Viola Desmond ( 1914 – 1965)

In mid-20th century Canada, Viola Desmond brought nationwide attention to the African Nova Scotian community’s struggle for equal rights. An African-Canadian businesswoman, she confronted the racism that Black Nova Scotians routinely faced by refusing to sit in a segregated space in a public theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia in 1946. After her arrest and conviction on spurious charges that concealed racial discrimination behind the arrest, Desmond fought the charges with the help of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP). Now a symbol of the struggle for equal rights, Viola Desmond’s defiance in the face of injustice became a rallying cry for Black Nova Scotians and Canadians determined to end racial discrimination.
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Africa Unity Day – 58 years later

Credit: consumare.org

In this day in 1963, African leaders from 32 independent countries established an intergovernmental organization called the Organization of African Nations in Addis-Abeba, Ethiopia.

Some of the key aims of the OAU were to encourage political and  economic integration among member states, and to eradicate colonialism and neo-colonialism from the African continent.
58 years later in 2021, the continent is far to have achieved this goal: No Unity, no real Independence.
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Nina Simone

“Nina Simone, you are idolized, even loved, by millions now. But what happened, Miss Simone? Maya Angelou

She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works. She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. Read More “Nina Simone”

21 march 1960 -Remember Sharpeville and take actions

Sharpeville massacre, (March 21, 1960), incident in the black township of Sharpeville, near VereenigingSouth Africa, in which police fired on a crowd of blacks, killing or wounding some 250 of them. It was one of the first and most violent demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa.The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), a splinter group of the African National Congress (ANC) created in 1959, organized a countrywide demonstration for March 21, 1960, for the abolition of South Africa’s pass laws. Participants were instructed to surrender their reference books (passes) and invite arrest. Some 20,000 blacks gathered near a police station at Sharpeville, located about 30 miles (50 km) south of Johannesburg. After some demonstrators, according to police, began stoning police officers and their armoured cars, the officers opened fire on them with submachine guns. About 69 blacks were killed and more than 180 wounded, some 50 women and children being among the victims. A state of emergency was declared in South Africa, more than 11,000 people were detained, and the PAC and ANC were outlawed. Reports of the incident helped focus international criticism on South Africa’s apartheid policy. Following the dismantling of apartheid, South African President Nelson Mandela chose Sharpeville as the site at which, on December 10, 1996, he signed into law the country’s new constitution.
The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is observed annually on 21 March.
In 1979, the General Assembly adopted a Programme of activities to be undertaken during the second half of the Decade for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (A/RES/34/24). On that occasion, the General Assembly decided that a week of solidarity with the peoples struggling against racism and racial discrimination, beginning on 21 March, would be organized annually in all States. Read More “21 march 1960 -Remember Sharpeville and take actions”

Independence Day – Togo

In this day 1960, Togo the former German colony that gained independence from France.
It’s been 60 years since Togo gained its independence from France.
The country, which was severely hit by the slave trade in the 16th century, was once a protectorate of Germany until the Germans were defeated by the French and British military forces after World War I in 1914.
In 1922, the western part of the country was handed to Britain while France was given the eastern area by a mandate from the League of Nations.
The country was primarily divided into the British administrative region and the French administrative region.
Togo at the time had a major problem. Its major tribe, the Ewes were divided by the boundaries of British and French Togoland.

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Before 1918

Then emerged Sylvanus Olympio, a Lome citizen whose main concern was to unite the Ewe people.
The resident of the French area of the country was the leader of the Committee of Togolese Unity after World War II and was elected president of the first territorial assembly in 1946.
A year after, Olympio, who had Togolese and British education, began having issues with the Togoland’s French colonial administration.
With this and his wish to unite Ewes, Olympio joined the Comité de l’Unité (CUT), an association dedicated to Ewe reunification. The association also opposed closer links between Togo and the French Empire.
As president of the Togo Assembly after 1946, and later a deputy to the French Assembly, he appeared a number of times before the United Nations, stressing the need for Ewe unification.
However, his wish to unite the Ewes did not materialize when in 1956, the British Togoland voted by plebiscite to join the Gold Coast which later became independent Ghana.
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In 1956 French Togo received limited autonomy. It subsequently held elections which were won by the Parti Togolaise du Progrès, and Olympio’s rival, Nicholas Grunitzky became prime minister.
But Olympio and the CUT protested the election to the United Nations till another election, this time supervised by the UN, was organized in 1958.
Olympio and his CUT won that election and he became prime minister.
Togo was granted independence on April 27, 1960. A year later, it became a republic with Olympio as its president.
Due to dissatisfaction with some of his policies and pro-French attitude, Olympio was assassinated in a coup on January 13, 1963.
Sources: face2faceafrica.com
 

How Togo came to have its name

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One of the more fascinating ways to look at the small country of Togo is that if Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah had his way, Togo would have been part of the territory formerly known as the Gold Coast.
As Face2FaceAfrica once explained, Nkrumah had always wanted more of Togo, perhaps all of it, to be part of Ghana. This was in line with his dreams of a united Africa.

