By NICOLE BURROWS
MORE than 700 years ago, a “peaceful” people inhabited these islands we now call home. We imagine that they were, given their isolation, content with how they came to be here. We will never know the true extent of their own inner peacefulness, or the extent to which they were savage even unto themselves. But we know they lived alone simply and fairly easily with nature as their only limitation or adversary.
Then came the Europeans in their conquering European ways, hell bent on Catholicising the world of heathens who didn’t share their beliefs, via Christopher Columbus, a man looking for financial support from the Spanish king and queen to be a “discoverer” of the East Indies. He happened upon the peaceful people of the now Bahama Islands, discovering nothing other than the fact that these people already lived here.
Things were okay for five minutes until the “visitors” decided they didn’t want to visit anymore, they wanted to stay, they wanted to own the place and take what they could from it, hoard some of it and send the rest back to their people across the water. And all hell broke loose and the peaceful people were ultimately annihilated.
Pause for a moment and imagine you are one of the Lucayan people. You watch these massive ships roll up into your neighbourhood and people disembark who don’t speak your language. What do you do? Do you invite them ashore and become friends? Do you become so mesmerised by what they could bring you from their motherland that you totally miss the fact that they must want something in exchange for their “gifts”?
They bring disease and they threaten your people’s existence, but you don’t know it and you let them in anyway. And then one day you are outnumbered and they kill off most of your people when you finally reach your breaking point and retaliate, and they become the new owners of your once peaceful home.
Then more of Europe joins the party and they fight each other for this new place full of riches to call their home. People who were sent by Spain and eventually Mother England, and people who broke away from Mother England and wanted nothing more to do with her all wanted to escape to these islands you now call home.
Ironically, they all came and they brought Mother England’s mechanisms with them, the very mechanisms they were eager to leave behind. And when the original native inhabitants were no longer available to be enslaved, the European conquerors worked a deal with Mother Africa’s equally despicable leaders and purchased or traded for shiploads of human capital, the enslaved Africans, across a vast ocean.
Anyway, after many, many years of beating the dying horse of slavery, when these humans of African origin decided they wanted rights because they were people too, the Europeans left again. And in between all of that these islands had temporary “visitors” of all sorts, including the pirates and buccaneers, all general misfits looking for some quick money and easy living.
But by the time slavery became illegal and colonists of Mother England could no longer own other human beings, there was really not much left to be taken and there were so many of these once-enslaved African people left behind that the Europeans decided it was no longer in their interest to hang around like before, especially when they could settle other places with less headache.
Enough of them hung around until the former slaves proliferated and became a majority and decided they wanted ... deserved ... more rights and were going to fight to get them. Well, who fights a majority they once enslaved, right?
And slowly but surely the Africans became the majority in The Bahamas, organising themselves just enough to break free of their colonial rulers of the past. The existing citizens at this point are British and subjects of the British crown. But then the organised majority says we are Bahamians and we want to be free of oppressive English rule. So they give Mother England the middle finger, remarkably with no conscionable plan other than to take over, and to take the rules she once used to govern and tweak them for their own use.
But, then what?
What do you do when you’ve cut off the nose to spite the face? Where does the money come from now to support the nation you just created? Suddenly, you’ve just inherited responsibility for the lives of many people and you have no real plan in place to take them from this point to a successful future.
And you don’t scare off all the people who used to bring trade and industry to the islands so now you need to find new trade and industry. You clean out the few blossoming agriculturalists because “dis we tings” and “cause you in charge now, son”, and nobody could be more industrious than you. And the end result is that you close down farms on other islands, destroying what works in order that your loyal supporters get to open their own farms. And then that fails.
But you still need more money to run this new country. Back to square one. Drug trafficking is an option, but you can’t do that too boldly or the world and sister America will scorn you to kingdom come for your complicit behaviour. Still, everyone knows that behind the scenes something untoward is happening, when your people start becoming drug addicts and other versions of destitute and criminal behaviour is born out of abuse and depravity.
But wait. Those people you once kicked to the kerb, they have money right? Yes!
