“After much thought, I have decided to continue publishing and editoring the AMANDALA newspaper as long as I can. AMANDALA will move in the direction of being a community newspaper rather than a political organ. How long we will survive is, of course, up to you, the people. I also want to do some writing otherwise. By and large, the years have been good ones. I will not answer the post-election rumours and accusations. Only time will be the judge, and you will know this was a brother that was sincere to you, the people.”

— from AMANDALA no. 251, Friday, November 8, 1974. (Reproduced on pg. 55 of FEELINGS, 1975)

As a young man, I considered myself a revolutionary personality, in the sense that I was challenging the most powerful institutions in this country. I knew there were certain leadership roles I could never play, because I suffered from a terrible airplane phobia, and it was clear to me that one could never be any really relevant leader of people unless one was prepared to fly to different parts of the region and the world.

As fate would have it, leadership of the United Black Association for Development (UBAD) was thrust upon me when the first leader of the organization, one Lionel Clarke, gave up the position after just a few weeks and went to New York City, where he has apparently resided ever since. I have never seen him or heard of him again from that time, early 1969. (UBAD was founded on February 9, 1969, split at the top in early 1973, and was formally dissolved in early November of 1974.)

After UBAD was dissolved, I apparently became attractive as a potential ally to the ruling People’s United Party, which had come under serious pressure in the October 1974 general election and the December 1974 Belize City Council election from the relatively new United Democratic Party (UDP), which had been formed in early 1973 out of a coalition among the People’s Development Movement (PDM), the National Independence Party (NIP), and a so-called, and leaderless, Liberal Party.

The reason I became attractive as a potential ally to the PUP, with whom I had been fighting from the time they charged me and the late Ismail Shabazz with seditious conspiracy in February of 1970, was because the 1974 general election suggested, based on my performance as the sole UBAD candidate, in the hotly contested Collet constituency, that there was a bloc of voters (about 4 per cent), whose loyalty was to those concepts for which UBAD and I had stood. (Before 1978, you had to be 21 years old in order to vote in Belize.)

After three or four private meetings between myself and PUP Deputy Premier, Hon. C. L. B. Rogers, I basically became a PUP ally. I ran the streets of Belize City with Hon. Rogers’ no. 1 general, the late Ray Lightburn, and I regularly ate at Ray’s mom’s home, his mom being the late, legendary Lucille Eusey.

In mid-1977, the PUP decided, with Senator Said Musa being the most prominent investor, to become business partners with AMANDALA. The PUP investment enabled AMANDALA to acquire the offset printing technology which would enable us to compete with THE REPORTER, whose owner, Harry Lawrence, had been a founding member of the Liberal Party and was a leader of the UDP.

The PUP leadership then brought pressure on me to become a candidate for their slate in the upcoming Belize City Council election, scheduled for December of 1977. Remember, in December of 1974, the PUP had lost the City Council for the first time ever, to the UDP. This was a UDP victory which could be considered almost sensational.

I had a couple good friends in the PUP slate who urged me to accept a candidacy, even though I had publicly resigned from electoral politics in 1974. Against my better judgment, I finally relented and ran as a candidate for the PUP’s so-called “Dynamic Nine.” I was humiliated in that election. The UDP won all nine CitCo seats, and I ran last out of all the candidates.

So then, that is when I decided that the way I would contribute to my city and country was by job creation, with the newspaper being our only business at the time. We’re talking about more than forty years ago. Incidentally, children were allowed to sell newspapers in those days when AMANDALA became Belize’s leading newspaper in 1981.

The collating section of our newspaper then produced the core of the championship Kremandala Raiders basketball team, and it was that basketball team, I think, which enabled our second major business, KREM Radio, to survive some rough times after we began broadcasting in 1989. (In memory of James Wilfred Gordon. Peace and love.)

And so, all the preceding has been by way of introducing you to the fact that Kremandala suffered a tragedy this week when one of the newspaper collators who has been with us for almost three decades, Evan “Porque” Mitchell, was stabbed to death in Lord’s Bank on Friday evening.

At the time, the chief of our collating section, Charles “Bigga” Myles, who has been with us from the middle 1980s, had himself been temporarily hospitalized at KHMH. When Porque was brought into KHMH emergency, Bigga was informed of the tragedy, and made contact with my second daughter, Jacinta, who runs the newspaper these days.

Jacinta called me on Friday night. I was at home recovering from hernia surgery which had been performed on Tuesday at Belize Health Care Partners.

There are Belizeans out there who have built Kremandala over the decades and to whom we must feel personal gratitude. Perhaps all you may have heard about is yours truly, but ours is not a one-man show. It never was.

Power to the people.