Like Nelson Mandela, Sir Arthur Foulkes embodies the best of his country and the best of the human spirit. At the moment of his release from prison after 27 years of captivity, Mandela felt the swell of anger for the violence done to his country and to him by the perpetrators of apartheid's efficient and vicious brutality.
To secure the freedom of his people and to preserve that of his soul, he resolved to leave any lingering bitterness in his prison cell. He was determined not to allow his captors to imprison his spirit as he emerged from a physical confinement which never succeeded in shackling his hopes and his convictions.
In and out of prison Mandela embodied "Invictus", the Victorian poem of William Ernest Henley:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears,
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years,
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Sir Arthur, now 86, decided early in his life that he was the master of his fate, the captain of his unconquerable soul. Over an extraordinary lifetime, with a sovereign Bahamas on the horizon, eventually dawning, developing as a young independent nation, he helped to conquer racist minority rule and the misrule and viciousness of the Pindling era.
Sir Arthur refused to be defined by those who plotted to destroy him and his unquenchable witness to freedom and a democratic Bahamas. Anger is described as one of the seven deadly sins. But it is not anger per se that is the sin. The true sin is the poison of unending bitterness and the never satisfied appetite for vengeance arising from undistilled anger.
In the wisdom of Dr. Maya Angelou: "Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean."
What Mandela, Angelou, Martin Luther King Jr., Sir Arthur and other noble souls understood as a classic challenge of the human spirit and of the cause of justice is the enduring and necessary struggle to transform anger into positive and creative action without internalizing bitterness and the bile of revenge.
Bitterness destroys the one who gorges on it, the one who is unable to forgive, the one who is unable to reach for reconciliation, the one who is unable to let go of certain hurt and pain inflicted by others, which often metastasize from anger into rage and all manner of destructive tendencies; a lifetime of crippling feelings, grievances and chips on shoulders engorged to boulders if not released.
It is often easier to conquer a nation than to tame or conquer one's appetites and sprits. The greatest among us are those who are able to achieve both of these, like Mandela, like Mohandas Gandhi, and in his own way, like Arthur Foulkes.
By his early 20s he had moved permanently from Inagua to New Providence, finding employment at The Tribune, during which time he celebrated his 21st birthday. "In the fell clutch of circumstance" of the 1950s under a racist minority government, Arthur A. Foulkes joined the fledgling Progressive Liberal Party.
The British activist Vivienne Westwood bemoans: "Most people don't think change is up to them; they think somehow it will just happen." Sir Arthur eschews such moral indifference.
He knew that it was up to him to play his part. His conscience dictated that he join the struggle and his moral compass pushed him to oppose Sir Lynden, at great cost to him and his family, while others who initially agreed to support the historic vote of no confidence against Sir Lynden buckled and lost courage, continuing to support the Pindling regime even during its blackest days.
Radicalized
The young Arthur Foulkes' political consciousness was radicalized by the discrimination he saw around him, including as a young reporter covering the House of Assembly. By 1958 he was on the council of the PLP, had helped to found the political action group the National Committee for Positive Action soon after the formation of the PLP, and in 1962 at 34, was a candidate for the party in eastern New Providence.
With the bitter defeat of the 1962 contest, in which the PLP lost the election and Sir Arthur lost his bid for a seat, he left a promising journalism career to found Bahamian Times, which proved pivotal in the struggle for majority rule.
Sir Arthur saw himself more as a journalist than a politician. But he knew that he had to take up the cause of politics, employing his considerable writing skills in the interest of the great cause of the day, the liberation of the mass of Bahamians from racial, political and economic discrimination.
Still, to call Sir Arthur a writer is a failure to fully appreciate his gift and his legacy. More fully, he was a public intellectual, having thought through and written more on a vast variety of topics than any other Bahamian save for a few.
He was by some comparison The Bahamas' Thomas Paine, the "English-American political activist, philosopher, author, political theorist and revolutionary", whose writings were, like Sir Arthur's, pivotal to a liberation struggle.
In addition to his journalism and commentary Sir Arthur penned or drafted notable political documents including the famous petition to the U.N.'s committee on decolonization. Sir Arthur's writings were more pivotal to majority rule than any other single Bahamian.
It was the nature of the struggle and of the courage and conviction of Sir Arthur and others that led them to initially oppose as internal dissidents the misrule and cult of personality mushrooming around Sir Lynden Pindling.
Approaching nearly two decades in the vanguard of the struggle for majority rule, Sir Arthur and others like Sir Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, Warren Levarity, and Maurice Moore, left their political home and spent a quarter of a century struggling to secure the democracy of which they long dreamed and for which they endured extraordinary sacrifice, charges of treason, the viciousness of Lewis Yard, the denial of jobs and other economic opportunities, myriad assaults on their person and families, and other indignities.
Pivotal
There were also the internal struggle to form and sustain a new political party, the great split between the FNM and the Bahamian Democratic Party and the central and pivotal role played by Sir Arthur and Basil Nicholls to reconstitute and reunite the major opposition forces in the country.
Along the way, attempts failed to woo Sir Arthur back to the PLP with certain favors and appointments. Mandela was similarly wooed. Both refused to trade conscience for comforts.
Sir Arthur and others spent nearly 40 years in opposition fighting for a certain dream of Bahamian nationhood and democracy. In their many decades in opposition they did more to secure our democracy than did many who spent decades in government. Indeed, the former saved our democracy.
The Hon. A.D. Hanna and others have lionized Sir Arthur with the enduring tribute that few sacrificed more for the struggle than did the man who, though once described as "The Man Who Survived" in a Bahamian Review Magazine cover story, might best be described as the man who flourished and who ensured the flourishing of his country.
Sir Arthur contributed extraordinarily as a public intellectual and writer, as a politician, parliamentarian and Cabinet minister, as a diplomat and for the last four years as one of the finest governors general in an independent Bahamas.
Yet he has contributed much more to the Bahamian spirit. He leaves office with no rancor or bitterness despite the viciousness of many of his former opponents including some now in high office. He leaves office deeply beloved, with his integrity unquestioned and having fostered national unity and one Bahamas.
Two of the greater lessons of his extraordinary life and legacy are the examples of resilience and reconciliation. Those who hated what he stood for and who sought to destroy his vision never caused him to hate. "Under the bludgeonings of chance", his head was sometimes bloody, but never unbowed.
Power reveals. As governor general he exemplified a spirit of humility and graciousness, with his words and speeches uplifting to the people for whom he dedicated a lifetime of struggle and, yes, love.
At a flag-raising ceremony in Rawson Square last week a primary school student offered a tribute to Sir Arthur. In his encomium, he thanked Sir Arthur and Lady Joan Foulkes for their hospitality at Government House, especially of young people. That boy of eight or so captured the gratitude of a nation.
In time he will relish that which generations of Bahamians already know: That we enjoyed the great fortune to live during the times of one such as Sir Arthur, a father of the nation, one whom we are proud to call our own and one who has exemplified the better angels of our nature.
o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.
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