Today’s guest is Dr. Julius W. Garvey was born on August 16, 1933 in Kingston, Jamaica to United Negro Improvement Association founder Marcus Garvey and activist Amy Jacques Garvey. The younger of two sons, Garvey was raised in Jamaica. He graduated from Wolmer’s Trust High School for Boys in Kingston in 1950; and then earned his B.S. degree from McGill University in Montréal, Canada in 1957, and his M.D., C.M. degree from McGill University Faculty of Medicine in 1961.
While he was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to participate in the launching of a new Global Black History, Heritage, and Education Centre (GBHHEC), The Ethiopian Herald had a brief stay with Dr. Julius W. Garvey and raised points directly and indirectly related to the struggle of black people from the yokes of racial discrimination and the role of Adowa. Have a nice read!
Your father Dr. Marcus Garvey was a notable personality in his struggle to liberate the black people from the yokes of racial discrimination to what extent do you think had his goal for the black people of the world succeeded?
That is an interesting question. A lot of progress has been made but many people do not think that progress has been enough or swift enough. First of all, he was born in 1887 and secondly he formed his organization the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in 1914. So, at that particular time, slavery was abolished in the Caribbean in 1838 and in the United States in 1865 and the Berlin conference was in 1884 and 1885.
So, there was a transition from slavery to colonialism. So, that was the order of the day in terms of the early 19th century. He created that organization of the UNIA-ACL and basically to unite African people around the world and to uplift them in terms of the condition in which they were in, meaning striving towards our freedom or towards removing the yoke of colonialism. The Berlin conference took place in 1884 and 1885, all of Africa was cut up, and all of the Caribbean was colonized. So, the organization achieved significant growth in a very short period of time – it subscribed some six million followers. But I am going to fast forward a little bit and say that today there are 54 independent African countries.
At that time, only Ethiopia was independent, when my father was around, and Liberia was pretty much a client state of the United States. And if you look at the Caribbean, all the countries in the Caribbean were independent. And CARICOM, was the coalition of 15 Caribbean countries for a trading area. All those were free.
So, progress has been made, but I guess the other side of your question is, we live in a near colonial period in terms of the yoke of imperialism. It is still present, and the globalization has continued to take its toll in terms of the centralization of power in the United States and some other European countries, but primarily in the United States.
So the growth and development of these 54 independent countries has not occurred as quickly as we would like to say but to see in terms of development, and the same thing in the Caribbean. Because most of the systems that have been put in place, let’s say since 1945 after World War II, such as the United Nations in 1948 and so on, have been put in place as a replacement for colonial structures.
But to continue the same domination, the World Bank and the IMF, the World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, all of those still constitute obstacles to the development of African people worldwide. So, progress needs to be made still. And to achieve maximal progress, we really need a federated United States of Africa. And of course, you need the Caribbean and the Americas as well.
Black people are still under the influence of neo-colonialism. In your opinion, what are the problems holding back people from emancipating themselves from discrimination and racial abuses?
My father in 1937, in a speech in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, said that we must emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because while others may help us free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Of course, Bob Marley took that and made that part of his lyrics in Redemption Song. So it is about emancipating the mind from mental slavery because what has transpired over the last 20 years is that we are now living in a world educational systems that have been put in place are mis-educational systems. They mis-educate us and they are fundamentally illusory in terms of representing the truth about history and the relationship over time between Africa and the rest of the world.
So that African history has been distorted, it is been minimized, books have been burned, people have been killed, etc. So, over time, African people have had a mis-education process. There is a gentleman by the name of Carter G. Woodson in the United States back in the 1930s, he wrote a book about the mis-education of the African people and that is what has occurred over all of this time, over 500 years. And each phase, whether it is enslavement or colonialism or neo-African-ism, it’s a process.
The mis-education system has continued. I cannot speak for Ethiopian universities but many of the universities in the United States, the historical and the black colleges, the universities in the Caribbean, etc., the curriculum, very often, is still the same with that the colonizers had put in place, maybe with some modifications but the curriculum needs to be rewritten altogether from an African perspective. So, that is what is holding us back. Mental enslavement is still there. We haven’t broken those chains.
