Maddening Days

In these maddening days of the ‘Silly Season’ everything becomes politicised, even the National Spiritual Baptist Day. Enough silliness around as we have come to expect. We are told that not since slavery, have we had so much employment.

WOW! I hope the same factors that led to full employment during slavery are not the ones propelling our employment. This was certainly not meant to be a serious remark! The major issues affecting our society continue. It is good to see the recent statement by the Christian Council on the prevailing spate of murders. It appears that it was the reality of a triple murder that forced this statement. The Christian Council “pledges to work with the authorities and other stakeholders to help reduce violence in our nation.” Great, but who takes the initiative? Might this not be the role of the Council? I believe they had done something like this before. I am not sure what was the outcome. Such disruptive practices, and the perpetration of evil, threaten the very fabric of our society, as the Christian Council sees it. The Council’s statement urges that we examine the root causes of such violence. Who does this? Clearly, we have to try and find the root causes, but to do so might create political anger as we try to find out where and how we as a people are going.

The police claim to know the motives for the triple killing in Belmont. This is probably a start in trying to understand the root causes, so we can get away from talking about high maintenance women and so on. I have to repeat what I have said before, that we have to look at both long and short term solutions. Given the youthful age of some of those involved in criminal activities, we have to focus on our schools, even while the police set about trying to bring the culprits to justice. Have we been tracing the high drop outs from our schools to find out what they are doing? As we look at the root causes, we might find that some of the issues come from deep in our society and are not far removed from us. Let us not wait until it affects people close to us to become concerned.

I was moved by an article in one of the online newspapers that was captioned “Young Man Chopped to death in Glen Over Plumrose”. If plumrose was the cause of the argument, then the death of one of the individuals has to be caused by something more fundamental. Every minor argument these days leads to a rush for weapons. It appears that settling arguments or disagreements inevitably leads to a call to arms. This is where we are!
Let us also remember that we are at the start of the Hurricane Season and that this season is expected to be above average. We certainly will remember what happened in the Southern Grenadines last year. Had the mainland been hit in that way, then it would have been a horse of a different colour. I hope we learnt lessons from what happened then. I don’t think the country can afford another major storm/hurricane so let us hope we are spared this time as we had been in the past.

There are so many things happening now that one cannot help believing that they are driven by the fact that we are in an election year. We hear of decolonising the national landscape. This needs to be looked at, but there should at this time be more urgent matters that demand our attention. Let us also in this maddening period not try to do in one year, things that were not done in 20 odd years. They are likely to be hurriedly done, and we will certainly feel the consequences later on. But make no bones about it, the madness will continue. These are indeed Maddening Days!

• Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian