Valerie Dixon, Contributor
IT'S BEEN quite a while since I felt the urge to put pen to paper and comment on anything. Like so many Jamaicans I feel dizzy and punch-drunk and oblivious to pain.
I was talking to some colleagues and they told me quite frankly that they don't care what happens in or to Jamaica anymore.
They have cried 'cree' and are now out of the game. Remember at primary school when you got tired of playing a game, or you couldn't keep up, the only way you could be excused from the game was to bawl out the word 'cree' for everyone to hear and then you simply walked away?
The truth is that it is some of these same colleagues who have brought Jamaica to this sorry state. They sold their souls to the devil in order to get a piece of the good life and didn't realise that the devil extracted a steep price. Many are so embroiled in corruption that the good life now feels bad when they see the many times they have to kow-tow and turn a blind eye to the wrongs that are done in their presence and for some, they affixed their signatures to some shady deals. Very few of us can find the guts and courage to resign or walk away. Being popular and being with the 'in-crowd' is more important, so we compromise our values and principles. What gaan bad a mawning can't come good a evening.
WHO'S TO BLAME?
I am not willing to join the debate as to whether Jamaica is a failed state or not. In my mind, Jamaica is not the problem - it will still be here when we are all gone. A few columnists have been saying for a long time that it is our leaders who have failed, but our surname is not Mbeki, so I guess nobody was paying attention.
I am still maintaining that Walter Rodney was killed for nothing. It makes me wonder that if he were still alive, would he have been honest and been able to write a book entitled 'How African and Caribbean Leaders Underdeveloped Their Countries', I can only speculate. As I said in an earlier article, I thought that the Black Power Movement that he gave life to in the Caribbean, was for the upliftment of the black people who the colonialists had oppressed, or so we were made to believe. I thought he would have succeeded Marcus Garvey and filled the vacuum that Marcus had left. Rodney must be turning in his grave now to see that the more things change the more they remain the same. The colour has changed but the oppression remains the same.
THE COST OF SELFLESSNESS
The truth is that Black leaders do not love themselves and seem unable to handle success. The story is told of a farmer who entered his corn in the state fair each year and always won a blue ribbon. When a reporter asked how he did it, the farmer said: "I share my seed corn with my neighbours." Why would he give away his prize seed corn to his competition? The farmer said the wind pollinated the fields. If his neighbours grew inferior corn, his corn would be degraded too.
It is mostly black leaders who don't understand the moral of this story. They believe that the best way to rule is for them alone to be rich and look prosperous and to keep their people (read subjects) deprived, depraved and degraded. They believe that their people should have an abundance of poverty.
The main problem in Jamaica why the above scenario will be difficult to change is that for the most part, the people who put themselves up for office on both sides, seem to be cut from the same fabric. The majority of those who enter politics are too poor to be of service to their country and their fellow Jamaicans, so their focus is one of service to self first, then friends and family and those who are politically and genetically linked. When you love yourself you want 'good' for the whole (which includes yourself.)
Too many of us are 'verandah politicians'. This is what is likely to happen if we vote with our mouths instead of our fingers. We will not 'count'. Who will count and be counted are those described as uneducated, illiterate, unemployable and irredeemable. Many politicians know where the factories that mass-produce this type of Jamaican can be found. They will go to the factories and load them unto buses and pack them into their conferences and political meetings, put them into coloured T-shirts, give them a Nanny (better make that a Joshie things have gone up) and then tell them how to vote (or else?). These people will largely determine which party forms the government for the verandah politicians and voters. If this is what we all want then so be it.
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
Allow me to step back in time. I remember when a certain politician was a rabid communist and the term he used to use to describe the uneducated, illiterate etc. was 'the lumpen proletariat.' Today, he has metamorphosed into a rabid capitalist and I think the term he will be calling these people now will be "my fellow comrades". I can't laugh and I can't cry because this is Jamaica and anything is possible.
Anyway, it is not time to cry 'cree' and get out of the game. We have to think about the future generations that we have to produce, because we have to give them their legacy which is a very high mountain of debt money that we 'walk-bout' and borrow (out of which many of us have never enjoyed a free dinner much less a free plane ride). However, I do know that I have figured out a possible game that our black leaders are playing. It involves seeing who can live the best European lifestyle and have the biggest European bank accounts. Finally, the black leader who becomes the richest ghost in the cemetery is the winner.
Valerie Dixon can be contacted at valeriecdixon@hotmail.com.
