The Guyana National Service

Jan 29, 2012 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

---

(There was “talk” from APNU during the elections on the need for a “National Service” to deal with the problem of unemployed youths. We offer the following to remind the nation of the nature of the GNS so that missteps are not repeated.)
The Guyana National Service (GNS) was given the mandate by LFS Burnham to literally “create the new Guyanese man, and woman”. By his definition, of course. The GNS was to be a hybrid organization – military training combined with heavy socialist indoctrination and development focus, incorporating youths for eight years.
Its largest component, the Pioneer Corps, for youths 18-25, was stationed at several camps in the deep interior jungles where they could be “moulded” away from the baneful influence of the rest of society.  The camps had male and female recruits and the selection and training was intended to develop the discipline and “unity” Burnham found wanting in the rest of Guyanese society.  Its model was the National Service of Tanzania from where the idea of co-operative also came via Eusi Kwayana.
Officers were seconded from the GDF and the Police Force – especially the former, provided the command and managerial cadres.
The stated objectives of the GNS were to:
a)    Mobilize and train youths in relevant development skills especially related to the hinterland.
b)    Inculcate the Socialist ideology of Guyana into Guyanese youths.
c)    Settle youths in the interior
d)    Complete development projects especially in the interior
e)    Create a untied and “truly Guyanese society”
Once again Burnham could obviously not contain his exuberance for “moulding” the destinies of Guyanese and he set a hodgepodge of ambitious goals for the organization that almost guaranteed its failure.  One anomaly was the militaristic component of the GNS’s training, which was compounded by its command structure of GDF officers. The whole GNS structure was a replica of the Guyana Defence Force.  This military training was not part of the stated objectives and one can only conclude that Burnham was not satisfied with the result of the wider societal indoctrination of discipline though the control of the media etc.
Among the units of the Disciplined Forces, the GNS was the most penetrated by the PNC.  Its command fell directly under Burnham, as did the GDF but not the GPF.  When it was discerned that Indians, especially females, balked at entering the GNS because of their cultural norms, Burnham mandated that all students expecting to graduate from the University of Guyana would have had to serve one year in the GNS. Of the sixty-three students compulsorily inducted into the GNS in the first year, fifty-three were Indians and of those twenty-five were female (90% of the women).  Most of the Indian women dropped out of UG rather than serve in the interior camps.
More than any other Burnhamite innovation, this compulsory induction of women was the one most resented by Indian Guyanese.  Apocryphal or not, there were many stories of sexual molestations of women in the interior camps.  Rather than building Guyanese “unity” the GNS exacerbated the ethnic divisions of the society. Indians were convinced that by “unity” Burnham meant “miscegenation” and resisted strenuously.
Some complained that Burnham was insensitive to the culture of Indians, but they missed the point.  Burnham never believed that there should be the retention of “Indian” culture – he saw this as ‘backward”. It should disappear into Creole “Guyanese” culture. That Indians perceived Creole culture as alien in many ways and resented its imposition was of no consequence to Burnham.
As in the other units of the Disciplined Forces, the GNS officer corps was about 90% African with ranks at 80%.  However, the infusion of discipline that Burnham felt was necessary to stiffen his supporters’ resolve did not seem to have been significantly altered as a result of the GNS activities as compared with the GDF and the Co-op Movement in general.
Most of the ambitious agricultural programmes such as cotton, pigeon peas and onion cultivation and pig rearing, flopped.   There was a great fanfare in the initiation of these projects, but little commitment to sustain the programme over time.   As with many of Burnham’s ideas his ends may have been laudable, but the means chosen ultimately subverted those ends.
The Indian population was never convinced that the GNS was not meant to eradicate their culture and rejected in toto the goals of the GNS.  Most crucially, the economy could not provide employment for the African youths who may have had a better attitude towards the GNS’s methodology and picked up some skills during their sojourn in the interior.  Individuals from the various ethnic groups may also have interacted with each other in the camps, but once back on the segregated coast, they never saw each other again.  They mingled but did not mix.
Whatever goodwill and togetherness in inter-ethnic relations that may have been engendered in the interior, quickly dissipated in the discriminatory and politicized “coast” culture.  Racial and political preferences were still a huge factor in employment and thus pitted Africans versus Indians in the scramble for jobs and survival.
However, the GNS could always be counted on to provide bodies for the ubiquitous public rallies that Burnham introduced. The GNS also had the task of preparing forged ballots to rig elections from 1978.  It was most disciplined in performing this task.

---

---