May-June 2017

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Dear readers,

 

The other day one of my friends was sharing with me (as she was told by a neighbour who saw the happening) the stabbing of a black man in the local barber shop. He had stopped his car, left a black woman in the car, entered the premises and went straight to a man who was waiting for his turn, thumping him more than once. It so happened that the stunned now enraged man had a knife on him and used it liberally on his attacker. Despite his serious injuries, he jumped back into his car driven by the woman. Rapper Skeng, real name Crispin Siddon, was pronounced dead by the emergencies services who found him near the hospital he was trying to reach. I do walk by the shop when I go through the area. The local newspaper reads “Hundreds pay tribute to rapper Skeng”. Is it reasonable to ponder whether he could not have spoken to the customer like a civilised person he who was a public figure? It took for the drama to unfold a few insignificant minutes. How many insignificant moments have changed our lives, for good or bad? Can we simply get up out of bed and just do as we please with other people’s lives? Has life become so cheap in our community?

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Then I remembered if God requires every beast that kills a man, its very life – the origin of the law on animal euthanasia for those dogs who aggressed and caused grievous bodily harm followed by death or not – how much more a man who kills another man? Genesis 5 verse 9.

 

Black British teenagers preparing to enter university next year will find themselves, and their parents, wondering which university to choose with the obvious locations remaining in the UK. Little do we know that our diaspora is not short of first-rate institutions of higher education.

 

When seeking those universities that beat the competition, bets can be taken that few parents and undergraduates from our community would ever consider African universities because they fall off the radar or they feel lesser of them. But not so for the expert online Times Higher Education who, as every year, has done all the ground work to make available the wide-ranging list of Best universities in Africa 2017 on a par with many international prestigious universities. I will drop in the basket another contender, the website NICHE’s 2017 Best HBCU Schools in America ranking 25 Historically Black Colleges and Universities. With the addition of the top 180 Caribbean universities, spread across the Spanish and English-speaking islands, submitted by Ranking Web of Universities, my job is done.

 

Let our money support our own education establishments without which they cannot survive and remain independent. It’s our duty from which we would derive pride and so would our children.

 

We have had to deplore the death of two giants in the fight for the end of discrimination, death of British civil right campaigner Darcus Howe on 1st April and anti-apartheid activist of Indian heritage Ahmed Kathrada died aged 87 on 28th March. He had been a faithful friend and right arm to Nelson Mandela with whom he was jailed in 1964 on Robben island. UK gospel pioneer and legend Lavine Hudson's death on 6th April did not make the media’s attention even though in the late ‘80s she had been the rising star of wriggling British Caribbean gospel. She had been one of the leading singer on TV Gospel Music show ‘People Get Ready’.

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Our people are becoming increasingly mobile, setting up businesses and homes in the most eastern part of the globe in Japan, China, India and Korea where two twenty-something black women, singers from Los Angeles, have the design to break into the Korean music scene. Unsurprisingly, not to the taste of the Korean who accused the duo of cultural appropriation when they sang their single in Korean.

 

Ahead of the International Film Festival sets to start in May, the 14th International Pan-African Film Festival 2017 kicking off April 5, in Cannes on the French Riviera, the focus of which “USA: Yesterday and Tomorrow” will be on African American independent cinema.

 

It’s never too late and too little too late could be attributed to the French government for the naturalisation of 27 Senegalese tirailleurs (English: skirmishers), soldiers in the French army of the First World War residing in France, the youngest being 79 years old while the oldest is 91. The ceremony took place at the Élysée Palace in mid-April.

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In the long list of oppression of Black people in a majorly white population, on May 16, Afro-Colombians from Buenaventura in southern Colombia started protesting against the national government over security problems linked principally to the drug trade and overwhelming and structural infrastructure problems in spite of support from Human Rights Defenders, Journalists, and Trade Unionists.

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Christina Louis-Huet's new article A fresh and vibrant, glowing looking skin - Part 1 highlights the benefits of a varied and nutritious diet whilst she uncovers the noxious effects of a sweet drug called 'sugar' responsible for skin premature aging. You will be reminded how your ACE vitamins are best to fight your AGEs.

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Until next time,

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Michelle Rondof

Founder and Director

info@theadid.com

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