Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

A tas­sa per­for­mance and clas­si­cal In­di­an Dance dur­ing an African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tion host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) has sparked de­bate on so­cial me­dia, with some peo­ple ques­tion­ing whether it was ap­pro­pri­ate for an event com­mem­o­rat­ing the eman­ci­pa­tion of en­slaved Africans.

The pro­gramme, ti­tled UHU­RU: Cel­e­brat­ing Free­dom, was or­gan­ised by UTT in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA).

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Hansen Nar­i­nesingh de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress, in which he said the his­to­ries of African eman­ci­pa­tion and In­di­an in­den­ture­ship had to­geth­er shaped T&T.

“The jour­ney of our African an­ces­tors who fought for eman­ci­pa­tion and our East In­di­an an­ces­tors who ar­rived un­der the in­den­ture­ship sys­tem in a search for bet­ter life are ex­tra­or­di­nary sto­ries. To­geth­er, these ex­pe­ri­ences have shaped the val­ues of re­silience, of sol­i­dar­i­ty, and of mu­tu­al re­spect that con­tin­ue to de­fine our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty,” Nar­i­nesingh said.

He said in­sti­tu­tions such as the UTT serve not on­ly as cen­tres of aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence, re­search and in­no­va­tion, but are al­so spaces where our her­itage, cre­ativ­i­ty and di­verse cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions are ex­plored and cel­e­brat­ed.

Nar­i­nesingh added: “As we com­mem­o­rate African Eman­ci­pa­tion, we must reaf­firm our com­mit­ment to build­ing a coun­try where op­por­tu­ni­ty is open to all, draw­ing strengths from the lega­cy of our an­ces­tors. By re­mem­ber­ing the strug­gles of those who came be­fore us, we are chal­lenged to build a so­ci­ety where free­dom is matched by in­clu­sion, where di­ver­si­ty is em­braced as a source of strength, and where every cit­i­zen has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­alise their full po­ten­tial.”

Videos from the event lat­er cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, show­ing a tas­sa per­for­mance, prompt­ing mixed re­ac­tions. While some peo­ple de­fend­ed the in­clu­sion of dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, oth­ers ques­tioned whether tas­sa was ap­pro­pri­ate for an African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day ob­ser­vance. Some al­so said African drum­ming would have been more fit­ting and called for or­gan­is­ers to ex­plain the de­ci­sion.

In a state­ment fol­low­ing the event, UTT said UHU­RU: Cel­e­brat­ing Free­dom ho­n­oured “the en­dur­ing lega­cy of Eman­ci­pa­tion while cel­e­brat­ing the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions of African her­itage to the so­cial, cul­tur­al and artis­tic de­vel­op­ment of T&T.”

The uni­ver­si­ty said the pro­duc­tion fea­tured the­atri­cal read­ings, dance and mu­si­cal per­for­mances that paid trib­ute to those who fought for free­dom while re­flect­ing on the last­ing im­pact of Eman­ci­pa­tion on the na­tion’s iden­ti­ty.

Com­ment­ing on the event, Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle said he be­lieved there had been a grow­ing pat­tern of what he de­scribed as dis­re­spect to­wards African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day and African peo­ple in T&T.

Mar­celle said the is­sue was not lim­it­ed to the UTT event, but re­flect­ed what he de­scribed as a wider de­bate around how the day is com­mem­o­rat­ed.

He crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as at­tempts to place oth­er his­tor­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ences along­side slav­ery dur­ing dis­cus­sions about Eman­ci­pa­tion, ar­gu­ing that African peo­ple should be able to com­mem­o­rate their an­ces­tors and his­to­ry with­out com­par­isons.

How­ev­er, so­cial ac­tivist David Muham­mad said he wasn’t sur­prised by the in­clu­sion.

“Afro-Trin­bag­on­ian con­scious­ness in ca­su­al con­ver­sa­tions tends to be punc­tu­at­ed by apolo­gies and re­quests for for­give­ness for “think­ing or be­ing too black’,” he told Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp.

“I am there­fore not sur­prised by this. To me, it is an­oth­er one of those des­per­ate at­tempts com­ing out of the African com­mu­ni­ty that we are will­ing to sym­bol­i­cal­ly make racial-cul­tur­al in­te­gra­tion an even high­er pri­or­i­ty than the ide­o­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lib­er­a­tion of African minds, even for a cel­e­bra­tion like Eman­ci­pa­tion Day.”

The con­tro­ver­sy comes a week af­ter the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion in Port-of-Spain faced wide­spread crit­i­cism for ini­tial­ly sched­ul­ing an In­di­an Di­as­po­ra Day open house to­day (Au­gust 1), as T&T ob­serves African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day.

The High Com­mis­sion lat­er post­poned the event to Au­gust 8 fol­low­ing pub­lic back­lash. Crit­ics ar­gued that Au­gust 1 is not sim­ply a pub­lic hol­i­day but a day ded­i­cat­ed to com­mem­o­rat­ing the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and ho­n­our­ing the strug­gles and sac­ri­fices of en­slaved Africans.

Row­ley com­ments on Eman­ci­pa­tion

While not di­rect­ly ad­dress­ing the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the UTT event, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so weighed in on African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day in a so­cial me­dia post, crit­i­cis­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s for­eign pol­i­cy.

“So, when T&T vot­ed to sup­port geno­cide and the de­struc­tive em­bar­go against Cu­ba, we should know that un­der this UNC gov­ern­ment, we have lost our way and have cho­sen to be a vul­gar vas­sal state in­stead of the proud post-colo­nial bea­con that we al­ways were,” Row­ley wrote.

Row­ley’s com­ments came more than two years af­ter he, as prime min­is­ter, an­nounced that Cab­i­net had ap­proved re­nam­ing the Au­gust 1 hol­i­day from Eman­ci­pa­tion Day to African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day.

An­nounc­ing the change in April 2024, Row­ley said the move was in­tend­ed to make it clear that the ob­ser­vance com­mem­o­rates the eman­ci­pa­tion of en­slaved Africans.

“The time has come for us to make it quite clear what eman­ci­pa­tion means; and who is be­ing eman­ci­pat­ed,” he said then, adding that he had no­ticed oth­ers were “at­tempt­ing to climb on­to the Eman­ci­pa­tion band­wag­on and at­tempt­ing to add ap­pendages to it.”

Row­ley said that since T&T was the first coun­try to de­clare Eman­ci­pa­tion Day a pub­lic hol­i­day, it had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­serve its orig­i­nal mean­ing.