Some follow up on an article that I posted in the Abeng edition.

This story follows upon an article in my first issue of "Abeng" the article discusses Rasta in Barbados Government... it is taken from the "Barbados Nation" where my friend Amanda Lynch-Foster now works...

Tafari Will Trod On
Friday 19, November-2004

Ikael Tafari: has heard it all before.
by AMANDA LYNCH-FOSTER

Dr Ikael Tafari has heard it all before.

“It’s not the first time I’ve heard that I’m a white man,” says Tafari with a little laugh, referring to the controversy which has swirled around his recent appointment as director of the Pan-African Commission (PAC).

In his office at the commission on Hincks Street, the walls are plastered with posters and pictures celebrating noted Pan-Africanists, such as Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie and those lesser known such as Rastafari elder Ras Boanerges.

None of them look like the man born Michael Hutchinson, who possesses piercing grey-green eyes, a straight, hawkish nose and silky locks tucked up into a black velvet hat.

“This identity thing has been very difficult for me. I have often been questioned...and asked: ‘what are you? Who are you?’ Sometimes they just look at me and ask, ‘are you’...?” he says, tilting his head quizzically in the way of his inquisitors.

These questions have been shouted in recent weeks since the contract of former director David Comissiong was not renewed and Tafari moved up to head the PAC.

From Rastafari brethren and sistren to cantankerous callers on radio shows to his fellow Pan-Africanists, Tafari’s melanin has been called into question and with it, his ‘right’ to lead the PAC.

“When you’re in the middle, you get this,” says Tafari, reflecting that, at one time or another, he has been told by both sides “you are not one of us.”

But for the university lecturer and sociologist, the question of his race has never been as simple as black or white.

Growing up in an extended family of mixed races, which included black, brown, white, Chinese and Indian elements, Tafari says the specifics of race never mattered to him.

“I always saw all of them as humanity,” he says simply.

In describing his heritage, he is detailed and technical, saying he is black through his mother’s side, “but that also includes the lighter-skinned ones that were on her side of the family” and that his father “could pass for white”.

“I’ve always accepted both. I don’t have a problem with the white in me. I do have a problem with some people’s response to my identification with the black in me. Except for a brief rebellion in my youth, I always admired my father, but I never saw [him] as white,” says Tafari.

Still, he admits that since the days of his youth, he was always drawn to those of a darker hue.

One of his darker aunts and her “very dark Vincentian” husband lived next-door with their son. Tafari, who has a sister, but no brother, in effect grew up with his darker cousin, Ronald Cox - like the brother he never had.

The powerful mould of this early relationship above all others, was to leave a lasting imprint and perhaps was the influence that moved Tafari closer with his African ‘brothers’ further on in his life.

“That was my favourite part of the family,” he reminisces.

When he went to Harrison College, again he was moved to associate with the darker students.

However, it took leaving the “very oppressive society” of his native island for his black consciousness to really bloom.

In 1968, he went to the University of the West Indies Mona campus in Kingston, Jamaica, and in his words “arrived there just to jump into the fire” that was the regional Black Power movement.

Jamaica was a country in upheaval during that time. In October, student protests broke out when the government banned legendary intellectual and university lecturer Walter Rodney.

“Firmly convinced that I was a black man, I marched with them. That was my baptism of fire,” recalls Tafari.

The protests turned violent when the students were brutally attacked by the police with tear gas and batons.

In a strange and turbulent new land, spluttering and eyes watering in the burning vapours of the tear gas, he knew for sure he wasn’t in Barbados anymore.

“My whole life changed... when I went to Jamaica.”

It was not just a pivotal time for young Jamaica, but for the young Michael Hutchinson who was soon to be no more.

“This helped lead me to Rastafari,” recollects Tafari.

Always a student of the Bible, he became captivated and started to explore the religion.

He was particularly fascinated by accounts of Haile Selassie’s character and drawn to the Rastafarian acceptance of all people, particularly because of his own struggles with his identity.

