Education is important for the improvement of the African community says Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.
“Holidays for reflection are important. Busts and statues are important because they reach out to us and draw us to remember because we can so easily forget. Especially if we have not been properly educated on the facts of our circumstance we can so easily forget. And if we forget, then we can also lose our way in a very competitive society, a very competitive world. We can also find ourselves victims of self-loathing, we can find ourselves victims of self-flagellation. We can also find ourselves accepting instances or periods of low self-esteem. All of these are to be rejected out of hand because we are equal to any, better than none, but equal to any and inferior to none,” he said.
The Prime Minister was speaking yesterday at the annual Emancipation Kambule Day procession on the Brian Lara Promenade, Port-of-Spain.
Earlier this week, there was the launch of a new history textbook titled Foundation Readings on the History of T&T held at the Government Campus Plaza in Port-of-Spain.
The book, consisting of 25 chapters written by various historians, was commissioned by Rowley and was presented at the event.
“Only a couple days ago, I had the pleasure of receiving into our library of T&T a text prepared, a reviewed text written and reviewed by those who know, is now in print, the foundation of the history of the People of T&T. It will be available to our children in primary schools, in our secondary schools, in our universities, and our bookshops and I ask you to educate yourself, emancipate yourself from that mental slavery. Education is the key, knowledge is the power,” Rowley said yesterday.
He added that Emancipation has been always been an evolution. “We do it step- by- step, legally we have been free since 1834 to encourage and accept that freedom, a number of other laws had to be passed and even today there are still laws that have to be passed to allow that emancipation to be completed. Emancipation is not just about freedom not to go to work on the plantation. It is about what you do, generation after generation. It is for us to take our own responsibility to reflect and determine what we will contribute to this great journey of emancipation.”
Speaking in front of the Treasury Building, in Port-of-Spain, he promised to place a plaque there where the proclamation of Emancipation was read in the 1800s.
He said, “You say we meet here every year in this occasion, you say you want a plaque on this building, the plaque is to say that this is the place where the proclamation was read and that makes this place special and important. I say we do that. I say that they have consulted enough. I say the minister knows that next year when we meet in this place, one of the acts that we will do is to commemorate and look at the plaque on this building that marks the spot where our proclamation was read.”
The Prime Minister told the crowd that self-recognition of their identity is important.
“We need to know who we are for fear that we may disconnect ourselves from our legacy, one of pain and suffering but one of great promise. One that ended with a freedom to be had and emancipation to be made. We are a product of that past and it will always be so. The act of enslavement lasted approximately 400 years, in a few years time, it will be 200 years since we have been striving for that emancipation that was supposed to have come at the break of those inhumanities. What that says is that emancipation of that tremendously important and far-reaching act of enslavement would be a long process,” he said.
Kafra Kambon, chairman of the Emancipation Committee, called for the legalisation of marijuana and the release of young people who have been imprisoned for possession of marijuana.
