Dear Editor,

It was a moment of great pleasure when it was announced that the Government of South Africa selected Peter Tosh for a national award and it was equally momentous to watch the awards ceremony.

What was most interesting was the extensive interview of Tosh’s daughter Niambe and South African human rights activist and researcher C Mandula. It was so inspiring to listen to the interviewees and I am proud of Niambe, she represented her father very well, while the South African activist provided information on the influence of Tosh’s work in South Africa, then and now. He shared his perspectives on Tosh’s influence on music, liberation of ganja, and the presence of Rastafari in South Africa as well as his political influence in the anti-apartheid struggles.

Tosh was bestowed with this great honour at a time when the radical thinking reggae artiste Kabaka Pyramid won the best reggae album for The Kalling at the Grammy Awards and the world celebrated another great artiste and freedom fighter, Harry Belafonte, for his significant assistance to the civil rights movement in the United States and his magnificent support for exiled South African musicians as well as his important contribution to the anti-apartheid struggles.

The Equal Rights and Justice album was a collection of many reggae anthems in service to African liberation. On his Mystic Man album, the song Recruiting Soldiers was like an anthem among the Umkhonto Wi Sizwe, guerilla soldiers of the African National Congress.

The interviewees defined Tosh as a revolutionary thinker, musician, and artiste. His sphere of influence included his work as a human rights and global ganja activist, and as the militant soldier of Rastafari he inspired the growth and development of the movement globally.

Tosh was uncompromising in his thinking about the legalisation of ganja, primarily on his Bush Doctor and Legalize It albums and in his many speeches. In fact, he described his struggles for legalisation of ganja as a human rights struggle. Of note is that there is much significant progress in the liberation of the ganja plant in today’s South Africa.

Songs such as Jah Guide, Rastafari Is, Recruiting Soldiers, I Am that I Am, and 400 Years are accompanied by his illuminating lecture on the history and philosophy of Rastafari.

Tosh was a soldier for the resistance of white supremacy in Southern Africa long before he became a superstar. Prince Buster, in an interview, shared his experience of seeing Tosh being part of a group that blocked the intersection of Collie Smith Drive and Spanish Town Road and how they were arrested.

The roadblock was part of a demonstration in Jamaica protesting the hanging of black freedom fighters in the mid-1960s under the illegal regime of Ian Smith in Southern Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe. During the 1970s the Government of the day was involved in the anti-imperialist and anti-apartheid struggles. It was in this rich and radical political setting that he unleashed Equal Rights, the album that took the anti-apartheid struggle to a popular level.

There are many people who were introduced to this struggle by Tosh’s work. As a visionary he penned The Day the Dollar Dies in 1979, a time when Jamaica was put under “heavy manners” by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Today, South Africa is playing a leading role in the anti-imperialist struggles as well as being in the forefront of the de-dollarisation politics.

This award has officially enshrined Tosh for his critical intervention in the struggles for the liberation of southern Africa in general and South Africa in particular. We thank you, South Africa, for bestowing such significant honour on this revolutionary thinker and artiste from Westmoreland, Jamaica.

Dr Louis EA Moyston

thearchives01@yahoo.com