A little over 50 years ago Norman Washington Manley exited the political scene. Paired alongside Alexander “Busta” Bustamante, his ally and political adversary, they became the lynchpins and gladiators of our Independence movement, following the violent unrest over the desperate living conditions in Jamaica in the 1930s. They were the umbilici of the mission to wrest political and economic independence from the grasp of the dominant capitalist elite and place it into the hands of ordinary people.

The elections of 1944 and 1949 were pivotal moments with convincing wins by Busta and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), thereby heralding the shift of political power to the masses. Political independence soon followed in 1962.

It must not be overlooked that the society inherited at Independence had its foundations in race, wealth, and privilege. The dominant economic power-based system was exploitative of the masses by design and intent and impaired the reach and influence of the new State to effect meaningful social economic changes.

Reforms were sorely needed to empower the State to expand and deepen investments in welfare, wellness, education, and land reform. These were imperatives to stem the wave of immiseration caused and enabled by the cruel thrust for ‘freedom’ in 1938 into a world with nothing — no compensation for forced servitude, not an inch of the land worked without pay, no homes, no belongings, nothing save their black skins and breath. Clearly the injustices, stretching in a long line from slavery would not, and did not, end at Independence.

Despite all the hard work, Manley and Busta had to contend with political independence, only, as their gift to us. For implicit in Manley’s 1969 charge to the next generations of leaders was the painful admission that “economic independence” still eluded us, and that the leadership of both himself and Busta had not delivered the template for economic justice to the landless, penniless, helpless poor of the new, politically independent State.

In short, Manley saw that the inconvenient and unnatural marriage of political independence and economic dependence was inimical to full and true Independence for those burdened by the legacy of slavery and colonial exploitation.

The attempt in the second decade of Independence to realign the economic power structure was met with tumult and resistance. The economic backlash was as ferocious as it was crippling and destabilising.

In the end the push for change and justice fizzled, leaving largely intact the socio-economic architecture and its stranglehold on a suffering, seething, and growing band of low- or no-income, uneducated, socially dysfunctional poor.

Every Government since, barring none, has tiptoed around and sought accommodations with the might of money in governance, whilst presiding over a process increasingly irrelevant to and isolated from the sufferings.

The consequences today are not just pecuniary, but include a raft of dysfunctionalities to include low or no self-esteem, low or no regard for life and order. It is manifestly the State’s failure to positively impact lives and living conditions of the most vulnerable that has created the void now filled by dons and gangs. It is unquestionably naïve, if not dishonest, to question the origin and cause of our engulfing violence and instability. Governments have for too long ignored the permeating socio-economic segregation that characterises the experience of too many, with severe ramifications for a stable, democratic, political order.

Indeed, the lack of will and leadership has denied, and is still denying, the creation of a Jamaica comprising “one people” as promised at Independence. As a consequence, the vast majority of Jamaicans remain economic pariahs and social outcasts who subsist on the fringes of our predatory, class-segregated society. This is a betrayal greater than Judas’s kiss, and more people are taking the view that politics and polling booths are abattoirs of their hopes and dreams. Indeed, all around there are signs of distrust of the political order and with it the dimming of the prospects of justice and peace.

And, there are more reasons for dismay than hope. There is no leadership seen or heard that points us out of the mess. Promises and failings characterise much of what has and now passes as political leadership.

Suites of economic programmes suit and enhance the lives and livlihoods of the small top tier, but are inimical to the needs of the vast majority.

Perhaps nothing better captures the impotence of the political order than the People’s National Party’s (PNP) waltz with the delusion that its billionaire suitors will suddenly change skin and tact and tear down the silos and economic fortresses that are the principal manifestations of the widening economic inequality. That state of mind is worse than death itself.

We are, today, at a post-Independence juncture, not unlike where we were in the 1860s when post-Emancipation expectations of freedom and progress went up in the flames of rebellion.

We can ignore or even deny our history, but we cannot escape it. A failed, not-fit-for-purpose education system, inadequate housing, poor nutrition and wellness, and closed avenues for social mobility and economic bondage are the experiences across our land. The concentration of these social conditions are fertile breeding ground for anti-State ferment and violent upheavals. Indeed, the prime minister recently conceded that gangs now pose a threat to the country’s “constitutional order”. Those who think “enhanced security measures” alone can quell today’s happenings are living in spaces deprived of light, oxygen, and reason. You know we are on the brink when people view the gang trial now underway as the State putting on trial the victims of its own derelictions.

The only solace is that the post Manley-Busta political order of dormancy, ineffectiveness, and growing voter apathy is itself in the throes of decay and rot, hopefully to soon be replaced by a transformational era of good governance for our long-suffering people. Then, perhaps, we will get governments that do not give the appearance of being junior partners in a coalition with the business elites and parliamentarians who do not, unwittingly or otherwise, serve to perpetuate the inequality and hardships inherited at Independence. 

delmor@cwjamaica.com