Two nights before a much awaited national show, two carloads of armed men drove into Marley’s Hope Road yard and shot up the place. Whether the CIA was connected to the attack is unclear. But Marley was stirring up the populace with lyrics of resistance and revolution, inciting the people to think breaking from “the system” was a good idea.

Naomi Klein’s book ‘This Changes Everything’ shows how climate change and the bleak future we are marching toward are inextricably bound up with unfettered capitalism. To preserve capitalist excesses, hi-tech fixes for warming—like Solar Radiation Management—may be employed that hasten the demise of large parts of Africa and Asia and the natural world.

Jamaica was in serious need of money, but PM Manley resisted Kissinger’s pressure to denounce Fidel Castro for sending troops to Angola, in exchange for US dollars. It was a principled stand in support of Angola’s liberation, which had wide ramifications for Southern Africa.

Heroic efforts by individuals and NGOs may have beneficial outcomes and in very poor countries may be a prime option for dealing with social ills. But African leaders are advised against the wholesale adoption of Western ideals of “personal responsibility.”

The voice of Bob Marley is needed now more than ever. His lyrics may well have given inspiration and solace to as many as did Martin Luther King’s speeches, and he has come to symbolize resistance to oppression.

After half-a-century of independence, life in Jamaica is marked by low wages, high prices, mass unemployment and depreciation of the national currency. The task of fulfilling the promise of independence lies with the Jamaican people.