Dear Reader,

Ever since I returned home almost 30 years ago, I have had concerns about the community of Tivoli Gardens. My return to my homeland landed me squarely and voluntarily into Fletchers Land, and into the east/west belt of downtown Kingston. I would later work in the communities of Matthews Lane, Trench Town and Jones Town, among some of the poorest and most vulnerable groups in the country. It was those experiences that opened my eyes to the cunning game of “divide and rule” and the deadly phenomenon of garrison politics.

The insights and friendships I have made over the many years of community work have made me aware of a very crucial fact – that there is a dichotomy between the deep, personal longings and desires of the citizens, and the calculated herding together of masses of people into excluded zones under the fluttering banner of party politics. To put it more plainly, the people of our inner cities by and large have the same intrinsic instincts and ambitions that other Jamaicans have, but unlike the other areas of the country, they have been locked out and kept back by a deliberate strategy of divide and rule, and for the vulgar gains of political hegemony.

I have long called for the decent, hardworking people of Tivoli Gardens to free themselves from the shackles of bondage called garrisons. What is happening to the citizens of our inner-city communities is worse than slavery, for as abominable as that was, there were enlightened and courageous slaves who understood the calculated nature of slavery and were prepared to fight back, and an external abolitionist force, however weak and disjointed, that worked tirelessly to bring an end to that dehumanising institution. In the case of Jamaica’s inner cities, neither of those liberating forces exists.

I continue to liken Jamaica’s inner cities to the system of apartheid that existed in South Africa where lines of demarcation were drawn and where people were relegated to specific enclaves, not being free to move around as they pleased. While, admittedly, Jamaica does not have laws that restrict habitation or movement, we continue to practise a kind of de facto apartheid, where the poorest are confined to certain spaces, and where the more affluent communities continue to be out of reach and out of bounds, even though unprescribed.

I’ll never forget the day I drove my “mentee” through the rolling hills of Cherry Gardens and Norbrook as we made our way down to Constant Spring. She was mesmerised, and kept staring with amazement at the surroundings. Finally, she blurted out, “Ms Blaine, I never see anything like this before. Is the first I see houses like this. I never know is so Jamaica stay.” That morning left an indelible mark on my memory, and I vowed to work hard to free the children.

Those who don’t know at all, and those others who would care not to know, should be forced to enrol in a course called “The exigencies and risks of exclusion” before it’s too late. Instead of sitting in hotel lobbies and on elevated verandahs to debate the reasons why the masses are shiftless and lazy and don’t want to work, those who don’t understand should be educated about the psychology of exclusion, and the behavioural manifestations associated with that type of separateness. They may be surprised to know that for many inner-city residents, the outside world is not New York, Canada or England, but north of Half-Way-Tree.

It is against that background that one has to examine the statement made by Prime Minister Golding at his recent constituency meeting in which he proudly affirmed that Tivoli and other communities along the western belt are some of the safest places in Jamaica. Nobody could fault the prime minister for stating an item of fact, but the question is, how come? Why is Tivoli Gardens safer than anywhere else in Jamaica, and if we all agree that it is, shouldn’t Tivoli be used as a best practice – as a model?

After all, every single one of us wants to be safe, and all of us want to know that our children and our families are safe as well, so we should all be asking, how can the Tivoli model be replicated across the country? Better yet, I am of the opinion that any person who is able to achieve what no national leader has been able to do – and that is, to maintain complete and consistent peace and prosperity in a volatile inner-city community like Tivoli, should probably be given a chance to run the country.

If we could just simply chalk up Mr Golding’s remarks to partisan putridity, then for me what he said would neither be here nor there. But the truth is that there are deeper and more serious connotations regarding excluded, self-governing enclaves like Tivoli Gardens. What the politicians of this country have done is to corral the decent, hardworking citizens into “safe-seat” zones in which none of them would choose to reside themselves, and having done that, they then leave them up to their own devices.

Safe indeed, Mr Golding, but at what price?

With love,

bab2609@yahoo.com