Legacy of the Holy Thursday Coral Gardens Uprising
THE EDITOR, MADAM:
AS WE commemorate the Coral Gardens Uprising of 1963, let us never forget that Rastafarian farmer Benjamin ‘ Rudolph’ Franklyn was shot and killed by the police on that mournful Holy Thursday on April 11 over the unsettled issue of land tenure on the Rose Hall property in St James.
Let us also be reminded of the quote from Franz Fanon in his masterpiece, The Wrenched of the Earth: “For a colonised people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”
Let us not be distracted from the fundamental issue that gave rise to the Coral Gardens Uprising – the uprising was rooted in the iniquitous distribution of land.
Coral Gardens was part of a larger property, the Rose Hall estate (which includes the Rose Hall Great House).
According to historian and noted Montego Bay scholar, Dr Horace Campbell, this property was the site of both small-scale farming by Rastafarians, as well as the ambitions of landlords and government officials who hoped to convert the area into a tourist destination.
The Government and landlords saw the Rastafarians as an obstacle to their goal of re-purposing the property for tourism, and frequently sent police to evict the Rastafarians.
Victimhood and a revolutionary mindset represent two distinct approaches to addressing social injustices or challenging circumstances.
The Coral Gardens Uprising was a revolutionary act of resistance, an assault against the system. It was a part of a wider struggle by the Rastafarian against imperialism, a struggle rooted in the fight for equity and justice, a struggle for land and dignity, waged by a warrior class that lit the torch of freedom, as revolutionaries do.
THE NEW GENERATION
As the masses of the people are more and more alienated from the land, the New Rastafarian movement must take on that revolutionary struggle and focus on challenging the establishment to transform existing power structures and systems that perpetuate injustice. They must believe in their ability to effect change and take proactive steps to bring about social or political transformation. Non but ourselves.
This New Rasta must break with the peace and love mantra which was used by Priest Brown of the Potters House, as a defensive shield to protect Rasta from the brutal force of the army and the police. It has since outlived its usefulness, which has only rendered the Rasta movement as an exotic component of the tourist industry, tolerated yet neither loved nor feared.
The movement should not remain victims who appeal to the benevolence of the oppressor or see themselves as disadvantaged by external forces or individuals who feel powerless to change their situation and rely on others for sympathy or support, victims who seek validation and sympathy from others to reinforce their perceived victim status. But proud champions of the oppressed.
O. DAVE ALLEN oodamaxef@yahoo.com