Guyana’s class structure, Charrandass and me

Sep 29, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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One very boring afternoon, there was no one in the head office of the WPA on Croal Street. I lived literally a five-minute walk – on Hadfield Street, Wortmanville – from the building. Eusi Kwayana worked every day in the office. When you wanted to see him, just drop in and he’d be there.

I said to Eusi that I would like to know why certain characters in the WPA leadership do not want to be confronted with hard facts when they fight the government with the same approach . This little chat occurred more than 25 years ago, but I will always remember it. Eusi gave me a little lecture on the nature of the Georgetown middle class.
Eusi is still alive. I have no permission to quote him, but I will be general in what I report. For students of politics and for those who are interested in political activism, it is important to understand certain concepts in Guyanese politics. The Georgetown middle class is not the same with Guyana’s petty bourgeoisie. They are two different classes.
In the post-Independence period, the middle class referred to the urban elite. They were mostly light-complexioned, educated people who had status but not wealth. They regarded themselves as the custodians of European culture. They socialised with their own types and the remnants of the Portuguese petty bourgeoisie who stayed in Guyana.
These two types of strata have diminished in size since the early eighties under Burnham’s quasi-Marxist direction, but to this day, the two remained closely knitted with the Portuguese group eschewing political involvement. If you were at Andaiye’s celebration of life event held at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre to mark her death, you would have seen how enduring this class in Guyana is.
Don’t be fooled by their Afro-Guyanese radicalism. It was Afro-Saxon radicalism as personified by the WPA in the seventies. Despite his post-colonial radicalism, Walter Rodney was part of WPA’s Eurocentric, “la dolce vita” world, though Kwayana had no use for such an ambience. Burnham detested the WPA not only because they posed a threat to his rule, but he was insanely incensed that such a class of revolutionary pretenders was actually barefaced enough to want to enter the politics of radicalism.
Vincent Alexander is the best describer of how Burnham felt about the WPA. Alexander is reluctant to write about this period of Guyanese politics, even though he knows he is getting on in age. I suspect the reason is because he socialises with the remnants of the WPA. I don’t socialise at all, so I cannot be accused of betraying my class affiliation. My class affiliation is dark-skinned African and Indian working class people.
From the 1980s onwards with the migration of the Portuguese petty bourgeoisie, the landed Indians, the Indians in commerce and other wealthy Indians constituted the petty bourgeoisie. The professional Indian class – doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, etc., did not gravitate to their urban, African counterparts.
The urban Indian middle class found socialisation through cricket clubs and Hindu and Muslim associations. I mean no insult when I say they also found the “bottle” to be a serious source of socialisation. The Indian petty bourgeoisie is an ironic class in Guyana. Unlike the urban, African middle class, they are not snobbish, elitist, arrogant, but they tend to use racial criteria in their lives at a deeper level than the African middle class.
Back to Kwayana. I interpret him to mean (I may be wrong; Kwayana is a funny man that hates being misquoted) that because of their class nature, they resent working class people for confronting them. They would accept torrid arguments, but it must come from their own.
What has this analysis got to do with Charrandass?
I heard an interesting interview with Charran’s friend, attorney Ryan Crawford. Crawford said many afternoons he would be playing dominoes with Charran on Charran’s bridge and sugar workers would pass and hurl expletives and insults at Charran. They felt Charran betrayed them, but Charran didn’t know about the closures of the estates.
For years Charran has been cussing down the AFC’s betrayal of its raison d’être in conversations with me. I would tell him to go to meetings and confront them vehemently. But he was afraid. Maybe he was intimidated by their middle class environment.
This is where I differ from other humans. I told many AFC leaders through these columns, and to their faces, what political low-lives I think they are. As soon as I heard in May 2015 that they called their middle class friend and offered her the Ministry of the Environment, I exposed them immediately. But I guess Charran had the last laugh.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

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