Apartheid – A stinging sensation at work in Guyana

Aug 22, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

I gather that employment of the word ‘apartheid’ in Guyana has fanned the imagination, set ablaze some sensitive nerves.  Something tells me that it has meaning, notwithstanding the rising expressions of righteous indignation.  It seems that the PPP Government got caught in a #Metoo (Me too) moment, and flagrantly so.  It is what pierces, is responsible for this unleashing of storming outcries.

Before proceeding, I honour those Africans (particularly), Indians, and others who aided when it was not favoured, helped courageously.  I speak for them.  I go where gods hesitate.

I think the word ‘apartheid’ has meaning, substance, traction in today’s Guyana.  Beneath the oral and written smoothness, the efforts of the weavers and spinners, there is that other Guyana that is exclusive, the preserve of the new masters.  I share that the Virginians, Georgians, and Texans used extracts from the Holy Bible itself to rationalise slavery.  Hold in mind, please.  I start with Pradoville, a reserve for one kind, with a thin smattering of other colour.  The Hon. AG has his legalese; I give him regular Guyanese.  Look at that prime real estate carved out for certain types of folks, and those of like mind.  They may be darker, but it is not from the heat of the fields, for they are not of the fields if my drift is grasped.  Segregation yesterday!  Segregation today!  Segregation forever (if allowed to be)!  A mindset at work: superiors and inferiors.

I make the case that the tendering facilities in this country are dedicated to the continuation of economic apartheid, by clumsy means sometimes.  Wars can be fought by different means, under different flags; so also, it can be for economic warfare, in terms of who is included, who excluded.  For the cheerleaders and defenders, I point to the winners.  Seems to me that there is some culling going on there, heavy configuring for specific outcomes that favours the fittest, strongest, cleverest.  And who are they?

There is the public service, and it is about who is denied unjustifiably, those for whom the doors are held wide open inexplicably, and with the entire system geared to oftentimes crude doctoring, occasionally skilled manipulations.  People from my church are part of the arrangements and gamesmanship.  Like South Africa, it is about those given free “pass” and those who shouldn’t show up.  The word spreads from a variety of solid sources, including those experiencing the brunt of rejections, the victimised; players and orchestrators have known texture, careful coding.  Remember I lived in Burnham time.  There was precedence, and the wisdom to glean insights, even if one was only half-awake and a certified halfwit.  In essence, I know what it was to live in apartheid conditions back then, to be on the outside, the receiving end, and that is what I detect is present right now.  Who is in, who is out.  Hence, that little homage earlier.

Editor, policing and complaint and crime resolution are other extensions of the apartheid state in Guyana.  For the new political masters and their kith and kin, policing represents the discriminating, segregating state: it is what the book says that it should be about; while the other is about who is protected, and who is not.  Following the outgoing ripples, it is of who is pursued, who is given short thrift, who and what are dealt with professionally, and what falls into the box of the politically mandated, or untouchable.  To say otherwise: different folks, different strokes, and as centrally directed, or believed to please controllers.  Botha and Vorster had their police criminals in charge of the legal, and so also did Orville Faubus and George Wallace.

I think that one more area should highlight the occasionally subtle, but frequently flagrant, system of apartheid in this country.  It is of redistribution of Guyana’s wealth.  It seems that only one kind of Guyanese-colour, politics, standing-are identified to partake.  I go deeper, and identify Regions 4 and 10.  Targeted sectoral and regional relief has succeeded beautifully in doing just that: target those who should be excluded, without relief.  Like South Africa and the South (American), they must be subhuman.  Punished.  Kept yearning.

Other than for my American journey, I very well could have found myself among the Guyanese scavenging for survival, resentful at the authors of my plights.  I persist that what we have here is a nuanced system in its many forms of apartheid sheathed in glossy politically correct speech, cheerleading squads, leadership marketing.  Stalin’s worst held enemies were those who contradicted his blatant falsehoods, his flagrant societal fouls, and his destructive, divisive follies.  They were always accompanied by willing henchmen perfecting verbal farces to justify all many horrors.  In Burnham’s time, it was party card.  In Ali’s hour, it is party identity, and identify politics.  Don’t be blind.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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