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Thoughts that are dancing like fireflies on Emancipation Day

Aug 01, 2009 Freddie Kissoon

Today marks yet another anniversary when the slaves brought to the new world were freed. No one wants to be that stupid or no one should be that stupid to say that any form of bondage in Guyana was as onerous and uncivilised as slavery.
In the scholarly world, the debate is between slavery and the Holocaust as to which one is the most sordid blot on civilisation. One has to be very immoral and unintelligent and thus be mentally incapable of producing human thinking to say that in Guyana indentureship was as cruel and burdensome as slavery.
There are many thoughts spinning like windmills in my mind as I write this piece on Thursday evening. I am alone in my study gazing through my window where I can see the dark canopy of the Atlantic Ocean and the evanescent contrast with the illumination of the lights of the Convention Centre.
My mind wonders and wanders as four images dance like fireflies in front of my psyche. One is the news I just heard that the spy computer that was captured from Roger Khan was purchased by the Government of Guyana as stated by the CEO of the company that sold the laptop to the Guyana Government. He was giving evidence in court. Shouldn’t this be the end of the PPP Government and we can move on to another stage of the emancipation of mind, body and spirit?
The second psychological sound I hear is the anguish of Bonita Bone. I knew Bonita from our days in the WPA. I remember her sitting on the sofa in my student apartment of the University of Toronto telling me of something I will always hold against Cheddi Jagan. This is a memory I have of Bonita Bone.
She explained to me that Jagan had told Walter Rodney that it was not necessary for the WPA to be on the sugar belt and in the Indian country side since the Indians were already a converted people. According to Jagan, the WPA should concentrate on winning the cities. Jagan was subtly preserving his ethnic enclaves.
On this day, the emancipation of the African slaves that came to this land, can we ordinary humans understand what is taking place in the psyche of Bonita Bone?
She endured the death of a Black freedom fighter, Walter Rodney. She saw a Government she deemed a dictatorship brutalising and killing people. The knives of that dictatorship were blunted after 1992.
Then guns replaced steel. And Bonita Bone saw another of her close associate, another Black Guyanese, murdered, Ronald Waddell. Bonita Bone must be wondering in her lonely corner if anything changes in life. Times like these the famous French saying echoes through the walls of the mental prison of most Guyanese except those who benefit today from the spoils of elected dictatorship –  “God is dead, Marx is dead , and I’m not feeling too well myself.”
Is Bonita Bone feeling well after hearing who killed Ronald Waddell?
This brings me to the torment that is a thread that knits all Emancipation Day celebrations together since Dr. Jagan died. Are African Guyanese regretting that they alienated themselves from the PNC Government of Forbes Burnham, helped to weaken that Government and today created their own reenactment of bondage?
Few analysts, political observers and independent thinkers would be so barefaced to deny that the PPP Government has devastatingly diminished the political, social and economic foundations of the African Guyanese? If a scholar is aware on what factors the African existence depends on in this country, then that analyst should be exceedingly concerned with the future of the African Guyanese.
I go places in Georgetown, and each time I set my eyes on the people that pass my way as I eat my food or sip on my coffee or drink my beverage, I feel the chemistry of despair discomfiting my mind as I watch who is spending money dining and who are looking like the elites in the society.
When you are a researcher in the social sciences, these class manifestations appear in front of you like wild horses coming your way. Finally, shouldn’t President Jagdeo have politely said to the Jamaican Prime Minister that nationalism compels him to spend Emancipation Day with his own people?
Should a leader enjoy the celebrations of Emancipation Day in another country rather than his own? Isn’t that a time when the leader out of love of country seeks to bond with those who are his country folks?
I guess stranger things have happened in this tragic land.

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