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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Message from the Emancipation Support Committee: Restore African self-hood

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933 days ago
20220731

Eman­ci­pa­tion marked the end of an era when hu­man be­ings could be legal­ly traf­ficked and en­slaved, a pe­ri­od when per­sons could be whipped and worked till death for the ben­e­fit of oth­ers, sold, ex­changed, and in­her­it­ed like “chat­tel,” an­i­mals or fam­i­ly sil­ver and oth­er heir­looms.

Those per­sons, women and men, many of whose names can­not be re­called, who strug­gled to break that world or­der and to bring a new world in­to be­ing where peo­ple by law are free and equal, are re­mem­bered and cel­e­brat­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od of eman­ci­pa­tion each year and sym­bol­ised most by the Neg Ma­won sculp­ture in Port -au-Prince, Haiti.

This year the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ES­CTT) marks its thir­ti­eth an­niver­sary with the theme—30 years of Trans­for­ma­tion and Re­silience.

We could not ar­rive at this mo­ment with­out the work of ear­ly eman­ci­pa­tors such as M’zum­bo Lazar and Edgar Marisse Smith who or­gan­ised the Eman­ci­pa­tion 50th An­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions and called for the day to be recog­nised as a pub­lic hol­i­day in 1888.

The re­sponse of the pow­ers that be, was to de­clare Au­gust 1, Dis­cov­ery Day in 1901, which paved the way for the false nar­ra­tive of Christo­pher Colum­bus to shape the na­tion­al psy­che.

This di­min­ished the mark­ing of eman­ci­pa­tion but did not elim­i­nate the com­mem­o­ra­tion of eman­ci­pa­tion as small groups of African peo­ple con­tin­ued to in­for­mal­ly cel­e­brate Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, with com­mu­ni­ty events ev­i­dent up un­til the 1960s.

It took NJAC and Daa­ga, from the 1960’s to the ’70s through the or­gan­i­sa­tion of cul­tur­al ral­lies mark­ing eman­ci­pa­tion, to take up the call once again for Eman­ci­pa­tion Day to be­come a na­tion­al hol­i­day.

This call was am­pli­fied by cul­tur­al ac­tivists such as John Cu­pid who or­gan­ised street pro­ces­sion in San Fer­nan­do, Lancelot Layne who or­gan­ised flam­beau pro­ces­sions through Bel­mont and Laven­tille and Lidj Ya­su Omowale who or­gan­ised the full three-day cel­e­bra­tions.

In 1984 the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter George Cham­bers de­clared Au­gust 1st, Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, and a Hol­i­day, right­ly re­plac­ing Dis­cov­ery Day.

Be­tween 1984 and 1992 the Tra­di­tion­al African Na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TANA) or­gan­ised eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions at Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary school and in 1992 the ES­CTT was for­mal­ly es­tab­lished with Khafra Kam­bon and Lidj Ya­su Omowale be­ing its first Co- Chairs.

In 1995, PM ANR Robin­son was the first Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go to vis­it the Eman­ci­pa­tion Vil­lage and lat­er Prime Min­is­ters have con­tin­ued the tra­di­tion. The cel­e­bra­tions were moved to the Queens Park Sa­van­nah in 1996 hav­ing out­grown the Mu­cu­rapo Hall, herald­ing a glo­ri­ous pe­ri­od which saw vis­its from African Heads of States: Prime Min­is­ter Jer­ry Rawl­ins of Ghana, Pres­i­dent Obasan­jo of Nige­ria, Pres­i­dent Good Luck Johnathon of Nige­ria and Pres­i­dents Ku­fuor of Ghana and Mu­sev­eni of Ugan­da.

But it was not on­ly vis­it­ing Heads of State, but Schol­ars and out­stand­ing po­lit­i­cal ac­tivists al­so graced the shores of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the com­mem­o­ra­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion.

They came from North Amer­i­ca, Dr Kath­leen Cleaver, Dr Leonard Jef­feries, Prof James Small, Dr Lisa Aubrey, Mel Foote; from East Africa, Pro­fes­sor Ali Mazrui, Her Ex­cel­len­cy Gertrude Ibeng­we Mon­gel­la First Pres­i­dent of the African Par­lia­ment of the African Union; from West Africa Prof Wole Soyin­ka; from South Africa Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and head of the ANC Women’s League Win­nie Man­dela, and from the Caribbean the Ho­n­ourable Ralph Gon­salves and Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley. Near­er home came Sis­ter Andaiye of Guyana, Dr An­tho­ny Mar­tin of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Dr Julius Gar­vey of Ja­maica.

