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| Basorun MKO Abiola |
REPARATIONS AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER
xcerpts of the lecture delivered by Basorun MKO Abiola to
the Black Congressional Caucus/ Americans at the Bethune-Dubois Award, Held at
the Capital Hilton Hotel, Washington
DC. USA. On MAY 21, 1991.
t It gives me great pleasure as well as
honor, to be present with you today, to receive an award which associates me
with such outstanding African -Americans as Brother Dubois and Sister Mary McLeod
Bethune.
These two geniuses
sacrificed themselves on behalf of the down trodden masses of African-America,
the rest of Africans in Diaspora, and the great long sufferings and mutilated
continent. But neither Sister Bethune nor Brother Dubois was content to remain
in the dark, nor allow us, their children, to think that darkness and despair
were our lots in perpetuity. Their heroic struggles against injustice and
discrimination taught us to reach out and turn on the light, to give birth to
hope and keep that hope alive.
BEYOND RACIAL STRIFE:
If for brother Dubois the
main problem of the twentieth century was the color, we can suitably honor him
by the extent to which we have solve this problem, so that the 21 st. century
will not continue to be stained with the vile of colors of man’s inhumanity to
man and woman, packaged in the obnoxious doctrines of racism.
As great statesmen and
women speaks with visionary certitudes about the new world order, they must be
told that there can be no order without justice, equality and right of life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, for which men and women has fought
throughout the ages, and continue to fight today.
You cannot have a new
world order in an affluent United
States of America where African American
teenagers are forced to kill each other over drugs because they are denied
equal opportunities for education and employment. And you cannot have order in
the world old or new where hundreds of millions are condemned to poverty ,
famine, civil wars and premature death because they are denied equal economic
opportunities in the global market place.
If a few hundred of
millions of people delude themselves that their wealth protects them from the
inhuman poverty and wrath of billions of fellow human being, they are very much
like the beautiful flowers which blooms
in ignorance on the edge of a volcano.
INTERNATIONALIZATION OF
BLACK POVERTY.
In Africa
the wise man rushes to pour water on his neighbor’s thatched roof so that the
conflagration will not spread to consume his own. Similarly a man who hunts
alone runs the risk of being hunted by wild animals who wisely hunts in pack.
And who ever heard of one hand clapping?
The world we wish to see
in the 21st century must be the hand work of all men and women of all races,
continents, and regions regardless of sex, race, religion and economic
circumstances. My plea tonight is directed at you, brothers and sisters in
African American, but it is also meant for the great rainbow of people who make
up this land of fantastic opportunities, truly the first modern nation in the
world.
REPARATIONS AND THE NEW
WORLD ORDER
The issue of Reparations
is at the very heart of the social solidarity and justice necessary for mankind
to survive into the next century because it demands compensations for wrongs
done against individuals and for the evils perpetuated against Nations. To
realize our vision of a new world order, however, we must now right the wrongs
of previous centuries, redress the imbalance, and remove the blinkers of bias,
prejudice, and discrimination which prevents us from seeing our common
humanity and act in solidarity to solve the problems which threatens us all of
mankind.
Today Africa
is a wounded continent, many of our people, where ever they find themselves are
destitute, discriminated and desperate. And it is our duty as African Americans
who are in position of some privileges to help put things right if the wounds
are to be healed and if the illness not to prove terminal. Let us assist our
unfortunate brothers and sisters to march, with heads held high and wrongs
righted into the next century.
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