The great divide between Mandela and the others

Dec 08, 2013 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The death of Nelson Mandela took everyone by surprise. Of course there had been false alarms. Mandela had been sick for some time and as was the case of Yasser Arafat, a death watch began. Mandela survived, though, but we all knew that it was only a matter of time.
We did not wish him to die because he represented something that the world had never seen. This was the man who as a prisoner had gripped the attention of the world and when he was released from prison that Sunday in February 1990, the whole world watched. Many of us shed a tear.
I am an ordinary human being and if someone were to rob me of my freedom for no reason except my beliefs then I would be hard put to forgive that person. Mandela did that and much more. He made the world realize that he was not about power. Indeed, he became President Mandela, but only for a term.
I am not going to talk about Mandela, because so many others have said it so much better than me. Instead, I am going to examine the difference between people and why there are leaders who are revered and those who are despised. I have travelled a bit and I have met some world leaders.
I remember when Yakubu Gowan came to Guyana in 1971. He was a flamboyant person by any standard and I was certain that he was a good leader. But soon after, he was ousted in a coup while he was in London.
Then there was Indira Gandhi. I found her to be great woman and leader. Most in India loved her, yet a group assassinated her. She was killed by her bodyguards, people who were passed to protect her life.  She too had come to Guyana. There was King Moshoeshoe II, another visitor to Guyana who was later overthrown, and so many others loved by their people.
I remember when Fidel Castro came. I had never seen so many security personnel in one place. He focused on Guyana’s sugar, something that is still to heed Castro’s advice and suffering to this day. It was not until I visited Cuba for the first time in 1980 that I realized how loved was Fidel. All over the country people talked about Fidel as though he was their father.
Guyana had its Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan, both of them charismatic leaders who, with the passage of time, lost the sheen they had on this country. They are both dead and except for the sporadic events to mark their passing, nothing much is said about them.
What made Mandela stand out above these people was the seriousness with which he viewed reconciliation. This was a man who said that history was often determined through the eyes of the person viewing it. I have seen the recent history of Guyana and some of the people writing about things that I witnessed could only be a figment of the imagination.
For example, people were critical of Burnham, but at no time could I recall this dictator giving orders to the courts. In fact, one decision by the court saw a cane cutter, Teemal, winning his case against a Burnham ruling. When this happened even Burnham’s critics lauded one of Burnham’s supporters, Keith Massiah. Such was the story of Guyana’s history.
We have modern leaders these days, but no one seems to see them as leaders. In recent times I have got close to all of them, from Burnham to Ramotar. I have seen their human sides and I have seen them in their moment of weakness.
I got the closest to Desmond Hoyte and we shared many intimate thoughts. But those who did not know Hoyte would conclude that he was arrogant, a word that I doubt that Hoyte had in his vocabulary.
In recent times, I have been called a lot of uncomplimentary names for giving credit to Bharrat Jagdeo for some of the things that he has done. This was a young man who had vision and had it not been for the proven allegations under his watch, he would have gone down as one of the best leaders Guyana could have had.
He was liked by many world leaders, if only because he had a knack for appealing to their weaknesses and their vanities. He was also able to wrangle deals intended to benefit Guyana, but he failed because he wanted everything to happen in a hurry. Burnham was like that; he had no patience with the slow thought process of the ordinary man.
Unlike Burnham, Jagdeo dropped money with every project and today many people are financially sound because of Jagdeo. Even if they did not steal, they were allowed to overcharge and undertake poorly executed work which allowed them to pocket more money. It is to his discredit that many of his supporters did not get to share the wealth.
And this is what helped to make him so detested by a large section of the populace. Ramotar would never be seen in the same light as Mandela because he, to many, is not rocking the Jagdeo boat and is allowing so many things that people detested, to continue.

 

 

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