Let us soar!

Comrades and friends,

We are gathered here today to commemorate and celebrate the life and works of Winston Hubert McIntosh, also known as Peter Tosh. Peter was born on the 19 October 1944 and assassinated as we observed the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Bantu Stephen Biko, that is on 11 September 1987. This means that Sunday, 11 September 2011 marks the 24th anniversary of Peter’s brutal slaying.

Peter used to keep birds at his home in Jamaica. Some of these birds were wild ones that he had caught by hand. And he often laughed and spoke of the day when he would really surprise people – like the tales told by African slaves about the ones with secret wings who flew to freedom. And people would comment: ‘Look at that Peter Tosh now – he’s flying!’

Peter demonstrated to black people the world over that it is worthless to live on your knees. You need to hold your head up and look Babylon straight in the eye. I promise that if you do that, Babylon will blink.

The vampire that Peter described in his song of that name sank its teeth first into Steve, and almost to the day ten years later, it sank its teeth into Peter. Peter sang that that the ‘old vampire’...‘drink up the old wine have no place for the new mind.’

A reporter from ‘Reggae Beat’ asked Tosh: ‘In the song, ‘Vampire’, who is the vampire?’ Peter’s reply is worth quoting:

‘Well you know of them. They are the ones who suck the blood of the innocent ones. Invisible vampires, because according to technology, vampires don’t come out and bite your neck anymore. They cause a plane to crash [remember Samora?"> or something destructive to happen that blood has to spill and these invisible vampires will still get their meals. It shall be eradicated.’

You know, Peter once described himself as ‘optimistic’. This is usually the sentiment either of blind Pollyannas or people who have some sense of what they are up against and are rising to meet it. I have no doubt that Peter fell into the latter category.

Black consciousness (BC) in this land took cognisance of the fact that the struggle of black people manifests itself in intensely cultural forms. In fact, the BC philosophy was expressed initially in dance, poetry, music, literature and theology and the likes of Theatre Council of Natal (TECON) and the People’s Experimental Theatre (PET) were amongst the seminal BC formations. No other liberation movement in our land has had a similar genesis.

BC took cognisance of the fact that blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated. That is the equivalent of attempting to unscramble an egg.

BC expressed as Rastafarianism is an authentic oppressed class ideology, the property of the oppressed masses of the Caribbean which has been shared with humankind in every corner of the inhabitable globe. It is a mistake to get stuck in Rasta’s negative paradoxes without taking into account that there was no other way for an oppressed ideology to emerge among people who were left to fend for themselves and build their own livelihoods.

To summarise Michael Thelwell’s novel, ‘The Harder They Come’, Ivan, a Kingston ‘rude boy’ (ghetto youth in and around the Jamaican music scene) tries to visit his family’s home in the mountains after several years of living in the city:

‘Nothing was familiar...Bush-bush full up everywhere. But... Dis coulden the right place after all? Right down dere should be the tin roof. You mean say bush-bush grow up, cover it?...

‘There was no evidence of the passage of his generations, the ancestors whose intelligence, industry and skill had created a self-sufficient homestead there. None – at all...’

His grandmother who had raised him up there had died several years earlier; his mother was back down in Kingston working at starvation pay as a washerwoman; his uncles were long gone off the land and had met their ends all over the globe. One died in World War II fighting for the British; another went to cut cane in Cuba and was never heard from again; another was serving a life sentence in the Kingston penitentiary for killing his wife.

‘Ah shoulda did stay an’ tek care of de place, he thought. The worst insult that people has was sneering, ‘Cho, you no come from nowhe”... He wanted to get a machete, to cut a path to the graves and clear the bush away. But...what de raas is de use...What’s the fucken use? He felt empty, and frightened, futile, miserable, and very alone. He would never, he swore, come back ever.’

He continued down the road to the former house of Maas’ Nattie the man who had raised him like a father, and discovered that two American tourists had taken over the backyard and were lazily smoking ganja and sunbathing, stark naked. Ivan watched while one of them tried to milk a male goat, then jumped on his motorbike in disgust and sped over the mountains and through the foothills choked with bauxite dust, back down to Kingston.

From that moment on, he refused to look back, and with nothing to lose, he shot cops and sang his way to fame and notoriety. He was an outlaw, and a fearless hero to those being ground up in this new urban ‘promised land’ – a concrete jungle where you couldn’t even find a clean glass of water, let alone a day’s work. It is in the context of Ivan’s story that we can better appreciate what is easily Peter’s anthem, ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ (Marley/Tosh 1978):

‘Come on
Get up, stand up
Don’t let them push you ‘round
Stand up for your rights
Brother [and, we add, sister">
Get up, stand up
Be brave now
Don’t give up the fight
I say
Get up stand up
Stand up for your rights
Don’t let them hold you down
Get up stand up
Don’t give up the fight.’

Mark you, there is no flying back to the past. The future and the world beckon. Listen well to the deep baritone voice of teacher and preacher Peter Tosh:

‘I’m like a flashing laser and a rolling thunder
I’m dangerous
I’m dangerous
I’m like a steppin’ razor
Don’t you watch my size
I’m dangerous, dangerous...’

As the contributions of Peter find their way into the hearts, cassette players and iPods of the Ivans of Azania and the world, let us look to the likes of Mao Tse Tung and Steve for political and philosophical guidance. We have work to do to bury the shistem; let us get down to doing it. And if all the steppin’ razors come together we will undoubtedly soar!

Let us soar! Azania ke ya rona!

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This was an address delivered by Imrann Moosa on the occasion of ‘Verses for Biko and Tosh’ organised by the Slam Poetry Operation Team in conjunction with the September National Imbizo (‘SNI’) at Uprising Restaurant, Bat Centre, Durban on Saturday,10 September 2011, commencing at 12h00. This piece is based on the article ‘Azania salutes Tosh’ by Frank Talk Staff Writers in Frank Talk, Volume 3 (February 1990) and has been edited to restrict its focus to Peter Tosh.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.