“Fact of the matter is, that while none can deny that there was corruption within the previous government and certainly a few other factors that led to their defeat, the man singly most responsible for bringing down the PUP government is Evan Hyde.”
– G. Michael Reid, Tuesday, February 26, 2008
When you consider our situation as roots Belizeans in this country, the first thing you must accept is that we are an oppressed people. If you do not accept that premise, then all your deliberations after that will be skewed.
We can see that the Garifuna people of Belize are more focused than the so-called Creole people. As a result of being more focused, the Garifuna people are achieving more and failing less than the Creoles. At least, so it seems. I would submit that the Garifuna thinkers and leaders begin their analyses with the accepted postulate that they are an oppressed people.
But this is not the case with Creole leaders and thinkers. Somehow, amongst our Creole thinkers and leaders in the first half of the twentieth century, there was a tendency to view ourselves as perhaps being partners of the British colonial masters. Today, there are few Creole thinkers and leaders who will just say it in a hard core way and begin everything from this – we are oppressed.
If we do not accept that we are oppressed, you see, then “the system” can encourage us to believe that we are to blame for our situation. The system and its apologists say, don’t be bringing up the past. Slavery is long gone. If your people are having problems, the fault lies in yourselves. You are losers.
Before I proceed, let me say that defining ethnicity in Belize is very difficult, which is maybe a good thing. We have become so “mingled” that most of us feel truly Belizean, if you understand what I mean. But I have to introduce ethnicity into this discussion because of the terrible, frightening, murderous violence which has taken over the primarily Creole Southside of Belize City. The young boys and young men who are killing and maiming each other every day are generally so-called Creoles. What’s wrong?
Well, what we have are strong, healthy youth who are not educated. They do not have any skills with which to earn a living, court a mate, and support a family. Desperate to survive, these young boys/men have become criminals. They are fighting each other for money and power in the streets of Belize City. A lot of that money and power comes from the drug business.
There are formative years in the lives of children when adults try to prepare them for life. In the urban areas, children go to school. Or at least they are supposed to. What are they learning in these schools to prepare them for gainful employment? Are there regulations to mandate school attendance and monitor performance? There is an elected government, and paid public officers, school administrators and teachers to run the educational system of Belize. But we have too many uneducated, unskilled young people on the Southside. Something is wrong.
There is a lot of money spent on education in Belize, but the fact of the matter is that public money is financing private schools. That is the core of the problem. They call it the church-state educational system, and it is a sacred cow in Belize. This means that you cannot criticize, or even discuss, this system, because then you will be accused of not believing in God and stuff like that. The bottom line is that there are people who are satisfied, happy with the way things are. But on the Southside, there is chaos and despair.
This is not a topic one can deal with adequately in a newspaper column. I will mention, in passing, two initiatives that have come out of Kremandala in the last eight years.
The first initiative was that I went to the new national university in 2000 as the chairman of the board. At the University of Belize during my time there from 2000 to 2004, we were the victims of an orchestrated anti-UB campaign. Nobody can tell me that the campaign was not the work of Ralph Fonseca, whom I consider a Jesuit asset. (Likewise, G. Michael Reid.)
Immediately after the 2003 general elections, there was a PUP government move to cripple UB. A remarkable lady by the name of Luz Longsworth led an incredible fight by the UB faculty and staff to save their university from dismemberment. This is a story which needs to be told. I wish somebody else would do it.
A second Kremandala initiative was the historic Belize Black Summit of September 2003. This was a hard fight. That summit took five months of planning and preparation. Such a summit, or a similar get together of black thinkers and leaders, should be at least an annual effort, given the situation in our community. Ask yourself the question why the response to our community crisis is so haphazard, piecemeal, and practically casual.
Now I return to my original argument. So-called Creole thinkers and leaders don’t live on the Southside any more, so they are getting away with congratulating themselves on their own achievements, and the overall accomplishments of Creole professionals, businessmen, and entrepreneurs.
If what is happening on the Southside does not mean that we are an oppressed people, then it means that we are animals. I can’t accept that. Can you? These kids are human beings just like we are. You think they want to die, or be crippled? You think they start out wanting to kill? Watch them as they put on their reckless badman front for the television cameras. It’s a show. You think they like to be locked up in jail? You think they don’t suffer worrying about what their women are doing outside and how their children are surviving? Come on. These are our young people. We have a problem. We have a major problem. In fact, we have an emergency.