Martin Henry
NEWSPAPER STORIES, video footage and voice recordings of the death of another notorious bad man and the uprising of PNP Spanish Town in the aftermath of Bulbie's shooting by the security forces will join records of the Morant Bay Rebellion, the labour upheavals of 1938, and any number of other historical uprisings of varying significance in the archives of the nation's memory.
One big difference is that the stuff of these days is all digital allowing almost infinite electronic storage. And more of it can be captured by ordinary amateurs armed with electronic recording devices. But the problem of being buried under mountains of unsorted data easily captured and stored and the problem of retrieval as technologies rapidly become obsolete arise. I suppose we can keep transferring from medium to medium. But the more stuff there is, the bigger that task is, despite the power of the computer.
Donovan Bulbie Bennett's death is significant. How significant as an event of Jamaican history future historians and political analysts will comb the records to ascertain. His dawn demise on Sunday morning has cast a bright light on the dark side of the politics/crime connection. When Peter Phillips was handed the bitter cup of National Security and began to fire off statements about curbing crime and violence, I wrote then that any seriously successful crime-fighting would have to destroy the crime/politics connection, with serious implications for the political parties which are integral parts of the criminal network, and serious implications for the crime fighter within and outside his own party.
RADICAL TURNING POINT?
Bulbie's death and the 'political' uprising it has spawned in the old seat of government could mark a radical turning point and a break with a sordid, destructive past. Or it could be a major step on the road to a failed state in which the rule of law has been finally annulled. When I saw the torching of the bright orange Phillips' T-shirts, held aptly with the image upside down, and the scornful stomping upon the bundle of party caps and shirts dashed down upon the highway (to progress), images of the end of Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascist state flashed through my mind. The parallels are not perfect, but?
Many of our celebrated bad men - and rebels - and some heroes, have relied upon Obya [Obeah] for protection. I am not sure how it was with Bulbie. But there is an interesting connection between faith in magical protection and operations outside the existing legal framework which is worthy of serious investigation. Both crime of the organised sort that Bulbie allegedly directed and the practice of Obya are acts of 'rebellion' against an unwelcome social order and means of survival within it. The sheer duration and scope of Bulbie's elusive reign does suggest aid from a variety of higher authorities.
OBI-ISM
Last week I shared some findings from rummaging through the National Library of Jamaica. Some more. The 1887-88 Handbook of Jamaica included an article on Obi-ism by Rev. John Radcliffe which diverted me from my real research business. The English clergyman sought to establish that Obi-ism in Jamaica was old serpent worship which had flourished in Egypt and the rest of Africa and was comparable to "Vaudauism in Hayti". It was supposed to have both protective and punitive powers. Radcliffe cited one witness in a court case telling the presiding judge, "Hi! Massa. If you want cure, it cure; if you want kill, it kill."
A police inspector [a white Englishman, since no Black Jamaican could rise to the officer corps in the police force then] also testifying said, "The belief in Obeah is so great that I consider it one of the greatest obstacles we have to contend with. It is almost beyond belief the terror which is inspired by the obeah-man and he is employed more or less in every case of importance that comes into a court of justice in some districts." Unlike Inspector Black, most Black Jamaicans, like Paul Bogle and his followers only 14 years before his testimony, would have regarded the colonial courts of the times as courts of injustice.
EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS
Up to Rev. Radcliffe's time, the House of Assembly in 1840, 1856 and 1857 had "tried to repress Obi-ism in Jamaica, but all efforts were in vain." The Christian foreign gentleman then went on to say, "It has its priests and votaries, nay what is so unaccountable, priests and votaries who profess the Christian religion."
A couple of Christian clergymen, impeccably black from their varied measure of African blood and independent Jamaican, have been, in recent times, on this page advocating the recognition of Obi-ism. Recognised or not, the status of Obya as an integral part of Jamaican culture with strong, if surreptitious, linkages to Christianity, on the one hand, and to gangsterism, on the other, as I am proposing, is not about to fade away. Nor is the crime/politics connection, which Bulbie's death has so glaringly exposed, unless someone is courageous enough to cut the binding knot at great cost to self and party.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
