#BTSpeakingOut- Let us rejoice in the republic

The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

By Alister Alexander

By the grace of God, coming generations will not find us loitering on colonial premises. It is finally closing time, the celebratory hour when a liberated joy overpowers a people swelling with the pride of nationhood.

Lower the standard of the oppressor and lift the standard of the oppressed. And let the oppressed rejoice in that we are exalted and the oppressor in that they are made low. Let us now in the Republic bend our knee to God alone.

Let the Republic be divinely established in the selfawareness that we are the very mirror image of our Creator.

Let the Republic stand actualised. Let it graciously reflect that beautiful self-respect bestowed at creation.

Mark the way we have passed with art, memorials, monuments and symbols. It is a rough way and there’s a horrific trail of blood that leads to this moment. By this bloody and crimson river, where we have often sat down and wept, the Republic must pause in solemn honour of those who refused to accept an inferior status.

Let’s observe somewhere in our spirits a moment of silent gratitude for the martyrs of the 37 Uprising and for the unnamed soldiers fallen in battle, in armed resistance, on ancestral soil against enslavement and colonialism.

There must be a reverent moment too for those who lost their lives in the many rebellious skirmishes on Britain’s demonic slave ships, refusing to be taken to a life of subhuman bondage. Let the new Republic grant a tearful moment for all, who in the land of their captivity, rather than submit to the chained limitations of servitude, died fighting in this very effort of self-determination.

From His Excellency, the Right Honourable General Bussa back to white settlement, there must be a national pause to remember the heroic courage of all who lost their lives in resistance, and a pause to remember emancipated courage like that of Tony, who, in 1675, told his barbaric and wicked enslavers, “If you roast me today, can’t roast me tomorrow.”

BARVEN rejoices in this seminal moment of historic and social righteousness. We welcome a Republic that is fashioned after the supreme character of the words of Africa’s Christian Emperor Haile Selassie, “where the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes; where the philosophy that holds one race superior and another inferior is totally and permanently discredited and abandoned.”

In this new Independent Republic of Barbados, in the words of scripture, we must not envy the oppressor or choose his ways. And so, in harmony with this truth, it is right at such a moment as this to acknowledge the great liberating works of our white brothers, of William Wilberforce, whose name the champions of the Bussa Rebellion raised in 1816 as they marched towards this freedom.

Every white abolitionist brother I pay unapologetic respect to and so must a Republic that affirms equal rights, justice and the equality of all.

Now, finally, we have our own head, to move ahead, to get ahead, to stay ahead. God bless our Independence and God bless our Republic, the self-rule of the people.

Alister Alexander GCM, President BARVEN.