So let’s now invite them back over, the Europeans and now the Americans, call them tourists, cater to their every need, because The Bahamas is where people come to escape anyway, wait on them hand and foot because we already know how to do that since we were once slaves and tell them to come on over for a vacation. And let’s build a pink and purple eyesore high into the sky so even more of these visitors can come over.
Are we onto something? Let’s call this here escape route an industry! Tourism, which was just around on a very small scale, now becomes the sole focus of the future. You chuck all your eggs in this basket because the dollar signs are flashing in front of you and, you know, it’s cleaner than the drug money (which finds a permanent home in the economic background anyway.)
For decades, you pour your resources into this tourism and, behold, the new slavery is born. But it’s a catch-22, because your people can live better now with more money and ready access to American currency and things they love to have. But what is the trade-off? Boy we living good, ey? And it works for a while. Because your people, the used-to-be slaves, the ones you now have great responsibility providing for, now have money in their pockets all the time and they can buy things and travel the world and live higher than they did before.
Throw into that mix a greater dependency on foreign resources, to the exclusion of developing your own resources with that foreign money from tourism. Instead of taking the foreign money to develop your healthcare system, “cause Bahamians like to make babies”; schools, because all these babies need education; and industry, because something has to be left when the tourism money dries up, you focus on bringing more and more visitors to spend more and more money. You never stop to consider that one day these visitors will decide to go elsewhere for a vacation. Maybe they will get tired of you standing there with your two hands open all the time.
So what else have you got to give them? Oh - that’s right! Don’t just invite them to visit and sell them vacations. You could start selling your land! You have a lot of it. You can sell islands at a time if you want to, and these folks have the money to buy it.
And while you sell land, you can invite the folks to come and build their own hotels, too, as long as your people can get “jobs” catering to their new landowners.
So you sell the land, and you sell the rights to the land. It’s the new plantation. And before you know it you have many islands where the people still have to live like those 1492 Lucayans, and one primary island where the gap between the wealthy and the poor rapidly widens and the land becomes overpopulated.
Not only is the income gap widening, because the real property demand of your people outstrips the supply of your one main island, where you’ve concentrated the population for lack of a better plan, where legal and illegal immigrants have flocked to over the last couple decades, where your people from the island who don’t want to live like Lucayans have moved to in order to access some money, but now you’ve introduced an entirely new market of demanders.
Now, your biggest industries cater to the foreign visitor, the foreign worker, and now the foreign resident, most of whom live behind a gate somewhere and are shielded from the daily impact of the illegal immigration, poverty, low and no education, and crime, which are all a direct result of severe economic disparity.
For decades, your people have sucked on the teats of tourism; every two minutes you hear about how they must increase spending by cruise ship passengers, how to get guests to stay longer in hotels and experience more of the island so they spend more, how to find something new and different outside the hotels so more guests will come and spend more ... getting visitors to spend more money being the ultimate goal.
But the ultimate goal should have been developing your people, their education, their healthy lifestyles, their future opportunities. Instead, you gave them a giant udder to suck off of, but now the udder is gone, and the cash cow can’t produce like it once did. And the people are left looking around at each other going “what next?” When will the next udder fall from the sky, because we don’t know how to make nothing? We don’t know how to think. Who gon’ save us now?
Your people can’t afford to live, literally, because your tourism and your focus on tourism to the exclusion of everything else sensible has left them without property to live on. Shelter, food, and clothing are necessary for survival. If they can’t have decent shelter and they get sandwiched to the interior of one 21 by seven mile long island, what good is food and clothing? Are they all going to live on the streets now?
Because of their nation’s haphazard development, Bahamians, the 2015 variety, are in direct competition with foreigners for the land in their own country.
Real property in The Bahamas is not priced out of the range of Bahamians simply because The Bahamas has more people than land. The land in The Bahamas is priced out of range of Bahamians because foreign purchasers can afford to buy it at whatever the market rate is ... the same foreign buyers who come from countries where the people have been taught to think, can create things that the world needs and wants, where there is excellent public school education and decent public healthcare ... these are the people who can afford to buy property, land parcels, islands in The Bahamas.
