Juneteenth is now a federal holiday in the US, marking the day in 1865 when Black people in the southern state of Texas were belatedly told by victorious Union troops that slavery had been abolished two years before.
Even before it was formalised as a state holiday in 1980 and subsequently in a number of other states, people in the US and beyond had been organising their own observances of the day, marking not only the emancipation of African Americans but also celebrating their culture and achievements.
So, it is not surprising its adoption as a national holiday has been greeted with much praise.
In fact, coming just six months after the white supremacist administration of Donald Trump was booted out of the office and his Republican Party enablers lost control of the Senate, the holiday’s establishment must have seemed particularly apt. However, not all were enthused.
Prof Crystal Fleming, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Stony Brook University, tweeted: “I still don’t understand what it means to “celebrate” the day Black Texans belatedly gained their freedom and commenced their status as second class citizens subject to systematic oppression, exploitation, segregation and arbitrary murder in a white supremacist nation”.
It is somewhat reminiscent of what happens in Africa, where many annually and to great fanfare celebrate “independence” when they were supposedly saved from brutal white colonial robbers and oppressors and delivered into the arms of equally rapacious and oppressive black liberators.
Kenya actually has two – one, on the first of June or Madaraka Day, to mark the establishment of something called “internal self-government”, and a second, Jamhuri Day, six months later, to mark formal independence.
On December 12, 1963, came “Independence”, which according to the British meant the conversion of Kenya from a Crown Colony into a Dominion.
Elizabeth II remained Queen of Kenya, and her hand-picked British representative was governor, holding all executive power.
Kenyans were given a flag and an anthem to play with but their elected Prime Minister, Jomo Kenyatta, was little more than an adviser to the governor.
After all the celebrating, independence looked very much like what had come before. However, there was a crucial difference.
The Kenyan elite could change the constitution, a task they set about with great gusto.
Exactly a year later, on December 12, 1964, Kenya became a republic (or Jamhuri in Kiswahili) and Kenyatta became President. So the “independence” Kenyans mark every December, is not the charade of 1963, but rather the charade of 1964.
Because the elite did not stop there. In an effort to protect the interests of the whites who remained in Kenya on stolen lands, the British had influenced the adoption of a liberal, decentralised constitution with strong protections for individual rights.
Within a few years, that document had been completely mangled by Kenyatta and his cronies, recreating the colonial system but with them at the top. It wasn’t too difficult given that many of them had actually been part of the colonial apparatus.
So effective were they that in February 1966, just over a year after Jamhuri, one parliamentarian could declare: "Today we have a black man's government, and the black man's government administers exactly the same regulations, rigorously, as the colonial administration used to do."
That is what “independence” would look like for Kenyans for much of the next half-century.
We like to think of particular dates as worthy of observation, as marking the end of one historical epoch and the beginning of another.
However, what is sometimes missed is that, as experienced in the lives of ordinary people, often the dates were more remarkable for continuity than change. In such cases, observations should serve as a reminder of this.
Kenyans may celebrate independence, but perhaps a better meaning for the holiday is as a reminder that the fight for freedom from the colonial system continues to this day.
Similarly, Juneteenth should be a reminder less of the emancipation of slaves and more of the fact that generations later, emancipation has yet to deliver dignity, freedom and equality for many.
