Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer
GARVEY
WHAT WOULD Marcus Garvey think of Africa at this time, and the effects modern challenges such as AIDS and globalisation have had on the continent he cherished so much?
Speakers at a symposium commemorating the 118th birthday of the Pan Africanist and National Hero last Tuesday at the PCJ Auditorium in Kingston, sought to answer these questions.
Canon Ernle Gordon, reector of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, believes Garvey would have flatly refused assistance from European leaders who pledged US$25 billion in aid to the continent at the G8 Summit in Edinburgh, Scotland in July.
The funds will go toward alleviating poverty and developing programmes to stem the HIV/ AIDS disease which is rampant throughout parts of Africa.
"He always wanted Europeans out of Africa ... I don't believe he would have accepted it based on his sense of self-reliance and independence," said Canon Gordon.
AFRICAN LEADERS ATTENDED
Leaders from seven African countries - Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania - attended the G8 Summit with President Olesegun Obasanjo of Nigeria describing the financial gesture as "encouraging".
In his presentation, Fitzroy Baptiste, a lecturer in the department of history at the University of West Indies' Mona campus, focused on the 'negative' images of Africa portrayed in western media.
"We don't hear enough of what's happening on the continent unless it's about death and famine, things like that," said Mr. Baptiste, a Trinidadian. "But they have their own versions of CARICOM promoting positive initiatives."
Garvey was born in St. Ann's Bay in 1887, but left Jamaica for Central America in the early 20th Century. He returned to Jamaica in 1914, forming the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which had over 1,000 affiliates in over 40 countries.
He left Jamaica again in 1916 for Harlem, New York where he was a beacon of that borough's so-called renaissance, influencing authors such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.
Garvey was deported to Jamaica on mail fraud charges in 1927; he died in England in 1940. His body was brought back to Jamaica in 1964.
