AS a lover of pure, ground coffee, I’d rather do without than use the instant, powdered version.
Likewise, given the constantly-evolving and accelerating pace of IT, I won’t even try to keep-up with the advanced and advancing changes in ways that’ll require I put my memory on deep-freeze, just to give instant thought and responses to fast drips of ‘breaking-news’ with emphasis more on reading and sharing than understanding, even remembering.
Take this week’s circulation of an online video and related stories about changes in Digicel’s corporate ownership structure, with the emphasis on size of debts to US creditors and projected possible share ownership percentage changes, in ways that would suggest — even seem and sound like — the Caribbean’s fastest-growing foreign direct investment in the telephone and IT sector in the 21st Century is about to go under.
Nothing said or written says so, but the projected decline in Founding Chair and original sole owner Denis O’Brien’s shares and proportionate increase in that of those who lent Digicel the money behind its steep and fast rise in less than the first quarter of Century 21, rather than be seen (and shown) as part of how corporate entities restructure to stay alive today, is sold to the online money-market audiences as the likely beginning of Digicel’s end.
I look at the billions of US dollars involved and put it alongside the value of the positive transformations that came with the private company’s timely entry into Haiti, Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean’s cell-phone market as a competitive service provider in a field monopolized for centuries.
Indeed, my thoughts have always been in the direction that what’s happening is a reorganization of the finances and figures to ensure Digicel stays alive to continue serving its valuable regional market.
Ditto when I watch ads about the competitor’s continuing expansions in ownership and organizational structures beyond the Eastern Caribbean and into The Americas — and its similarly spectacular entry into the region’s television and music markets.
I always say that hadn’t it been for Digicel’s arrival, the competition would have continued being the sole monopoly, even though I know too that business today also leaves room for two monopolies to share a duopoly of common market interests.
I was therefore not surprised to hear and read well-placed concerns among Caribbean Reparations advocates about the implications of the latest news about Digicel for O’Brian’s stated commitment to contribute to the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) quest for Reparations from Europe for Slavery and Native Genocide.
I was contacted by well-meaning concerned fellow advocates with the same question, including some who had also earlier queried why O’Brien’s Reparations contribution was personal and private and not through Digicel.
I recalled making the point last year that I felt it was safer for O’Brien to finance his contribution from his “still-deep pockets”, than through the corporate company — if only because shareholders might not all support sharing their dividends with governments of nations seeking slavery compensation from the UK.
Today, I guess, that point will be driven home because, like I reminded inquiring minds, that this is O’Brien’s personal project, being executed through the Repair Campaign team that’s already under way with breaking the bottlenecks and laying the head corner stones for what will be a long-lasting project to span seas, skies and generations, instead of one to win popularity.
The O’Brien Repair Campaign’s team has already held some 280 meetings with interested entities in all 14 CARICOM member states in less than a year and is also in contractual engagement with the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) of The University of the West Indies (The UWI), as well as with CARICOM governments and the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC).
The Repair Campaign doesn’t aim to put reparations pounds or dollars into individual pockets, but instead to establish permanent structures on both sides of The Atlantic to realize O’Brien’s stated dream of personally atoning for his native Ireland’s role in Slavery in the Caribbean and contributing to a better understanding of the reparations message through media messaging, on both sides of the channel.
In this regard, O’Brien’s example followed that of Britain’s Margaret Freeman (who contributed US $500,000 to a special related UWI fund, the recently-established Heirs of Slavery in UK and the launch of the Trevelyan Family Fund of US $100,000 (seed-money donated by former BBC presenter Laura Trevelyan in Grenada in February 2023) are all parts of a positive move by families of descendants of slave owners who benefitted (and still do) from their ancestors’ Chattel Slave-driven inheritances from both the Slave Trade and the reparations got by way of compensation by the British government after abolition, to the value of 20 million pounds (sterling), that amounted back then to over 40% of Britain’s GDP.
The efforts and actions by O’Brien’s Repair Campaign and those representatives of the growing number of UK families building new bridges across the Atlantic provide yet another change to reverse the so-called Middle Passage.
There are questions on minds on both sides of the channel about how best to advance the processes to the mutual benefit of all on both sides, so it’s important for all to better understand each other’s motives and objectives, visions and mission statements.
In this regard, I think CARICOM, the CRC and National Reparations Committees (NRCs), plus the many non-government and Civil Society entities met in the long whirlwind introductory visits by the Repair teams, all need to start through organized national and regional parleys, action conferences and national workshops – all also with continuing CARICOM and national governments’ support.
The Saint Lucia NRC has been engaged with the Repair Team from its first arrival on the island and is also engaged with Heirs of Slavery in discussions on how best to provide the ways and means of ensuring bridge building and other infrastructural mechanisms are in place.
The objective should be to allow for not only a reverse of the Middle Passage, but also, eventually, turning the Great Triangle of Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery on its head, through the trans-continental bridges also already being constructed through Reparations between Africa, The Americas, The Caribbean, Europe and India.
This growing movement for reconciliation and compensation through apologies and atonements, including the commendable efforts of the increasing numbers of UK families and their Caribbean branches willing to make their own repair, whether or not by other direct and personal means, must be more encouraged than discouraged or treated with unhealthy suspicion.
It is in that regard that the Saint Lucia NRC also plans to engage with the Repair Campaign and others during the 2023 Emancipation Month activities organized for August by the island’s National Cultural Foundation (NCF), to provide the necessary hybrid platform(s) for related questions and answers from all interested parties and persons everywhere, who want to ask, answer and listen.
And BTW: commonsense always more valuable than dollars and cents, nothing I’ve seen and heard, read or shared suggests to me that Digicel is about to sink.
But then, commonsense is never common…