INDEPENDENCE AFTER 52 YEARS WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Down in Exuma, the southern island in The Bahamas, the Bahamian flag fluttered in the breeze at Regatta Park as it rose just before midnight on 10 July 2025. This was the date 52 years ago that Lynden Pindling and his colleagues chose to lead the new nation the Commonwealth of The Bahamas into independence. The ceremony in Georgetown, Exuma was replicated around the country, even though the rain threatened to spoil it in Nassau.
It is an emotional moment for most Bahamian citizens. On that morning and during the day, flags were flying throughout the country. Bahamian music was being played exclusively on the radio stations. People gathered in their homes dressed in national colours and everyone spoke Bahamian.
It was like time out from the divisions of other parochial matters.
On 11 July though, we get back to realty pretty quickly. The fact is that our neighbours to the north are acting in ways that we find quite odd and contrary. We are a majority black nation and as we watch things unfold, we are not quite sure that we as black people or even white Bahamians are welcomed into a land called America that we helped to build. Today many of our citizens and their descendants of our citizens have lent their intellectual talent to the building up of that country. But it appears they have now descended into the madness of anti-immigrant fervour that catches both legal and illegal.
To show the tenor of the times: white farmers who helped to maintain the racist state of apartheid South Africa are being welcomed into the US as victims while Haitians whose society has descended into chaos, largely because of American made weapons, and are legitimate refugees, are being sent back home.
Independence is an emotional step. It is also a legal step. We have the right legally to decide what we want but the practical reality is that most of our choices are dictated by the real politic. We depend on the neighbour next door for our food, for our medicine, for our psychological well-being. So we are in a strange positon practically speaking. What does keep us alive though is that emotional legacy bequeathed to us by our founders that we are a free an independent people and we will use what we have to maintain that freedom.
Number of hits for the week ending Saturday 12 July 2025 up to midnight: 1,378,286;
Number of hits for the month of July up to Saturday 12 Julye 2025 up to midnight: 2,133,841;
Number of hits for the year 2o25 up to Saturday 12 July 2025 up to midnight: 10,767,267;