By Afua Hirsch
From an African perspective, going to the Caribbean can be a disarming experience. On many of the islands, the people look distinctively west African, their national dishes are barely changed versions of African food (compare Nevis’s “cook-up” to Ghana’s “waakye” and I challenge you to spot the difference), and their Creole dialects are often almost direct translations of African languages into English or French.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that cultural ties, stretched and distorted by 5,000 miles, slavery and the passage of several hundred years, are still strong enough to produce some kind of political union between Africa and the Caribbean. And sure enough, in January the African Union is poised to admit Haiti as a member, which if it happens, will be the first time any nation with no geographic connection to the continent of Africa will have joined.
More than any other Caribbean nation, Haiti occupies a special place in the affection of many Africans and members of the African diaspora. The country endured decades of still prescient punishment for daring to overthrow its slave masters, becoming the world’s first independent black nation in 1804 – the slave rebellion’s leader Toussaint L’Ouverture hailed from Benin. Haiti used its independence and membership of the United Nations in the post-war period to back decolonisation during the fraught period of African independence.
And now it has a level of poverty gives it more in common with many African nations than its wealthier Caribbean neighbours, who have been known to regard Haitan refugees as a nuisance. After the 2010 earthquake, the Democratic Republic of Congo – which struggles to finance its own budget – pledged $2.5m in aid to the devastated country. Senegal offered land and places at its university to Haitan students. As the African Union chairman, Jean Ping, said: “We have attachment and links to that country. The first black republic … that carried high the flame of liberation and freedom for black people and has paid a heavy price for so doing.”
Despite all this, it’s unlikely the primary reasons for Haiti’s interest in AU membership are emotional. At the AU summit in July, the Haitan information minister compared the country’s interest in the union with its interest in the EU.
There is much for poor, aid-dependent Haiti to gain from battles African nations have already fought, not least debt cancellation. It is also telling that when Haiti was granted observer status at the AU back in February, one of the first things its ambassador Ady Jean Gardy did was to enter Haiti in the inter-ministerial conference on China-AU investment. Relative to the now-booming economies of many African nations, Haiti attracts very little foreign direct investment, and Africa’s example – imperfect as it is – is a natural one to follow. Meanwhile, intra-African trade is on the rise, and Haiti would do well to find itself included.
The rest of the Caribbean is wealthier and so lacks such practical incentives to join forces with Africa. But that doesn’t mean Haiti won’t set a precedent. After all, the AU was founded off the back of African legends such as Kwame Nkrumah and Leopold Senghor, pan-African and négritude principles were themselves directly inspired by leaders from the Caribbean – Jamaican Marcus Garvey, Martinican Aimé Césaire and Trinidadian Henry Sylvester Williams.
The Senegalese consultant Babacar M’Bow, who has been working behind the scenes for AU membership for Haiti, summarised his view of what Africans think about Haitians. “[Africans] think ‘well they shipped you over there, so come back to us.’” It looks like they just might.
Afua Hirsch is the Guardian’s west Africa correspondent based in Ghana.
@You got your history wrong, after Haiti became independent from France, this country became a slave trading country. The person that started the Pan African movement was Du Bois and not none of the people you name in your essay. Du Bois held the first anti-colonial movement in London against colonialism. You should read that book published by Du Bois in 1903 called” Soul of the Black Folks”.
Maybe things have changed in the last 25 years, but when I was travelling through Africa I met one or two black Americans who were having a miserable time.
Right across the continent they were insulted as acting as whites and one even told me that he had been told that “real Africans did not let themselves be taken as slaves…”
It really left them upset and bewildered.
@johnbpatson, Africans are all in denial of their role in the slave trade. The slave trade went on for four hundred years and the Africans played a mjor role in this trade.
Shouldn’t that be, “We sold you to them, they shipped you away, now you can come back”?
