by Colin Hyde
I know I’m not a Marcus Mosiah Garvey expert, that there are gaps in my knowledge. But when it comes to dirt on him I believe I’ve read all they have to throw, so I have no fear there’s anything out there about him that might raise my eyebrows. You can trust that I won’t fall for revelations from agenda-driven sources that cherry-pick the facts. You know how these historians for their cause are about unearthing things to forward their agendas. Uy, somebody reminded Oprah Winfrey about her mortality, and she came out to say that she and a close female friend are not lovers. Ooh, the gay agenda was so close to claiming her. But jos wait until she dead.
We understand why Black American intellectuals shun our hero. We in the Caribbean have to know who we are. Always remember to separate the good from the baggage. There is nothing they can say about Marcus that can trump what he brought to uplift the Black nation on the west side of the Atlantic.
Speaking about Marcus in 2004 to Dr. Iyo (PhD), an interview published in the book UBAD Conversations, Assad said: “the UNIA [that’s the organization Marcus founded in 1914] developed in Belize as a sort of pro-colonial movement…With all due respect to Marcus Garvey, in a sense, when he came here, he gave some credibility to royalty! You know what I’m saying. The way he dressed, the way he consorted with the Governor, and so on. I mean, the movement was always a little dubious in Belize. I believe this to be true…eventually, the UNIA became more allied to the British than to the people’s power.”
Some years ago, a Mestizo brother who was a very close friend of mine told me that he found a popular t-shirt with the line, “it’s a black thang, you wouldn’t understand”, quite offensive. The sense I got from him was that he felt it insulted his intelligence. Personally, I didn’t like the line either. I thought it was crude. But it was the truth. I hope age has made my brother realize that there was nothing false about that line. He didn’t and couldn’t understand. We are limited in the way we understand each other. With people covered with a black skin it’s a whole ‘nother esteh.
Flat out I am not questioning Assad’s heart. He asked questions, and I sense that he thought he had answers. All due respect to him, he didn’t then, and I doubt now, understand the complexities of Black people. Neither the Palestinians nor the Jews, tribes that have known suffering, can grasp the added burden of being black. In Belize, Assad is white. Everywhere on this planet there is a huge advantage in being white.
When we have time there are things about Marcus we can try to understand. Always keep in mind that we are talking about the world over 100 years ago. Why he dressed the way he did, and why he “consorted with the Governor”, are really not consequential. The legacy of the Black Cross nurses is. Hey, it’s just the beginning of Marcus’s month.
The president who didn’t visit
In 2022, after a Belize delegation had been to Rwanda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Kigali, Rwanda, and were impressed with what they saw there, the Belize Press Office announced that Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, had been invited to Belize, that he would become the first African head of state to come here, and that he would be here in September that year. The visit did not take place. After further thought our leaders might have decided that the visit would be controversial, or maybe President Kagame might have had some worry about his security.
Understandably, there are Rwandans who have problems with his regime; I said regime, yes. It is so that no one on this planet gets 100% approval. According to the ballots in Rwandan elections, Kagame, who has been the democratically elected “dictator” of Rwanda since 2000, wins elections with over 90%, not 100% of the votes.
Kagame has his detractors. This week ESPN published a story by Mark Fainaru-Wada titled, “How the NBA got into business with an African dictator”, and well, in this month when we prepare to celebrate Marcus Garvey’s birthday, I am spurred to comment about this brother, again. Okay. Kagame loves football and basketball, and the NBA has made considerable investments in Rwanda and has its eyes on making basketball in Africa as popular as it is in China. The story, as the title indicates, isn’t exactly favorable to the business relationship.
There is no title that is uglier than “dictator” to people who live in a democracy. But, if we heed the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, we might accept that Rwanda noh ready fu people power, not yet. Understandably, there will be dissent in Rwanda. Outside of Rwanda it is easier for us to have a better understanding.
In 1994 an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, more than 10% of their population, were slaughtered in about a hundred days. It was genocide, a ruthless story of ethnic cleansing. The vast majority of those killed belonged to Paul Kagame’s ethnic group, the Tutsis. One source estimates that the Tutsi population was reduced by 75% in the slaughter.
How does a country recover from that? Belize rushes to the lifeline SOE because of 100 plus murders a year. Rwanda experienced 800,000 murders in a hundred days! That’s the equivalent of 40,000 Belizeans dead! How does a country recover from that? You bet that there’ll be human rights violations in such a country. Opposition leaders have said that some of their ranks have been “disappeared.” The Rwandan government says such stories are not true. I say we can’t play judge here. There is no way under the sun, 30 years after the 1994 atrocity, that Rwanda can be an open democracy.
Maartje Weerdesteijn, Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in a 2023 piece in The Conversation titled, “Rwanda: Paul Kagame is a dictator who clings to power but it’s not just for his own gain”, found a little soft spot in the harsh world of a dictator. Maartje, whose publisher went to great lengths to establish that s/he wasn’t invested in either side in Rwanda, said the 65-year-old Kagame said at a 2023 press conference that “he was looking forward to his retirement after 23 years in power…but the chances that Kagame will actually step down seem rather small.”
Maartje said her/his “research suggests Kagame is not only acting out of self-interest.” More Maartje: “For the past decade, I have studied dictators – broadly defined as leaders who cannot be removed through elections, or where political opposition doesn’t operate on a level playing field. I have tried to nuance the assumption that all dictators are power hungry. Some dictators are. But often their motives to rule their countries are more complex. In my view, this is the case with Kagame. While staying in power is necessary to attaining his vision for Rwanda, it isn’t a goal in itself.
“Kagame’s end goal seems to be a safe and prosperous Rwanda, but not one that’s meant to benefit all Rwandans equally. Although it’s prohibited by law to differentiate among Hutu and Tutsi, ethnic differences still matter in Rwanda – favouring Tutsi refugees who were driven out of their country in pre-1994 episodes of genocidal violence…in my view, Kagame’s goal is to create a home for the Tutsi population that was chased out of Rwanda before the 1994 genocide.”
Maartje noted that not only Tutsis were slaughtered in the 1994 genocide, that Kagame’s rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, helped spark the civil war, that while he was more open than others to peace talks to end the war, he “didn’t shy away from perpetrating mass atrocities to attain this end,” that Kagame is a man who believes the ends justify the means, and that his “allegiance lies with his fellow Tutsi.”
It’s a particularly tough country, a tough situation. Maybe our government cannot be blamed for ducking out, which is the most likely reason for the canceled visit. I naturally believe that Paul Kagame would not have passed up a chance to be in the Jewel. The fact is he is a dictator, in a country that most likely would descend into anarchy without one.