Tag Archives: Africa

Africa, Gender, General T&T

New Daughters of Africa

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 08, 2019

“Know you not that love, when firmly established, is priceless?”

—Nana Asma’u, “Lamentation for ‘Aysha.'”

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI met Margaret Busby in the 1980s just after her press (Allison & Busby) published three volumes of C. L. R. James’s collected work (The Future in the Present [1977], Spheres of Existence [1980], and At the Rendezvous of Victory 1984]). It was an exciting time for James scholars. The assembled pieces were important parts of James’s intellectual corpus.
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Africa, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Thinking Dialectically About Slavery

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 30, 2019

“It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital…without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic.”

—V. I. Lenin quoted in C. L. R. James, Notes on Dialectics

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeOn Monday the Sugar and Slavery Gallery of London Museum Docklands invited me to be a panelist in a seminar, “London’s Debt to and Involvement with Slavery.” The other panelist, Dr. Kate Donington, Co-Curator of the Slavery, Culture and Collecting display at the Museum, spoke about George Hibbert, a slave owner in Jamaica and a hugely influential presence in eighteenth-century Jamaica and London.
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Africa, Gender, General T&T, International, Racism Watch, South Africa

Flawed Heroines

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 09, 2018

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeQueen Njinga of Africa ruled Ndongo (located in present-day Angola) from 1624-1663. Despite her outstanding accomplishments, “Europeans at the time portrayed her as a bloodthirsty cannibal who thought nothing of murdering babies and slaughtering her enemies.” This is the conclusion that Linda Heywood, a Trinidadian professor of history at Boston University, arrives at in her new biography, Njinga of Angola: African Warrior Queen (2017).
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Africa, Gambia, General T&T

My Gambian Journey

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 26, 2018

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeMonday’s disorder in East Port of Spain made me reflect on my recent visit to the Gambia where I participated in Mboka, a festival to celebrate Gambian as well as African diasporic heritage. Gambians “belong to the Senegambia region of West Africa, the general name given to the area drained by the Senegal and Gambia rivers” (Faal, A History of Gambia). Mboka or “One Family,” a Wolof word, is taken from the ethnic group of the same name.
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Caribbean, France, General T&T, Haiti, International, USA

No regrets for making Haiti a ‘shithole’?

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By Sir Ronald Sanders
January 13, 2018 – telesurtv.net

Haiti(The writer is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States and the OAS. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and Massey College in the University of Toronto. The views expressed are his own)

The effect of the inappropriate depiction of Haiti, El Salvador and all African nations as “shit hole” countries is a matter that the people of the United States of America and their government and Congress should contemplate seriously.
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General T&T, Haiti, International, USA

Why The US Owes Haiti Billions – The Briefest History

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By Bill Quigley
November 27, 2013 – ccrjustice.org

HaitiWhy does the US owe Haiti Billions? Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, stated his foreign policy view as the “Pottery Barn rule.” That is – “if you break it, you own it.”

The US has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. Not charity. We owe Haiti as a matter of justice. Reparations. And not the $100 million promised by President Obama either – that is Powerball money. The US owes Haiti Billions – with a big B.
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Africa, General T&T, International, PNM, South Africa

Long Walk to Freedom

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 10, 2017

PART 1

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI spent four weeks in South Africa and Swaziland at the end of June and the beginning of July. These were some of the most educative and inspiring days of my life. I had followed the South African liberation struggle since the late 1950s when Miriam Makeba sang her freedom songs. In the 1960s I read Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country and cried. Later I read Peter Abrahams Tell Freedom. It did not produce the same emotional impact on me.
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Africa, Education, General T&T, Schools

Go to Timbuktu!!!

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By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 27, 2017

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeMany Trinidadians and Tobagonians of my generation can remember when, in a rage or disagreement, an antagonist uttered the insult: “Go to Timbuktu!” It was a term that suggested one should be banished into ignominy and sent into the dungeon of stupidity.

Experience and education have taught me that Timbuktu, an important seat of learning between the 12th and 16th centuries, was one of the most important educational and cultural centers in the world. In its Golden age, the town’s numerous Islamic scholars and extensive trading network made possible an important book trade. There were campuses of the Sankore Madrasah, an Islamic university. At its height, as many as 25,000 students, a quarter of the city’s population, studied there.
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Africa, Caribbean, England, General T&T, International, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

Britain’s Perfect Caribbean Crime: Ignored Genocide, Faked Emancipation…

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7th Annual George Lamming Distinguished Lecture

Streamed live on Jun 13, 2017

On Tuesday, June 13, 2017, Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies (The UWI) Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, delivered the seventh Annual George Lamming Distinguished Lecture at The UWI Cave Hill Campus’ Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination (EBCCI) in Barbados. Vice-Chancellor Beckles spoke on Britain’s Perfect Caribbean Crime: Ignored Genocide, Faked Emancipation, Insincere Independence, and No Reparations.
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Africa, General T&T, Race and Identity, Racism Watch

I arrived by birth

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By Raffique Shah
May 30, 2017

Raffique ShahThere was a minority view back in the 1980s/1990s when the lobby for a holiday to mark the presence of Indians in Trinidad & Tobago was loudest, that the termination of indentureship in 1917, not their arrival in 1845, should be celebrated. If that had prevailed, this year the Indo-Trinidad community would have marked the centennial of end of their semi-slavery. But the very vocal majority had their say and their day, hence the declaration of a public holiday on Arrival Day, May 30, the date when, in 1845, the Fatel Rozack docked in Port of Spain and deposited 200-odd wretched Indian souls on these shores.
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