Apartheid in Guyana, like underworld invisible, like phantoms deniable

Aug 30, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Apartheid.  We must neither fear nor suppress conversations on perceptions, possible existence, and extents of apartheid in Guyana. Though dangerous to speak of such truth in Guyana, this must occur, with honest probing.  For this is more than the welfare of Black Guyanese involved; it is the character of the national well-being ultimately.  There must be neither fear nor shame.

I discern broad, deep paranoia in merely mentioning this word, ‘apartheid,’ – the profanest 4-letter word.  The most accursed of caste systems is subtly present in Guyana today, but unlike South Africa or Israel, it has no owner, no sponsor, no rabbi. Those who should know better, were themselves victimized in earlier apartheid seasons, in all but name, are now ostriches burrowing for wisdoms (and cover) in deep mud, where neither wisdoms nor cover, nor mud are present.  When done today, I may have fewer friends, perhaps none.  If that’s the final verdict, let it be.

We stopped governing 60 years ago.  Leaders and citizens abandoned just, inclusive governing, and instead seized on dividing and diminishing: misinformation, mismanagement, and misleading.  Only those knowing what it is like are truly equipped to speak of its torturing agonies, naked despairs, cruel impotencies.

In apartheid systems – legal, formal, and official – there is first discrimination and segregation, last isolation.  When outside of and unsaid in the law, via informal and unowned conduct, it is still apartheid, other than by constitutional sanction.  And when there are broad stretches of compellingly bonafide human objects, who claim genuine victimhood, then there is a not-so-secret system of apartheid at work, which is where Guyana is today.  The shoe fits.  Remember: nobody owns phantoms, admits to membership in the invisible underworld.

PNC loyalists will rage, and PPP fundamentalists will preen (both hypocritically) for it defuses the former’s narratives, and powers the latter’s rank partisanship.  From the time of Burnham, apartheid was present.  I worked at Atkinson Field and even in my unrefined teenaged observations, there were the planeloads of Indo-Guyanese fleeing by the hundreds and thousands daily, weekly, for years.  There was BOAC, Pan Am, Air Canada, Air France, KLM, Lufthansa, and BWIA, ferrying Guyanese Indian exiles, who couldn’t find work or inclusion, felt commercially squeezed, lived insecurely, shuttered their farms.  They left.  In Toronto, they filed for refugee status.  From what?

Nevertheless, Burnham maintained publicly that he was for all Guyanese, even while the flights multiplied.  Therefore, a Little Guyana in Richmond Hill, pockets elsewhere.  The stormy 60s, 70s, and 80s, birthed the unicorn, that Sphinx, of mostly Black Guyanese, which attracted despairing Indians, who had nothing else, nothing to lose, something possibly to gain for their citizenship. It was the WPA.  Lest we forget, a heavily Black Guyanese group rising up to battle against a maximum leader, a Black leader.  Said differently, their tribal chief.  But that didn’t deter, because of character, and the great indefinable conscience.  They had the courage to say: No!  Not right!  Not acceptable!  Bad leadership, bad governance.

From those, I know apartheid’s palpable realities.  Just as is present today with the PPP, no matter how denied, nuanced, camouflaged. Given today’s Guyana of now, it is surprising – indeed, remarkably startling – that Indo-Guyanese refuse to see, numb their senses, turn their backs on principle (and own experience), regarding what exists here today. The biases, the subtle bigotries, the separatist results.  No!  that conversation must never be had.  Indo-Guyanese consider talk about apartheid as undermining and menacing their status quo (just like Burnham reacted).  I contend that it may be unsettling, but it is insightful to observe the reflexive defensive tribal outpourings.  On issues that require national self-examining and unraveling, we suppress the capacity, character, conscience, and courage to face our racial demons with honesty and rawest frankness.  Many deny earlier rigging.  Today, apartheid brings flinching, same sturdy deviousness.

I dive deeper, assert that there must be Indians with what it takes to stand for truth and justice, given our apartheid circumstances today.  My brother Indians, from painful wilderness, must have conscience to say something, take some stand, and admit that what goes on in Guyana today is an informal and unofficial system of discriminatory and segregationists’ practices, the offshoots of illegalised apartheid.  When fellow Indians do so, they are just like the mainly Black Guyanese in the early WPA who went against the grain, because what Burnham was doing could not be lived with anymore, and still claim proud manhood and prime citizenhood.  It was what led to the destruction of the Black middle class, and Guyana’s wider middle class, with the best and brightest departing.

I point to tender awards, contracts.  I identify who is favoured (passes) versus those made examples by law enforcement.  I direct attention to the public service and its ethnic oppressions (hiring, promoting, firing).  Last, I refer to relief monies, who received, those ignored. Besides circumstances prompting billions in aid, the rest featured prominently in Burnham’s era.  Indians know this.  I persist with my interpretation, position, and conclusion that apartheid lives in the PPP’s Guyana, with Burnham’s parallels present.  If this makes me a hated race traitor, I’m unmoved.  When self-serving conclusions are that a PNC man speaks, I stand. I remind them of PPP parliamentarians chastising the PNC that one of their own (guess who?) speaking critically; and the occasions during Coalition governance, that I called publicly for sitting ministers to be fired.  Has any PPP supporter ever done that to their leaders, government, party? We defeat ourselves when we cower before truth and reality, including apartheid’s injustices.

Either we face honestly and constructively what we live with, or we risk ultimately falling by our own hands.

Sincerely,

GHK Lall

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