It is hard to believe that 30 years have flown by since Lord Funny asked searching questions in his 25th Independence anniversary calypso. This August 31, in assessing the state of our nation-building project, we must update Funny and ask every citizen – 55 years are gone – How yuh feel?
How have we fared along this road having formally taken charge of our destiny; having taken the reigns and assumed responsibility for our nation and our future, with no colonial master exercising power in our land?
This is the important critical assessment we must make after 55 years of having an anthem, flag, coat of arms and other trappings of sovereign control.
                                                                            SAFEGUARD OUR UNITY
When we celebrated the golden anniversary, a cultural activist and historian suggested that our Calypsonians have chronicled our journey with what he described as patriotic songs. Tracing from Lord Brynner’s Trinidad and Tobago Independence to Benjai’s Trini, he produced a ‘Top 25 Patriotic Calypso Chart’ (see chart).
A central theme of most of these songs is UNITY; the kind of unity within our ethnic diversity and that is probably why they are also frequently referred to as ‘nation-building’ songs.
Brynner’s 1962 chorus was a plea to ‘live like one happy family’, a theme revisited in Sparrow’s Model Nation, Sniper’s Portrait of Trinidad, Rudder’s Ganges & The Nile, Merchant’s Let Us Build A Nation Together, Brother Marvin’s Jahaji Bhai and so many more.
Increasingly, our celebrated ‘rainbow nation’ is under serious strain as various barbs of chauvinistic expression rear their ugly heads threatening to drive us down the path of suicidal division. The same is happening in elsewhere creating murderous theatres of catastrophic war and human destruction.
Whether the label is ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘protecting our culture’, ‘history’ or ‘civilisation’, racism and racial and ethnic superiority pose dangers no less than when practiced by Hitler’s Nazi hordes or the Boers in Apartheid South Africa or during the genocidal chattel slave trade.
This is a serious threat to the very future of our nation, more dangerous than any economic recession or the deepening decay of our social fabric.
                                                                         SIMMERING DISCONTENT
Eight years after Independence, our youth rose in popular upheaval to vent the frustrations of their disappointment at the promises of “Massa Day Done” not being manifested as quickly or visibly as they were made to expect.
Three years after Funny posed his 25th anniversary question, thousands of disappointed and distraught workers and vulnerable citizens were again on the streets demonstrating ‘how they felt’ reeling under the crushing burden of adjustment in the face of an unsustainable economy.
On the 50 Anniversary, the simmering discontent with our nation-building project, found expression, not in mass action, but in the protestation of the Head of State when he voiced his disappointment at the failure to solve the fundamental Constitutional issue of the relationship between Tobago and Trinidad.
In 2017, the failure to resolve this critical relationship as a free and equal union between our nations previously brought together by colonial power, is again reflected in the persistent issues surrounding the collapse of the air and sea bridges between the islands.
After 55 years, discontent with the state of our independence progress persists, as our economy continues to be vulnerable to the global pressures on a single commodity-dominated structure, very much like the pre-independence sugar economy.
                                                                    PRESSURES ON OUR NATION
Our governance structures remain cast in the mould of maximum Governorship with little by way of a more participatory system in which the majority of the body politic plays a meaningful role in the process of decision-making.
Our social structure is being torn asunder as the measures taken in response to popular discontent in 1970 and later aimed at stamping out the spirit of rebellion among our youth, continue to spawn organised criminal enterprise on the foundation of the illicit drug economy and murderous criminality.
Close to 500 people are the victims of murderous crime every year in a country that is not at war. Our women, children, elderly - no one is safe from the wanton criminality and failure of the state to guarantee the right of all citizens to safety and security.
The failure to focus our nation-building on human development to make our society fit for human beings in the 21st century is now threatening the very UNITY of our nation to which Lord Brynner drew attention in 1962.
                                                                 CRITICAL TASKS FOR NATION BUILDING
The necessity to build an economy which is sustainable and capable of meeting the constantly growing needs of our citizens for basic amenities and other needs is critical.
The necessity to renew our political and electoral processes to put power in the hands of the majority and ensure a meaningful role for the citizens in decision-making so that their interests are central to all that society does is critical.
The resolution of the Tobago-Trinidad relationship based on mutual respect and recognising the rights of the 2 nations that make up our country is critical.
The creation of a state of security and safety by ensuring that the rights of all citizens are guaranteed and that criminality is suppressed is critical.
Patriotism in this state of disappointment with the failure to deliver on the promise of Independence requires not talk, not rhetoric but concrete action to solve the fundamental problems still unresolved 55 years after the lowering of the Union Jack and hoisting the Red White and Black.
The nation-building songs have unwittingly chronicled our ongoing failure to resolve critical issues.
What we need is not more appeals to an abstract patriotism. Our citizens need to organise themselves in concrete actions to make real measured advances starting now and further successes recorded by the 56th anniversary and beyond.
Then, we shall say Happy Independence in a meaningful way. Then, we will feel proud of what we have achieved as a nation.