At one lev­el the com­mem­o­ra­tion of eman­ci­pa­tion is about mem­o­ry. The rec­ol­lec­tion of his­to­ry is sa­cred in every cul­ture. It is the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry of a peo­ple, the ba­sis of their com­mon iden­ti­ty, the lens through which they see the world, the mo­tive force of their de­vel­op­ment. His­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry is in­sti­tu­tion­alised in many facets of a so­ci­ety in­clud­ing for­mal and in­for­mal ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems, cul­tur­al prac­tices, oral and writ­ten lit­er­a­ture and com­mem­o­ra­tive events. The in­va­sion, cor­rup­tion and ma­nip­u­la­tion of that mem­o­ry places a great deal of con­trol over a peo­ple's view of them­selves and of the world in the hands of those who have suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing such an in­tru­sion. One of the grave psy­cho­log­i­cal bur­dens that Africans in every part of the world car­ry has stemmed di­rect­ly from the col­o­niza­tion of our his­to­ry.

At a mass lev­el we have been de­prived of a knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of our his­to­ry. Our vast con­tri­bu­tion to the con­struc­tion of the mod­ern world, from its most an­cient foun­da­tions to the present, has been erased from pop­u­lar knowl­edge. Where mon­u­ments in stone have stood against na­ture and time such as the pyra­mids in Egypt, or the walls of Great Zim­bab­we, their con­struc­tion and the ge­nius of their de­sign are at­trib­uted to oth­ers. The great pre-colo­nial em­pires of West Africa, the once fa­mous cen­tres of learn­ing and trade in that part of the con­ti­nent, the daz­zling East African city states, the cities of stone that ex­ist­ed from En­garu­ka in Kenya to Ma­pun­gub­we in South Africa, the net­works of roads and oth­er phys­i­cal tes­ti­monies to our lev­el of in­de­pen­dent de­vel­op­ment, all fell in­to ru­in dur­ing the maafa. Now they have fall­en vic­tim to the si­lence of his­to­ry.

A veil is thrown even over our mod­ern con­tri­bu­tions - to space ex­plo­ration, to com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy, to the med­ical sci­ences and all cut­ting edge tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment. The col­o­niza­tion of our his­to­ry ex­tends to the oth­er as­pect of our ex­pe­ri­ence. For 400 of the last 500 years our peo­ple en­dured what is gen­er­al­ly ac­knowl­edged as the great­est tragedy in hu­man his­to­ry - the com­bi­na­tion of the Trans-At­lantic Slave Trade and chat­tel slav­ery. This twin evil dec­i­mat­ed Africa's peo­ple, po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions and civ­i­liza­tions, and wreaked hav­oc with the very hu­man­i­ty of Africans forcibly trans­port­ed to the Amer­i­c­as where the en­slaved were stripped of every shred of iden­ti­ty that could be shorn by ter­ror, de­fined in law as prop­er­ty, hu­mil­i­at­ed, bru­tal­ized, mu­ti­lat­ed, mur­dered at whim and lit­er­al­ly worked to death. It al­so pro­duced epic strug­gles against great odds, which ul­ti­mate­ly led to our tri­umph over slav­ery.

Our broth­ers and sis­ters in Haiti struck the first ma­jor blow against the sys­tem of slav­ery with a suc­cess­ful rev­o­lu­tion­ary strug­gle that cul­mi­nat­ed in the de­c­la­ra­tion of In­de­pen­dence on Jan­u­ary 1, 1804. Along the way to their free­dom they de­feat­ed the most pow­er­ful armies of Eu­rope in­clud­ing Napoleon's. The oth­er land­mark on the road to African re­demp­tion came with the hard-won abo­li­tion of slav­ery in the then British Em­pire that took fi­nal ef­fect in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean on Au­gust 1, 1838, the his­tor­i­cal mo­ment that has led to the most wide­spread com­mem­o­ra­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion Day. Eman­ci­pa­tion in the British ter­ri­to­ries added one more di­men­sion to the con­tin­u­ing strug­gle against slav­ery - a moral swipe at the ne­far­i­ous in­sti­tu­tion by one of the main pow­ers which for cen­turies had been in­volved in this de­base­ment of hu­man­i­ty.

Britain was com­pelled to abol­ish slav­ery for many rea­sons.

The Hait­ian rev­o­lu­tion in­voked fear in planters and im­pe­r­i­al gov­ern­ments but it in­spired the en­slaved. Britain was faced with the grow­ing ef­fec­tive­ness of re­volt and the slip­ping eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of plan­ta­tions wracked by re­sis­tance. But they couched their de­ci­sion in moral terms. The uni­ver­sal ac­cep­tance of chat­tel slav­ery by West­ern gov­ern­ments was now bro­ken by Britain's ac­knowl­edge­ment that chat­tel slav­ery and the slave trade were moral­ly wrong. With­in an­oth­er half cen­tu­ry chat­tel slav­ery was abol­ished through­out the Amer­i­c­as.

Yet, as the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee point­ed out in a 1999 doc­u­ment:

The slave trade ....was left out of for­mal ed­u­ca­tion cur­ric­u­la in coun­tries on the con­ti­nent, even in the coun­tries which suf­fered most. A few of these coun­tries are now cor­rect­ing this. The top­ic is al­so ig­nored in schools in Latin Amer­i­ca. It is ad­dressed but with­out depth in the school cur­ric­u­la in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. The sup­pres­sion of mem­o­ry was not lim­it­ed to ed­u­ca­tion­al cur­ric­u­la. Through­out the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean there was a re­lent­less war to sup­press the com­mem­o­ra­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion Day on Au­gust 1st. The first time Au­gust 1 was of­fi­cial­ly rec­og­nized as Eman­ci­pa­tion Day by a gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go was in 1985 - 147 years af­ter the abo­li­tion of slav­ery. Even then the recog­ni­tion was on­ly for­mal and it was grass­roots or­ga­ni­za­tions that kept the day alive on their lim­it­ed ma­te­r­i­al re­sources.

The Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing the com­mem­o­ra­tion a sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al event against tremen­dous odds. (Ex­tract from a brief­ing pre­pared for the African Union in 2005)