Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Race Re­la­tions ex­pert Ayinde Kafile says the African male is still shack­led by the rem­nants of slav­ery be­cause of his in­abil­i­ty to build strong fam­i­ly struc­tures. Speak­ing on be­half of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee dur­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions at Oropouche East on Thurs­day, Kafile called on In­di­an youths to re­frain from em­u­lat­ing African youths. He said if such em­u­la­tion oc­curs, then In­di­an youths will lose their iden­ti­ty. Kafile lament­ed that be­cause of the lega­cy of slav­ery, African youths have not em­braced fam­i­ly roles.

"This is a re­sult of colo­nial­ism and slav­ery where the male African male was used as a stud. To date we are ask­ing what went wrong with the African male, but what has hap­pened is that the African male has not learnt how to adopt fa­ther­hood roles and build fam­i­ly struc­tures like the In­di­an." Kafile ex­plained that the African man seems to be work­ing against him­self. He called on African males to be mind­ful of the ef­fects of men­tal slav­ery and to try to build a strong fam­i­ly sys­tem like that which ex­ists among In­di­an com­mu­ni­ties. He ex­plained that both Africans and In­di­ans must get rid of ha­tred, mal­ice and spite and must em­brace each oth­er.

"The In­di­an and the African are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the same prob­lems with Gov­ern­ment. They are the same," Kafile said. He added that the "African mind is a sim­ple mind and Africans were lag­ging be­hind eco­nom­i­cal­ly be­cause ini­tial­ly they lived in a land of plen­ty where they did not have to fight for any­thing." Kafile said both Africans and In­di­ans should be proud of their eth­nic­i­ty and must work to­geth­er to es­cape the chal­lenges of men­tal slav­ery.