What I saw during the time I was employed at the Pass Office – I mean the ill- treatment of Africans – affected my heart and stirred my soul ... I would be of some service to my down-trodden people.

Richard Victor Selope Thema was voorsitter van die komitee wat ’n nuwe grondwet vir die South African Native National Congress opgestel het, die eerste redakteur van The Bantu World (nou The Sowetan) en lid van die Native Representative Council (NRC). Thema was in 1919 ook een van die eerste swart mans wat Engeland besoek het om voorspraak te maak vir swart Suid-Afrikaners.

Die boek, in Thema se eie woorde, beskryf sy vroeë lewe en volg sy denke en skryfwerk van radikaal na pasifis – Thema het geglo dat amper enigiets met onderhandeling en gesprek opgelos kan word en nie almal in die ANC het met hom saamgestem nie. Hy is ’n intellektuele voorvader van beide die ANC-jeugliga en die Pan-Afrikane van die 1950’s, en een van die vergete leiers van die ANC.

This work is a collection of selected papers presented at the conference "Trajectories of Freedom: Caribbean Societies, 1807-2007", a theme inspired by the two-hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the British Empire. The papers interrogate and problematise shifting notions and expressions of "freedom" as they have evolved in Caribbean societies over the past two hundred years and as they have been applied in the context of the contemporary Caribbean. Together, these essays illustrate the historical and continuing efforts in the various spheres of human endeavour in the Caribbean, including culture, education, language, social organisation, gender and politics - notwithstanding the constraints placed on Caribbean people by the legacies of slavery and colonialism - to finish the business of emancipation. Contributors: Agnel Barron, April Bernard, Bridget Brereton, Alan Cobley, Sandra Gift, Ena Harris, Oba Kenyatta Omowale Kiteme, Hilde Neus van der Putten, Edith Perez Sisto, Agostinho M.N. Pinnock, Kelvin Quintyne, Kirwin R. Shaffer, Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Victor C. Simpson, Jerome Teelucksingh.