Sir Alexander Bustamante
If the measure of a person is his/her legacy in words - both what they have actually said and what has been spoken about what they purportedly said - then former Prime Minister Sir Alexander Bustamante stands especially tall in Jamaican history.
The focus of Ken Jones' Bustamante: Notes, Quotes, Anecdotes, formally launched at King's House, Hope Road, St Andrew, last Thursday, is on what 'Busta' actually said. However, there were references throughout an especially lengthy launch programme to rumours about what Bustamante said - and the implications for his intelligence.
And the programme's host, Minister of Labour and Social Security Pearnel Charles, worked in a reference to his detention, saying that he was held in the same cell as Bustamante had been.
Before getting a sample of the Bustamante quotes from Prime Minister Bruce Golding, the audience was shown a 'Historical Perspectives' video presentation on him by the Bustamante Museum and a Memories of Bustamante, compiled by Carey Robinson. "I followed my grandfather, who followed Bustamante to the end," Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture Olivia Grange said in her remarks.
'What a hell ...'
The Memories of Bustamante ended with Superintendent Daniel Biggs' memories of a fixed bayonet encounter with Bustamante, his voice breaking as he said "what a hell if I did kill him!"
Before going into an extensive series of Bustamante quotes, Golding said, "Bustamante was not a friend of academics. He was not a friend of the middle class ... Many of them were not impressed by what Bustamante did".
He said that Bustamante goes so far back in history that there is only a tiny, disappearing minority of persons who actually have a personal memory of him. As such, there are many stories about Bustamante and Golding said "folklore lays no claim to truth or accuracy".
"Bustamante was not an intellectual in the way we understand intellectuals to be. He did not attend university ... Yet he was such a profound thinker," Golding said. Among the many quotes he referred to from Bustamante: Notes, Quotes, Anecdotes was the former Prime Minister's self-perception, which spoke to his racial make-up and how "aquiline" his nose was.
Golding confessed that he had not encountered 'aquiline' previously and remarked on Bustamante's use of the word.
There were quotes about birth control, casinos, crime, the light and power company and fiscal policy, the last causing a chuckle as Golding spoke about the currency of Bustamante's thoughts on not raising taxes to pay wages. "Why do I get the feeling he was speaking to nurse Edith Allwood-Anderson?" Golding jibed.
Before Bustamante: Notes, Quotes, Anecdotes was officially launched by Governor General Sir Patrick Allen, there were more quotes from Bustamante in a dramatic presentation, these coming from Letters to the Editor and most giving his address as 1A Duke Street, Kingston.
Relevant today
Allen said "some of the quotes are priceless and they are as relevant today as when Sir Alexander made them".
And Ken Jones told a story which is not in the book but critical to its existence and his life. He related how his father, a policeman, was being mobbed and beaten within an inch of his life during a riot. As he was falling, perhaps to be mauled for the final time, a car pulled up, Bustamante sprang out and commanded "leave that policeman alone!". The crowd froze, and in that instant, Bustamante flung his father into the car and took him away.
"If it had not been for Bustamante my father would have died that day," Ken Jones said.
"I will always be in his debt, just as this country will always be in his debt," Jones concluded.
And earlier in the launch, CHASE Fund CEO Billy Heaven put Bustamante: Notes, Quotes, Anecdotes into context in a body of work on former Jamaican Prime Ministers, which includes their biographies or autobiographies, video presentation and digitisation of audio-visual material related to them.