On Saturday upcoming July 1, 2017 we will be celebrating emancipation day. When I hear the word emancipation I reflect on the words of the late reggae artist “Bob Marley” who said that we should emancipate ourselves from mental slavery none but ourselves can free our minds . Those are powerful words. Now how do we do this? Presently many of us are under the spell of the slave master thinking that he is superior to us. We think that everything in existence came from him. We could never be so wrong. I will be attending the celebrations on July 1, 2017 I think it is a very important day and a tribute to those who made it possible such as one tete loke, but in order to emancipate ourselves we must know who we are and where we came from. Let me remind many who call the Netherlands our motherland, she is not and can never be our motherland. Our motherland is Africa whose name I learnt is really Alke-bulan mother of mankind or garden of Eden. There are those who don’t want to accept the fact that our lineage came from there but it is a reality. We have been indoctrinated and brained washed for thousands of years into thinking that we are less than while we are more than. The pyramids, the Sphinx are prime example of our intelligence. Only a brilliant mind could have created such structures which up until today according to information cannot be duplicated. I think it is high time we focus on who we are and what we are capable of. But in order to do so we must know our history, which shows we were kings and queens in our country. A family oriented people. We all know where the phrase came from it takes a village to raise a child. We have to go back to the practices of old where the man took care of his family and society took care of its people. Africans were the real socialist. this brings me to another song by the late South African artist lucky Dube who sang the song with the words am going back to my roots. Because of our love that was shown towards all who came to Africa no knowing that it would have been to our own demise. There is talk of making changes to our curriculum to talk about our local history but please don’t forget our African history. Even though they destroyed millions of books, literature, paintings, destroyed and plundered. We are a resilient people and will bounce back. There lies within us the ability to create anything we set our minds on. Let us start by emancipating ourselves from mental slavery. Have a great emancipation celebration. Your servant.
George Pantophlet