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Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley is advocating on this Emancipation Day that “we have what it takes to overcome whatever challenges we currently endure,” as he praised the “resilience” shown by African slaves almost 400 years ago as an example of their fortitude to overcome the “inhumanity” meted out to them.
In a message on this Emancipation day, Rowley said “our African ancestors endured great hardships,” having come to these shores “shackled and chained as slaves,” to work on the sugar plantations, but they demonstrated “immense resilience in the face of what many viewed as insurmountable difficulties.”
The Prime Minister said it was his view that “we should seek to emulate their resilience to overcome difficult times in similar manner, to how our displaced ancestors survived, even after enduring the harshest of conditions, of inhumanity inflicted upon them by other human beings.”
Rowley said, “when we review where we were back then to where we are now, we can indeed feel a sense of pride and indeed continue to strive for greatness whilst learning from our past.”
Today, he said, “we the great, great grandchildren and our lineage have come a long way but must never become weak-kneed and accept standards and values that are detrimental to our national existence since no other act of cruelty and deprivation in human history comes close to resembling 400 years of brutal enslavement of African people between the West Coast of Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas.”
Rowley said while this emancipation celebration affords an opportunity to reflect on the horrors of that era and on those who endured its pain, “we must draw strength from our survival and growth as we aspire to greater progress, confident in our proven knowledge that we have what it takes to overcome whatever challenges we currently endure and those that may lay ahead once we accept responsibility to be the best that we can be and make the most of the God-given resources, large or small, that are available to us.”