to true and sustained growth.
The criminal neglect of the Caribbean by past colonial powers has pushed post-independence regional authorities to borrow excessively, making the Caribbean one of the world’s most indebted areas.
Nonetheless, as we will see, inequality is quite significant in both independent and colonial states within the region. The white settler class completely dominated the business and social life in the colonial enclaves. As a result, metrics such as GDP and per capita income are misleading and do not provide a realistic picture of how the people in the region live.
The GDP measures the size of the economy and provides an insight into how well it is operating. However, the real GDP growth rate provides a more accurate representation of economic health. Many individuals now recognise that economic growth does not always imply economic development.
The same can be said of concepts like per capita income, or the amount of money earned by each individual in a certain country. SVG, for example, today has a per capita income of more than EC$8,000. However, our poverty and unemployment rates push past 40%. When all of this is considered, the vast majority of Vincentians can be classified as working poor. As a result, per capita numbers are inaccurate and do not reflect citizens’ actual circumstances.
Many of the colonies have superior infrastructure than independent countries, but this is because the colonial overlords in London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Washington have transformed the non-independent areas into playgrounds for their economic elites. It’s no surprise that people of all colonial areas can be found in large numbers as they seek greener pastures. Puerto Ricans, Guadeloupeans, and Martiniquais can be found in large numbers in the metropoles. Bermuda, Turks and Caicos, and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have considerable numbers of residents from other islands looking for work and a better life.
Because they are accustomed to seeing individuals who look like them in positions of influence in politics and the economy, many Caribbean people assert strength and resolve in the metropoles of North America and Europe.
Conditions for indigenous peoples in colonies are comparable to those in independent countries. Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne, for example, have unemployment rates of 18, 22, and 23%, respectively. Life expectancy at birth is 83, 82, and 77 years, respectively. The life expectancy figures are not surprising given that all three civilisations have sizable white settler communities in comparison to primarily black-independent countries. Metropoles watch out for their own.
There is also the need for preserving colonial remnants such as the Privy Council. Our judges are said to have gone to the same schools and knew each other. Proponents of this viewpoint overlook, downplay, or ignore a critical point: the law is rarely about friendships, but rather about class and political interests. British judges attend private colleges such as Eton and King’s College, same as our lawyers attend UWI or British institutions. They are no smarter than our judges. To suggest you’d rather have a stranger preside over your legal problem than a local judge is a sad reflection on our self-esteem. Such sentiments feed into colonial overlords’ beliefs that our people are subhuman and thus have inferior intellect.
Returning to the “halcyon days” of colonial control demonstrates a lack of confidence and self-worth. Such viewpoints are based on an inferiority complex, which believes that others are superior to us in matters of state.
Onward to true independence, citizen ownership, and control.
This piece, published Nov. 2, 2023, is reissued with minor changes.
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former senator and Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].
Jomo, I have to attend colleges once a week for my dissertation. I just got in and don’t have time to properly respond to your remarks and opinions but I will tomorrow. I find it peculiar what you think about progressives.
Nice piece Jomo. However it is my opinion that many of the results from the Caribbean courts are left for us to wonder if they use the same yard stick when reaching a ruling. Case in point Sir James had to go to the Privy Courts to get some form of compensation when the Caribbean courts should of come to the same. This leaves some of us to wonder if the Judges of this court are not in the pockets of the Political Heads. I hope the results of the Teachers will prove me wrong.
As I have repeatedly replied to Jomo Thomas and other addled leftist commentators, the richest islands in the Caribbean are those that by the choice of their people remain the colonies or quasi-colonies of their European and North American conquerors. These include Puerto Rico, Anguilla, Aruba, British Virgin Islands, American Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin, Sint Maarten, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
One not listed above, Montserrat, is arguably a poor island but its people would be far worse off than they now are save for their Associate State status which ensured millions of dollars in aid and the permanent repatriation to England of aged retired Monsterratians following the devastating 1995 earthquake.
In particular, on 18 July 1995, the previously dormant Soufrière Hills volcano in the southern end of the island became active and its eruptions destroyed Plymouth, Montserrat’s capital city situated on the west coast. Between 1995 and 2000, two-thirds of the island’s population was forced to flee, mostly to the United Kingdom, leaving fewer than 1,200 people on the island in 1997. Many have since returned to help rebuilt the country with generous British assistance. But if Montserrat had been an “independent” nation in 1995, there would have been no moral or legal obligation for Great Britain to bail out its former colonized people in the same way that our former motherland hardly notices the existence of SVG these days because our leaders hungry for power and control of the treasury fooled our unlettered people into voting for the severance of our colonial ties with the motherland.
Conversely, the two oldest independent Caribbean countries — Haiti (1804) and Cuba (1898) — are its poorest. Nearly 90 percent of Haitians and Cubans are living in poverty or abject poverty.
Our “independence” is a total illusion, if not complete farce, because both our economy and polity would immediately collapse were it not for external aid and other support from other countries and overseas Vincentians who have fled by the thousands since our “independence” on October 27, 1979, a dark day that will live in infamy because, contrary to Jomo Thomas’s empty assertions, we would now be far better off in every social, cultural, and economic respect had we remained a Crown colony of Great Britain, as the example of so many Caribbean countries clearly reveal.
For three days now, our best friend the communist dictatorship of Cuba has been without electricity, an outcome having nothing to do with the so-called embargo which the country has long easily dealt with by exchanging goods and services with dozens of other nations, a process that has never allowed the vast majority of its peoples to escape grinding poverty, an outcome that is the inevitable result of the dead hand of socialist mismanagement.
The Caribbean is one of the most indebted regions in the world. Data that purports to represent the real state of living in the area, such GDP and per capita income, is often times misleading.
The GDP measures both the size and the status of the economy. This includes terms such as per capita income. SVG’s per capita income is around $8,000. notwithstanding, approximately 40% of the population lives in poverty and are unemployed. Consequently, per capita figures are erroneous and do not fully reflect the true status of the economy.
Becoming accustomed to seeing people who look like us in top political and economic positions has resulted in a large number of devoted Caribbean people relocating to North American cities.
Happy Independence