It was the late great Marcus Mosiah Garvey who once said, “a people that is without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” His statement has become an almost self-fulfilling prophecy for Jamaicans, for today, far too many
of us are clueless about our origins. Far too many have allowed themselves to become pawns in a chess game where they are sacrificed to those who want to become social and political kings.
It is my belief that this state-of-affairs was never an accident but a calculated risk that has bred a level of divisiveness within segments of our population replete with the associated selfishness that is manifested by the staggering levels of criminality. It is this criminal culture above all else that has undermined Jamaica’s social and economic development for the past six decades. In addition, it has served to create the environment from which successive Jamaican political administrations have been unable to salvage the country.
Most of these problems began in the lead-up to the Independence elections of 1962. For starters, this was the first time that gunplay became part of our political experience when gun activities in Western Kingston led to the closure of a major polling division in that constituency and the disqualification of more than 1700 votes. Seaga would win the Seat by 483 votes. Immediately after that in 1963, the victorious JLP administration saw to the completion of the Wilton Gardens housing scheme in a section of Trench Pen that was renamed, Rema.
The then Minister of Development Hon., Edward Seaga presided over the completion of this scheme and the handing over of these high-rise homes to “hand-picked” individuals, essaying the practice of “benefits politics” that would again be repeated with the creation of Tivoli Gardens. The PNP would unfurl its’ own approaches in the 1970s with the creation of Arnett Gardens, among others. The gestures created a level of hostility that turned into violence between people from Trench Town and Rema, Denham Town and Tivoli Gardens, etc., from which we are yet to recover. In time, sections of those communities would channel acerbic levels of violence throughout the Kingston & St. Andrew area which would spread to Spanish Town and other areas in the island.
In the last 20 years, there has been a noticeable separation of sorts between the politician and the gunman, albeit not totally. It is this very fact that makes it impossible to talk about crime solutions without addressing the role that our practice of politics plays in shepherding the agents of this scourge. We saw in the early years of the 1960s and 1970s where the political hand-outs were houses and jobs for a select few. We saw the political garrisons that this created, all of which stand today. In 2021, it has become a bun at Easter or a bag of groceries. In the last 30 years, the level of graft and basic corruption has become stratospheric in every sector of society. Politicians have become fat and their associates who are close enough to the trough similarly bloated while the value of the voter has shrunk significantly.
Despite the lack of amenities within communities the constituents believe even more that the politician is working for them. After all, he or she has given them a $500.00 Easter bun...or a bag with a couple pounds of flour, rice, sugar, cornmeal, tin mackerel, and some salted butter. This is the measure of the voters' value by the current crop of politicians. Give them a belly-full periodically and you do not have to provide any long-term solutions to the problems that handcuff them to this demeaning demonstration of the politicians' generosity.
It is unquestionable that the level of criminal activity on the island was birthed by our political process. That notwithstanding, certain segments of our political class have taken to attaching the blame for our criminal tsunami to the creators of Jamaican music. Let me be clear that I find these attempts to hang the causes of our criminality on the creators of our music as cheap and irresponsible political theater. For more than 60 years, Jamaican music creators have done what writers do…they write about events on the ground. They write and sing about what is happening around them. In these communities, crime is the flavor of the day and therefore the subject matter for recording.
The fact is that successive administrations have failed to address our crime problem because they have never provided the budgetary resources required for transforming “at-risk” communities. Instead, they provide more firepower and armored vehicles, etc., to the police, a strategy that was and never will be the solution to our problems. Blaming music creators for this is again, a bird that will never fly. In the meantime, many of these communities have been converted by criminals into their personal havens. Go figure…
Check out my website at: YAAWD MEDIA INC | SUNDAY SCOOPS for a trove of information on Jamaican music.
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