It is never too late
THE CHANGE of status for the people from Africa in Jamaica was spectacular compared to what it was when they first arrived in captivity under colonial rule. By 1962 they were the overwhelming majority of the people continuously living on the island as permanent residents to be granted the franchise to govern the country at the end of colonial rule.
These are the people who celebrate independence after being carried from their land in Africa and transplanted in the new world of the Americas carrying nothing with them but the audacity of hope to take their rightful place in the global society.
AUDACITY OF HOPE
Having been abducted from home, denied religious and cultural practices and deprived of name or other identifiable distinction other than the colour of their skin that gave birth to the curse of racism and discrimination they suffered. To be the virtually the indigenous people of Jamaica without owning the land at independence must be a unique form of neo-colourism for societal change where the audacity of hope did not wither or die, but remained a post-colonial appendix as former US President Barack Obama could later testify.
Jamaicans can be justifiably proud of their stable government and the strides in economic development, yet the people remain restless and unsatisfied with their condition. World leaders like Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Usain Bolt and others in sport is not enough to satisfy their thirst for more; nor does the world-renown reggae music with the legend Bob Marley serving out inspiration with the philosophy of Marcus Gavey for the uplifting of people from and in Africa. Jamaica’s restless present population of 2.7 million people is what Orlando Patterson grapple with in his latest book, The Confounded Island: Jamaica and the post-colonial predicament.
FOOL’S PARADISE
Emancipation made the situation worse for the freed workers who had no lodging and no way to feed themselves and their family; they may have been better off as workers on the plantations. At the abolition of slavery, the wrong people were paid for the work to create the wealth of the country. Independence after a long and arduous journey with much toil, the shedding of tears and blood by generations of the people from Africa, land remained in other hands protected by the constitution handed down as a cut-and-paste copy of the British unwritten constitution, only possible with a mockingbird monarch for a fool’s paradise – a post-colonial predicament. And the more things changed, the more they remained the same.
If the present Constitutional Reform Commission is to mean anything, there has first to be a strong declaration deeply enshrined in the constitution for all land in the country called Jamaica belong to the people of Jamaica. Distribution and use of the land must only be with approval of the people’s representatives in a democratically elected parliament. It is not too late to correct the omission of fundamental human rights with justice for the people on the confounded island.
In gynaecological terms the first triage in 1834 did more harm than good for the birth of a nation when the wrong people were paid at the abolition of slavery. Likewise at the second triage for Independence in 1962 is where Professor Patterson detailed the hardship and suffering of women while carrying the audacity of hope in their womb for delivery from one generation to another, still not recognised for their extraordinary contribution with the hope of the people for land too long overdue. There remains the third triage to satisfy the audacity of hope.
THIRD TRIAGE
The prime minister’s New Year message to the nation can only be a part of the plan to satisfy the unfulfilled promise of land distribution for the people to provide themselves with shelter and food security as the third triage, limited to workers in the tourist industry to share in the boon they help to create.
The two outdated political parties should have no difficulty in supporting the principle to be extend to all Jamaicans present and those whose ancestors lived and worked on the land for the development of the country and the enrichment of the oppressors. It is not too late for action to correct the omission.