February 9 will mark 42 years since the founding of UBAD, the organization which laid the foundation for Amandala, the newspaper which became Belize’s leading publication in 1981. We have said that UBAD laid the foundation for Amandala, because the fledgling newspaper could not have survived without the street strength of UBAD.
Just six months after the newspaper was established, the two UBAD officers responsible for the newspaper, Evan X Hyde and Ismail Omar Shabazz, were arrested and charged for seditious conspiracy because of an Amandala article. The law under which they were charged was a repressive colonial law, but the ruling and supposedly anti-colonial People’s United Party (PUP) had no qualms about using the same law which had imprisoned their leaders in 1951, to try to imprison the UBAD leaders in 1970. Amandala was only a four-page, mimeographed newsletter in 1970, so the sedition trial in July of that year may appear a case of overkill to historians.
The reality was that between June and September of 1969, UBAD had attracted the largest public meeting crowds seen in the old capital for some time. Beginning in October of 1969, an ill-fated coalition between UBAD and the People’s Action Committee (PAC) had seen UBAD’s popularity diminish. In January of 1970, however, UBAD ended the coalition. The seditious conspiracy arrests took place just weeks later. In the months leading up to the trial, UBAD’s popularity returned, and then some.
The street strength of UBAD no doubt contributed to the acquittals of X Hyde and Shabazz. Against the advice of Shabazz, X Hyde took a decision to take UBAD political in the aftermath of the trial. As a political party, UBAD reached the zenith of its street strength from May to October of 1972, but internal contradictions and petty personality disputes saw the organization divide, fatally so, over the issue of whether to join the new Unity Congress in early 1973. (The Unity Congress became the United Democratic Party [UDP] in September 1973.)
When UBAD collapsed in November of 1974, Evan X Hyde, as president, gained control of the organization’s assets, which were the land on Partridge Street and a 20’ x 30’ building, which has since been demolished. Using those assets and his personal investment in a Chandler and Price letterpress, Hyde began to build Amandala. By 1981, to repeat, Amandala became the leading newspaper here, and it has so remained.
The former UBAD land, with the support of the newspaper, became the home of Belize’s first private, commercial radio station in 1989. KREM Radio was subsidized by this newspaper from 1989 to 1998.
The KREM Television experiment, which began in 2003, has been subsidized by the newspaper and the radio station. As with the latter two, KREM Television began life in a severely undercapitalized condition, and the business experts will tell you that this is the worst way to begin a business. What it means is that any money you make, has to go back into urgent and mandatory technology upgrade.
The secret to survival in such an undesirable situation has been the recurrent support from the masses of the Belizean people, who have recognized the Kremandala system as one which is indigenous, authentic and nationalistic. The road of self-financing in an oppressed society is a difficult one, but there is a positive side. The positive side is that your overall structure, no matter how small, is strong, because its foundation and its internals are genuine and solid.
It has now become clear that the globalist financial mogul of British origin, Lord Michael Ashcroft, who has claimed that he loves Belize and Belizeans, represents the direct historical antithesis to Kremandala. A burden of philosophical proof lies on those Belizeans who aspire to leadership of the Belizean people, but insist on swimming in Lord Ashcroft’s money. Where is the proof that the Lord of Chichester loves Belize? If he is always throwing a little here and grabbing a lot there, who is benefiting? Belize or Lord Michael?
The people of Belize are not formally educated in the main, but our people have become politically sophisticated. This does not mean that Belizeans are liberated, because Belize’s two-party system of parliamentary democracy has proven to be a farce on the ground. As it operates in Belize, our system of government makes virtual dictators of our Prime Ministers.
There is little Belize can do about what has been, effectively since 1961, one-man rule, but there is something that we can and will do about Lord Ashcroft. As it is, it appears that the Lord owns most of one of the two major political parties, and much of the other. What he does not own, is Kremandala. We would close with the words of Belizean Rudolph Farrahkan, in paraphrase: Those who come to destroy the House of Kremandala, themselves shall be destroyed.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.