One of the reasons for the subjugation and discrimination of blacks is their economic challenge. How do you think should African countries and blacks across the world alleviate this problem?
Well, the reason for slavery is to steal human resources as well as physical resources that are in the earth’s crust or on the surface of the earth and that has continued through the colonial and near colonial period. As I mentioned, many of the finance and economic systems, such as the World Bank, the IMF and World Trade Organization prevents the development of former colonies in terms of interest rates etc. For example, if you look at Haiti, rice has been dumped coming from the United States because America subsidizes farmers. So, they signed a contract with the president of Haiti to import rice from America and it is sold at a price than what the Haitian farmer can produce. So, in no time at all, there is no more production of rice, let’s say, in Haiti and you import American rice.
The same thing happened with the milk industry in Jamaica, where the farmers, again, from the United States sent their milk down. This happens because of the coercion of the governments such as the United States of America, and/or the colonizers. And America has taken over a colonial role since World War II because it has become the most powerful country.
These are the things that prevent our development even though we have great resources. If you are looking at the African continent, certainly it is the richest continent in the world, 60% of the arable land, 40% of the gold, the diamonds, the platinum, 80% of the coal, and you can go on and on in terms of mineral wealth. However, the governments are subverted one way or another. They are bribed. A coup is engineered, or they are assassinated.
Over 10 African leaders have been assassinated since the 60s. So, these are the problems that we still face and many of these problems can only be solved by a federal government that will have enough strength. It will have one currency, it will have one army, and it will be able to resist the predatory influences of the outside world, such as the European Union and America.
How do you see the struggle or effort of promoting history and civilization of black people on the side of African countries at this moment?
Well, certainly it is appropriate to focus on that. Interestingly, I was invited here to Ethiopia to participate in the launching of a new institution called the GBHHEC, which is focusing or will be focusing on just these elements that you talked about, that is education, heritage and culture. And of course sustainable economic development would be part of that. So, that is something I would be participating in or I have been asked to participate.
And hopefully there are other agencies along those lines such as UNDP, NEPAD, African Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund need to focus on the economic development aspect of it. As I mentioned, two things have to go together: the liberation of the mind, as well as the understanding of the fact that Africa has to travel a different course from Europe as the focus of Europe is utilizing resources as fast as possible to create more and more products for people to use, and then consumer items and then you pollute the country with garbage. You create obesity. And you have an economy that is really over time not sustainable, because it’s using up the clean water. It is using up the clean air. It is polluting the ground. It is polluting the air in terms of fossil fuels, etc, which is the energy base for the Industrial Revolution. So, we have a climate crisis and it is part and parcel of the socio-economic crisis that has been created by the physicality of the European perspective, meaning that everything relates to scientific materialism.
And the understanding and the benefit for the human being as a person is not understood. So from my perspective, I think African humanism is the paradigm that needs to be put forward, more or less based on Ubuntu and Ma’at, Kemetic, Ethiopian principles as well.
So, we have to educate our young people so that they come out of our universities with a wider understanding, not only of different topics but with a wider understanding of the philosophy and the cosmology of life itself. Since we are the first human beings come across first civilizations, and if we recapture our history and our traditions, that is what we have to offer to the world in the 21st century.
Some decades back, there were black rights advocators, like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and so on. Do we still have people of similar influence or caliber working for the rights of black people?
Yeah, I think you have to look at transformation as a process. Many people look at transformation as a violent revolutionary process. Therefore, they think change is going to happen by revolution. Malcolm once said, the revolution won’t be televised. So it is not an instantaneous process, but it takes place over time.
Now, at some point in time, you need the charismatic leader to be able to express the understanding and the true feelings of the masses of the people, who may not be able to articulate it even for themselves. However, if you have a leader who understands the people, he can articulate it to them and therefore, there is a groundswell in terms of moving in the direction of change that is appropriate and that is what we are talking about in terms of us as a people controlling our resources and our geopolitical situation in the world. So, at some point in time, you need a charismatic leader.
But what you end up needing is institutionalization of the ideas of freedom. So, they need to be articulated clearly in terms of the ideology. But then you need to create the institutions that are the result of the ideology and then you educate the people in those institutions. So, I think we are, in some sense, beyond the charismatic leader. We do not need anybody to really tell us the problems that we have and rally us. I think, especially now, with the information technology that is out there.
