Rawlings Calls For Unity Of The Black Race

ACCRA, Ghana (PANA) - July31, 1998
Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings has called for a strong bond between Africans on the continent and those in the Diaspora to ensure unity and progress of the black race. ''If the nations and peoples of Africa and of the Diaspora can come together with determination to build a strong economic base, our people can live in peace and dignity,'' he said. Rawlings was speaking Thursday at the official opening ceremony of the First Emancipation Day celebration to be hosted by Ghana.

The nine-day celebrations, under the theme ''Our Heritage, Our Strength'', has brought together a large number of people of African descent from the United States and the Caribbean. Rawlings recounted the atrocities of slavery and said the sacrifices made by Africans should spur them on to a greater sense of unity and well-being. ''Among us, we have many complementary resources, skills and talents. Divided, we can achieve only relatively modest gains. Together, we can create prosperity and address the causes of poverty, ignorance and strife,'' he stressed.

The president said Africans have reached a point where they need to rely on the potentials of one another to ensure their development. ''What we need is the commitment and the resolve, as willing collaborators of one family, to harness our collective skills and investments to provide a true and healthy meaning to our freedom,'' he pointed out. ''We remember the past, not in bitterness and hatred,...but in recognition of our duty to ensure that such injustice shall never happen again,'' he added. ''Shared pain and sorrow may unite us, but we have the will and the commitment to turn it into shared hope, pride and progress.'' Rawlings said his country is an appropriate setting for the first celebration of Emancipation Day outside the Caribbean because it is regarded as the centre of the slave trade and ''government was considering waiving visa requirements for Africans in the Diaspora.''

Owuraku Amofa, Deputy Minister ofTourism and Chairman of the Emancipation Day Planning Committee, said although slavery was abolished over a century ago, the black race is yet to be totally emancipated as their minds are still dominated by conditions set up by their slave masters. ''Now the black race is at a cross-roads where they will have to decide which way they will have to take forward to regain their dignity and ensure their progress,'' Amofa said.

The highpoint of the event will be the re-burial of the remains of two Africans, a man from the United States and a woman from Jamaica on Friday. The remains of Samuel Carson and Crystal from the US and Jamaica, respectively, will be re-buried at Assin Manso, believed to have been the last ''check point'' of Africans before they were shipped into slavery. It was at Assin Manso that the slave traders checked the ''fitness'' of the Africans and bathed them in the ''Slave River'' (Ndonkor Nsuo) before purchasing them for final shipment out of Africa.

Carson rose to become a naval officer in the US Navy while Crystal, believed to have died of hunger, got her name from a crystal found on her body. The remains of the two were accompanied by a 30-member delegation led by Sunny Carson, a descendant of Samuel and Minnon Philips, a Jamaican. Amofa said the significance of the remains was to undo all the atrocities meted out to African slaves by the Europeans. He said the Emancipation Day should serve as a unifying bond between Africans on the continent and those in the diaspora, adding that there will be a yearly pilgrimage of African-Americans to Ghana to consolidate the re-union.