NEVILLE Annibourne, journalist and pre-Independence political activist, died at his Happy Acres, East Coast Demerara home around 4:00 a.m. yesterday morning, after a brief period of illness.

Annibourne, 82, was General Secretary of the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO), youth wing of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), in the pre-Independence era, and he travelled on behalf of the PPP to all of the then communist bloc Eastern European countries, as well as Latin America and Cuba, where he did special training. He also became a stringer for Prensa Latina, the Cuban news agency, as well as Russian and Hungarian news agencies.
He was an active member of a number of fraternal organisations in Georgetown, served as the Chief Ranger of Court Georgetown Lily, Ancient Order of Forresters, and was a Master in several others. A close Forrester brother and former media colleague, James Deane, remembers Annibourne as “a real, genuine friend, who served with all his heart in the fraternal organizations, and was always keen to lend a hand to charitable causes.”
Allan Fenty, another former media colleague, recalls his “exquisite skills in preparing the most scrumptious souse and his patriotic fervour” that prompted him to enlist in the then People’s Militia during a period of heightened tension along the Guyana-Venezuelan border.
Annibourne became a Captain in the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Reserve and was among the first batch of civilians to enlist for training as an Officer Cadet in the then Guyana People’s Militia in 1982, now the Second Infantry Battalion Group Reserve.
He was also a journalist with several pre-and-post-Independence newspapers, and the presenter of the radio programme |’Focus on Four’ as the Region 4, Regional Information Officer with the Ministry of Information.   The Guyana Press Association (GPA) more than a decade ago awarded him for his contribution to the media.
He narrowly escaped death while on assignment as a Government Information Officer on November 18, 1978, at the airstrip at Port Kaituma, in the North West, when gunmen from the Peoples Temple cult opened fire on U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan who had gone to Jonestown to probe complaints about ill treatment of members by cult leader Jim Jones. He recalled being pinned down by gunfire near the Guyana Airways Corporation plane that had arrived to take the visiting party back to Georgetown, and seeing a woman’s brain being blown out as she was hit in the barrage of gunfire.
The Congressman, three American media workers and a Peoples Temple defector were among the dead. Soon after, in an internationally notorious incident, Jones led his more than 900 mainly American followers to commit mass suicide with cyanide-laced Kool-Aid while some were fatally shot.
Annibourne, who was born in Essequibo, was twice married and twice divorced. He is survived by his 99-year-old mother who lives in Jamaica, four daughters, two sons, and his companion of many years, Verna Cummings.