rootsandculture

Ramnaresh Sarwan The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) drama continues to befuddle. Most recently its St. Lucian head, Dr. Julian Hunte and its St. Lucian CEO, Ernest Hilaire, ‘fired’ a number of players and hired a new Captain: A St. Lucian, Darren Sammy. The ‘fired’ players included its current captain and vice captain, Chris Gayle, and Dwayne Bravo, and former captain and vice captain, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dinesh Ramdin. These players all held central contracts with the WICB up until these new developments. There were other players fired but these four happened to be the more experienced players on the team. The WICB offered a number of reasons for these moves. The most befuddling was Sarwan’s firing. The WICB gave his lack of fitness as the reason. I used the word ‘fired’ to describe these actions because its important we understand this is an employer/employee relationship between the WICB and the players. Gayle and Bravo declined their offers ostensibly to p

The Trinidad and Tobago general election appears to have passed without any violence and a new government has gained the numbers to replace the old government. Patrick Manning leaves and in steps Kamla Persad-Bissessar: Trinidad and Tobago ’s first female Prime Minister. From my temporary base in the PNM stronghold of Diego Martin, I watched with amazement at the excitement the elections seemed to generate. The weekend leading up to the election saw a series of events held by all the parties and all seemed to be attended by gung-ho supporters of all ages. I tried to think of when I last saw anything like this in Guyana , Jamaica , elsewhere, even the USA . With the election of Barack Obama we did see some unusual enthusiasm but still turnout hovered in the mid 50s, percent: The highest turnout since 1968. The average between midterm and presidential elections shows less than half the people eligible to vote in the US actually vote. So it was strange in a good way to see the

Professor Samir Amin headlined the Second Annual Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week. He lectured on the history of monopoly capitalism with special emphasis on the Bandung Conference as the first attempts by newly independent African and Asian states to resist all forms of imperial expansion. He reiterated the need for continued resistance, while predicting the inevitable collapse of an unworkable system: monopoly capitalism. He brilliantly wove events of history to highlight his point about the constant fight of the peasantry to assert influence on the monarchies and governments and to cut their heads off if necessary. Samia Nkrumah daughter of the Late President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and a newly elected member to Ghana’s parliament, spoke about the work of her father and gave some insight to the kinds of things needed to recapture the fervor and direction of an earlier Africa: the time of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah. It was Dr. Utsa Patnaik, author of “The Republic of Hunger

The University of Toronto’s William Doo Auditorium had the honor of hosting the largest audience for a single viewing of the film, “W.A.R. Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney”. Hostess and Chair of the Department of Caribbean Studies, Prof. D.Alyssa Trotz remarked that she had never seen such a diverse crowd for anything at the location. In truth, they were young, not so young, of African descent, of Indian descent, Africans, Euros and others not so clear and from all over the world. It really was a tribute to Walter Rodney and, of course, the organizational skills of the Caribbean Studies Department. Over 250 people sat through the film, cheering at the appearance of Dr. Rex Nettleford, in the film of course, and laughing at Denys Vaughn Cooke’s ginep tree story. I believe I saw a few tears too. Oh ..and the panel was superb: Drs. Honor Ford-Smith, Pablo Idalhoso, David Hinds and Nigel Westmaas. Prodded by a knowledgeable and determined audience, the youth central among them, the pa