Category Archives: Africa

Africa, General T&T, International, Passed on, South Africa

Night the world stood still

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By Raffique Shah
December 07, 2013

Raffique ShahLast Thursday night, for moments ranging from seconds to hours, the world stood still. People paused or stopped doing whatever they were engaged in, diverting attention to their radio or television sets that, in hundreds of languages, broke the news that Nelson Mandela had died.

By Friday, every newspaper that had gone to print after his passing will have featured banner headlines screaming news of his passing. Network news leaders such as the BBC and CNN continued almost non-stop coverage of the life and times and death of this man. Tributes poured in: no one had anything negative to say about him.
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Africa, General T&T, Media, Passed on, Politics, South Africa

MANDELA DIES

December 06, 2013 – newsday.co.tt

MANDELA DIESTRINIDAD and Tobago last night joined with the rest of the world in celebrating the life of South Africa’s cherished statesman Nelson Mandela and mourning his death at the age of 95. Mandela was undoubtedly a colossus of the 20th century when he emerged from 27 years in prison to negotiate an end to the hated apartheid system of white minority rule in South Africa.

South African President Jacob Zuma made the announcement at a news conference yesterday at 5.45 pm TT time, telling the world, “we have lost our greatest son.” Mandela’s death at his home in Johannesburg closed the final chapter in South Africa’s struggle to cast off apartheid, leaving the world with indelible memories of a man of astonishing grace and good humour.
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Africa, General T&T, India, Labour, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

The Indian Experience in Trinidad, or The Triumph of Ideology Over Scholarship

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 24, 2013

No one, again with the exception of the extinct Carib people, and perhaps the Spanish people can claim to be ‘natives’ of the island. All peoples were newcomers to Trinidad, and all were immigrants. The immigrant nature of the society of Trinidad needs to be recognized for what it was and what it is. (537)

GeradTikasingh, Trinidad During the 19th Century

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeGerad Tikasingh has written an interesting book, Trinidad During the 19th Century: The Indian Experience, an extension of his doctoral thesis, “The Establishment of Indians in Trinidad, 1870,” that he completed at UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad in 1973. Although his book is filled with facts, it is marred by an ideological orientation (one may say Indo-centric perspective) and a negative rendering of the African experience in the country. This book continues an argument made by other Indo-Caribbean scholars that suggests that the dominance of an Afro-centric ethos (which Tikasingh calls a “black bias”) has “tended to downplay, if not obscure the parallel Indo-Caribbean experience of indentureship and its contributions to Guyanese and Trinidadian culture in particular” (see Frank Birbalsingh, Indo Caribbean Resistance, 1993).

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Africa, Caribbean, CARICOM, General T&T, People's Partnership, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

National Committee on Reparations for TT

Sunday, November 24 2013

EmancipationA National Committee on Reparations is being established in Trinidad and Tobago, the Communications Unit of the Office of the Prime Minister said yesterday.

In a media release, the Communications Unit said persons responsible for setting up the Committee met with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar SC at the Parliament Building on Friday.
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Africa, General T&T, International, Kenya

Victim of Zealots

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By Raffique Shah
September 29, 2013

Raffique ShahReally, it’s a messed-up, mixed-up world in which someone like young Ravindra Ramrattan falls victim to indescribable madness, to savagery clothed in religion. Even as I ponder the enormous possibilities that were terminated in murderous gunfire in far-off Kenya, I take comfort in my agnosticism that has kept me aloof of the zealots of one religion or other, and my revolutionary spirit that soars above the ideologues who manufacture and manipulate madmen for whom no life is precious, not even their own.
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Africa, General T&T, Health, International

The lion in winter

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By Raffique Shah
July 06, 2013

Raffique ShahFROM A distance, I watch the Grand Old Man slowly making his exit from a world that is far from the perfect place idealists like him had hoped to see in their lifetimes. As The Lion breathes his last, family feuds disrupt the peace he so deserves in his final hours, I wonder why they do not allow him to die the way he lived—fearlessly, with honour. Nelson Mandela, in his 94 years on earth, has contributed to his country and to humankind what others will need several lifetimes to achieve.
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Africa, Crime in T&T, General T&T, Hindu, India, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch, Religion

Don’t Blame the Hindus or the Christians

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 04, 2013

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTwo of my dear friends are reputed to have suggested that the Hindus and the Christians may be responsible for the plight of young Africans who find themselves in trouble with the law. They also seem to suggest that a Hindu-based government is to be blamed for out plight. I should hope that this is not what they intended to convey to the public. Such statements tend to inflame national feelings and deepen the national divide. I am a member of the PNM and count myself to be as conscious of my blackness as anyone else. However, I think we ought to be careful about what we say.
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Africa, General T&T, International, Racism Watch

Mandela: From Prisoner to President

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By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
June 17, 2013

Dr. Kwame NantambuAs Nelson Mandela remains “in critical condition” in a hospital in Pretoria, South Africa, as a result of “a recurring lung infection” it becomes extremely imperative/vital to trace/recount his remarkable/heroic journey from prisoner/revolutionary to President of South Africa.

At the outset, it must be emphasized that the year 1994 was a watershed turning-point as the white minority-ruled South Africa joined the civilized nations as a de jure actor on the international stage of democracy.

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Africa, Caribbean, General T&T, Hindu, India, International, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Indian Indentureship: Afri-centric Analysis

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By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
May 29, 2013

Dr. Kwame NantambuThe purpose of this article is to conduct an Afri-centric, linkage analysis of the Indian Indentureship system.

In his magnum opus titled Capitalism & Slavery (1944), Dr. Eric Williams postulates that: “The immediate successor of the Amerindians was not the African but ‘poor whites’. They were regarded as ‘indentured servants’ because before leaving England, they had to sign a contract binding them to service for a stipulated period for their passage. Others were criminals/convicts who were sent by the British government to serve for a specific time on plantations in the Caribbean.” (p.9).
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Africa, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Selwyn Cudjoe Speaks on the Life of Tony Martin

By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
[Celebration & Remembrance of Tony Martin, Wellesley College,
Wednesday, May 1, 2013.]

Professor Tony MartinI met Tony Martin when I arrived at Harvard University in 1976. Although we were both born in Trinidad, we had not met each other prior to that time. Tony was born in Port of Spain, the capital of the country; I was born in Tacarigua, a village about twelve miles east of Port of Spain. Tony had studied at St. Mary’s College, one of the elite colleges of the country; I had remained at St. Mary’s Anglican Church School, as a pupil teacher or practicing teacher under supervision of other teachers. In the course of things, Tony went off to England “to further his studies” as we say at home. I went to the States. By then he had written Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Improvement Association, a book that came to define his scholarly career and which the late, great John Henrik Clarke described as being “close to a definitive study of Marcus Garvey as we have seen.” Other than our mutual national origins, my interest in Tony Martin grew because I was using Race First in my class and wanted to know more about Tony and what had gone into the writing of his book. In December of 1987, a year and a half after I arrived at Wellesley, Tony presented me with a copy of his book that was inscribed, “To a brother and a colleague, with Best wishes.” I still possess a copy of that book, but this is getting ahead of my story.
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