Martin Henry, Contributor

Jamaica enjoys a solid democracy and high levels of freedom, but is one of the most violent places on Earth, measured by murders. How can that be? Why are we so 'weird'? Isn't there supposed to be a 'democratic peace'?

Last Monday evening, a migrant son of the soil, Orlando Patterson, explored the paradox in the annual University of Technology (UTech) Anniversary Lecture, this one marking the 50th anniversary of the institution going back to the Jamaica Institute of Technology, 1958. The theme of the lecture was 'Democracy, Violence and Development: Do we pay too high a price for Freedom?'

Patterson's work

As I noted as chair, most of us first met Orlando Patterson through his novels, not his scholarly work as one of the world's leading scholars of freedom and its anti-thesis, slavery. The Children of Sisyphus, his first novel published at 24 just after graduating from the UWI, may now be endangered as a staple text in literature classes as the Government moves to sanitise the curriculum. The novel is set in the rough underbelly of urban Kingston, which has spawned so much of the violence in the democracy, and it explores Rastafarianism, which like Jamaican popular music, also has its origins in the same tough environment.

Patterson was an activist in the Walter Rodney affair when an earlier Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government was busy banning books, ideas and people. He was impounded on the Mona campus by the security forces.

Democracy is grounded in the freedom of ideas and their expression. But freedom of ideas and expression may help generate conflict and violence in the State. Many an autocratic state is blissfully peaceful and orderly. That struck me quite forcefully in Cuba where I did the unthinkable of walking ghetto streets in Havana with touring colleagues in the night. But there was a police officer on every corner. The place felt like a cage.

My first encounter with Orlando Patterson was through the second novel, Die the Long Day. I gobbled up Die the Long Day, the gripping story of one woman slave's resistance, as a high-school student devouring West Indian literature while studying West Indian history with a great deal of bitterness over the sins and sinners of slavery.

Absence of overt hostility

One of the paradoxes of free Jamaica has been the absence of overt hostility and violence by the oppressed against the oppressor. One of the paradoxes of democratic independent Jamaica, with one of the highest levels of inequality in the world, is the absence of overt hostility and violence by the 'have nots' against the 'haves' even when that hostility has been encouraged almost as a matter of public policy at some point.

Patterson, historical and cultural sociologist at Harvard, who has done a great deal of work on gender and family relationships in black societies, argues that gender conflict is one of three principal causes of the high level of endemic violence in Jamaica, the other two being the lack of family stability, and childrearing practices.

The question of 'Why not Barbados?' led to many interesting hypotheses from audience and lecturer, but no conclusive answer. We jus' weird! Personally, I find the Patterson analysis of causes short. Certainly, our 'weird' political history and 'weird' dominant political leadership characters are important factors in the unprecedented escalation of violence which began in the late 1960s.

Interestingly, while Jamaica may have a world leader in election violence on a per capita basis, Patterson points out, there has never been any post-election violence contesting the results and no leadership-change problems, as in Kenya recently, and so many other places. Some of us felt very uncomfortable on the night of the last election when it appeared that public utterances by some elements of leadership had the potential to break the pattern.

Like Carl Stone, Orlando Patterson sees clientelism [fighting for scarce-benefits handouts] driving Jamaica's (political) violence. He comprehensively demonstrated that the "democratic peace" is fiction and that violence may be inherent in the very nature of democracy itself.

To the horror of the Jamaican presidentialists, several of whom were sitting in the audience, Patterson demonstrated that parliamentary democracies have been generally more resilient than presidential ones. I have always felt that there is nothing seriously wrong with the Jamaican Constitution and certainly nothing requiring a presidential fix.

Patterson, having dismissed the democratic peace, then roughly debunked the notion that democracy is essential for economic growth. He argued, however, that inequality with freedom is a potent combination for violence.

Patterson's cure

Patterson's cure for the problem of violence in our lower-middle-income democracy is education to compensate for the poor socialisation role of the family. We should focus on primary and secondary with curriculum reform, longer school time, and better pay for teachers. Since the most important job in the world is child rearing, child rearing skills should be taught, as well as inter-personal relationship skills.

He proposes political reform, improving the electoral system, dismantling garrisons and clientelism, and reducing corruption, although we are only "moderately corrupt". He had no convincing answer, however, to an attendee's question as to how we could trust the politicians themselves and the system to reform themselves, although he did point out earlier that we have a thriving civil society.

Orlando Patterson was special adviser for social policy and development to Prime Minister Michael Manley for eight years in the 1970s, and, therefore, had a hand in the formation of the social and political culture of our times. Many have argued that the Manley democratic socialist regime worsened both. I sometimes wonder what responsibility advisers assign themselves for the successes and failures of their bosses.

But like Patterson, great scholar of slavery and freedom, I prefer to face the hazards of a violent democracy than be trapped in the peaceful and orderly cage of a regimented autocratic society where the streets may be safe, but the secret police can come knocking at 3:00 in the morning.