Melville Cooke
'I am the man you love to hate
Look, I am now your next door neighbour'
- I Am The Man, Mutabaruka
WE ARE bearing bloody, first-hand witness to a Jamaican revolution or, at least, its nascent stages. And I speak of revolution not in the romantic sense of a charismatic leader leading the poor, downtrodden masses into a land of free milk and old-age benefits, but in its true sense, as in simply a change.
Whether that change is for better or worse is anyone's judgement call.
It is a revolution that is fuelled by drugs money, extortion and the whole package that Kingfish is trying to snag out of the complex pond of Jamaican society by dangling the bait of rewards and the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) is making a 29-point declaration against in a second Emancipation, so to speak.
MORALS AND VALUES
It is a revolution that has been long in coming, which has no ideology except more and more money and assets and the freedom to flaunt same. And I believe that it is irresistible, more so in the absence of a competing immovable object in the society's morals and/or values.
For the majority of people in this country, it has been a long, circuitous, torturous road to the short distance between Henry Lunan purchasing the first lot of land at Sligoville, the first free village, and packing into the quads of Portmore.
In our history, very little has developed to challenge the stranglehold the large landowners have on the economy. The then University College of the West Indies, now UWI, whose first office opened in 1947, and its predecessor as the primary institution of higher education, the University of Marescaux Road (more properly known as Mico Teachers' College) were (and still are) not accessible to the majority of the society.
And for the majority of those who did and do go there, Buju Banton sums up the situation perfectly in Untold Stories from the 'Til Shiloh' album, when he sings 'full a education/but no own a payroll'. An employee, no matter how well paid, is still an employee and the translation from having a job to owning the means of production has been woefully in about the same proportion as the West Indies beating Australia at cricket over the past five years.
The schooled (as opposed to educated) have, of course, made strides and occupied better housing, but the colour of the hands on the controlling shares of the companies that really matter, as well as faces that congregate at board meetings, are still much closer to limestone than the banana friendly dark earth of my native St. Thomas.
There have been two emerging industries that have had the earning power to challenge the status quo music and drugs. Music, unfortunately, has had its fair share of thievery and downright incompetence, to the extent that less than five per cent of the money reggae generates comes back to Jamaica and many of the earlier musicians and performers have nothing, while those who stole from them are accorded accolades.
Illicit drugs (and here I include marijuana, not because I consider it a drug, but because it is deemed an illegal substance), on the other hand, generate real money that is seen in huge houses, shiny cars and piles of money. For those who are not faint of heart, it is an equal opportunity industry and it is levelling the playing field of this pyramid society.
I have no lot and part with cocaine but it is certainly no worse than trafficking slaves, or charging people money to leave their homes, go to work and go back home. There was no law against slavery when this country was being resettled; it is conceivable that 300 years from now cocaine will be legal and families that have had a headstart on the industry will be quite respected.
PLANTATION SOCIETY
Need I remind you of the Kennedys?
Sometime last week, I read a newspaper story in which a policeman said there were illiterates living in big houses and it sounded like he was describing a plantation society.
And it is reputed that in some communities the don has his pick of the women, much as the plantation owner had his choice of those big-assed beauties. Is it not amazing how change often imitates the mode of behaviour in the system it is replacing?
Remember, revolution is, by strict definition, a circle. And the romanticised version is invariably bloody.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
