‘Things fall apart / The centre can not hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world’. W.B. Yeats lines, some say, aptly describe Jamaica’s current situation. At times it is difficult not to agree. The nightly news is a regular litany of murders, riots, bankruptcies, and layoffs. Many of our increasingly illiterate young men seem interested only in drugs and crime. Our rate of deforestation is the highest in the world, our coral reefs are nearly dead, and our beaches may be next.

But anyone who travels and reads knows that Jamaica is a blessed country. And for all its incomparable physical gifts, the nation’s greatest asset is its immense social capital. We have hundreds of service clubs and charities, and thousands of people involved in helping others not for monetary gain but merely for love of country and fellowman. How can a nation with so many people willing to give of themselves ever be without hope?

And how can one not have confidence in a country which so vigorously exercises the right of free speech? The expression and tolerance of opposing opinions is the very essence of democracy, which as Winston Churchill famously said, is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

The wheels of democracy turn slowly, but they turn surely. No country which has held fast to the principles of free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary has failed to overcome the problems it faced. Nations which opt for authoritarian quick fix methods almost always regret them in the long run. As old time people say ‘Long way draw sweat, but short cut draw blood’. A Jamaica that remains fully democratic need not fear the future. Amidst all our problems, the preservation of liberal democracy must remain the country’s focus. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance - an old but true cliché.

Jamaica is having a hard time adjusting to globalization. We like the good parts such as cheap cars and computers, but have not made the flipside adjustments of becoming more hard working and efficient. Doomsayers moan that the situation is hopeless. But such bleak predictions have been heard before. Here is a quote from V.S. Naipaul’s famous 1962 travel book  ‘The Middle Passage’..

 ‘Race…is the most important issue in Jamaican society today. The hypocrisy… is at last provoking anger and creating a thoroughly black racism which could conceivably turn the island into another Haiti.’

Seldom has a writer been more mistaken. Race was and remains a problem in Jamaica. But in which other nation is it less of one? There are few places on earth where races mix as comfortably, and Jamaica is one of the few places that even argues about the role of race in politics. In most countries racial politics is accepted as an immutable fact of life.

Perhaps independent Jamaica’s most remarkable accomplishment has been the development of a strong sense of black pride allied with an almost total lack of animosity to other races. Rastafarianism and reggae music have certainly played a great part in this. Reggae is unmistakably a black music with African roots. Yet it is uniquely all embracing, welcoming dreadlocked white ‘roots’ bands and Japanese dancehall deejays not with hostility but humour.

Here is another quote from ‘The Middle Passage’ about a small society’s road to ruin, which is clearly intended as a prophetic vision about Jamaica.

‘This ends in a famine, an insurrection. The regiment shoots down the mob and establishes a military dictatorship’.

Again, Naipaul was completely wrong. Since 1962 Jamaica has held regular multi-party elections, never experienced the assassination of an elected leader, suffered no serious uprisings, adhered to the rule of law, and maintained a free press. Independent Jamaica has been by any criteria, one of the world’s most stable democracies.

Naipaul is not everyone’s cup of tea. A man not yet thirty who writes that  ‘Carnival in Trinidad has always depressed me’ and sees only ‘ugliness’ in Jamaica surely lacks instinctive vitality. But he is a great writer, and ‘The Middle Passage’ contains many sharp observations about the confused identity of ex-slave colonies.

But countries are not born with scrolls of historical deeds, nor is national self-doubt a permanent condition. Jamaica and the West Indies has since given birth to a vibrantly attractive and exceptionally tolerant cultural mixture of African and Europe, most tellingly in calypso and reggae, two of the world’s most vital folk musics.

Intellectual snobs dismiss reggae as ‘popular’ music and not ‘high culture’. But Bob Marley is  more famous and has had a greater influence on modern culture than say Naipaul. Marley’s music might well outlive Naipaul’s writing - the only true judge of art is time.

From any viewpoint, reggae’s world wide popularity is astonishing. It is probably the only music not of European or American origin which can be heard in every country on earth, and is arguably the first example in modern times of a third world country exporting its culture to such a diverse audience.

When Naipaul was writing, who had a clue that Jamaica would in short time develop a music which would catch the imagination of the entire world? The word ska had not even been coined yet. For so young and small a nation to create such a universally influential music suggests that within the collective breasts of the Jamaican people beats an unchannelled but potent force.

Reggae is the heart song of Jamaica. And no words better sum up the nation’s experience than Toots Hibbert’s ‘Never Get Weary’

‘I was walking on shore

And they took me in the ship

And they throw me overboard

And I swam right out of the belly of a whale

And I never get weary yet

They put me in jail and I didn’t do no wrong

And I never get weary yet

Say they put me in jail and I didn’t get no bail

And I never get weary yet

Yes I was from before Christopher Columbus

And I was from before the Arawak Indians

Trod in creation before this nation

I’ll always remember, I can’t forget

Never get weary yet’

A people who could endure all that the Jamaicans have, and yet come out with spirits and ancestral memories unbroken, will surely not be defeated by temporary transitional difficulties. Jamaica has abundant human capital, strong democratic traditions, and proven creativity. What is there to stop us from creating a nation of which we can all be proud, and which like reggae, the world will admire? We never get weary yet. Why should we get weary now?