Organise and Mobilise, Don’t Agonise...International Year for People of African Descent

Organise and Mobilise, Don’t Agonise…International Year for People of African Descent

Aug 27, 2017 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

By David A. Granger

Part 2

FIVE-POINT PROGRAMME

The Government of Guyana will work with non-governmental organisations which represent

David A. Granger

people of African Descent – during the remaining years of the International Decade. I commit the Government which I lead to the fulfilment of the programme in five main areas. There are 10 areas in the international programme, but I have extracted five. The first is expiation or what some people call an apology.

Expiation: It is a hard thing to apologize. They [Europeans] have apologized to the Jews for the holocaust, but this is a hard thing and the Caribbean Governments are insisting on an apology, because a crime was committed, and they must say that they are sorry.
As you know, a National Reparations Committee was established in Guyana in February of 2014. This was in response to a mandate given seven months earlier by the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community at the 34th Regular Meeting of the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community. The Heads, also in March 2014 in St. Vincent, accepted a 10-point Draft Regional Strategic Operational Plan for a Caribbean Reparatory Justice Programme (CRJP).
The Plan of Action, inter alia, must demand an apology for slavery and the payment of reparations. I want you to remember these dates and documents, because we must not sleep walk into the future without understanding that we must follow a plan and I feel it is part of the task today of this Cuffy 250 forum to work with that plan and not abandon that plan. Twenty months have passed; we only have another 100 months for this decade. We have to make this decade work for people of African descent.

Education: The fore-parents of present-day African-Guyanese had the vision, after Emancipation, to recognize that education was the means to lift them and their children out of the morass of poverty and economic exclusion. Education remains the way out of poverty and inequality.
The right to free primary education – protected under our ‘Constitution’ – does not prevent more than 4,000 Guyanese children from dropping-out of school each year. We have to take responsibility because nobody else will. This is what the boats, bicycles, and buses are all about. It is about getting children to school and keeping them in school.
Just as our illiterate fore-parents 178 years ago, saw the benefits of education, we their educated descendants, can do no better than to ensure that every single child goes to school and stay in school.

Equality: Ethnic discrimination and lack of equal access to public services contribute to inequality. People of African Descent, in the past, have alleged acts of discrimination in both the public and private sectors and there was evidence that there was discrimination. We must now correct that situation because discrimination against anyone promotes insecurity and social exclusion and that could lead to disorder.
The Plan of Action must give the assurance that no group or community would be disenfranchised or prevented from accessing public services. People of African Descent must be assured that they would not be discriminated against and hindered in accessing public services – including housing, education, health, utilities and most important their land rights.

Economy: The village movement began at least in November 1839, a little more than a year after Emancipation. Those early villages and the impact that they had on Guyanese society must be imprinted on our psyche.
I have seen writings by East Indian writers 100 years ago, encouraging Indians to do like the Africans and buy land and establish villages. So it [is clear that the Village Movement] made an impact.
The villages were cradles not only of a free economy which gave rise to village markets but they were also the cradle of local democracy which allowed villagers to run their own communities.
The villages are important because most Africans live there. Many people believe the myth that Africans are city-dwellers. It is true that they may form the majority of the population in Georgetown, New Amsterdam and Linden but the majority of Africans live in the countryside.
The villages, as I said, are the cradle of democracy and the cradle of the local economy and it is right that Cuffy 250 should focus on what has been happening in the villages. The hurdles that had to be overcome were daunting and the legislative barriers and the aggression, particularly from what was then called the Court of Policy which is now the equivalent of the National Assembly, did tremendous damage to the villages.
The villages were the home of our households, homes of our schools, homes of our churches, homes of our farms. We have to walk on two legs – improving not only at the economy, but also improving the way those villages are governed.
The villages gave dignity to the freed Africans coming out of the indescribable circumstances of enslavement. The plan of action which I challenge you to contemplate today should aim at revitalizing village economies.
The thrifty fore-parents of African-Guyanese accumulated their limited resources after Emancipation and bought lands on which were established propriety and communal villages. It is the intention of this Government to establish a Lands Commission in order to rectify the anomalies and resolve the controversies which up to now, surrounds thousands of hectares of communal lands which were purchased in the post-Emancipation Village Movement.

Employment: The problem of unemployment is one that is of serious concern to People of African Descent. The government is aware of the plight faced by many school-leavers to find jobs. The Plan of Action must aim at reducing the high incidence of unemployment in the economy and aim at creating an entrepreneurship programme to assist young Guyanese to establish and manage their businesses.

TIME TO ORGANIZE, TIME TO MOBILISE
Guyana has to plan seriously for the next 100 months of the Decade for People of African Descent. I iterate that twenty months of the ‘International Decade’ have elapsed already. This is the time to organize. This is the time to mobilise and not to agonize interminably about the condition in which we find ourselves as a nation.
This is the time to organize and mobilise so that at the end of the decade, the Government and the Guyanese people can report confidently they have achieved the objectives of the United Nations International Decade for people of African Descent.
Consult among yourselves how best the African Guyanese organizations in Guyana can be mobilized to achieve specific measureable targets month after month, year after year in the fulfillment and achievement of those objectives.
Guyanese recall that, over the past 25 years, there has been a remarkable revival of social consciousness. Several African-Guyanese organisations — the African Cultural Development Association (ACDA); African Heritage Foundation (AHP); African Welfare Convention (AWC); All African-Guyanese Council (AAGC); Forum for the Liberation of African-Guyanese (FLAG); National Emancipation Trust (NET); Movement for Economic Empowerment (MEE); Pan-African Movement (PAM); ‘Revival of Awareness and Promotion of African Culture (RAPAC); for example — have been established.
I ask that some forum be created, so that nobody could be left out, everyone could be involved and consulted if we are to achieve the objectives of this international decade.
My brothers and sisters,
This is the time to organize, the time to mobilize. We are obliged not only to look back at the contributions of those who helped to build Guyana but also to look forward to the type of country we wish to bequeath to our children and grandchildren.
All Guyanese are entitled to share equitably in the patrimony of this great country.