The Tribune

By Rev Canon S Sebastian Campbell

OUR nation rejoices. Yesterday was our 41st birthday as a nation. Just look where God has brought us: from a sleeping fishing village to a proud nation. From being colonial and enslaved, to a free and sovereign people.

Every true Bahamian must be proud and thankful to our great God. This march started on August 1, 1834, with the emancipation of slavery. En route we celebrated many milestones of achievement such as Burma Road in the 1940s, the formation of political parties starting in 1953, and Black Majority Rule on January, 10. 1967. Independence is the singular greatest achievement of any country. Slavery and colonialism are the darkest moments any people have to endure.

On July 4, a number of Bahamians were honoured and dubbed “nation builders” in ceremonies at Mount Nebo Baptist Church on Marshall Road.

These honourees from across our landscape are worthy role models who can only serve to inspire us to higher heights in our quest of nation building. I congratulate all the organisers and hail in this most worthy effort.

National honours are long overdue as a replacement to colonial honours; we had hoped they would have been in place by now, especially since draft legislation is well advanced for it to happen.

I urge our government to have the fortitude in bringing our local honours in place.

It is great, though, that no colonial awards have been presented in a long time. I hope they have been abolished forever. Our cultural advancement demands we replace colonial honours and thus catch up with progressive countries in our region.

Yes, we have come a long way with the attainment of a National Heroes Day and Majority Rule Day holidays. However, the package must be completed with national honours. We must free ourselves of this colonial mindset. In fact, the attainment of independence is incomplete without it thanks to champions like the late Dr Jackson Burnside, Paul Adderley and A O Hanna for downright refusing to accept such an enslaving, outdated award. We hail them as real national heroes of the first order.

The government is urged to appoint a cultural commission with powers to cause us as a society to advance politically and culturally. I had only hoped that we would have seen the marrying of the two ideas, Heroes Day with a national system of honours.

With all this should come “national dress.” The Heroes Committee wishes we advance ideas now to establish our national dress. Please forward your ideas to us.

Let us celebrate our strengths and pray we learn from all mistakes. The day needs to come when we stop rehashing ideas again and again. I only wished there was a non-political setup to oversee our celebration from start to finish and hopefully advance a more dynamic and less a boring celebration. We are too last minute people, shackled to keep things one way all the time. There are no new ideas for independence celebrations. In Antigua, heroes are declared and celebrated within the context of the independence celebrations.

Great idea! When will we stop dragging our feet and truly advance as leaders in our region?

We praise God for those liberating events and achievements because of independence, such as National Insurance, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, free high school education available to all, blacks on Government Hill as Governors General, Bahamians in leadership such as Permanent Secretaries, Commissioners of Police, Bishops of the Anglican Church, local TV stations, Out Island becoming Family Islands etc. etc. We thank God.

There is still much work to be done, such as liberating our minds from being and thinking colonial. We must beat back crime and the scourge of drugs, broken homes and family life, and find full and fulfilling employment for all.

Thank God for our heroes led by the late Sir Lynden Oscar Pindling, Father of the Nation, for having the vision and tenacity to bring us into independence. Now men and women must continually rise to give leadership, especially among our children and youth. Our work is never done!

“Pressing onward,

March together to a common

Loftier goal...”