Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase

“For some time pre­vi­ous to this great day it had been plain­ly ex­pressed by our slaves here that they had not the slight­est in­ten­tion of work­ing for their mas­ters af­ter the 31st of Ju­ly.

“It was de­cid­ed by them that the King had freed them right out and that the ap­pren­tice­ship was a job got up be­tween their mas­ters and the Gov­er­nor. Their mas­ters were ‘dam tief’ the Gov­er­nor an ‘Old Rogue’ and the King not such a Fool as to buy them half free when he was rich enough to pay for them al­to­geth­er.”

— The Gazette, Port-of-Spain, Au­gust 5, 1834, in His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Pub­li­ca­tion No 256.

To­mor­row, the streets of Port-of-Spain will be filled with African drum­ming, danc­ing and oth­er cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions as T&T cel­e­brates African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day. But these streets car­ry an­oth­er Eman­ci­pa­tion sto­ry.

On Au­gust 1, 1834, a crowd gath­ered in Port-of-Spain and they did not come to cel­e­brate. They came ex­pect­ing free­dom.

The Slav­ery Abo­li­tion Act had come in­to ef­fect, but free­dom was not what most en­slaved Africans re­ceived. With the ex­cep­tion of chil­dren un­der six, they were placed un­der an ap­pren­tice­ship sys­tem and re­quired to con­tin­ue work­ing, with­out wages, for their for­mer en­slavers. The sys­tem was ex­pect­ed to last for up to six years.

Pro­fes­sor Brid­get Br­ere­ton ex­plains that ap­pren­tice­ship had “much more in com­mon with slav­ery than with free­dom.”

So, when hun­dreds of new ap­pren­tices gath­ered in the area of Wood­ford Square on Au­gust 1, they were in an an­gry mood. “Point de six ans!” (“Not six more years!”) they shout­ed, com­plain­ing loud­ly that they were not giv­en “full free.” The mili­tia was called out and more than 50 of the al­leged “ring­lead­ers” were sen­tenced to flog­ging and, in some cas­es, im­pris­on­ment.

The for­mer­ly en­slaved were not fooled by the change in ter­mi­nol­o­gy. Their anger and sense of be­tray­al were un­mis­tak­able. Six more years was not some­thing the ma­jor­i­ty of them were will­ing to com­pro­mise on. They had al­ready been robbed of their free­dom, labour, fam­i­lies, cul­ture and con­trol over their own lives.

Yet, on the very day they were told that slav­ery had end­ed, they were ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the same es­tates and con­tin­ue work­ing with­out wages, for the same peo­ple who had en­slaved them.

This meant six more years of or­ders, pun­ish­ment and lack of free­dom. Six more years of watch­ing their chil­dren grow while some­one else con­tin­ued to con­trol their lives. Some of them would not even live long enough to ex­pe­ri­ence the free­dom they had been promised. No won­der they were an­gry.

They were not on­ly re­ject­ing ap­pren­tice­ship; they were de­mand­ing the right to de­cide what hap­pened to their own lives. The colo­nial au­thor­i­ties could change the name, but they knew ex­act­ly what ap­pren­tice­ship was—an­oth­er way of forc­ing them to work on the plan­ta­tions. They had wait­ed long enough and were not pre­pared to ac­cept an­oth­er ver­sion of slav­ery. They did not want to be half-free and they did not want free­dom six years lat­er. They want­ed what they had been promised: “full free,” right then and there.

Our cel­e­bra­tions should re­mind us that en­slaved Africans did not sur­ren­der every­thing that slav­ery tried to take from them. They held on to their cul­tur­al tra­di­tions even when African prac­tices were banned or sup­pressed. They pro­tect­ed them, adapt­ed them and passed them on, keep­ing their iden­ti­ty alive.

About 192 years ago, Africans oc­cu­pied the streets of Port-of-Spain to de­mand their free­dom. To­mor­row, those streets will once again be filled with Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans proud­ly claim­ing the cul­ture and iden­ti­ty their an­ces­tors fought to pre­serve.

African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day must pre­serve African cul­ture while con­fronting the con­di­tions af­fect­ing peo­ple of African de­scent to­day.

The cul­ture that sur­vived en­slave­ment must be taught, sup­port­ed and val­ued as part of our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty. TTPS sta­tis­tics show the ur­gency: Afro-Trinida­di­ans ac­count­ed for 34.2 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion in the last cen­sus, yet they made up 65 per cent of mur­der vic­tims in 2023. That year, 136 Afro-Trinida­di­ans aged 30 and un­der were mur­dered. The vi­o­lence af­fect­ing some pre­dom­i­nant­ly African com­mu­ni­ties can­not be ig­nored, min­imised or ex­cused. It is de­stroy­ing lives, and those re­spon­si­ble must be held ac­count­able.

Yet ar­rests and pun­ish­ment alone will not re­build what vi­o­lence has dam­aged. In 2023, Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee ex­ec­u­tive chair Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da called on T&T to in­vest in “com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, in cul­ture, in ed­u­ca­tion.”

Eman­ci­pa­tion must there­fore cre­ate space for an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion about per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, stronger fam­i­lies, re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship, ed­u­ca­tion and em­ploy­ment. We can­not cel­e­brate African re­silience while re­fus­ing to con­front what is de­stroy­ing lives to­day.

As Sir Hi­lary Beck­les re­mind­ed us, “Eman­ci­pa­tion Day is more than a day of re­mem­brance; it is a call to ac­tion”—one that re­quires us to study our his­to­ry and pass that knowl­edge to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. The cry for “full free” must now be­come a de­mand to build safer, stronger com­mu­ni­ties.