Few scholars have also been dancers of world renown. And these are just two aspects of a man who has undoubtedly shaped a Caribbean sense of pride over four decades. From his pioneering work with MG Smith and Roy Augier on the Rastafarian movement in Kingston, to his founding of the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, Rex Nettleford has always been at the cutting-edge of cultural pursuits and academia-as well as the seamless blending of both.
The former vice-chancellor of UWI was in T&T two Fridays ago to receive the Chancellor’s Medal for his lasting contribution to the university’s welfare and development.
Q: Professor, you have studied the Caribbean for the last four decades.
It has been your field of study in arts,
culture, academia-and now that we face this crisis globally, what is the way forward? I’m sure you’ve
thought about this.
A: Well, yes, one has to think about it. The global meltdown has merely confirmed a fact which has always been so-we are part of a world. And that we have been marginalised in that world. Have been used, abused, what have you. It stands to reason that we would naturally suffer from it. All across the region, the people are being asked to tighten their belts and it is probably a good thing for us.
Let me put it this way: We have a capacity to survive. We have survived exploited labour, whether it is in the form of slavery or indentureship, colonial conquest or subjugation, and we have survived [he stifles a laugh] some forms of leadership, which we would prefer not to mention-we will survive. But what bothers me is that we continue to be a people who are sprinters rather than long-distance runners. We just have to buckle down and this is really where I’m putting a great deal of hope in our women.... We should probably have more faith in our women. You know how to run things in the way that we mere men don’t quite know how to. We are supposed to be the providers and the women have allowed us to continue to think that we are the sole providers when, in fact, in the whole economy and social realities of the region, the women have been the providers.
What you say about the whole
gender thing-there’s a crisis in
masculinity worldwide, and we’re feeling it in many ways here. Men are not adapting to women’s strides, and maybe our crime and domestic violence is an expression of that...
I remember Maya Angelou, whose grandfather was Trinidadian by the way, she got mad at me because I said that mothers are to blame somewhat because in the rearing of their sons, they do not teach them a sense of process. They don’t understand that to go from A to Z, you have to go through B, C, etc. They want to jump straight over. So, in getting a job, a fellow wants to be in the boss’s chair overnight.
The woman understands process-you have to perform. That absence of that sense of process is a gap that we have not filled. How do other civilizations do it? Well, the boy might have grown up in a home with three generations. I am my mother’s son, for example, but I grew up with my grandmother. So I understood that you really have to wait your turn, and you have to perform to justify your existence. Even the notion that the male’s job is to provide, and you even have a custom in parts of the rural Caribbean where a man will give his salary to his wife and she dishes it out, and he feels he’s done his job. And he takes no part in the rearing of the children. He doesn’t understand how a child grows, and you expect him to be responsible? He can’t possibly do it-he has no sense of process. And I think the schools have to come back into this, to help grow the male child. I have felt that many of the schools at the primary level, which is so important, are not male-friendly.
The educational system has to address this. We can’t leave this to the women. They number 60 to 70 per cent in the university, so they are liberated, but not the men because the men have been fooled into thinking that they don’t have to study to be somebody.
What do you think of President Barack Obama?
People are shouting from the rooftops about Obama, but Obama would not have been possible had it not been for lots of the work that had gone before in civil rights in his own country, but more than that, in the world at large. One thing that fascinates me is that there have been four great men who represent the spirit of the 20th century, and none of them have been Caucasian: Gandhi, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King and Mandela. And they said something about the decency of human interaction, the whole thing about forgiveness-these are the things, other than the oil money and so on, that we have to think about.
