The bird that flew away from the sky’s wild noise

Oct 14, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

You are bound to accuse me of chauvinism if I was to cite the number of times I have faced vitriolic condemnation by important players in Guyana because of my critical outlook on their public lives only to be proven right. This has been my experience since I was a columnist with the Catholic Standard and the Stabroek News from the late eighties.
I have long regarded this society as so bitterly class riveted that there is hardly a place for courageous independent thinking and the more you are iconoclastic and revisionist, the more the class elitists will denounce and ostracize you.
In the annals of Caribbean politics and in global academia, the struggle against the autocracy of President Forbes Burnham is regarded one of the high points in working class rebellion in the post-colonial era.
No doubt Walter Rodney constitutes the essence of that period. But the flaws of that moment are yet to be analyzed. Intellectuals associated with the PNC and those who admire Forbes Burnham are yet to put their side to that zero sum battle with Rodney. I suspect two reasons deter them.
First, it is difficult to rescue Burnham and these analysts are afraid they would be accused of sugar-coating Burnham’s deep authoritarian output. Second, they are confused about how to analyze Rodney’s death. If they identify the wrongs Rodney and the WPA perpetuated against the government of Burnham, they are fearful of exonerating Burnham from the circumstance of his demise. They don’t want to criticize Burnham or Rodney.
But there are nuances of that high point in Caribbean’s working class rebellion against post-colonial betrayal that needs to be written about. The only attempt so far to discuss one of those nuances has been Cheddi Jagan’s reaction to Rodney’s death.
Jagan regarded Rodney’s activities against Burnham as adventurous and not embedded in working class socialization. Jagan’s thinking on this kind of politics would have predated Rodney’s arrival in Guyana (see Cheddi Jagan, “Guyana: A new stage.” Thunder, Vol. 3, No. 3, July –December 1971).
Vincent Alexander has a good analysis of the pitfalls of the politics of the WPA in the seventies but for some esoteric reason chooses not to write on the subject. I am not at liberty to disclose snippets of his thoughts in episodic conversations with me. We now have an important confession by Dr. David Hinds that should lead scholars to probe with an iconoclastic pen the nature of the WPA’s politics of the seventies.
Hinds observes; “I have known Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine as a close colleague and brother for 41 years. Had anyone told me that he would sit in a Cabinet that presides over the current treatment of teachers and not publicly register his disapproval and disassociate himself from that scenario, I would not have listened to them.”
Hinds thought he knew Roopnaraine over those 41 years. His admission should trigger a stream of critical thoughts on just what the WPA was doing in the seventies. I knew Roopnaraine one year longer than Hinds (42 to be exact). I was not impressed then and was never enchanted with his commitment to the liberation of the masses. My most candid assessment of Roopnaraine was back in 2013.
I quote from my column captioned; “The Sky’s Wild Noise drowned me with pessimism” of Wednesday, May 1, 2013; “Equally amazing is Rupert Roopnaraine. No one in the Third World has the ability to do what he has done. He has lived out more than thirty-five years in radical politics, yet for me, Roopnaraine is one of the most elitist, upper middle class politicians that the Caribbean has produced.
From the time the WPA magic died, Roopnaraine has remained the darling of Guyana’s middle class and its upper strata. He moves with mesmerizing ease in the company of the Georgetown elites and they view him as their favourite politician. Yet paradoxically, he moves with equal ease among the radical wings of working class politics in this land.”
There is much that turned out to be unsavoury about those who once belonged to the WPA. David Hinds is shocked. Not me. I saw it 42 years ago. I end with the repetition of the last few lines of that May 1, 2013 column on Roopnaraine; “I read “The Sky’s Wild Noise” on my landing that overlooks my garden. I am beginning to resent my garden, because the birds have literally taken over… after I was finished reading, I did make a noise to get the birds to fly. And they did. The noise was pleasant but as they flew and I looked toward the sky, I saw a country that I gave so much of my life to, but perhaps will never understand.”

---

---