April 8, 2014

Dear Sir,

I read with interest Khalid Wasi’s response to my letter to the Editor. Without seeking to indulge in an interminable back and forth with him, I do find it interesting that Mr Wasi never really directly addresses the concerns as expressed in my letter. Instead he, perhaps unintentionally, only offered additional rationale, outlining the reasons why he continues to show veiled contempt toward black Bermudians and Africans more generally. Notwithstanding that, it is ironic, in that while doing so he reveals that he is also currently involved in some sort of project in Africa seeking — I assume — to save Africans from themselves.

No doubt, he hopes that the same Africans that he denigrates will see him — unlike us here in Bermuda — for the prophet that Mr Wasi is convinced he truly is. His last sentence is instructive. Mr Wasi writes that I should “ ... get involved in building tomorrow today, stop cursing yesterday”. I find this very surprising in that he revealed quite publicly not too long ago, that he was more than willing to “curse” yesterday himself, when he, with a willing Royal Gazette reporter in tow, attached ropes to the Sally Bassett statue on the grounds of the Cabinet Office and simulated pulling it down only a few months after the piece in question was erected.

[See Editor’s note below].

An act that I am sure was a big hit in the environs of Point Shares and Harbour Road, I might add. Of course, the stunt in question earned him a nice big photo in The Royal Gazette and a platform to rant.

Additionally, as you and your readers will note, was it not Wasi himself, who cursed yesterday — to paraphrase him, and evoked in a simplistic and distorted way the trans-Atlantic slave trade by way of his original letter of some days ago, which was printed in this paper? All I did was simply offer a response to his somewhat malicious narrative. I was only 13 years of age in 1970, and while as a student of history I am familiar with the tensions and disagreements that existed within the black community at this time, I was literally too young to play an active role in any of that. And while I am an admirer of many of the men he lauded as black business persons during that period — most of whom I must note he is related to — I cannot imagine any of them publicly demonstrating the type of malevolence toward their fellow black Bermudians and the African diaspora as Mr Wasi does on a near weekly basis.

ROLFE COMMISSIONG

[Editor’s note: Mr Wasi believed the statue should have been located in Southampton where Ms Bassett lived, and he symbolically tugged it with an oar in the direction of Southampton]