This is what the US is now trying to get for itself, in order to have the kind of moral authority, not based on military might but a genuine respect for the human being as a human being. And I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for the Caribbean to lead in that respect. We don’t have any money, material wealth, but we do have a great deal of spiritual wealth which, in fact, somebody like Obama could benefit from. I was very happy for the summit to take place here, for him to come here. I don’t know if he was sufficiently exposed to what the society is about. But I remember Mandela visiting Jamaica soon after apartheid ended, and we gave him an honorary doctorate and he was so impressed with the society. He said, ’This is what I want South Africa to be.’ And what he was referring to was the cultural diversity.... And one of the things African-Americans may have to learn is that their agenda may have to turn to cultural diversity, without prejudice to the centrality of the African presence in the Americas, not just the US, and this requires a tremendous sophistication, and I think this is really where we, in the Caribbean, have a lot to teach. In this sense, we are ahead of the game in terms of 21st century global identity and global reality.
Yet, a degree from Oxford is still valued higher than one from UWI. How do we change that?
Do you really think that is so? Well, yes, you’re right in that sense. But it depends on the individual person. I certainly do not regard my Oxford degree as superior to my UWI degree. In fact, I went to Oxford an educated person. I went there to do post-graduate work [in politics] and it was wonderful. And the interesting thing at Oxford, the people I met, my supervisor, my teachers, they were very interested in where I was coming from. They really took an interest in my background. And that is the thing about great universities. Oxford is not a chauvinistic English university. My time at UWI was fantastic because it really prepared me to cope with anywhere. And my [Oxford] digs, my rooms, became a centre of intellectual discourse. It wasn’t because I was black because Oxford is accustomed to princelings from the Middle East. It was what I had to offer. And that offering came from the textured background from which I came, namely the Caribbean and, of course, my programme of study at UWI. So, Oxford was lovely, it was good for me, and because I am a person who believes in retributive justice, it was marvellous that one benefited from lots of the money which had been taken by (Cecil) Rhodes from Africa [he laughs]. Oh, I was perverse enough to revel in that.
And on the centenary of the Rhodes scholarship (in 2003), Mandela agreed to add his name to the Mandela-Rhodes Trust, which is wonderful-an old imperialist and a liberator -closing the circle. And the American Rhodes scholars wrote a damning letter condemning it. And I wrote the Rhodes Trust and asked if any Caribbean Rhodes scholars had signed the letter and none had. And I was very happy about that. The Rhodes Trust sent 10,000 pounds back to South Africa and they had the nerve to question that. The money was going back home! But they haven’t got that thing about history which people like us have got.
It’s interesting because South Africa is grateful to the Caribbean, and it’s not by accident that three of our great sons have been honoured by Mandela, by South Africa: Eric Williams, Michael Manley and (Shridath) Sonny Ramphal. Ramphal did a fantastic job in helping to break down apartheid. And he was ideally suited. He is of Indian ancestry, Guyanese, Caribbean, so he had everything-the sense and sensibility. These are the sort of people that we produce!
One last question. Caricom has such
a serious role in pulling the region
together, yet, somehow, we allow the bureaucrats and the technocrats to get in the way of what has been happening at the grassroots level and culturally...
The people in Caricom itself, they, themselves, understand there needs to be renewal and to look at themselves. The late George Beckford used to say that the people of the Caribbean have long federated; it’s only their leaders who haven’t. But, let not your heart be troubled. Europe took a long time to federate, or to integrate. It’s part of our arrogance in the Caribbean, we feel we do not need to go through -again, the sense of process, staying there, hold on, get poised, so that when the time comes, we are ready.
As a youngster studying European history, I heard about the Hanseatic League, the old Holy Roman Empire-which was neither holy Roman nor empire-but, nevertheless, gave the impression of a united Europe. Sometimes, we are too impatient, and I’m not for one moment excusing the mistakes made by the integrationist movement. But what we must not do is to destroy the instruments that are supportive of this integration-whether it is calypso, cricket, Carnival or other popular musical forms, the Caribbean Development Bank, CSME, CCJ, which itself is a clear sign of our independence that, in fact, we can judge ourselves and, of course, UWI, which has a particular value for this region, in terms of ensuring that we get the richness and diversity of our people to work together.