Everybody is on WhatsApp and the different methods of instantaneous information. So, many people understand where we are and I think the coups that have taken place in Francophone Africa are an indication of that. The young people, where they have all these riches, with its nuclear resources, and France is taking it out of their country and they get nothing out of it.
And the young people see it and understand it and say; no more. So, then they maybe a military person comes up bringing the change. But it does not have to be a military person but I think the force for change has now moved to the younger generation. They have the energy and some of the understanding that the world is not the way it should be because there is a group of people that, 5% of the population of the world has 80% of the riches and they want to benefit from the riches in their own country.
So, we are at that cusp now in terms of history. So, what we really need leaders who have that understanding. And, I refer to my father. I think the type of leadership we need is servant leadership, not somebody who wants to go out there, talks a lot and enriches himself and puts it in the bank in Switzerland or something like that. We have had enough of those. But many of our leaders have been killed or marginalized and criminalized. And I think the system knows the people want change, to be free and benefit from their resources. That is natural, human nature.
So, we have to have that understanding and unite as unity gives us strength. We have to move in that direction of controlling our resources. I think if we unite with that understanding, we have to move in a different direction from Europe and America; we will be able to do it. And if you look at the development paradigms that have happened since the Second World War, for Russia to reconstruct itself after the devastation of World War II, the West was antagonistic even though they were allies during the war. So, Russia had to bring down the eye Curtain. And they developed behind the eye in curtain, separate from Europe and America and the same way with China. The rest of the world did not want China to develop. And they wanted all of those resources. Chiang Kai-shek was a part of that etc. So you had the revolution by Mao Zedong. And then you had the bamboo curtain and then China was able to develop behind that. We need some kind of African curtain to keep up with the Europeans and the Americans. So we can develop with our own resources and uniting together as we certainly have the brain power.
What should institutions, including the GBHHEC, and other Black people’s movements, should do to truly liberate the African people?
If you look at European systems of governance, philosophy and religion, their system is based on individualism. What is important is the individual person. Now, the individual person is separate from others and his environment too. So the purpose of this individual in life is to benefit himself, not the society, not as a steward of nature or anything like that. It is all about the individual freedom to do what you want.
Now, all you have to do is elaborate from that. Let us say you have a million people in a 10-square-mile radius, and within that society of a million people, everybody is doing what they want to please themselves. That is another name for chaos. The only way you can move them in the right direction is if you have a power and a system that controls them. And if you look at all of European history, that is the way it has gone, in terms of the feudal system, and then in terms of the religious system that was created, in particular, Roman Catholicism as a system. And then if you look at the commercial system, it’s very much a hierarchy. All of it is a hierarchy. It is a hierarchy with top-down rules and regulations. And the boss dictates what everybody else does. Now, surreptitiously, I will tell you that that is a democracy because they will get people to vote for it. But, that is a scam because they tell people who to vote for.
If you look at elections, let us just say in the United States, who are the people that are going to be elected? They are chosen by a party or by somebody, and they have to be funded in order to be able to compete in an election.
So who is it funding them? It is the corporate interests that want the government to create certain laws so that the corporations can prosper, etc. So it is a system that is loaded. It is top-heavy. And again, if you look at that system, 5% of the people at the top have 80% or 90% of the wealth.
Let us put that aside for the time being. If you look at an African system, going all the way back, the African individual is not an individual to himself. He is a person within a society. He is a person that has a relationship to nature and also to divinity. My dad said; “God and nature first made us what we are. Then out of our own creative genius we make ourselves what we want to be.” So that means that we are one with God. God is the source and we are one with nature because God and nature is one and the same thing. And so are we.
So, the basic ideological, principle of African systems, is unity. It manifests itself in the family. It manifests itself in the extended family. It manifests itself in the community. It manifests itself in the tribe. It manifests itself in the nation. If you look at all of African history, which is the way it is. There is always an extended family.
If you look at a capsule again of Ubuntu philosophy, “because you are I am”, “because I am we are”, that means I see myself in you. I am not an individual isolated from you or from my environment or from the rest of human beings. So that creates different systems of education, a different system of economics, and a different religious systems because it is an understanding that spirit is part and parcel of humanity. It is not just, physicality. Again, if you look at scientific material from the European perspective, only what can be measured is considered to be science.
