The time has come to move from rhetoric to action, but even this challenge could become another case of rhetoric, if we do not design the institutions through which action can be achieved. – Michael Manley
Errol Miller’s latest two volume work, Elections and Governance: Jamaica on the Global Frontier – The Colonial Years and The Independence years, similar to his previous sweeping exploration into the genetic make-up of the teaching profession, The Prophet and The Virgin is exceedingly dense, often opaque, highly academic, pedantically detailed … the kind of work that could be classical reference material in its field as with earlier works Men at Risk or Marginalization of the Black Male, but unlikely to have their hot-off-the-shelves, best-seller impact, which though scholarly, appealed both to man-in-the-street as well as high-minded academic.
I consider the real value of this two-volume, deep and very detailed philosophical reflection on the history of governance and elections in Jamaica to be two-fold: – the unprecedented vista it gives us into the formation of Jamaican institutions not only of elections and governance, given Miller’s cadastral approach we are also given a broad overview of Jamaican institutional development in general – in the fields of law, education, religion, finance, commerce and trade, and other areas of civic life and social organization. We become witness to the evolutionary forces and conditions that shaped Jamaica through successive generations from 1663 to 2016: the agentive factors, decisions made and reactions from the various people groups, the social outcomes and patterns of behavior. The second and even more potent benefit of the work is the illumination not only of history, but of destiny mandates derived from historical reflection. Miller devotes almost the entire ultimate chapter of Volume 2 to mapping a thoroughly detailed, long-term development plan for the Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches. Only such a mind, recognizing the natal inter-connection in the Jamaican experience between politics and religion could confidently and persuasively hold the logic that includes such an appeal/challenge in a book ostensibly about governance and elections.
Miller’s entire career establishes him firmly as an institutionalist. He generally doesn’t venture outside the box, he rennovates it. His deep insights into the history and impact of institutions have made him almost a career guest speaker at anniversaries of all sorts of institutions, a sample of these insights are captured in Marking Milestones.
Our constant challenge as Jamaicans has been to discern when the institutional ‘boxes’ we have inherited are ill-fitted for our purpose and need to be replaced rather than tinkered with. Our reticence for example in ridding ourselves of the monarchy or embracing the Caribbean Court of Justice as our apex court demonstrates an identity struggle still operational in the Jamaican psyche. We have stood aside and watched too many of our prophets slaughtered (like Harlo Mayne) because of an inability to recognize and nurture our own uniqueness, straddled as we have been by the baggage of colonial institutions crafted to extract rather than increase our assets. We are a people given to measuring ourselves by external standards not yet having come to grips with the truth that our ‘prophets’ keep telling us if we would only listen – that when we accept our authenticity, we find ourselves standard bearers in a chaotic world more skilled in recognizing our light than are we and desperate for direction.
This business of identifying and crafting the rituals and institutions that nurture our identity, creativity and progress; delinking from ways of being and knowing learned in subjugation that immobilized us and siphoned away our energies, whether these ways were forced upon us or developed by ourselves in order to cope, is an issue that deserves much more attention than we have managed to give. One of the persons that has indicated keen insights in this is Miller’s former student and protege Prof Clinton Hutton. Most recently I heard him speak at the Manley Center on the impact of colonial education on the mental development of African peoples. He had ‘so much things to say’ they could not fit the limited time.
May 31st is a forgotten milestone celebrating one of the greatest Black institution builders in humanity’s history. On that day this year, I engage Clinton in conversation to excavate his thinking on the matter. Conversation archived below.
Destiny is designed before it is discovered. The question in both instances is – ‘By who?’
YeKengalé 