The coming Oil and Gas wealth as Emancipation and Reparations: Vote for your Grandparents’ back pay

Jul 28, 2019 Features / Columnists, Hinds' Sight with Dr. David Hinds

In the coming days, Guyana will join the African Guyanese community in observing yet another Emancipation anniversary. This year’s observances come as the country nervously awaits the outcome of several challenges emanating from the passage of a No Confidence Vote against the current government which is heavily supported by African Guyanese.

WPA Executive member, Dr. David Hinds

It is very difficult, then, to avoid speaking about Emancipation outside of the larger political context. What then are the linkages between Emancipation and the current political situation?
Emancipation in 1838 brought a formal end to chattel slavery in Guyana and the wider Anglophone Caribbean society. The moment was pregnant with a sense of both triumph and anxiety. The now free people had triumphed over a system of socio-economic, political and cultural domination that was steeped in the inhumanity of mankind against mankind.
The profound story of Emancipation was and is the spirit of overcoming—no other group of people had undergone that level of inhumanity and for so long before and after. The institution of slavery had profound implications for global developments during the period it was practiced and for the post-Emancipation era.
I am arguing that one cannot grasp the reality of Guyana from 1838 to the present, outside of the institution of slavery. I know that there is a reluctance by some people, high and low, to explain the present as a consequence of the past. Such presentism conveys a flawed understanding of the challenges Guyana has continued to face as we advance deep into the twenty-first century.
If we downplay or silence slavery and its consequences from the national consciousness, we erase the true character of the African Guyanese contribution to Guyana and distorts those of other ethnic groups that came before and after them.
It is not that African Guyanese should be elevated to a special status; it is that the scars of the long and sordid bondage they experienced must inform not only an African Guyanese praxis, but the larger Guyanese and African diaspora praxis.
It was the overcoming of enslavement that triggered another wave of migration in the form of indentureship. But that migration was not forced in the same manner as Africans were, nor was it grounded in the notion of the inhumanity of its victims. That is a most important and central observation that must form the starting point of any analysis of the present.
This year’s Emancipation observances come on the eve of the most important election in post-slavery Guyana. The vote, that most precious and powerful political gift that we gave ourselves, is itself a derivative of Emancipation. While it is not the sum-total of democracy, in contemporary Guyana it is one of the most democratic tools.
Because our elections are mired in ethnic competition and rivalry, the vote is sometimes viewed in negative terms. Further, because elections have not yielded emancipatory outcomes, many African Guyanese are cynical about it. And that in turn has diminished the quality of our politics and economics.
I view the coming elections as the route to a second Emancipation. The coming of the oil and gas economy to Guyana has to be linked to Emancipation and beyond. For African Guyanese the possibilities are greatly significant. The ailments that have afflicted African Guyanese in the post-Emancipation era, and for which they are sometimes blamed, stand the best chance of being erased with the coming of the expected oil and gas wealth. The African Guyanese condition relative to that of other ethnic groups has been a source of concern, debate and political acrimony.
Some have urged the group to alter its condition through a spirit of “Black Uplift” that ignores the role of broad governmental emancipatory policy. Others, like this writer, have argued that that model is inadequate to meet the demands of a condition that is directly and indirectly the consequence of centuries of dehumanization and de-empowerment.
The African Guyanese condition is not the consequence of any inherent flaw in the collective psyche—it is the consequence of deliberate policies aimed at exploiting their labour for the enrichment of others and the perpetuation of underdevelopment of the African.
So, if grand, overarching policies are responsible for the present condition of the group, then it would take overarching policies to alter that condition. I am clear about that and I want African Guyanese who present themselves as leaders to grasp that truism.
The African Guyanese condition cannot be overcome by sermonization and demonization as some of us have been swayed to do, but by the use of institutions, including the government, to advance emancipatory policies. African Guyanese, therefore, must use their vote in this coming election and beyond as leverage for policies aimed at turning back the rapid slide back into socio-economic and cultural enslavement. There is no more effective way out.
This imminent election is about the coming oil and gas economy. Who gets to manage that economy? How would that wealth be distributed to ensure that all ethnic groups benefit equally? I am contending that African Guyanese must see that moment in reparatory terms—it must be a form of internal reparations for the social and economic violence meted out to that community during and after slavery. That is my Emancipation plea.
But African Guyanese must make that demand. Start with the vote—cast it for the group that has shown a willingness to take African Guyanese seriously. For too long the African has been used as the route to power for their elites, only to be marginalized after power has been attained. It must stop, but it can only be stopped by a collective resolve.
Make your vote matter. Exchange it for opportunities that would lead you out of bondage. One side has recognized the International Decade of Persons of African Descent (IDPADA) while the other side scornfully laughs. But we must demand policy, not pity and pittance.
Hold your head high Miss African. Hold aloft the “Red, Green and Gold”, Mr. African. Let the memories of the Middle Passage and the Plantation spur you to the Promised Land. You are equal to all and inferior to none. Don’t be shy about voting for your Grandfather and Grandmother’s back pay. And then make it happen.
Happy Emancipation.

More of Dr. Hinds’ writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.news. Send comments to [email protected]

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