Glob­al per­son­al­i­ties such as Dr Ju­dith Aidoo-Saltus fi­nan­cial ti­tan of Ghana and Dr Mo­hammed Ibn Cham­bas UN Un­der Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Head of the Unit­ed Na­tions Of­fice for East Africa and Sa­hel (UN­OWAS) left their mark on the eman­ci­pa­tion ac­tiv­i­ties over the years.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od, spe­cial re­la­tion­ships were built be­tween the Caribbean and Africa.

The then Chair, Khafra Kam­bon of the ES­CTT as­sist­ed in the con­struc­tion of the mech­a­nism that would be­come the African Union Com­mis­sion (AUC) Eco­nom­ic So­cial and Cul­tur­al Com­mit­tee and sat on its plan­ning body and as one of on­ly two rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the African Di­as­po­ra for Civ­il So­ci­ety.

The African Union (AU) was of­ten rep­re­sent­ed at spe­cial meet­ings and work­shops in Trinidad and To­ba­go led by Dr Jin­mi Adis­sa, Head of the Cit­i­zens and Di­as­po­ra (CI­DO) Di­rec­torate which was re­spon­si­ble for im­ple­ment­ing the African Union’s vi­sion of a peo­ple-ori­ent­ed and dri­ven or­gan­sa­tion based on a part­ner­ship be­tween gov­ern­ments, civ­il so­ci­ety and di­as­po­ra. Lat­er the ES­CTT had the plea­sure of host­ing His Ex­cel­len­cy Kwe­si Quartey, African Union Com­mis­sion (AUC) Deputy Chair­per­son.

These re­la­tion­ships re­sult­ed in Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning ac­cept­ing an in­vi­ta­tion and be­com­ing the first Caribbean leader to ad­dress the African Union Sum­mit (2007) and the sub­se­quent con­ven­ing of the first African Union Com­mis­sion—CARI­COM Sum­mit (2021) which in­sti­tu­tion­alised CARI­COM-African Union col­lab­o­ra­tion; ex­plored greater eco­nom­ic trade and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween Africa and the Caribbean; and es­tab­lished sol­i­dar­i­ty in ac­tions to ad­dress glob­al chal­lenges in­clud­ing cli­mate change and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The ES­CTT con­tin­ues its mis­sion stat­ed as the restora­tion of African self-hood, em­brac­ing a con­tem­po­rary vi­sion of eman­ci­pa­tion for de­vel­op­ment. The project of eman­ci­pa­tion fol­lowed by in­de­pen­dence is far from over.

As a na­tion we con­tin­ue to be stran­gled by the neo colo­nial struc­tures of false hi­er­ar­chies based on colour, tex­ture of hair, res­i­den­tial ad­dress­es, class, wealth and eth­nic­i­ty.

Pub­lic spaces con­tin­ue to re­flect the pow­er and val­ues of those who ex­ploit­ed and op­pressed.

We seem as a so­ci­ety to be trapped in the bi­na­ry pow­er strug­gle for a space so nar­row that we can­not ad­dress the deep and re­al so­ci­etal is­sues that are tear­ing at the fab­ric of the so­ci­ety, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of which we see to­day as “gun vi­o­lence and gen­der-based vi­o­lence” fas­tened to grow­ing so­ci­etal in­equal­i­ties.

This year through the Kwame Ture Memo­r­i­al Lec­ture Se­ries we em­barked on a jour­ney to ex­plore some of those deep­er is­sues ask­ing the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion, what else need­ed to be done to bring eman­ci­pa­tion and in­de­pen­dence clos­er to a re­al­i­ty which our peo­ple can ex­pe­ri­ence.

What needs to be done to fur­ther de­colonise our en­vi­ron­ment—in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, pub­lic spaces, or the da­ta that is used to de­fine and analyse us.

We are proud that we have been able to con­tribute to the de­coloni­sa­tion of the space that is Trinidad and To­ba­go through the erec­tion of two mon­u­ments—one ARISE— to the re­silient spir­it of our peo­ple and the oth­er—the Yoru­ba Vil­lage Mon­u­ment which speaks to the con­tri­bu­tion of African peo­ple to the cul­tur­al, so­cial and eco­nom­ic land­scape of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The search for an­swers and for or­di­nary cit­i­zens to join us in this on­go­ing move­ment to achieve eman­ci­pa­tion and in­de­pen­dence is nec­es­sary.

We re­main op­ti­mistic that the ES­CTT in this our 30th year can meet the chal­lenges of the na­tion­al, re­gion­al, and glob­al en­vi­ron­ments made vis­i­ble by the glob­al pan­dem­ic and the rav­ages of cli­mate change which we are des­tined to ex­pe­ri­ence as a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states.


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