HARTLEY NEITAHARTLEY NEITA
THERE IS an impression that the fight against apartheid, and for black majority rule in South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, was carried solely by our political leaders. They were the Field Marshals, but there were also the foot soldiers, and there were many Jamaicans who marched in that army.
I have already named some of the sportsmen, boxers such as Lloyd Honeyghan who gave up his world crown to avoid meeting a South African in a title fight. There were also netball's Leila Robinson, lawn tennis' Leslie Ashenheim, and sports writer Alva Ramsey, I have also mentioned the caustic comments made by Rev. Marcus James, a former Kingston College student, whose rise in the Anglican hierarchy is felt to have been affected by his criticisms of South Africa's apartheid leaders.
Because of South Africa's participation in the World Paraplegic Games in Toronto, Canada in 1976, Jamaica's paraplegic team was withdrawn from those games. Our Olympic teams almost did not make it to Los Angeles and to Munich, and we almost did not go to the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. Some felt these actions were political, but they were publicly silent in these views.
PROTEST MARCH
University of the West Indies students are now remembered for their protest march through Kingston when lecturer Walter Rodney was banned from re-entering Jamaica. Not as remembered is that UWI students led by the Guild's 1st Vice President, Anthony Abrahams, now a radio talk-show host, and Secretary Angela King, now a Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, and supported by thousands of citizens, staged a massive march through downtown Kingston, blocking traffic in the centre of the city to protest against South Africa's racist policy and the murder of 80 black South Africans by the security forces. They even dramatised the event with a hearse filled with wreaths which preceded the marchers as a sign of mourning.
Anthony Abrahams carried his militancy to England where although he was the beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship founded by the Cecil Rhodes who created the Rhodesias in Africa, organised a demonstration against the visit of South African Ambassador Dr. Carol Wet to Oxford. As a result he and four other Oxford University students were suspended from the university and also ordered to leave the city of Oxford. Such is the story of this young subversive!!!
Then there was Jamaican author Andrew Salkey who lived and wrote most of, if not all, his novels in England. He was one of the leaders of a demonstration which picketed the Waldorf Hotel in London with placards protesting against the arrival of the South African team in 1965. Salkey carried a banner which read: "Are you going to see 'whites only' cricket?"
MUSICIANS
Then there were the musicians like Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and poets like Lorna Goodison, and writers of letters to our newspapers who cried for South Africans in their pain and suffering.
We poured out our love for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he came here to receive the key to the city of Kingston and to address the students of the University of the West Indies. And we mourned when he was assassinated.
And it was glory when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa, and if we had not been careful every street and park and public building would have been re-named in his honour.
Yes, our political leaders were in the forefront of the fight to dismantle apartheid, but let us remember and pay tribute to those who marched left foot, right foot, with them.
