Dear Editor,
I remember the first time I heard Mutabaruka repudiate the 1962 Jamaican Independence watershed as a meaningless development from the Rasta perspective. It jarred me.
Even if one agrees with the analysis, that in all the independence movements of the 20th century in Africa and the Caribbean, black nationalism capitulated to western rationalism, which conceived nations in terms of units of land rather than a unity of people, one feels some spiritual connection with the motto, anthem and pledge fed to us daily from our primary school days.
I have always fought to find some meaning in the promise of 1962. My father and his father before him left a legacy of the kind of sacrifice, vision and principles that fed the fledgling institutions of a young nation.
While empathising with Muta's sentiment, the here and now required me to culturally repatriate, self-repair, and put my own dynastic flag of conquest on the Jamaican rock.
However, I have now arrived at the following conclusion:
The symbols of 1962 can never be sold successfully to a people if they are, or are perceived to be, tools of oppression. The Coral Gardens atrocity is the significant memory the Rastaman has of 1962. The Independence fires and flag-raising had little impact upon those brutally violated by the State.
The present age of violence can justly be said to have been initiated by the Jamaican Government and its agencies. From Coral Gardens to Tivoli Gardens, and every case of police extrajudicial killing in-between; poor black people in Jamaica have been fed a diet of murderous impunity for the last 50 years.
There is a very long file of State terror that makes a mockery of every honest attempt to find integrity in the idea and symbols of Jamaican nationhood.
Notwithstanding short bouts of hope from populist leaders such as those at present, the people who have witnessed the brutish nature of the post-Independence Jamaican Government have failed to be aroused from their deep cynicism and anancyism by compromised and corrupt leaders.
These leaders lack the courage to accept responsibility for the brutish past, for initially arming the inner-city political fiefdoms and fuelling the baptism of blood and international crime that now brand the nation, and for waxing fat off the blood of the poor, raping them of justice, and translating the rule of law into a rule of terror.
Last Friday was the anniversary of the State crucifixion of Rastafari -- the true carrier of the gene of black identity and will towards self-determination. The State should now move swiftly to make amends, right this wrong, and safeguard itself from reaping in the next 50 years the blood it has sown in the last 50. This would be a meaningful Jamaica Jubilee.
YeKengale
yekengale@yahoo.com
For a meaningful Jamaica Jubilee
-->
I remember the first time I heard Mutabaruka repudiate the 1962 Jamaican Independence watershed as a meaningless development from the Rasta perspective. It jarred me.
Even if one agrees with the analysis, that in all the independence movements of the 20th century in Africa and the Caribbean, black nationalism capitulated to western rationalism, which conceived nations in terms of units of land rather than a unity of people, one feels some spiritual connection with the motto, anthem and pledge fed to us daily from our primary school days.
I have always fought to find some meaning in the promise of 1962. My father and his father before him left a legacy of the kind of sacrifice, vision and principles that fed the fledgling institutions of a young nation.
While empathising with Muta's sentiment, the here and now required me to culturally repatriate, self-repair, and put my own dynastic flag of conquest on the Jamaican rock.
However, I have now arrived at the following conclusion:
The symbols of 1962 can never be sold successfully to a people if they are, or are perceived to be, tools of oppression. The Coral Gardens atrocity is the significant memory the Rastaman has of 1962. The Independence fires and flag-raising had little impact upon those brutally violated by the State.
The present age of violence can justly be said to have been initiated by the Jamaican Government and its agencies. From Coral Gardens to Tivoli Gardens, and every case of police extrajudicial killing in-between; poor black people in Jamaica have been fed a diet of murderous impunity for the last 50 years.
There is a very long file of State terror that makes a mockery of every honest attempt to find integrity in the idea and symbols of Jamaican nationhood.
Notwithstanding short bouts of hope from populist leaders such as those at present, the people who have witnessed the brutish nature of the post-Independence Jamaican Government have failed to be aroused from their deep cynicism and anancyism by compromised and corrupt leaders.
These leaders lack the courage to accept responsibility for the brutish past, for initially arming the inner-city political fiefdoms and fuelling the baptism of blood and international crime that now brand the nation, and for waxing fat off the blood of the poor, raping them of justice, and translating the rule of law into a rule of terror.
Last Friday was the anniversary of the State crucifixion of Rastafari -- the true carrier of the gene of black identity and will towards self-determination. The State should now move swiftly to make amends, right this wrong, and safeguard itself from reaping in the next 50 years the blood it has sown in the last 50. This would be a meaningful Jamaica Jubilee.
YeKengale
yekengale@yahoo.com
For a meaningful Jamaica Jubilee
-->