It has been 50 years since Jamaica named its first National Hero in Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr, who would have been 127 years old today, having been born on August 17, 1887.

During those 50 years since Garvey was conferred with the country’s highest honour in 1964, only six other Jamaicans have been elevated to national hero status — Nanny of the Maroons; Sam Sharpe; George William Gordon; Paul Bogle; Sir Alexander Bustamante; and Norman Washington Manley. Nanny was the last to be named in the 1970s under the Michael Manley Administration at a time of great social fomentation and re-engineering.

Interestingly, of the seven national heroes, only Nanny was not born in the 1800s, with 1686 being given as the year of her birth. Sam Sharpe was born in 1801; George William Gordon in 1820; Paul Bogle in 1822; Sir Alexander Bustamante in 1884 and Norman Washington Manley in 1893.

The suggestion of naming another national hero has usually been met with great disagreement among Jamaicans, not necessarily against the idea, but against the persons named. The most popular names to have been suggested in recent memory are Michael Manley, Bob Marley, and Louise Bennett-Coverley.

On the 127th anniversary of Garvey’s birth it is relevant to ask: Are there no more heroes among us, alive or dead?

Our sense is that the level of political polarisation of our society will make it extremely difficult to find agreement on a national hero. Of the three possible candidates we mentioned earlier, Mrs Bennett-Coverley is the most likely to get anything near consensus, mostly because the cultural icon was not known as a political activist.

Critics of Michael Manley and Bob Marley have pointed vehemently to their shortcomings — Manley mainly for the ideological ‘warfare’ of the 1970s which pitted his Democratic Socialist People’s National Party (PNP) against the conservative Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) of the day; and Marley for espousing Rastafarianism and openly smoking ganja.

Ironically, ganja is the new instrument of parliamentary unity, with both PNP and JLP agreeing that the weed should be decriminalised and a ganja industry be allowed to develop. This will eliminate one of the strongest marks against Marley, who is the Third World’s biggest superstar and whose music continues to promote Jamaica in every nook and cranny of the world 33 years after his death in 1981 at the age of 36.

Manley, revered almost as much as he is reviled, will likely take much longer to be accepted as a national hero and, we make bold to suggest, not in our lifetime. Unless, of course, the two major parties strike a compromise and name two heroes — one from each side.

Of one thing we are sure: there is no person, Jamaican or otherwise, who is without flaw. All seven national heroes so far have their own shortcomings. It is foolhardy, we believe, to seek to find a hero who is perfect and completely blameless. We must accept that along with their heroism will come warts and all.

In the meantime, we join with members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association to celebrate the life and times of their founder, Marcus Garvey, for his remarkable achievements on behalf of the Black race and against all odds. His heroism is a legacy that all Jamaicans must proudly own and embrace in the spirit of ‘One God, one aim, one destiny’.