If you cannot weigh it, if you cannot measure it, if you cannot touch it, if it does not have a shape, etc, it does not exist. So the entire spiritual dimension is excluded in terms of your society and so on. So the human being is considered a mind-body complex with so many cells, hormones and muscles and a mind.
There is no soul basically there. It is a mind-body complex. And if you look at their religion, the religion is a dogmatic religion that tells you to do this and do that and the other thing. And if you do things properly, maybe over time, when you die, you may get to heaven. So how does that manifest itself in society on a day-to-day basis?
The individual is separated from society and that creates all of the tensions that exist within society, within the West I mean, like World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnamese War, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, now Yemen, now Gaza.
That is where you solve problems. They go to war to create peace. That is nonsense. You go to war because you want to dominate the next person. That is what it is all about. And that means, that is a projection of the fact that the individual is separate from everything else. So is the nation in terms of its politics.
But, Africa is different. Its foundation is different and that has to be recaptured. That has to be the basis then of our development as we go forward. And that is where I am saying about development previously. So, we are stewards of nature. So, our development has to be sustainable and that is where we have to go, not just imitating Europeans. So we have a lot of work to do, and we have a lot to do in educating our young people. We have the youngest population in the world, and their future looks good.
As it is hosting many Pan-African institutions like African Union, Addis Ababa is becoming a hub of Pan-Africanism as well as other African institutions. What is your impression?
That is a wonderful question. I had a great opportunity to visit the Adwa Museum. So I am full of admiration. I know something about Ethiopian history. I know that humanity was birthed here in the Rift Valley and Lucy. So I know that much history as it relates to humanity and Ethiopia is a central role of birthing humanity.
Ethiopia has central role in terms of civilization over time. Again, as a Nile Valley civilization, those were the first civilizations. Ethiopia was never colonized and knowing something of the history in 1896 and I think you are going to celebrate it in March the 2nd.
It is a wonderful thing to know that there was an aspect of Africa that was able to resist colonial domination and throw it off, defeat the Italians, in the Battle of Adwa. That is of extreme importance to us as African people. There is a similar parallel in the Caribbean that is in Haiti. Well, we have different Maroon populations, but in Haiti, Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, they were able to beat the French and end slavery in Haiti and that was in 1804. That was a great jolt for us in the Caribbean and helped to give rise to other revolutions.
Similarly, the Battle of Adwa and the defeat of the Italians gave birth to that understanding of us as African people being able to defeat a European power, and gave us the pride in ourselves as a people. And in some sense, it was the birth of the pan African spirit from the continental Africa. And it was a very important part of the African perspective. And over time, it has given birth, obviously to the organization of African unity. Emperor Haile Selassie I, was a clear participant and supporter, one of the founders of that institution.
We saw that Ethiopia has been central to that. My visit to the museum showed me, I think over time, the rest of Africa and rest of the world will see to what extent, the whole Ethiopian nation came together to fight against the Italians. What was new to me was to see the involvement of the women. They were caring for the men, provisions, bringing provisions, feeding them, nursing them when they were wounded, but also being more dedicated to that warriors in their own right. So, it was a total mobilization and unity of an African population to maintain the spirit and the soul of Africa. So it was very inspiring.
So, Ethiopia has a lot of chips out there in terms of Mother Africa, shall we say, birthing that independence movement and birthing the spirit of Pan-Africanism and birthing the organization of African unity, which is going on now to become the African Union, and of course, which is housed here. So I think Ethiopia then has an obligation to carry that forward and mantle forward. It cannot shrug it off, and I know it is not shrugging it off. So I see this Ethiopia.
And I think Ethiopia is becoming more and more central to the whole concept of Africa as a civilization and Africa as a geopolitical entity in terms of taking its place now in society.
What was the reason that inspired your father to fight for the freedom and equality, rights of black people?
