Jamaal Shabazz, one of the 114 insurrectionists in the 1990 coup attempt, broke down in tears yesterday before the commission of enquiry, indicating that poverty was one of the causes of the uprising.
On July 27, 1990, Shabazz led a group of Muslimeen members in a takeover of Trinidad Broadcasting Corporation on Maraval Road, Port-of-Spain, while other Jamaat leaders seized Trinidad and Tobago Television and the Red House. Beginning with the Biblical record of Jesus sharing five loaves of bread and two fishes among 5,000 people, Shabazz sought to explain his feeling in 1990 that the haves did not share with the have nots. "I feel that whatever little is in the Treasury must filter down to Laventille and Caroni...Every day I in Morvant and Laventille," he said.
"If Selby could cry, I could cry too!" he added in an angry, emotional outburst. Former finance minister in the NAR administration, Selby Wilson, cried before the commission last week while recounting the assault on himself and other hostages in the Red House. Shabazz, the first of the insurgents to appear before the commission, said in 1990 he didn't see the "one love" that marked the NAR's 1986 general election campaign.
"I see in history where in crisis real leaders come down and walk with the people," he said. "Every day we cook and feed people (at the Jamaat). No matter how much you cook...On a daily basis our lives are cut short dealing with these social issues." A football coach and former journalist, Shabazz admitted, however, that the coup attempt was a "heinous" act. "May God never have us and our children to do this again...I submit that 1990 was extreme behaviour on our part and could be labelled as fundamentalist," he said.
He said if there was one thing he wanted from the inquiry was for the children of the insurgents to be at peace with the children of the coup victims. "If those who were wronged in 1990 don't forgive us, I wouldn't hold it against them. "But let our grandchildren live in peace without that burden," Shabazz pleaded. He pointed out, too, that, there would be no amnesty with today's youth, meaning that there would be no negotiating with them. He denied evidence of earlier witnesses who all said they felt the Jamaat did not have the support of the masses when they staged the uprising. He said, on the contrary, the fact that the NAR government was voted out lock, stock and barrel in the 1991 general election was proof of mass support.
He claimed that as discredited as the Jamaat was today, it could still bring out 10,000 people to a protest.
Questioned by the commission's lead counsel, Avory Sinanan, SC, about Jamaat leader, Yasin Abu Bakr's properties, Shabazz said it is expected that the African man has nothing and stay with nothing but nobody questions the wealth of Ish Galbaransingh or the Sabgas. Even Attorney General Anand Ramlogan scoffed at the idea of Bakr owning properties and the general sentiment was "what is Bakr doing with all that," he said.
Noting that "the Imam has nice cars," Shabazz asked: "Who is to say that the Imam doesn't have a car dealership with some senior politician? "Why must Pastor Cuffie (alone) have a nice car?" he said.
Shabazz further disputed allegations by earlier witnesses that the Jamaat took advantage of poor, dispossessed youth, saying there were teachers, university graduates and businessmen among the insurgents.
"They want to say that the Muslimeen just used some poor, hungry youths to dismiss 1990 as some terrorist act by some mad people. "That's not how it went down," he said. Seeking to show the idealism that guided his thinking in 1990, Shabazz said as an admirer of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, he was attracted to the Jamaat's teachings. He said the Jamaat taught to do what was right and also see to stop the wrong. He said he protested with the group against South African apartheid. Shabazz denied, however, that he was a blind follower of Bakr who, he felt, tried to wake up Afro-Trinidadians who were going nowhere. "I felt it (the coup) was the only course of action...I deserved what was coming to me."