What and where is the propaganda against Forbes Burnham?

Mar 13, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – There is a puzzle in the academic writings of David Granger. The former president has written or edited several books and many little books. Not one is on Forbes Burnham, except his contribution to the African liberation movements on the continent, which was almost a booklet and was descriptive of Burnham’s support for the liberation process.
Granger has not penned any detailed biographical account of Burnham’s time in power or anything at all about Burnham. This is strange considering that Granger writes profusely and he has openly asserted that Burnham is one of his heroes. Granger has used his private home at D’Urban Backlands after he became president to house four organizations that bear the name of Burnham to preserve his legacy.
What could possibly be the reason for this conspicuous vacuum? It has to do with Granger’s concern about the credibility of his (Granger’s) academic ability. All of Granger’s publications are safe, meaning that they relate to security matters and historical topics. His writings stay clear of politics in any era.
It is not possible to salvage Burnham’s legacy. His use of power was diabolical and Machiavellian. The approach to his legacy is two-dimensional. One is his phenomenal departure from post-colonial economics. The other is his construction of an enduring autocracy that was sinister and downright evil.
If you emphasize one and neglect the other, your scholarship will be challenged. You have to paint Burnham with a holistic brush. Vincent Alexander as head of the Forbes Burnham Institute avoids discussion of Burnham’s totalitarian instincts like the plague. He prefers to wax lyrical on Burnham’s economic innovations, which are indeed impressive. How can one not be grateful to Burnham for the NIS, the harbour bridge, Linden highway, free education, multilateral schools, just to mention a few.
Dr. Henry Jeffrey, another of Burnham’s admirers, has written a three part series in the Stabroek News on Burnham. But there are no analytical perspectives on Burnham. There is hardly any discussion on Burnham. This is where keen, astute editorship comes in. The editor should have stepped in after part two and asked the writer where the assessments of Burnham are.
Maybe this did happen and Jeffrey promised it in part three. But I read part three and I am still to see an intellectual/polemical discourse on Burnham. But there is an interesting last line in part three that goes like this, “Burnham’s contribution is over-drenched with propaganda.”
I think Dr. Jeffrey has the same fear as Granger. If he elaborates on one dimension only – the economics of Burnham and evades polemical offerings on Burnham’s evil ways, then Dr. Jeffrey exposes his own propaganda. You simply have to expand on both levels of Burnham’s reign – the political and the economic.
So what is meant by Burnham’s contribution being over-drenched with propaganda? It is difficult to confront Jeffrey because the sentence is too terse. My understanding of what Jeffrey meant applies to all other pro-Burnhamite analysts who want to evaluate Burnham in a positive way.
Alexander, Granger and Dr. Jeffrey were all protégéd by Burnham and worked with substantial authority under his rule. I remember I was a freshman at UG when Dr. Jeffrey submitted a research paper to the Institute of Development Studies.
The thesis was that cooperative socialism was an enhancement on the normal socialist system that obtains in socialist countries. Dr. Jeffrey’s argument was that cooperative socialism was a deeper form of socialism. A huge rebuttal came from Professor Clive Thomas who dismissed cooperative socialism as playing around with words.
I think by “over-drenched with propaganda,” Dr. Jeffrey is saying that there are too many harsh, vulgar dismissals of Burnham that overlook his seminal contribution to economic development in the aftermath of Independence. In this context, Dr. Jeffrey may be cynical of the oceans of criticism of Burnham with some very emotional portraits painted of him the past 50 years.
There is a valid value in those tempestuous portraits. The language may be vulgar, excessive and emotionally charged but within the tempest, there are mountains of irrefutable facts of Burnham’s evil. I can see Dr. Jeffrey’s objection to the use of the term “evil” and he probably will say this again proves his contention of “over-drenched with propaganda.”
I will assert that the use of the term “evil” is appropriate and potent. Within each dictatorship, there are measures of evil. I don’t think Burnham was completely fascist but his exercise of power was certainly characterised by large doses of semi-fascism. Dr. Jeffrey will assert once more that another propagandistic term, “semi-fascism,” is employed in assessing Burnham. I don’t agree. Forbes Burnham was semi-fascist and evil. Any attempt to resuscitate his dead legacy is a Sisyphean task.

(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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