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Category Archives: Africa
Emancipation Foibles – Part 2
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 06, 2023
On June 27, 2022, Margaret Heath, a member of William Hardin Burnley’s family who once owned the Orange Grove Sugar Estates, sent me an email. It read: “Dear Professor Cudjoe. I thought you might be interested to know that my brother, as executor of my mother’s estate, has just informed me he consigned a trunkful of exclusive family papers that belong to William Hardin Burnley and his son, Frederick Burnley, to Paul Laidlow, Auctioneers, Carlisle, to be included in their sale on July 1st/2nd.”
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Emancipation foibles
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 03, 2023
PART I
“So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.”
—Ecclesiastes 4, Verse 1
It’s Emancipation Day (Tuesday)and all the politicians, the proprietors and the bankers are trotting out their lies about freedom and emancipation. They may even quote the words of our prophet Bob Marley (“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery/None but ourselves can free our minds”), to demonstrate how the ordinary black person has misused the opportunity to free himself/herself mentally in this country. But take it from me, “All of dat is damn lies.”
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What Emancipation still has not brought us
By Corey Gilkes
August 02, 2023
Those of you who took god out your thoughts and were following my rants over the years know I have been saying the word “emancipation” actually means transfer ownership. And that puts into clearer perspective what dem snakes and soucouyants I was taught to celebrate as humanitarians and liberators were really thinking.
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Kagame and Other Stooges Do U.S. Bidding in Haiti
By Margaret Kimberley
BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
July 28, 2023
The U.S. is committed to invading Haiti but needs Black “leaders” to give them cover. They pressured Caribbean nations to be the face of intervention and called on Rwanda’s Paul Kagame to be the African diaspora front man.
It can be argued that Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame is the Black head of state most useful to the U.S. and its allies. There are many human tools in their box but Kagame is the most willing to act on behalf of the collective west. He can reliably be called upon to enthusiastically do the dirty work of the U.S. and Europe. When he arrived at the recent CARICOM summit it was clear that a terrible plot was being hatched.
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Zimbabwe And Other African Nations Are Fighting Back. Stop Illegal Sanctions
The African continent has been under European siege for 600 years. The current form of white men telling Africans to shut up and do as they are told are called “sanctions”. Listen to Rutendo Matinyarare explaining the origins and effects of the illegal US and European sanctions on his home country, Zimbabwe. Rutendo is a leader of the Zimbabwe Anti Sanction Movement (ZASM) and an expert on the country’s foreign policy.
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Unravelling of a nationalist party
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 12, 2022
The advent of nationalist parties in developing countries in the late 19th and 20th centuries demonstrated the desires of the struggling masses that yearned to control their own affairs and to develop their nations. In this context, the goals of the People’s National Movement (the word “national” is important) were no different from those of the Indian National Congress in India, the African National Congress in South Africa, and the People’s National Party in Jamaica. These parties were all steeled by the impetus to empower the struggling masses and to democratise a system ruled by colonial powers.
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African presence in early England
By Dr Kwame Nantambu
December 10, 2022
Now that England has ushered in its first modern-day, non-European Prime Minister in Rishi Sunak of Asian-Indian descent and the country’s first Hindu to hold that top office, indeed, it is a sine qua non to reveal and recount the role and presence of Africans in England’s early history.
In his treatise History of the Africans in Europe (1971), Dr. G.K. Osei postulates that “when Saint Patrick went to Ireland to convert the people he took one (African) with him. The (African) used to sing at the various meetings. Ireland had an African Bishop called Diman. He died in Ulster in 658 A.D. and is now a Saint.”
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Rituals of grief
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
September 26, 2022
“The glories of our blood and state, Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate, Death lays his icy hands on kings. Sceptre and crown must tumble down, And, in the dust, be equal made with the poor crooked scythe and spade.”
—James Shirley
I didn’t expect to spend so much time looking at the funeral of Elizabeth II. I was intrigued by the spectacle made of death (a display put on for its visual effect and impact) and the ritual of grief (a solemn ceremony performed according to a prescribed order) that was enacted before millions of people.
It took 20 years of planning to stage this event. It was the responsibility of Edward Fitzalan-Howard, who inherited the role of Earl Marshal of England when his father died in 2002. He “descended from the same family that has planned royal funerals and coronations since 1672”. He takes his responsibility seriously. He did not earn a cent for the tireless work he did for the Queen’s funeral.
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Deluded Children of Empire
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
September 19, 2022
On a sunny day in February of 1952 I was an eight-year-old schoolboy made to attend a memorial service for King George VI, the father of the late Elizabeth II. On that day I remembered the “Taps” played by the Police Band or the Tacarigua Orphan Home Band, as the bugles rattled through the bamboos on the banks of the Tacarigua River that flowed on the western side of the church.
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