So, tell me, how the hell can you be a Bahamian, how the hell can you be proud to be a Bahamian, when you can’t even afford to own the smallest piece of land in your own country?
Comments
asiseeit 8 years, 10 months ago
And it gets worse. Go look out west behind the gates and see who is working in those mega-mansions, not Bahamians, they do not want us. They import workers from the other side of the world to clean their toilets and change their sheets. You think they want a stupid, stealing, nasty Bahamian to look after their kids? So don't worry about land, you can't even get a job! Even The political elite are hiring the Philipeeno's just look out west where the rich is be.
avidreader 8 years, 10 months ago
Young Ms. Burrows was born too late to be a member of the now defunct Vanguard Party. How many of you remember them and their printed manifesto? Ms. Burrows makes a number of interesting points but you have to remember that many of the ills of which she complains are the direct result of so-called "globalization" and neocolonialism both of which are rampant at present.
Unfortunately there are far too many people who care only about themselves and their personal enrichment and do not have a moment to consider the larger picture of misery and deprivation in the wider community. This is the case in most countries of the world. In this country there are some who would be so bold as to say that we have had it too good for too long.
asiseeit 8 years, 10 months ago
One question for Miss Burrows, Would Not the initial Europeans that settled and stayed in the Bahamas (Eleuthera Adventurers 1648) actually be the closest thing to a real Bahamians we have today. They and their descendants have been here the longest after all. What say you?
banker 8 years, 10 months ago
The Ghanaian economist, George Ayittey, in a TED Talk, said "There have been over 500 Black leaders of nations. Name ten famous, good ones." Nobody can. Nelson Mandela comes to mind first & foremost. And yet one can easily name many bad ones: Idi Amin, Mobutu, Mugabe, Al Bashir, Charles Taylor, etc. He frequently addresses why more often than not, Black people have trouble ruling themselves post-colonially.
It is because of tribalism & cronyism that post-colonial countries lose control of the civil service, security forces, judiciary, election centers & national bank to these despotic criminal leaders. That is exactly what happening in the Pindling era & that is what we see today with the PLP Attorney General squashing oversight into public funds; extra-judicial killings by police officers; he raping of the treasury with BAMSI & Urban Renewal.
There is just one exception to post-colonial failure in a Black country & that is Botswana. It succeeded primarily because of state legitimacy & a strong democratic tradition. Publicly elected leaders acted patriotically, protected the state and her possessions on behalf of the people and worked for the common good instead of self-interest. Other reasons given are a spectrum of good governance, inter-ethnic harmony & unity, respect for democracy, & strong commercial traditions.
Essentially we were screwed from the beginning with Pindling. He demonstrated his lack of respect for democracy by throwing the Parliamentary Mace out of the window & once in power, ran a racketeering ring to enrich himself & his cronies. These are the foundations of our country.
As for commercial traditions, we did have a convertible currency & a currency board (before the Central Bank) where one could use Bahamian dollars outside the country at a given exchange rate. Because the PLP government got hooked on running the country on debt, the currency board was abolished the Bahamian dollar was pegged, and non-convertible, ruining the global aspirations of Bahamian business. You can't participate in trade if your money is no good anywhere but at home.
So essentially we are truly incapable of governing ourselves. When Prime Minister Ingraham put forward a referendum for the constitutional equality of women, and put forward plans for eCommerce as the Third Pillar of the Economy, the criminal PLP campaigned vigorously against him, and even having odious scum like Valentine Grimes delivering fake ballots to polling stations. There are still pictures on the internet of lineups on Grand Bahama of Obie Wilchcombe buying votes publicly and the police guarding the moneybox.
As a result, the country is a mean old junkyard of rapacious, crowded rats in a cage, lying to each other and eking out a living the best they can. Human dignity is lost. The truth is rotting with the dead potcakes in the bushes, and the noble Bahamian people have been stamped out, replaced by nasty hypocrites. There is no hope.
asiseeit 8 years, 10 months ago
Truth, thank you Banker. To bad the Bahamas is more like Zimbabwe than Botswana.
