Fay­ola K J Fras­er

De­clared a na­tion­al hol­i­day in 1985 and cel­e­brat­ed on Au­gust 1 an­nu­al­ly, African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day in T&T com­mem­o­rates the free­dom of the for­mer­ly en­slaved African peo­ple fol­low­ing 400 years of sub­ju­ga­tion by colo­nial pow­ers and in­ter­ests.

Asha Wil­son, a Pan-Caribbean African So­ci­ol­o­gist, a moth­er of one, and a his­to­ri­an from T&T, has spent the bet­ter part of the last two decades as part of the nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing African Eman­ci­pa­tion. Her life’s work has cen­tred around un­der­stand­ing the his­to­ry, ad­vo­cat­ing for greater ties be­tween Africa and the di­as­po­ra, and en­cour­ag­ing free­dom from the men­tal and so­ci­etal yolks of colo­nial­ism and en­slave­ment.

Wil­son was born and raised in a fam­i­ly of ed­u­ca­tors, phil­an­thropists, and politi­cians, which “had a pro­found im­pact on my life’s di­rec­tion.” Af­ter leav­ing Trinidad to ini­tial­ly study in­ter­na­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing at Bar­ry Uni­ver­si­ty in Mi­a­mi, she ex­pe­ri­enced a sig­nif­i­cant awak­en­ing in her per­son­al and spir­i­tu­al lives, which changed the course of her stud­ies to so­ci­ol­o­gy. Wil­son was ex­posed to the NGO found­ed by her moth­er, a home for so­cial­ly dis­placed boys, and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly be­gan to seek more knowl­edge around the po­lit­i­cal life and tri­umphs of Haile Se­lassie, Em­per­or of Ethiopia.

Since 2000, Wil­son was keen­ly aware of the idea of Haile Se­lassie “as the re­turned Mes­si­ah/a black god, and Ethiopia as the King­dom of Zion, nev­er hav­ing been colonised,” which al­so fed in­to her the idea of the im­por­tance of repa­tri­a­tion.

When she fur­thered her knowl­edge of Haile Se­lassie’s im­pact, in­clud­ing his work free­ing Africans on the con­ti­nent and in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, and as a staunch de­fend­er of hu­man rights against colo­nial and fas­cist pow­ers, she was deeply drawn to the study of so­ci­ol­o­gy to bet­ter un­der­stand hu­man­i­ty.

Re­turn­ing to Trinidad in 2008, her in­ter­est in peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties alight­ed, she ground­ed her­self in the work of var­i­ous NGOs, such as the He­roes Foun­da­tion, and taught briefly at her al­ma mater, St Joseph’s Con­vent. This ground­ing cleared the path­way to her repa­tri­a­tion to Africa, and she was able to se­cure a po­si­tion teach­ing Eng­lish in Ethiopia in 2012, where she re­mained for five years.

Dur­ing her time in Ethiopia, she un­der­stood the re­al­i­ty that “we are all Ethiopi­ans, at home and abroad,” and sim­ply some of us have been dis­placed from this his­toric home­land. Wil­son al­so cred­its her fa­ther’s in­flu­ence with push­ing her to study the works of Haile Se­lassie aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and found her­self delv­ing in­to the con­tin­ued im­pact of en­slave­ment and colo­nial­ism in the form of neo­colo­nial­ism, which has dri­ven dis­crim­i­na­tion and di­vi­sion against and amongst African peo­ple to­day.

Some might won­der about the need for African Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions or pur­port that “so much time” has passed since the end of en­slave­ment, sug­gest­ing that so­ci­ety should sim­ply “move on.”

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Wil­son, “the lega­cy of slav­ery is still ev­i­dent glob­al­ly. It is not a mat­ter of chance or ge­net­ic pre­de­ter­mi­na­tion that any­where in the globe, re­gard­less of coun­try, the dark­est de­scen­dants are at the bot­tom of the food chain and dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.”

This racist lega­cy has borne the phe­nom­e­non of colourism, which di­vides lighter ver­sus dark­er-skinned African peo­ple, and re­mains one of the most im­pact­ful tenets of colo­nial­ism and en­slave­ment.

In T&T, al­though African de­scen­dents are not a mi­nor­i­ty in the pop­u­la­tion, there is still sig­nif­i­cant work to be done in en­hanc­ing the lives and op­por­tu­ni­ties of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Specif­i­cal­ly in the dis­cus­sion of repa­ra­tions, Wil­son not­ed that Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les’ speech on Eman­ci­pa­tion Day 2024 iden­ti­fied that fund­ing in the form of repa­ra­tions should con­tin­ue to be fought for, as it can be in­ject­ed in­to health­care, hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, and pub­lic funds that “im­prove the liveli­hood and so­cioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus of our peo­ples.”

This dis­cus­sion of repara­to­ry jus­tice is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant in a Caribbean con­text, where much of our na­tion-build­ing has been due to high-in­ter­est loans by for­mer colo­nial pow­ers, in­debt­ing us in huge amounts to these coun­tries and es­sen­tial­ly damn­ing the pace of our eco­nom­ic progress. Wil­son be­lieves that there is great hope for us and looks to the fu­ture “calm­ly, con­fi­dent­ly, and coura­geous­ly,” with a fo­cus on uni­fi­ca­tion above all else.

Cit­ing Haile Se­lassie’s speech to the African Union, “Africans at home and abroad must unite … We Africans oc­cu­py a dif­fer­ent—in­deed a unique—po­si­tion among the na­tions of this cen­tu­ry. Hav­ing for so long known op­pres­sion, tyran­ny, and sub­ju­ga­tion, who with bet­ter rights can claim for all the op­por­tu­ni­ty and the right to live and grow as free men?” (full speech: https://www.black­past.org/glob­al-african-his­to­ry/speech­es-glob­al-african-his­to­ry/1963-haile-se­lassie-to­wards-african-uni­ty/)

In a Trin­bag­on­ian con­text, specif­i­cal­ly, this is a call to aban­don all di­vi­sions, “be­tween Afro and In­do Trinida­di­ans, rich and poor, straight and LGBTQ spec­trum, Ras­ta City or Mus­lim gangs,” as these di­vi­sions have been his­tor­i­cal­ly carved to weak­en na­tion­al spir­it, there­by mak­ing it easy for colo­nial pow­ers to di­vide us and con­quer.

On African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day every year, we are called to re­mem­ber the men and women who re­fused to ac­cept the im­po­si­tion of colo­nial au­thor­i­ties, those who found strength in them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties, and who deeply be­lieved in over­com­ing the gross­est aber­ra­tion to hu­man­i­ty the world has ever known.

Wil­son calls eman­ci­pa­tion “a long labour of love, a stren­u­ous jour­ney and bat­tle,” and anoints Eman­ci­pa­tion Day as a mo­ment “to re­mem­ber and re­vere” the bravest of those who have gone be­fore us.

In­deed, it is al­so a mo­ment for us to en­sure that we nev­er for­get, “as an aware­ness of our past is es­sen­tial to the es­tab­lish­ment of our per­son­al­i­ty and our iden­ti­ty as Africans.”

Her ral­ly­ing cry is not on­ly in re­mem­brance but to build and de­vel­op mean­ing­ful and close con­nec­tions to our his­toric home­lands, which does not need to be nec­es­sar­i­ly in the form of repa­tri­a­tion but in uni­fi­ca­tion.