Dear Editor,

We do not readily take to foreigners speaking with any pretence to knowing the truth about our country or countrymen, more so when they use the proverbial broad brush.

Yet we have to be honest with ourselves. Before getting into a rage over what has been reported as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s unsolicited views of Jamaican men, can we honestly say there is no merit to the assessment?

We cannot deny that in Jamaica, men are outnumbered everywhere, except Caymanas Park, some sporting events, all boys’ schools, gambling dens, street corners, kneading palms, rum bars, and Parliament.

We probably should hold back from “shooting the messenger” until we have examined the message. If we ignore the merit of message, then pretty soon it will be all too obvious and too late. When an apparently grown man can declare on national television that “wi nuh want nuh work, a money wi want”, you know things are headed in the wrong direction.

If families, communities and nations go where men go, then the Jamaican man must wake up from this stupor of laziness, dependence and irresponsibility into which too many of us have fallen.

Failing which, it may not be one whom we have honoured in the past that speaks to us, but a jackass, more able to see and say what needs to be seen and said, than we are.

Everal Edwards

Kingston 20