IN 1985, under the George Chambers administration, Trinidad and Tobago became the first country in the world to commemorate the end of African enslavement by marking Emancipation Day with a public holiday.
Although a holiday was not officially recognised, every year from 1838 onward, formerly enslaved Africans and their offspring would neglect work and celebrate with church services, drumming, dancing and fetes on August 1.
This year marks the first that TT has celebrated the occasion under its new name, African Emancipation Day. The Prime Minister announced that change on April 18, 2023
.It comes during the last year of the UN-sanctioned International Decade for People of African Descent, which ends in December. The UN said the decade was proclaimed to “strengthen national, regional and international co-operation in relation to the full enjoyment of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights by people of African descent.”
As for reparations, the Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC), set up in 2013 at a Caricom heads of government meeting, said its goal is to "establish the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of reparations by the Governments of all the former colonial powers and the relevant institutions of those countries, to the nations and people of the Caribbean community for the crimes against humanity of native genocide, the transatlantic slave trade and a racialised system of chattel slavery."
The commission outlined a ten-point plan in its pursuit of justice from 11 European countries – France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Belgium and Norway as these are the countries that colonized the Caribbean.
Some of the points include a full and formal apology, indigenous peoples' development programmes, the enhancement of historical and cultural knowledge exchanges and education programmes.
Newsday spoke to the chairman of TT’s National Committee on Reparations (NCR), Dr Claudius Fergus, to find out more about the committee’s approach to reparations and the strides it has made thus far. Fergus joined UWI's St Augustine campus as a history tutor in 1987 and became a full-time lecturer in African history in 2002.
The NCR was appointed by Cabinet in 2014, and Fergus became a member in its first year. But he said the government did not take it seriously until a new chairman was elected in 2021.
“There was not the kind of support (that it needed) from late 2015, but the committee continued to function until a new chairman was announced in 2021.”
Despite this, the committee continued to function and liaised regularly with the CRC
.
The 11-person committee, which includes Caricom ambassador Jennifer Marchand, executive director of the Emancipation Support Committee Zakiya Uzoma-Wadada and chief of the First Peoples Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez, meets once a month. A management sub-committee meets weekly to "ensure decisions made at monthly meetings are actioned."
Fergus said the committee, which falls
under the Minis