Yeah, I think that my father had a divine inspiration. It was not something simply calculated over time. It seems like, from his boyhood, and growing up he understood the injustices that were being perpetrated against us as a people. In a very early age or in his teens, he traveled not only throughout Jamaica, but in the Caribbean and to Central America and saw the conditions there. Then in 1912, he went to England, traveled throughout Europe, and again saw the conditions there. He spoke to many different European countries and interacted with many university students from Africa as well as the sailors and he got knowledge of what was happening in Africa.
So, all of those inspired his mind. He was also impressed by Booker T. Washington, who had written a book, Up From Slavery and my dad read that and understood that there was a methodology by which we could lift ourselves from slavery and out of colonialism. So that some of his understanding of how to go forward was based on what had been done at Tuskegee Institute, the Booker T. Washington, in terms of training and education of young black men and women.
It is an inspiration. Because he carried it forward for the rest of his life and devoted himself completely to that and whatever setback there was, it continued until his organization had more than six million people back in the 20s. So it is not explainable in a way that I cannot explain. But I think it is the same sort of thing where you would have somebody who is a great artist or a great musician.
It is a gift from God, shall we say. And that was his gift. And I think he did it to his best ability. And I think that has borne significant fruit, because so many people, such as Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela and so many others, similarly in the Caribbean and also Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, etc were inspired by him. So he played a significant role in terms of that part of the revolution.
The 21st century is highly attached to digital technology. It becomes a way of knowing everything happening everywhere. Unless Africa is liberating itself from digital technology dependency, Africa may lose its future. What is your take on this?
Digital technology, digitization, is simply a tool, just like IT is just a tool. All of science is just a tool. It is how you use it. There is a danger of the digitization, the artificial intelligence and robotics and so on being used against humanity but that depends on the ideology behind the technology.
Humans have to control the technology. Unfortunately, what has happened in the West is that technology is now controlling humans as somebody is coming up with a new invention to do something quicker, faster, or whatever, which does not make any sense. What is the purpose of an industrial revolution, technological revolution that is destroying the planet? That is not progress. You have to have a sustainable development. You have to understand the society, the civilization that you create and the human beings have to be placed at the center of the society, not technology at the center. That is the problem.
Technology is placed at the center of Western civilization. So it is like you have to bounce into technology, whether it is 5G, or whatever you want to call it. Whatever it is, the next thing that comes in the next cell phone, you will find 10,000 people lined up overnight to buy a cell phone.
That’s just an attitude of mind that has been placed there by people who control you. They control the technology and you too. So it is all about control, as I mentioned before. You go all the way back to the feudal system. It is all about control. You can control all of these people here. You get them to move in the direction that you want. So it is a matter of mastering the technology. Thus, Africans have to learn to master the whole process of digitization and ICT.
If you want to add any more points for the coming generation, what do you like to say?
Well, the future is in the hands of the younger generation. I think the misfortune is that we are not taking care of the younger generation. A very disturbing fact is that 100 million young African people are not part of the educational system. That’s tragic. Some 60% of the African youth populations are unemployed. We see it in the young people going across the Sahara. They are brutalized in certain countries as they are trying to look for opportunity.
So we have failed our young people but yet, still, we talk about the youth demography. I mean where is the youth demography? We have the youngest population in the world and we should train them and educate them as the world is going to need that.
Europe and other places have aging populations. Africa has a younger population, so once again, we are wasting our resources. Thus, our young people have to be educated in order to really have the opportunity to develop the potential that is here in Africa, to create a life that is comfortable, because that is what it is all about.
You do not need to be a millionaire. Entrepreneurship is not about making millions or trillions. It is about making a good product, customer satisfaction and making a certain amount of profit. But that can be seen in a way in which you are not harming the environment, or you are not simply profiting on the misery of somebody else.
So there is enough wealth for everybody to share. So, we need that civilization paradigm that I talked about which is Africa. It’s humanism and we definitely need to make strong efforts to educate our young people and provide skill based training all along the route. I mean, all of those need various types of skills everything from carpenter up to the digitization.
If I’m not mistaken, there is a center for Dr. Marcus Garvey in Ghana? Do you have a plan to make the same in Ethiopia?
Yes.
When do you plan to make that?
Oh, we’re starting. Inshallah.
That is the entire question I have for you for today. Thank you very much.
You are welcome
BY GIRMACHEW GASHAW
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SATURDAY 2 MARCH 2024
