Congrats to Bro Kambon

THE EDITOR: I join with those who have congratulated Brother Khafra Kambon for the accolade of an honorary doctorate to be granted him by the University of Trinidad and Tobago.

I also wish to congratulate the University for its vision in doing that which is often forgotten in TT, honouring persons of worth while they are yet alive.

The late Chief Servant Makandal Daaga would have been overjoyed with Kambon's honorary doctorate. More so that it is coming on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Revolution.

I am happy for my mother as well. My bond with Kambon goes back to a day at Tunapuna EC School when my mother, the late Mrs Sylvia Murray, called out to him from the playing field and said that she wanted both of us to be friends. And so it has been.

We and a number of others who attended Trinity College, then at Melbourne Street, now at Moka, were among the founders of the National Joint Action Committee, which was birthed 50 years ago on February 26, 1969. Exactly one year later NJAC led the first demonstrations that became the 1970 Black Power revolution.

In those days Kambon was deputy leader to the Chief Servant Makandal Daaga. Though there was a separation in the 80s, the solidarity between us was such that we, all of us, never ceased to have a genuinely fraternal relationship. We have shared a passion for the development of a new and just TT society with particular emphasis on the progress of the African community.

Ironically Kambon will be given his doctorate on the same date the University of the West Indies and the Caricom Reparations Commission will host the first part of a two-day symposium commemorating the 75th anniversary of the publication Dr Eric Williams' seminal book Capitalism and Slavery.

It was the same Eric Williams who jailed Kambon and the rest of us in 1970 for pointing out the contradictions that remained in "independent” TT as we sought establish the new and just society.

Aiyegoro Ome

Mt Lambert