‘Dankey’ cart mentality and permanent colonial brainwashing

Jun 27, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Many writers of the Third World genre take the position that colonialism has left a permanent laceration on the psyche of the colonial subject.
A few of these thinkers, in the seventies, sought a catharsis for the post-colonial leaders and their citizens in the socialist path.
They posited that a continuation of western style political economy would preserve the Freudian underpinnings of colonialism. What these Third World intellectuals wanted was a complete break with Western culture. The Cuban model was the panacea.
The record speaks for itself. It didn’t work. Complete separation from the world economy did not bring progress in the developing countries. The reason for that is a separate argument that has to be adumbrated in another column.
The focus of this essay is to examine the balance sheet of those whose praxis is informed by Marxist culture, but who even when they were practicing Marxist economics couldn’t get away from the sempiturnal mental decorations of colonialism.
According to Dr. Tarron Khemraj in his excellent letter, “The donkey cart economy”, in which he examines the failure of the PPP Government, it was Cheddi Jagan, then Opposition Leader, who coined the term in reference to the PNC’s Government’s extravagant life style in an economy that was poor. How ironic life can become.
The PPP Government runs just as poor a country as when Burnham was in charge, but its extravagance makes the PNC regime back then look like a one-man dinner table.
We start with Jagan himself. He was the great custodian of Marxist-Leninist culture. But when it was time to send his offspring to university, he chose the most expensive one in Canada where Marxism was perhaps absent from the curriculum and where Shakespeare was perhaps more in vogue.
If the child had gone to Cuba or the USSR he would have learnt more about Marx and Maxim Gorky.
While in power, the PPP parents gave their children Russian and communist names. I know some of these children well. Up to this day, they still do. Then power came for the great Marxist party in 1992.
Immediately, a well known Marxist bought the latest Mercedes Benz. At the time, that was the newest model in that brand.
Scholarships to Cuba were not taken up, but a western education was instead pursued. Sadly, for the parents, the children came back to Guyana knowing more of Hegel and Nietzsche than Marx, Engels and Lenin.
In 1993, President Jagan’s party had its congress at Port Morant. In his address, he reasserted his belief in Marxism-Leninism that evoked a sharp response from the Stabroek News.
I was a columnist at the time at that paper, and I saw the expression of shock on the face of David De Caires.  But the colonial ethos was still ever present.
The great Marxist-Leninist, Cheddi Jagan, while President of the Republic, wasn’t seeking leftist employees. Hundreds of bourgeois East Indians who ran away from the struggle and took up second-class residency in Canada and the US were courted and brought back.
The leftist Clive Thomas was rejected for the post of UG Vice-Chancellor. The Marxist stamp on the PPP’s constitution is still there.
The leaders refused to remove it at the 2004 congress, rebuffing a Ramjattan resolution to erase the label. It has been seventeen years this Marxist-Leninist party has been in power but the colonial psychology is ever present.
Women are not allowed to enter public buildings in a tropical country wearing sleeveless shirts. Any person who is in a government and proclaims he/she is Marxist and allows that assault on women’s rights is nothing but a moron. This is the permanent effect of colonialism in all its sordid manifestations.
More important to note is how the beggar mentality has lodged itself inside the psyche of post-colonial leaders and it destroys people and country. At any public institution, under the PNC and at the moment, where Government collects money, it is virtually impossible to do a quick payment.
Whether is car licence, PAYE, light bill, VAT, NIS or any other payment, either the facilities are inadequate, the lines are sickeningly long, or the office is temporarily closed.
I saw this under Burnham, Hoyte, Cheddi Jagan, and it is widespread at the moment. The State is in need of money but the State does nothing to ensure that everything is in place to collect the finances.
What is the reason? Under colonialism, the Mother Country took care of the government and the population. So the need for the State to go out and raise money does not present itself in the management of the economy. Marx must be turning in his grave.

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