Honestman 8 years, 10 months ago
" ...the ultimate goal should have been developing your people, their education, their healthy lifestyles, their future opportunities. Instead, you gave them a giant udder to suck off of, but now the udder is gone, and the cash cow can’t produce like it once did".
A sad but true legacy of Prime Ministers Pindling, Ingraham and Christie. Meanwhile Cuba prepares itself for the influx of foreign investment that will transform that island into the premier holiday destination in the Caribbean.
johnq 8 years, 10 months ago
I was shocked to read and see that there were others who actually agreed with banker and what he wrote above.
Given the perspective banker wrote his opinion it is clear that he does not have a full grasp of history, global governance and maybe commonsense. His claim that Black people can't rule themselves is ignorant, misguided and dangerous. I hope that the majority of readers of this page has the intelligence to recognize this.
birdiestrachan 8 years, 10 months ago
Thank you so much John Q. The mere fact that Banker calls human beings rats. shows him up for what he is and is about. when one begin to call human beings rats that is very low. in a ditch and digging. The Bahamas has its problems, but they plain in comparison to other Countries. and there are still many people trying their very best to come to the Bahamas. There are to many suffering from the "Chicken Licken " Syndrome Just because they do not support the government in power.
banker 8 years, 10 months ago
I would like to point out the dissonance between what Johnq is saying & what I am saying. My leitmotif was about governance. It wasn't about fighting for independence, or African or Pan African ideals. It was about stable governance in a post-colonial setting.
Johnq references Lumumba, Cabral, Sankara et al, who were freedom fighters for majority rule. None were in power as governing figures of a state for more than a year. They were assassinated by the CIA, colonial powers, internecine warfare & a whole host of agents, external & internal who ultimately were responsible for their violent demise. They were effective leaders, but there is no measure of their governance, because they were not long in state power. The point that Ayittey makes, is that once a peaceful statehood struggle is over, good governance of Black-led & Black-peopled post-colonial countries is abysmal in general.
As a Black Bahamian, I am too young to know what the heady days of independence were like or what the pre-conditions were like. I do know that my great uncle from Grants Town fondly remembers the UBP days when nobody was hungry, the country was safe &secure from all alarms, he was a regular at the Cat & Fiddle, and life was not the grind that it is for him today. The Bahamian cultural scene was alive with government-promoted stars like Ronnie Butler and King Eric Gibson, and he fondly recalls years satisfied well-being that he misses. His neighbourhood has fallen to shreds around him & the punks in his neighbourhood scare him.
I am not too naive to understand that there was no equality Blacks and White -but today in 2015 there is no equality for women in the constitution at present.
The bottom line is that we have not had good governance. Occam's Razor tells me that we are not a success as a democratic state. Our government is rife with corruption and our founding government was criminal.
If the endemic low nationalistic self-esteem from a Black population prevents us from rationally acknowledging that our own leaders led us down the garden path to a failed state then there is no hope for this beautiful archipelago. The first step to solving a problem, is admitting that there is one. PLP partisans who cannot handle the truth of our history are rife in these lands & that is a major impediment towards development & advancement.
We have not done a very good job of self governance, and until we admit that fact, raise our consciousness, enlightenment and development to the point where we say "We are not going to take it anymore", then the future is indeed dark for The Bahamas. And throwing out the mace was a disrespect to the democratic tradition that it represented. It represented the authority of House, and he himself gained that self-same authority represented by the mace through the democratic tradition that he violated.
Thanks again for your point of view. I hope that you can see a little bit of mine. “Forward Upward Onward Together”.
afficianado 8 years, 10 months ago
Very good article Nicole. I hope that many Bahamians read this article and wake up. Will Durant said," A nation is born stoic and dies epicurean". The government has failed in creating industries, but that's what happens when you elect persons who lack ingenuity and creativity.
Zakary 8 years, 10 months ago
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