A few days ago, the murder statistics for the nation-state of Belize stood at 133 murders for 2017 so far, with 81 of these taking place in the Belize District. 81 out of 133 is something like 60 percent, but the population of the Belize District is only about 30 percent of the national population.

In fact, the vast majority of the 81 Belize District murders occurred on the Southside of Belize City, which also happens to be the political stronghold of the ruling United Democratic Party (UDP). The UDP has been in national power for almost ten years consecutively, but has been unwilling or unable to do anything about the unacceptable socio-economic conditions on the Southside, apart from a couple food handout programs and token attempts at special education upliftment.

It is important to note that during the latter part of the heyday of the People’s United Party (PUP), specifically the 1965 and 1969 general elections, the Southside was where, compared to the rest of the country, dissatisfaction with the PUP was being expressed. Hon. Philip Goldson, Leader of the National Independence Party (NIP), won the Albert seat in both those general elections, while the PUP’s C. L. B. Rogers won the Mesopotamia seat for the PUP in both 1965 and 1969. In the case of the third Southside constituency, Collet, Mr. Albert Cattouse won the seat for the PUP in 1965, while V. H. Courtenay won it for the PUP in 1969. But both the Cattouse and Courtenay victories were close, so that the overall vote total in the Southside probably established the area as the electoral base of opposition to the PUP. In fact, in 1965 the NIP polled 3832 votes on the Southside, while the PUP polled 3703. In 1969, the NIPDM polled 3006 votes on the Southside, while the PUP polled 2931. (In both 1965 and 1969, the PUP won all three Northside seats comfortably. These were Freetown, Pickstock, and Fort George, won by Rt. Hon. George Price, Mrs. Gweldolyn Lizarraga, and Sir Alexander Hunter, respectively.)

In 1960, the United Nations had passed a historic decolonization resolution condemning colonialism and calling on the various colonial powers to take their colonies to political independence as soon as possible. In the case of the United Kingdom, most of their Caribbean island colonies achieved independence in the 1960s.

Self-rule was an exciting concept for populations like that of British Honduras in the 1960s. Remember, we had come out of the abject condition of slavery in 1838, but then we had been formally colonized by the British in 1862. The bridge years between 1838 and 1862 would not have marked any discernible difference in the living conditions of Belize’s black masses, who were being joined in the settlement’s northern areas by refugees from the Caste War in Yucatan, which began in 1847.

It really did not occur to our people that self-rule did not automatically guarantee economic empowerment. We just assumed that things would get better once we Belizeans were making the relevant decisions for ourselves. Self-government in 1964 was a high, and so was political independence seventeen years later.

It did not occur to us that our colonial masters, as such colonial masters were doing all over the colonized world, were busy figuring out how they were going to maintain and increase, after decolonization, the wealth they had generated for themselves during slavery and colonialism. In their Anglo-Saxon minds, there was to be no significant transfer of wealth from Britain to Belize when independence came, just some ceremonial claptrap.

In fact, the nature of free market capitalism being what it is, there is no doubt that British corporations in Belize, Central America, and the Caribbean were figuring out how they could make decolonization work for them in the sense of increasing their profit margins. And, these British-owned businesses and industries had immense advantages over us newly decolonized when it came to machinery, technology, organization, marketing strategies, regional experience, military support, and so on and so forth.

Within a decade of Belize’s political independence, the gang wars between our young men began in Belize City, and as time went on the casualties from the gun violence reached civil war levels on the Southside. What may be described as suicidal genocide on the Southside of Belize City represented the fallout from colonialism, and, of course, slavery. The solution was never and could never be personality party politics: the solution had to be educational and economic vision, restructuring, and commitment.

But, Belize became bogged down in personality party politics. It was not until almost two decades after independence that our thinkers finally figured out that we had been saddled with a monarchical independence constitution in 1981, a constitution which created an elite PUDP political class which enjoyed domestic immunity from prosecution because the members of that elite political class were explicitly sworn to give their ultimate loyalty to the Queen of England, “her heirs and successors.”

The revolutionary generation of Belizeans which had emerged with the United Black Association for Development (UBAD) and the People’s Action Committee (PAC) in 1969 had been confronted with a classic historical reality: you cannot make revolution in a society which offers the electoral capacity for democratic change. Theoretically, then, it was possible to make serious change in Belize from within the democratic political structure, and to do so electorally. Thus, Assad Shoman and Said Musa, the attorney leaders of PAC, decided to join the ruling PUP in the early 1970s. They rose as high as becoming Cabinet Ministers in the 1979 to 1984 PUP government, but when they confronted Cabinet corruption in the decisive chairmanship convention of May 1983, they were soundly beaten. This marked the end of socialism and revolution in Belize.

In the case of UBAD, the cultural organization became a political party in August of 1970, and reached a peak of street power in Belize City in 1972. The leadership of the organization divided down the middle in early 1973, however, because one faction became convinced that the ultimate enemy was the PUP, while the other faction continued in the belief that Belize’s ultimate enemy was international white supremacy.

With the deaths of UBAD in 1973 and PAC in 1983, the wreckage of decolonization was allowed to remain in place. Belize has produced a wealthy, elitist political class which lies in bed with international white supremacy. The proof of this is the blood of black youth which has been flooding Southside streets for more than a quarter century.

It did not have to be this way, beloved. The fact of the matter is that our political leaders since independence, both UDP and PUP have been taking the easy way out – collaboration with international white supremacy. In the beginning, that condition where the colonizers continued their exploitative rule after decolonization, was referred to as neocolonialism. In the case of Belize in 2017, the wreckage of decolonization has a poster boy named Lord Michael Ashcroft. Since 1985, he has become the equivalent of colonialism’s Belize Estate and Produce Company (BEC). We Belizeans now owe Ashcroft our financial soul. First slavery chains, then BEC colonialism, now Belize Holdings “self-rule.” On the Southside, if we are to speak socio-economically, nothing much has changed.