BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Cel­e­bra­tions lead­ing up to the Au­gust 1, Eman­ci­pa­tion Day hol­i­day would not be af­fect­ed by the po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing by par­ties, as they get ready to head to the polls on Au­gust 20.

This was the as­sur­ance of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee (ESC) chair­man sis­ter Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view Uzoma-Wada­da told Guardian Me­dia, “The elec­tion has not re­al­ly im­pact­ed our plans be­cause from ear­li­er on in the year we had al­ready made some de­ci­sions with re­gards to how we would roll out the fes­ti­val this year based on the re­stric­tions that came as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic.”

She said at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s launch of Eman­ci­pa­tion 2020, which was held vir­tu­al­ly on May 25, where the pub­lic was in­formed, the fes­ti­val this year would be a vir­tu­al one.

Uzoma-Wada­da re­vealed when the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced there would be ease of re­stric­tions over a phase pe­ri­od, for a mo­ment, the or­gan­i­sa­tion did con­sid­er which of its events it could prob­a­bly host phys­i­cal­ly but sub­se­quent­ly scrapped the idea opt­ing to stay vir­tu­al as it might be best at this time.

Apart from the launch some of the events al­ready passed to mark the 35th an­nu­al ob­ser­vance were the Uru­ba Drum Vil­lage Fes­ti­val, which was held on June 20, and on Ju­ly 5, the launch of the Kwame Ture (Stok­ley Carmichael) lec­ture se­ries, which will con­tin­ue un­til Ju­ly 23. On Ju­ly 25, a vir­tu­al trade ex­hi­bi­tion would be held to as­sist en­tre­pre­neurs af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic fol­lowed by a vir­tu­al youth con­cert in trib­ute lo­cal reg­gae artiste Tau­re­an “Zion Star” Tay­lor, who was killed in a ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dent one year ago af­ter his per­for­mance at the youth con­cert for­mer­ly held at the Lidj Ya­su Omowale Vil­lage at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Uzoma-Wada­da said on Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, the or­gan­i­sa­tion was look­ing for­ward to the un­veil­ing of the mon­u­ment to com­mem­o­rate the procla­ma­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion.

The one-on­ly-phys­i­cal event dur­ing this year’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Day would take place at the Trea­sury build­ing in Port-of-Spain where the procla­ma­tion was read in 1838, sig­nal­ing the abo­li­tion of slav­ery on the twin-is­land. Uzoma-Wada­da said there would be the un­veil­ing of a mon­u­ment to com­mem­o­rate the his­toric mile­stone.

That day would al­so see a vir­tu­al drum call, Uzoma-Wada­da said, as drum­mers would be asked to play their drums live on­line in their var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties. Footage of pre­vi­ous Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions would al­so be avail­able on­line for the pub­lic’s view­ing. Al­so sched­uled vir­tu­al­ly, are ca­lyp­so con­certs, high­light­ing ca­lyp­sos from the 1970 era, a flam­beau event, and to con­clude the cel­e­bra­tion, a pan jazz con­cert fea­tur­ing panist and vo­cal­ists would take place on Au­gust 2.

Uzoma-Wada­da not­ed the theme of this year’s cel­e­bra­tion was 1970 Re­mem­bered: Re­con­nec­tion and Rec com­mit­ment. She said the theme was cho­sen in ob­ser­vance of the 50th an­niver­sary of the Black Pow­er Move­ment in T&T—an era that brought some progress for African peo­ple in T&T.

Uzoma-Wada­da said it was im­per­a­tive that peo­ple un­der­stood of the 400 years of en­slave­ment we were on­ly in­to the 182nd year of eman­ci­pa­tion.

“For 400 years African peo­ple were sys­tem­i­cal­ly taught to be and ac­cept de­hu­man­i­sa­tion. I want to re­mind peo­ple of that. We have to be a re­mark­able and spe­cial breed of hu­man­i­ty who have risen out of the depths of en­slave­ment to achieve what some of us have been able to achieve even in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in the ar­eas of mu­sic, sports, in­ven­tions, etc. And we need to fo­cus on that. Even to­day all we hear is that ‘African peo­ple lazy,’ and I think it is time we talk about what we have achieved in spite of what we have suf­fered for cen­turies,” Uzoma-Wada­da said.