“You are welcome to join our fight against racism because you are also black”
@ Sterling, the word “Pan Afrikanism” was coined by the Trinidadian barrister Sylvester Williams. Dr WEB DuBois took over the organisation of the Pan Afrikan conferences only after the death of Sylvester Williams.Initially Du Bois was not as interested in Pan Afrikanism as he was in intergrating Black Americans into the mainstream American society.He was, initially, oppossed to Marcus Garvey’s encouragement of “back to Afrika” movement, which was initiated by Sylvester Williams.Later in his life, after realising that the American dream was only a nightmare for people of colour of his time, Du Bois repatriated to Ghana and become Nkrumah’s adviser. DuBois passed on in Ghana when he was 91 years old
” There is much for poor, aid-dependent Haiti to gain from battles African nations have already fought, not least debt cancellation. ”
Haiti is not merely ‘poor and aid dependent’. Haiti has been fleeced and suppressed since the 18th century, when they threw off the yoke of the French. To restore ‘order’ in the slave holding Americas, they were subsequently invaded by Spain, France and the USA, and defeated them all.
To this day, Haiti is being robbed of their natural resources, including bauxite, which could provide income for all Haitians. Not throwing open the Haitian economy to US cororations is the reason the US kidnapped the Haitian president, Jean Bertrande Aristide, and flew him to the Central African Republic. Right now, his party which is also the biggest political party because it represents the people, is not allowed to participate in national elections, with the approval of the United States.
Google: haiti globalresearch.ca
@Mandla, Sylvester William was at the conference held in London but, he was upstaged by DuBois. DuBois gave a speech that linked racism with colonialism and he said the problems of the 20th century would be about racism. He called for the Europeans to leave Africa because they couldn’t take care of their own people in Europe. You are right DuBois was opposed to the back to Africa movement because he thought that blacks had gave 200 years of free labor in the US shouldn’t walk away and leave it.
Wherein, Sylvester William thinking of Pan-Africans was to give people of African origin protection in the English Empire. He wasn’t opposed to colonialism like DuBois was at that time. Marcus Garvey thinking wasn’t no big deal because the people in the English Empire could travel within the empire. However, the blacks in North America didn’t have the rights to travel with in the English Empire. As a matter of facts, William ran for a seat in parliament in England and lost the election so, he wasn’t against colonialism.
Our Leasers is Africa sold us. If they want us back now, they must buy us.
@Becker. it’s not that simple, the black people in the diaspora might be the same color as the Africans but, there is a vast culture difference. When many blacks from the new world visit Africa they are shocked at the culture difference in Africa. When children of African immigrants visit Africa, they don’t consider themselves one of their parents people. Most of Africa is feudal and the black people coming from overseas have never live in a society where the chiefs make all of the decisions for them.
Well… how did the slave trade really develop? Did Africans sell off other Africans to the Arab/European/American slave traders; or, did slave traders hunt down Africans to ferry them across the Atlantic? Is there a clear answer, backed by reliable historical records, to that double-question?
To suggest that Africans sold others to slave traders seems (to me) to invoke a shared responsibility to both sides, thereby lessening the (savage) blame to or role of the slave traders. This idea best suits the vested interests of the historians who would be trying to ‘defend’ the role of the slave traders. This is nothing new considering that the ‘victors’ always wrote the history…
@Mack, most of the cities that were built in black Africa were built around slave trade. The Arabs and the Europeans brought cheap goods to Africa and traded them off for African slaves to go to the new world. The goods that the Europeans and Arabs brought to Africa were unheard of by the Africans. The triangle trade was the most profitable trade in the world. The Europeans would bring goods to Africa worth a few dollars and the Africans would traded off their people for barley nothing. The slaves would be sold in the ports of the US for $2000 dollars each. Some of this money would be used to buy goods in the Caribbean and the US and take back to Europe for a big profit.
@Mack, there were slave markets in Africa up until the end of the 20th century. There were fortunes made from the slave trade however, the Africans got the short end of the stick. The slave trade was human capital that the Africans traded off to the Europeans and Arabs for peanuts. There are those who are saying the Africans are selling their natural resources the same way for nothing.