ADVENT is the time on the Christian calendar when the preparation of the coming of the Lord is re-enacted. Jesus Christ, the prince of peace, came into a sinful world of disunity and war to free us from our sins and to bring peace on earth. And in preparation we confess our sins and try to make peace with enemies. In our culture this has to be addressed in a different way and poses a serious challenge for Jamaican Christians who take their faith seriously.

Unity is a prerequisite for peace. And peace is a prerequisite for development. It should be made clear from the outset that development is not about things but about people. High-rise buildings, cars, cellphones and so on, are symbols of development but not development itself. Development is really a state of mind, which comes through the right type of nurturing.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding has called Vybz Kartel and Mavado together to work out a truce. This is very commendable no matter who opposes it. About 340 years ago the whole North Atlantic Trade depended on how the pirate Henry Morgan was handled and it was dealt with at the highest level. This was high on the agenda of the Treaty of Madrid in 1670. In Jamaica, we had the Maroon Treaty of 1738.

Today because of the influence of Vybz Kartel and Mavado on the local level they have been called in to broker peace. Those who think that calling them in for discussion is some kind of joke should study some history. But this is not enough to bring peace. We need to discourage garrison constituencies which are a source of the ongoing disunity.

I know the pitfalls of proportional representation. But under the circumstances we have to treat those pitfalls as side effects to taking some vitally important medicine for an illness. The only way to dismantle garrison constituencies is to have proportional representation. On this point I agree with John Maxwell.

While Jamaica has advanced in many ways from political independence in 1962, let alone from emancipation in 1838, certain aspects of our mentality are not that far removed from the slave plantation of “divide and rule”. There was a time when there were about 12 social classes in Jamaica from white through mulatto and quadrlatto to mustifino and sambo straight down to slave. Today this has evolved into three social classes and even that is changing.

But the disunity of the estate lingers on and has taken different forms since that time. And because of this, unity, the prerequisite of peace, does not come easy in Jamaica. Mental slavery, a condition of the slaves which was contrived and designed by the slave owners, persists to this day. “Divide and rule” was the way in which the slave-manned sugar estates were run.

Full emancipation came 171 years ago but the divide-and-rule mentality stayed on. And the political parties, since the granting of universal adult suffrage in 1944, have encouraged “divide and rule” in the name of power. Now that some do not need political parties to get ahead, other avenues have been used to feed the habit of disunity. One such avenue is the “Gaza-Gully” madness that overran parts of Jamaica this year.

This “Gaza-Gully” thing is really an outgrowth of the earlier political wars, which itself was an outgrowth of “divide and rule” in plantation slavery. The irony here is that although there were the PNP-JLP wars in the old days, Bustamante and Norman Manley enjoyed a good relationship and later Michael Manley and Hugh Shearer enjoyed a good relationship.

Similarly, I understand that Vybz Kartel and Mavado are friends. Their children go to the same upscale prep school in St Andrew and are also friends. But the psychology of division is of such that we tend to work out ways to divide before we work out ways to unite. And because of this we divide in politics, religion, families, communities, economic status, skin colour, sports competitions, song competitions, Top Road and Bottom Road, Up-hill and Down-hill, Them and Us – you name it.

The only way to really stop the disunity is to work towards an individual and collective change of mindset in Jamaica. Our entire education system should be geared around this. And schools should recruit anyone, trained teacher or otherwise, who can help to create positive mindsets in all children and adults in Jamaica.

Changing mindsets to rid Jamaica of violence is one thing. But we also need to re-start the learning process to co-operate for employment in co-operatives. This was started 72 years ago by Jamaica Welfare and joined 68 years ago by the Credit Union League established by the Roman Catholic Church.

Those who were wondering when I would come to my oft-repeated point about credit unions and the Roman Catholic Church will surely not be disappointed. But these are some of the things that will bring about unity that is a prerequisite to peace. Here endeth my Advent reflection for today.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com