Category Archives: Africa

Africa, Books, General T&T

An ideologue’s pirouette

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 07, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn his address to the nation on African Emancipation Day, the Leader of our Grief called upon his distraught citizens to focus on Afro-Trinbagonians who have made outstanding contributions at home and abroad.

He urged the universities of the West Indies, of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Southern Caribbean “to research further, then highlight and promote the African heritage in the country’s art, literature, music, religion, drama, fashion, cuisine, technical and empirical skills”. (Express, August 1, 2024.)
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Africa, Education, General T&T, Schools

Hear ye; hair ye: listen and be enlightened

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
July 24, 2024

Part I

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI wanted to add my two cents to Oke Zachary’s comments about educators freeing themselves from mental slavery as it related to the SDA dragging two students from their graduation because they cornrowed their hair (Express, July 14).

Zachary gave us an informative history lesson about the important role that hair plays in the lives of African people. He started with Bob Marley who had one of “the nappiest dreadlocks” and worked his way back to the inception of the cornrow style in 3,500 BCE before going to China “with the staircase braid from 1644 straight to the Caribbean with modern cornrows from the 1970s”.
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Africa, England, General T&T, Germany, Namibia, USA

Africa’s holocaust

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 14, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn 1985 I interviewed the president of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) Sam Nujoma when he visited the United Nations Decolonisation Committee to plead for his country’s independence (West Africa, present-day Namibia). Namibia was a German colony from the 1880s to the First World War when South African troops occupied its territory.

From 1904 to 1908, the Germans waged a war that exterminated over 100,000 Africans from the Herero and Nama ethnic groups. It was deemed the first holocaust of the 20th century. In 1920, the League of Nations allowed South Africa to administer the territory.
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Africa, General T&T

Please stay home

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 29, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeI do not know what Cabinet intended to achieve when it changed “Emancipation Day” to “African Emancipation Day”, beginning August 1, 2024. Our Prime Minister declared that too many people at the international level were attempting to “add appendages” to the reasoning behind emancipation. He felt he had to change that. He declaimed: “We in T&T, who led on this matter, will have none of it. We made it quite clear that emancipation in T&T is a result of the emancipation of slaves,” even though most enlightened scholars refer to people who were stolen from Africa and brought to work on the plantations of the New World as “enslaved” people rather than “slaves”.
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Africa, Education, General T&T

Decolonising the Euro-American universities’ curriculum

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
March 05, 2024

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIt was one of those trips that I find particularly gruesome. On Tuesday, I travelled from Boston, USA, to Edmonton, Canada, via Minneapolis, to participate in a conference, “Pan Africanism: Decolonising the University Curriculum”, at the University of Alberta. When I arrived, the temperature was -15°F. It was freezing cold.

This conference was organised by Prof Andy McKnight, a University of Alberta Distinguished Professor, who comes from an outstanding academic and political Caribbean family. He is related to Sir Grantley Adams, the first premier of Barbados and only president of the short-lived West Indian Federation; and Tom Adams, the son of Grantley Adams and second prime minister of that island.
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Africa, Christianity, Egypt, General T&T, Islam, Religion

Dreaming of a Black Christmas

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
December 26, 2023

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeThere was a large picture of Jesus at the entrance of our home when I grew up in Tacarigua. In this picture, Jesus’ skin was white, his hair was blonde, and his eyes were a piercing blue. This represented the saviour who is supposed to save us from our sins and prepare us to enter into the heavenly kingdom. This depiction of Jesus was a Western whitewashing of history.
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Africa, General T&T

Principles in politics

By Raffique Shah
November 01, 2023

Raffique ShahI know, I know: the words principles and politics hardly go together. They are more like an oxymoron. But fool that I am, until the day I breathe my last, I shall strive, in whatever way I can, to have politicians and their publics see the wisdom of insisting that they find ways, making principles an imperative for those who seek high public office, and for those who put them there.
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Africa, Caribbean, General T&T

Christopher Columbus Exposed: HIS-STORY

By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
October 24, 2023

Dr. Kwame NantambuAs Americans have already celebrated Columbus Day, this article presents the real Afri-centric truth/analysis in regard to the so-called ‘Discovery’ of the West Indies/ New World by the Euro-centric historical criminal, Christopher Columbus — real name on his Spanish birth certificate is Cristobal Colon from whose surname are historically derived European systems such as Colonialism, Colonizer, Colonized and Colony.
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Africa, Caribbean, General T&T, Ghana

Art and culture in West Africa and the Caribbean

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
October 23, 2023

The following is a lecture delivered at the Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra, Ghana.

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeFirst of all, I wish to thank the hosts of this marvelous festival for inviting me to participate in it and for allowing me to share my ideas of how literature, art, and culture have helped in understanding, achieving and reimagining the histories that link West Africa and the Caribbean. This is an enormous assignment. I will speak of how the West African culture, literature, and the arts helped to shape the identity of my Caribbean people. I will pay special attention to what transpired in Trinidad and Tobago, and then relate those experiences to the larger whole.
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Africa, Caribbean, General T&T, Race and Identity

Coming black on board

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
September 11, 2023

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeTwo weeks ago I was invited to be a panel member of a conference, “The March on Washington: Its Legacy and Impact in the Americas”, that was organised by the US Permanent Mission to the Organisation of American States (OAS) in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington at which Martin Luther King Jnr delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
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