IN preparation for their visit to Jamaica from March 22-24, 2022, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge specifically requested an audience with the Jamaica bobsleigh team.

Accession would bring with it, I was clear, some criticism.

Given the Jamaica Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation’s governance framework, directors, executives, and athletes had to be consulted before a final decision to participate could be rendered.

There was unanimity is accepting the invitation for various reasons including, at the end of the day, the simple matter of it being good manners to accept.

The royal couple were impressive in all regards and, personal misgivings aside, it was an honor for us to have had the opportunity to interreact with them. The visit and interaction provided an opportunity for me to reflect on the colonial relationship and the colonial legacy.

I operate at a global level of policy, politics, and economics from which I participate in sport administration, business, and education. My world view influences said participation in these fields. The interaction with the royals was therefore much more than a sport-related event. There was history, context and meaning.

The British media were relentless in their interrogation of my thoughts on Jamaica becoming a republic, reparations etc. I was measured and thoughtful, or perhaps more accurately, evasive.

I did not give them the headline some hoped for, which would be of the form ‘Chris Stokes said Jamaica should dump The Queen’ or something of that nature. Then again, they had plenty of headlines to carry. Dr Rosalea Hamilton articulated well and quite publicly what many Jamaicans are in fact asking for, headlined by an apology for slavery, and reparations.

Reminiscent of Walter Rodney’s 1972 classic, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Sir Hillary Beckles presents an at once chilling and compelling case for reparations in How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean, launched a month before the royal visit.

In speaking to the impact of the Garvey movement and funding of capital development projects in the Caribbean through some form of reparative payments as contemplated by Sir Arthur Lewis, in the inchoate stages of work that would eventually win him the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (jointly) in 1979, Sir Hillary writes “Recognizing the future intention of the British to extract rather than inject capital, and not to be supportive of significant Caribbean economic development activity, Lewis was not optimistic.”

Today, I am not optimistic either. In fact I go as far as to say that we will get neither apology nor reparations from the British any time soon, if ever. It is encouraging though to see some movement among African peoples towards a recognition and reckoning with their central and pivotal role in the Triangle Trade. For example, Benin has been wrestling with their role in the slave trade and the fact that many of their citizens’, political and business leaders’ generational wealth was accumulated from the capture and sale of other Africans. Patrice Talon, president of Benin, is a descendant of slave traders. It’s a complex world and we must live today in the world as we find it. What are some aspects of that world? I will treat here with two, social and sport.

First, in terms of domestic social issues, I do not know anyone personally and specifically who was captured and sold into the trans-Atlantic slave trade. I do not know any woman who was raped by her slave master, or man who was killed by a slave master.

I do know of, today, in 2022 in Jamaica, young women who have been kidnapped and sold into slavery; I do know personally survivors of home invasions and rape; I do know of men murdered by other men in my community, leaving wife and children destitute. Without discounting the atrocities of the former scenarios, nor negating the link between the former and latter scenarios, I concern myself with the latter reality if for no other reason than my stoic philosophy so well-articulated by Epictetus, “Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” As a country we need to double down on the choices that are our own. No one else is coming to save us.

No one is going to apologise or give us money — no matter how righteous our claims or how vile their atrocities. The good, right and disciplined governing of ourselves as individuals and as a country is a choice we must make daily. That is the way forward.

Then there is my great passion, sport. Around half a century after the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, when the scars on many backs were still plain to see, John Astley Cooper suggested the idea of a “contest and festival every four years as a means of increasing goodwill and good understanding of the British empire”. That is, sport as soft power, another means of maintaining influence and dominance outside of brute force. This was ahead of the ideas and efforts of Barron Pierre de Coubertin to reignite the ancient Olympic Games.

Darwin expounded the idea of survival of the fittest. What we have seen on closer examination is not so much survival of the fittest but survival of the most adaptable. The Christian church for example survived and grew because it adapted.

Following the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD, paganism was outlawed but related festivals were retained and rebranded Christian — Christmas and Easter being two of the more common examples. The Commonwealth Games has too gone through various iterations to adapt and survive. The British Empire Games, as they were first called, were held in 1930, 1934 and 1950.

The British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in 1954, 1958, 1962 and 1966; the British Commonwealth Games in 1970 and 1974, and the Commonwealth Games from 1978 on. There has therefore been a gradual sanitisation of the name to reflect the independent ‘personness’ of participating countries and to establish distance from the history of hegemony of the British.

While most Games are generally centred around the climate, example winter/summer, or region such as Asian, Pan American, African, the Commonwealth Games has the distinction of being unified by the fact that all, until recently with the admission of Rwanda and Mozambique, were formerly ruled by the British.

The United States of American does not participate in the Commonwealth Games and is not part of the Commonwealth because, fundamentally, they extracted themselves from British control by force of arms and not by negotiation — and therefore from very early considered themselves quite separate from Britain.

What then is this love affair with, if I am to listen to many comments, these wicked people who enslaved us, and abused us and now won’t apologise or pay us reparations? Why is The Queen still our head of State, or better yet why was she ever our head of State? Let us take the baby out of the bathwater, nurture the baby and toss the bathwater.

The bathwater is that we must in a real sense “emancipate ourselves from mental slavery”; govern ourselves, have our own final court of appeal, generate our own income, balance our own budgets, eliminate our own corruption and violence, educate our own children.

The wickedness cannot be undone. It is for us to create a new tomorrow. We must free our minds of dependence and our souls of the pain of the suffering inflicted on our blackness. We must throw that out. It only burdens us.

The British must recognise, for their part, that there is no more Great House but they are welcome to join us in the fields to cultivate a better tomorrow. In stating the following at the end of his Caribbean tour, I believe Prince William is clear on this: “What matters to us is the potential the Commonwealth family has to create a better future for the people who form it, and our commitment to serve and support as best we can.”

The baby is the Commonwealth Games itself. Jamaica hosted the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1966. Michael Fennell served as chairman of the Commonwealth Games Federation from 1994-2003 and president up to 2011.

Donald Quarry won the sprint double in 1970 and 1974, and the 100m in 1978. A remarkable achievement. Our first participation in the Commonwealth Games was in 1934; our first in the Olympic Games in 1948.

In short, the Commonwealth Games as a sporting event is baked into the cornerstone of Jamaican excellence on the field of play, in sport administration, and in Games hosting. As our athletes prepare for the XXII Commonwealth Games in Birmingham this summer let us keep in mind the importance of the event, not in terms of the pain of yesterday but rather of a hope for tomorrow.

Editor’s note: Dr Nelson “Chris” Stokes is a businessman and president of the Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation.