Imprisoned Jamaican don, Joel Andem

I have been reading with great interest the raft of discussions surrounding the potential extradition of Jamaica’s premier don, ‘Dudus’ (aka The President) to the United States to face drug trafficking and weapons smuggling charges. What concerns me is the pervasive thinking, especially by the intellectual class that this somehow would unravel the ‘peace’ in the otherwise captive and garrisoned communities over which these dons rule.  

Let me say here that academics who rationalise criminality are to be feared as much as the criminals that their thesis appears to protect. I understandthe sensitive politics of the garrisoned communities. I also get the extraordinary sentiment and empathy felt by captive communities when one of their own is taken away to be imprisoned or killed, particularly by their so-called ‘outsider/enemies’. But the case of the FARC rebels in Columbia, the drug gangs that control the favelas in Brazil, and the militants who control the oil base in Nigeria and those controlling large parts of the resource rich areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is clear evidence that garrisons/dons ought to be dismantled, not protected. What they offer to communities and the state appears to be an unstable peace premised on the complicity of the citizenry and the state of their own illegalities. This kind of contract with outlaw authorities renders the state itself criminal in its desperation to stem disorder. What we would now see is stable disorder, a persistent state of anarchy but an acceptable anarchy. Is this what we want for the future of Jamaica?

The Italian case is a powerful illustration that to really address in any real and comprehensive way the robustness of criminal gangs, the power of dons and the impact of their garrison government requires the support of civil society. Like Italy, Jamaica boasts a diverse civil society and myriad civic organizations, yet they are usually seen to be ambivalent and sedate (see Gray, 2005).  However, there is an ethical progression which is gaining momentum in Jamaica and the growing global movement against powerful criminal organisations has coincided with a Jamaican civil society slowly awakening to its inescapable role in the struggle against donmanship and garrisonisation.

The slaying of High court judges Falcone and Borsellino was the tipping point for Italian civil society. The brutality of the murders shocked its conscience and forced it into action. With a record number of homicides including 1674 in 2005 alone and the massive rise in the kidnapping and murder of children in 2008, the potential tipping points for Jamaica are many. Jamaican citizens are exhausted with criminality and the longstanding hegemony of dons. There is hope. Not unlike Italy, there are a plurality of cultures even in the areas where dons and criminal gangs reign. In other words, dons and gangs never have complete hegemony over an area. Indeed, rivalry and internal strife between gangs as they tussle for leadership weakens the don’s hegemony in an area. This violence also creates space for the higher authority of the state to win back control of the enclave and consolidate a pool of witnesses to become state’s evidence. This was the Modus Operandi of the Italian state when it secured some 400 mafiosi as ‘justice colloborators’ in the mid 1990s.

The loss of power of the Jamaican dons has manifested over the last decade in the increasing anti-don sentiment in overtly garrisoned communities, and a greater willingness of residents to risk their safety to assist the authorities. The result has been a slow breaking of the code of silence which has kept criminality viable as well as an increased intensity of episodic mobilizations in the streets by loosely organised networks of citizens, particularly women and students, who desire to exhibit their fearless opposition against criminal violence in their communities.

Rest assured that significant elements of the Jamaican working and disadvantaged classes are huge supporters of efforts to rid their communities of extra-legal actors. Whether embodied in civic initiatives such as marches, prayer vigils and crusades organized by the Church, covert attempts to provide information to the police or the lyrical output of reggae and dancehall entertainers, there are always people who try to escape the don’s reach and power.

Moreover, like Italy and elsewhere, Jamaican women (especially within the context of the historically significant accession of Jamaica’s first female Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller – now Opposition Leader) are becoming a force in themselves, raising their voices, also against criminality and injustice, and gaining power in civic action, popular street mobilizations as well as in the political arena. Whether as talk show hosts, human rights activities, news journalists, politicians, academics or entertainers, women are increasingly holding the stage and they use words as their only ‘weapons’, but – so it seems – those words are effective in realizing drastic changes.

Colombians protest against the FARC in 2008

While impoverishment and fear still keep some women trapped in the situation of being economic clients of patron-dons and filial bonds prevent others from assuming the much desired anti-don stance, the evident courage of women in the face of real danger may contribute to real changes in the status and authority of don in the country.  As recent as 2008, two women, relatives of criminals on the Jamaican police’s ‘most wanted’ list, were instrumental in getting their relative to surrender to the higher authority of the state. Other women, at great risk to their lives are speaking out against the practices of criminals. A televised new item in 2007 reported that a pregnant woman was shot to death in the community of Marverly in the metropolitan parish of Kingston and St. Andrew because she helped the police to unveil a kidnapping plot in her community.

Over the last decade also, there is a noticeable increase in citizen mobilizations in the streets against the control of their communities by criminals. Women, students and neighbourhoods in both rural and urban areas have become chief players in the process and are gaining power through collective action. Examples include the residents of St. John’s Road in Spanish Town who protested in February 2008 the criminal encroachment in their community; University students in March 2004 protested in fearless opposition to the reign of then area leader, ‘Bulby’; the Violence Prevention Alliance was formed to extend the message of peace by bringing together – not unlike LIBERA- different sectors of the Jamaican society. Also worthy of note here is the protests by teachers at Ocho Rios and Christiana High Schools in St. Ann and Manchester in February 2008 respectively against violence in schools. Their protest was a keen illustration that the criminal culture had embedded itself not only within garrison areas but had developed tentacles and spread throughout the wider society.

The increased role of the Church – through prayer vigils, crusades, prayer breakfasts – as well as social intervention programmes – is a great example of the power of combining symbolic gestures, evangelistic practices and real community activity. As a result of the installation of these activities, the Church counts as success its work in the one Hundred Lane community in Red Hills, St. Andrew where 7 people from one family were brutally murdered in 1997. The government sponsored Peace Management Initiative (PMI), established in 2002 and headed by a member of the Church community, Bishop Hero Blair, has also had much publicized success in halting violence in volatile garrison communities such as Mountain View and August Town. Part of the success of the PMI was that it had significant support from large sections of the marginalized community in the targeted communities. One of the challenges of civic initiatives such as the PMI is that it is not part of a larger strategy that would bring about the kind of structural changes that could offer real alternatives to the alienated class, or offer social goods which are tied to larger state structures and processes. Nonetheless, these interventions are clearly positive developments for de-garrisonisation in Jamaica.

In the same breath, there has been public indignation in recent years, propelled by the media (Letters to the Editor, radio talk shows, Editor’s Forums and Media sponsored Public Service Announcements), over the cosy, symbiotic relationship fostered between the political establishment and members of the organised crime industry. This included the daily publishing of the details of vicious crimes as front page stories, statistics illustrating mounting crime levels and letters from ordinary citizens expressing outrage at the state. This public objection resulted in the reluctant ‘outing’ of the role of politicians in legitimising donmanship. Nowadays, there is a less explicit or public display of alliance between politicians and dons and a generation of a public rhetoric by both political officials and citizens of ‘the need for political disassociation’ between these entities (see Ritch, 2001; Jamaica Gleaner, 2001, May 20).

Whereas this push from civil society has had the effect of exposing the ingrained linkages between criminal enterprise and politics, the mutually-dependent relationship which has been cultivated and sustained for more than half a century between dons and the political order clearly requires more than rhetoric to shatter. After all, if political parties are to be viewed as a vital part of the functioning of the state as well as an indispensable element of a mobilized and engaged civil society, then those within its employ cannot serve to undermine it. This sentiment also resonates with the Jamaican music industry whose members often display an ambivalent attitude to the problems of crime which beset the society by disseminating contradictory values, and at times, overt challenges to the police and the state.
Like Italy, Jamaica also knows a middle class based civil society, comprised of intellectuals, professionals and a sizeable merchant element whose constituents favour good governance, healthy economic and social institutions and are for the most part, anti-don/donmanship. The middle class is likely to profit most from institutional reforms which deepen its affinity for that agenda. Of crucial purchase therefore is that this very powerful merchant class, itself often accused of complicity in the extortion practices of dons (Henry, 2002, Jamaica Gleaner, January 31) and detached from the problems in the society, has – for the first time – pledged its financial support for the government’s latest initiatives to tackle organized crime.

Imprisoned Jamaican don, Donald 'Zekes' Phipps

Like the protests and demonstrations staged in Italy by women and youths in local communities such as Sicily and Palermo, the larger positive developments taking place in Jamaica are promising. This is because they represent the overcoming of silence, fear, resignation, years of indifference and inaction which are fertile ground for the flourishing of outlaw authorities, and for criminals to assume responsibility for governance. As such, I reiterate that the reasons dons and donmanship have persisted in Jamaica is powerfully connected to those that informed its development – a compromised Jamaican State, which continues to foster a symbiotic co-dependent relationship with alternate, outlaw authorities through the contrary patron- client practices of some Members of Parliament and a police force, some members of which continue to be in collusion with narcotics trafficking and banditry. Although the government is emphatic that it has no current ties with dons, informal practices by public officials in reality constitute de facto approval of their autonomy and independent authority. As a consequence, dons, like their Mafia counterparts worldwide, find themselves in the haughty position of being able to operate outside the rule of law.

All in all, pursuing the idea that the fight against dons have begun in Jamaica may lead one to become somewhat optimistic about the island’s future. If representatives of the middle and disadvantaged classes, including Jamaican women, official civic groups, corporate bodies, members of the reggae and dancehall industries and the media, feel increasingly confident in playing a role centre stage, and if the authorities are serious about the ‘de-garrisonisation’ of urban communities and able to evade the risk of having the ‘wars on crime’ becoming assaults on the poor (cf. Schneider & Schneider, 2003, p. 301), then – perhaps – Jamaica may undergo a decline of ‘don-power’ in much the same manner as Italy and the U.S.A. experienced the downturn of the Mafia. In such a case, Jamaica may also encounter a ‘reversible destiny’.    

There are however some noticeable challenges in the achievement of these goals. There is an apparent lack of consensus about the norms and values and principles by which the society is guided. There are colliding music forms, colliding sentiments over human rights and the role of the police, colliding ideas as to the country’s direction embodied in entrenched tribalistic and political divisions. There is also a tendency for sporadic interventions by different groups: each doing their own thing. An alliance or coordination of civic bodies similar to the LIBERA in Italy is mandatory as it will require enormous cooperation, unified collective action and consensus to dismantle the embedded nature of criminality and garrison culture in Jamaica. A revitalised Values and Attitudes programme must be tied to the Violence Prevention Alliance initiative; The Dispute Resolution Foundation, Teachers Against Violence and the raft of other citizen initiatives that share similar goals. These groups would assume the lead role in educating Jamaican citizens and training the young about peace and non-violence. Such groups would go into primary and high schools, community groups, and like LIBERA, involve the children of dons and gangsters or families living in a Mafia-don environment. And like the objectives of the Italian LIBERA, where mothers and fathers are guardians of garrison misvalues, the children can become messengers of positive inputs inside their own family and community.

This paper talked in volumes about the power of civic intervention. Social intervention by the state is also mandatory. The opening up of the Mathew’s Lane community in Kingston, for example, after the arrest and imprisonment of its longstanding don, Mathew ‘Zekes’ Phipps’, and the fact that no successor don has emerged to take his place has been the result of immediate and rapid social intervention by the Jamaican state to fill the space left vacant by rogues. It must be borne in mind that there is genuine affinity for dons amongst the garrison population. Part of this affinity stems from the don’s affluence and his capacity to extend welfare to members of his community. The Jamaican state is obliged to see the urgency of its role in dismantling garrison culture. If it fails to aggressively enforce its laws and to create new ones to confront an ever changing and dynamic criminal environment, outlaw authorities will always emerge and find a ready context for their extra-legal practices and even stronger support in the civil community.

Entertainer Mavado whose lyrics often celebrate dons and glorify killing

In this breath, an initiative such as the state- sponsored Peace Management Initiative is community based, and relies for its success on the drive from below.  It therefore must also be tied to other social goals and state intervention programmes. This is because programmes such as the PMI can only offer real hope if and when it becomes part of a wider process of teaching the disenfranchised to become mobilised on a collective basis, and that their struggles are linked to broader social movements and civil society organisations.

It took a civic revolution led by civil society, particularly in Palermo and Sicily, to undo the power wielded by the Mafia in Italian society for over a century. A cultural revolt arising from the belly of civil society is required in Jamaica. A cultural revolt demands collaboration and consensus – the very hall marks of a powerful civil society. Jamaican women can, as the women in Sicily did – scrawl anti-don slogans on bed spreads and hung it from their windows; they can go on hunger strikes, they can demonstrate; they can call talk shows – they can shame the government into action, shame themselves into action. But citizens are obliged to act, and act together. After all, as noted civil society theorist Benjamin Barber (1984) proclaims ‘where citizens will not act, savants and finally thugs will rush in; where citizens are dispossessed of their power or offer it up willingly, who will be left to rule but savants or thugs; And who can be surprised when the savants come quickly to act like thugs and the thugs claim they are wise men’
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My extended discussion on De-Garrisonisation and Civil Society is forthcoming in Crime and Community Safety, An International Journal