Indeed, part of what became Ghana was won over through a referendum in 1956 when the people of Western Togoland voted to be part of the British colony. Togoland was the French colony next door to the Gold Coast.
But Sylvanus Epiphanio Olympio, Togo’s first president, was an Ewe nationalist. He believed the Ewe ethnic group needed their own nation and thus, never quite overcame the pain of seeing Western Togoland join Ghana.
The Ewe nation is also a fundamentally important factor in the conception of modern Togo.
Archaeological evidence suggests that what counts as primary Ewe identity, that is language and a few other customs, was solidified prior to the 13th century.
The Ewe language itself descended from the Gbe group of languages which also includes the Fon and Aja. This family of languages is spoken largely in west African countries.
17th-century Eweland spread from modern Ghana right up to Benin. Consequently,
Ghana, Togo and Benin are the three countries on the continent that house today’s Ewe people.
European slave trade ambitions in Africa put the Ewe people in the region callously named the Slave Coast. This stretch from the Volta river in the west to bight of the Benin river.
The territory that is today Togo is thought to have been conceptualized, or better still, named around the 15th century. Togo, in the most popular Ewe dialect, comes from to (toh) meaning “river” and godo (gohdoh) which means “on the other side”.
The country thus etymologically translates as “on the other side of the river”. The said river is thought to be Lake Togo, historically a premium water source for the ancients.
Although the country is literally named by the Ewe, Togo does not even have the

biggest population of that ethnic group. That honor falls to Ghana where the Ewe are in the country’s eastern region bordering with Togo.
Olympio’s dream of an Ewe nation may never be realized. But others like Togo’s first president may take pride in the fact that most Ewe have regarded the country as some sort of “spiritual home” since independence in 1960.

 

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TOGO TODAY

Sources: face2faceafrica.com

Slavery memorial – Lisbon 2020

In 2020 a Memorial will be erected in Lisbon in honor of the victims of the slave trade, an initiative of
Djass – Association of Afro-descendants that was one of the winning projects of the 2017/2018 edition of the Participative Budget of Lisbon.

The Memorial will be chosen by voting in public sessions and will take place in December and January in various locations in the Lisbon region.
There are three voting proposals designed by three great contemporary artists:
– Grada Kilomba
– Jaime Lauriano
– Kiluanji Kia Henda.
Check out the project proposed by Grada Kilomba 
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“The Boat” stretches across the memorial platform, like a garden, forming a simple composition of benches that closely mimics a “ship with enslaved people.”
A boat in the “Portuguese” imagination is easily associated with maritime glory and expansion; a narrative that romanticizes the colonial historical past and erases one of the longest and most horrendous chapters of humanity – Slavery.
The dark gray concrete benches contrast with the platform floor, accentuating in the distance the boat’s silhouette, as well as its contents, the bodies. The distance between the concrete benches creates “entrances” and endless paths, almost a maze, inviting the public not only to contemplate “the boat” from the outside, but also to enter it and walk inside it – as if it were a garden of contemplation and memory. The rectangular and uniform shape of the benches reveals them, not only as seats, in which the public is invited to sit to look, think, contemplate, pray, worship and respect; but it also reveals them as an allusion to metaphorical tombs, which give “habitat” to a story of dehumanization, and give a place of rest and recognition to thousands of enslaved people.
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To distinguish the simple benches from metaphorical tombs, the latter will be covered with poems written on its surface, such as: “There is nothing sweeter than a deep truth.” The poems interact directly with the public, who reads them and bows before them. This choreography of contemplation is proper to a memorial, as a space of rituals and ceremonies to a history that has to be remembered and that cannot be forgotten. A story that has to be told and buried with dignity, for only in this way can memory be produced.

Slavery memorial – Lisbon 2020

In 2020 a Memorial will be erected in Lisbon in honor of the victims of the slave trade, an initiative of
Djass – Association of Afro-descendants that was one of the winning projects of the 2017/2018 edition of the Participative Budget of Lisbon.

The Memorial will be chosen by voting in public sessions and will take place in December and January in various locations in the Lisbon region.
There are three voting proposals designed by three great contemporary artists:
– Grada Kilomba
– Jaime Lauriano
– Kiluanji Kia Henda.
Check out the project proposed by Jaime Lauriano 
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Designed as a space to represent Slavery in a broad way, this project to build the Memorial to Tribute to Slave People aims to establish a link between past and present, inviting the public to reflect on colonial violence and its continuity in the current days. Designed as a piece of significant urban presence, the Memorial will at the same time be a place of reverence and mourning; a meeting arena; a spiritual and ritual space.


The memorial design is based on two forms: the triangle and the circle. Taken from iconographic research on religious symbols and struggle, the forms aim to celebrate the history of resistance of the enslaved people and to inspire the new struggles of communities of African descent around the world. Another important element of the Memorial is the speech, which will be translated by writing words – on the inner walls of the Memorial – gathered in rounds of conversation with African descent communities in Portugal.

Therefore, this project stands beside other initiatives that are rethinking the colonial past not only in the light of violence. For if in the tombs people were transported to work in enslavement, they were also transported philosophies, religions and experiences that were not restricted to the borders delineated by the European colonizers. News from Haiti has reached the Americas and examples of rebels have generated uprisings in several countries. In the 21st century, the anti-racist struggles and movements are still connected, with the Memorial could not be different.