Shujaa on our blog`s name is a Swahili word for hero. Now since you have the right idea about our mission then let’s begin. Our African hero today is Grenadian revolutionary Maurice Bishop. Bishop was the leader of the New Jewel Movement, a Marxist-Leninist party that stood for socio-economic development, education, and black liberation.
Through a revolutionary coup, the party came to power on 13th March 1979 when it overthrew the corrupt and pro-imperialist administration of president Eric Gairy from office. Bishop then headed the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada up to 1983, when he was dismissed from his post and executed during another coup by Bernard Coard, which led to unrest in Grenada.
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| PM Maurice Bishop |
Bishop initiated many projects in Grenada when he took power, most significantly, the building of a new international airport on the island’s southern tip, which in his honour, it was later named after him. Among Bishop’s core principles were workers’ rights, women’s rights, and the struggle against racism and apartheid. Under Bishop’s leadership, the National Women’s Organization was formed which participated in policy decisions along with other social groups.
Women were given equal pay and paid maternity leave, and sex discrimination was made illegal in Grenada. Organizations for education (Centre for Popular Education), health care, and youth affairs (National Youth Organization) were also established. Bishop introduced free public health, illiteracy dropped from 35% to 5%, and unemployment from 50 to 14 percent.
Maurice Bishop was a popular, creative and intelligent revolutionary, who won the love and support of the masses. When Bernard Coard arrested Bishop, protesters numbering 30,000 on an island of 100,000 gathered, and even the guards joined the protest. Large public demonstrations throughout the island demanded Bishop’s freedom and restoration back to power.
During one demonstration, the crowd succeeded in winning freedom for Bishop. It all started in 1983 when a dispute in the party leadership occurred. A military junta group within the party demanded either Bishop step down or agree to a power-sharing agreement with Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. When Bishop rejected these proposals, he was eventually deposed and placed under house arrest during the first week of October 1983.
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| Bishop and his party leadership |
Cuban leader Fidel Castro saw him as a true brother and comrade. Cuba as a country embraced Grenada wholeheartedly by giving any kind of needed aid and expertise. Grenada also built up close relations with other countries including Nicaragua, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, East Germany, Mozambique, Libya, and Syria.
Grenada also became a pole of attraction for black power activists from the US. That is why he was considered such a threat by the forces of imperialism that were the big players in his overthrowing and execution.
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| Bishop and Zimbabwean revolutionary and first president Samora Machel |
“Bishop was one of the political leaders best-liked and most respected by our people because of his talent, modesty, sincerity, revolutionary honesty, and proven friendship with our country.”
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| Bishop and Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro |
“There are those (some of them our friends) who believe that you cannot have a democracy unless there is a situation where every five years, and for five seconds in those five years, a people are allowed to put an ‘X’ next to some candidate’s name, and for those five seconds in those five years they become democrats, and for the remainder of the time, four years and 364 days, they return to being non-people without the right to say anything to their government, without any right to be involved in running their country.”
“We don’t believe that a parliamentary system is the most relevant in our situation. After all, we took power outside the ballot box and we are trying to build our Revolution on the basis of a new form of democracy: grassroots and democratic, creating mechanisms and institutions which really have relevance to the people, If we succeed it will bring in question this whole parliamentary approach to democracy which we regard as having failed in the region. We believe that elections could be important, but for us the question is one of timing. We don’t regard it now as a priority. We would much rather see elections come when the economy is more stable, when the Revolution is more consolidated. When more people have in fact had benefits brought to them. When more people are literate and able to understand what the meaning of a vote really is and what role they should have in building a genuine participatory democracy.”
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| Some supporters of The People’s Revolution of Grenada |
Bishop also stood against imperialism and was for black liberation. On the psychological war waged against ‘developing countries’ that include Africa, he is quoted as saying;
“The colonial masters recognized very early on that if you get a subject people to think like they, to forget their own history and their own culture, to develop a system of education that is going to have relevance to our outward needs and be almost entirely irrelevant to our internal needs, then they have already won the job of keeping us in perpetual domination and exploitation. Our educational process, therefore, was used mainly as a tool of the ruling elite.”
On his Cuban friends and their leader; (Before a crowd of 1.5 million people on May Day in Havana, 1980)
“Your revolution, comrades, has also provided the region and the world with a living legend in your great and indomitable leader, Fidel Castro. Fidel has taught us not only how to fight, but also how to work, how to build socialism, and how to lead our country in a spirit of humility, sincerity, commitment and firm revolutionary leadership.”
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