Those were the early “pariah” days of Rastafari before Bob Marley and others brought it closer to public acceptance and when he turned to the movement and started growing locks, “everyone on campus thought I was mad,” remembers Tafari.

Some fellow Barbadians “actually ran” from him, literally sprinting away from the dreadlocked rebel.

“To be rejected by your own really is a hard thing,” muses Tafari, remembering the experiences of that time.

When he moved off campus, he found he could not get a room to rent in all of Kingston and so he built a hut in the shanty town developing outside of the gates of the university in Mona Commons. He recalls with a wry laugh his first incompetent efforts at digging a pit toilet for his new home.

This was in the 1970s, when political passions and political tribalism in Jamaica were peaking and the squatter community – along with Tafari – would eventually be moved to another location in the same Mona area that Tafari and his mentor, Ras Boanerges, were able to develop into a new community called “Goldsmith Villa”, working with the ministry of Housing.

Unfortunately, given the politics of patronage of that time, some of the housing units fell into hands of the “political army” of the ruling People’s National Party and the housing area took on the more militant popular name of “Angola”.

At nights, as he walked across from the university to his home, Tafari would sometimes have to dodge the crossfire from the gunmen rampant in the area.

It was in this harsh, gritty environment that his parents came to visit him and first saw the new religion and life their son had adopted.

“Talk about two worlds meeting!” chuckles Tafari at the memory.

“My family was horrified. My sister and old lady both cried, but they never disowned me,” he says.

When Michael ‘Joshua’ Manley came to power in 1972, Tafari went to work with the government in the Social Development Commission, “one of the first Rastafari” to work with the more radical Manley administration.

He ended up living in Jamaica from 1968 until 1981, and even though he admitted that the country was often in a state of “civil war”, he was reluctant to leave the island.

However, it was a bigger cause that brought him back to the land of his birth – his daughter Nakazzi. Thinking it best that the six-year-old should be raised in a “more wholesome environment” offered by Barbados, he decided to come home.

When he returned, he naturally became involved with the local Pan-Africanist movement which like him, has moved from the fringes to officialdom.

Amidst the storm of controversy swirling around his appointment as head of the PAC, Tafari is calm.

“I think I have some very important work to do because my sense of history tells me when you find those kinds of forces trying to stop the man before he’s even started, it tells me I have something very major to do,” he comments about the opposition to his appointment.

Though he has replaced Comissiong, he says that his relationship with the former PAC director remains solid.

“I have not gotten any evidence that David Comissiong himself believes I have betrayed him. My relationship with David is the same as it has always been. He is my friend, my brother in the Pan-African struggle,” states Tafari firmly.

He says that, while sympathetic to Comissiong because of the note on which his tenure ended, his major concern when he learnt of the non-renewal of Comissiong’s contract as director, was to ensure that the work of the PAC continued.

He says the first six years of the PAC under Comissiong’s leadership “laid the groundwork” for a number of major initiatives that they intend to implement.

He plans to work on developing trade linkages with Africa which he believes is a major untapped market which offers much for local businesses.

Next year, in conjunction with the National Cultural Foundation, the PAC will also be developing the Season of Emancipation to a four-month-long season lasting from early April to late August, which will span most of the major days celebrating freedom from Heroes’ Day to the UNESCO day for the abolition of slavery.

Plans are under way to bring South African president Thabo Mbeki and Kenyan Nobel 2004 Prize Laureate, Wangari Maathai, to Barbados during the season.

Tafari notes laughingly that had he come to his present post when he was 34 instead of the older, wiser 54 he is now, things would have been very different.

“I would have been blazing hot and I would not have lasted two months.”

Now, he says he is “prepared to be strategic” so he can accomplish the goals of the PAC.

“I’ve done a lot of talking in my time. If it came down to a choice between rhetoric which antagonises and getting some crucial things done, right now I’m in my action mode,” he declares.

amandalynch@nationnews.com - someone e-mail her and harass her please...
here is the original link: http://www.nationnews.com/StoryView.cfm?Record=55377&Section=LO&Current=2004%2D11%2D19%2000%3A00%3A00