Shridath Ramphal escorting Queen Elizabeth, as Head of the Commonwealth, at his first Commonwealth Day Reception in March 1976 at Marlborough House, London. [photo: Shridath Ramphal public papers online]
[This tribute was written by Richard Bourne for the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association and has been kindly shared by the author who is also an emeritus member of the Round Table editorial board.]
The death of Sir Shridath Ramphal, better known as Sonny, his boyhood nickname from Guyana, has been greeted by an outpouring of memories, affection and admiration from all who knew him, and many who only knew of him. He was just short of 96 and still living independently in Barbados, in a house he shared with his daughter Susan, and her husband Sir Ronald Sanders, Ambassador for Antigua and Barbuda in the United States.
His death was instant news in the Caribbean, of whose Commonwealth countries he had been a fervent supporter since he worked for the ill-fated Federation of the West Indies, and then as an energetic Minister of Justice and Foreign Affairs for Guyana. Well into his 90s he had been acting as legal adviser to Guyana, as it warded off the claim to two thirds of its territory by the Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela, providing online testimony to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Strikingly, however, his death was not announced in the main news of the BBC, or speedily reported or obituarised in the UK’s mainstream press. Yet this was a man who, uniquely, had served as Commonwealth Secretary-General for 15 years, had newsworthy spats with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over Rhodesia as it became Zimbabwe, and sought a peaceful resolution for apartheid in its death throes in South Africa. He sent a Group of Commonwealth Eminent Persons to visit South Africa in 1986, to try and negotiate an end to this abhorrence.
The mission was destroyed when the white South African air force was ordered to bomb Botswana, Zambia and Botswana. Yet the Penguin Special of the EPG report sold out 55,000 copies in one week in June and, to show out of step the UK had become, only 26 nations and territories were willing to take part in the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games, following a massive boycott by the Afro-Asian majority. The Group’s formula was fruitful in the 1990s, when South Africans arduously negotiated their way to freedom.
Sonny Ramphal’s contribution over his 15 years in Marlborough House was a mixture of charm, energy, intelligence and a firm commitment to end racism, reduce poverty, and protect our planet’s fragile environment. Some of this now seems a long time ago, and he was building up the Commonwealth as a serious force for the global majority and its smaller states when the UK, and its more conservative elements, were still trying to keep the British in the driving seat. He focused on racism as the greatest horror when there were many other human rights abuses, and he had to work alongside long-term one-party states, as with Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, military regimes as in Nigeria, and governments with little respect for freedom of expression, as in South Asia. His achievements were often against the odds.
In addition to his fire-fighting, and deployment of Commonwealth diplomacy, he also had an understanding that the Commonwealth could play a significant role in public education. He appointed over a dozen expert groups, to examine issues ranging from youth unemployment, to the environment, and took part in several UN-backed international commissions, from Brandt on North and South, to Brundtland on the environment and development. Staff from the Commonwealth Secretariat worked on these international commissions, and helped publicise their recommendations.
Announcement of the death of Sir Shridath Ramphal and articles written by him and about him in the Round Table Journal
At this time the Commonwealth Secretariat was well-staffed. It also had a powerful communications department, led by Patsy Robertson, an extremely persuasive Jamaican who knew journalists all around the world. Indeed, just as talking to Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher’s bluff Yorkshire spokesman, was like to talking to the British Prime Minister, so talking to Patsy was like to listening to Sonny. Sonny and Patsy had total mutual confidence.
But how different these approaches were was illustrated at successive Commonwealth summits in the 1980s, when British journalists alone were invited to get the Thatcher line daily from Bernard. Often, at times which clashed, the rest of the Commonwealth media were invited to a Secretariat briefing by Patsy Robertson. Accounts of the leaders’ meetings were predictably different, and journalists had to swap information in time to meet worldwide deadlines.
Sonny was aware of the significance of a free press and supportive, even though Guyana then lacked one, and this was a pre-internet era of phone calls where his own time was always precious. He was affable with journalists and had a particularly close relationship with the joint founders of the Commonwealth Journalists Association – Derek Ingram of Gemini, and Patrick Keatley of The Guardian. I recall sitting in a 6pm conference at The Guardian when the editor shouted at Pat Keatley on the BBC News on television, to stop reporting for them and get back to Gray’s Inn Road ASAP.
He supported the foundation of the CJA in 1978, following a meeting of Commonwealth non-governmental organisations at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. As the result of an Australian initiative, the Secretariat set up a Commonwealth Media Development Fund, which the CJA was able to access to pay for training journalists. Sonny and Patsy were also involved in helping to rescue the Gemini News Service in the early 1980s, which Derek Ingram ran and edited in London. It posted news features every week to papers around the Commonwealth and developing world, but its finances were always on a knife-edge.
In his life time Sonny was memorialised with two institutions – the Ramphal Institute in London, and the Shridath Ramphal Centre at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill – and awarded many honorary doctorates. His extraordinary effectiveness in a role and institution hitherto under-respected, in the middle of the Cold War and other conflicts, led to a reaction.
Commonwealth Secretariat budgets have been effectively reduced. No Secretary-General can serve for longer than eight years. His dream of becoming UN Secretary-General was dismissed by Lord Carrington, representing a country whose Security Council veto rested on the British Empire’s role among the victorious allies of 1945. Carrington said he would “swim the Atlantic” to stop Sonny.
In all the affectionate pieces that are now being published by those who knew Sonny, and what this many-sided person achieved, it is impossible to ignore a sense of nostalgia. His friends have yet to see a Commonwealth imbued with a similar sense of dynamism, and cooperation with governments and institutions of diverse kinds for noble and difficult ends. That would make a living memorial. Will the Commonwealth leaders, due to meet in Samoa next month, rise to the challenge?
Obituaries:
From Obit from The Guardian: The central focus of the long international career of Sonny (Shridath) Ramphal, who has died aged 95, was undoubtedly his time as secretary general of the Commonwealth. It was in this period, from 1975 to 1990, that the reputation of the Commonwealth as a proactive postcolonial institution that could play a mediating role between developed and developing world was formed.
This was particularly due to the central part Ramphal played in helping to broker the decolonisation of Rhodesia into Zimbabwe in 1980, and in furthering the ending of apartheid in South Africa 10 years later.
Sir Hilary expressed his condolences on behalf of the University, recognising Sonny’s stature as a distinguished scholar and statesman, whose contributions to the University, the region, and the world cannot be forgotten.
It was Sonny’s mission to promote both democracy and regionalism. In his role as a legal draftsman, he worked on the constitutions of the West Indies Federation and Guyanese Independence. As an architect of multi-racial democracy in the post-colonial period, he played a crucial part. He was instrumental in securing the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which has served to preserve and protect the regional character of The UWI. A first for the Commonwealth, he made history as its first Secretary General from a “third world” country. In his long service as Secretary General of the Commonwealth, he played an important diplomatic role in ending apartheid and freeing Nelson Mandela.
