African Guyanese need to Address their Challenges to Development

Aug 09, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

August 2023 marks another month, another year passed since the official emancipation of Africans from slavery in 1833. It offers another opportunity for African Guyanese to contemplate their origins, the humiliation, and struggle by their ancestors against the oppressive and degrading system of slavery instituted by the British. The principal concern I have regarding slavery is the apparent unwillingness for our governments to make reparations a national issue and initiate dialogue with the United Kingdom and any other nations which our lawyers through research can determine Guyana can make a substantive claim. The British compensated their slave owners for the ‘loss’ of their slaves which resulted from emancipation.

The biggest question which for me should dominate contemporary discussions has been why after close to 200 years, many African Guyanese, particularly those in the outlying regions, still live in economically depressed conditions where many are burdened with the challenge of starting and running their own businesses, finding proper jobs, looking after their families and ensuring that their children acquire basic secondary education qualifications necessary to acquire jobs. The answer to this is rooted in the fact that the condition of African Guyanese since Independence has been due to the failure of our leaders and politicians, beginning with Forbes Burnham and the PNC under its socialist agenda to properly manage our economy over the decades of its earlier rule, to adopt policies which stimulate investment and job creation, to consider the state of our welfare as this relates to our ability of our incomes to meet the financial demands managing our households, the adequacy of which have been reduced to insignificant amounts through gross economic mismanagement on the part of the PNC during its earlier 28-year dictatorial stint in government.

Indeed, history has proven that the greatest disaster African Guyanese have endured is having none other than Burnham himself as a leader, along with those who followed him. As brilliant and gifted as Burnham was, he was poisoned by the politics of communism and dictatorship as mechanisms for acquiring and retaining power/leadership. The costs of his and the PNC’s economic mismanagement were severe, and in addition to retarded economic growth under their government up until 1992, resulted in the dramatic loss in value of our currency which fell from G$3.00: US$1.00 in 1983 to G$125: US$1.00 by the time they left office in 1992, deteriorating further to around G$201: US$1.00 by the end of 2005. This loss in value of the Guyana dollar translated into severe bouts of inflation as the cost of importing everything from food stuff to machinery rose steeply, sending many Guyanese into poverty.

This was followed by the Jagdeo-led PPP administration’s vicious policy of exacting political spite and economic oppression of public servants, largely dominated by African Guyanese, accompanied by perceived discriminatory economic policies against African Guyanese-dominated communities and villages. With the exception of the 56-day strike in 1999 which resulted in the then PPP-led administration capitulating on its stance of unilateral imposition of salary increases for public servants that year, a practice which remains the modus operandi of the his administration today, little has been effected by public service unions via recourse to our courts to have government comply with regulations or recommend arbitration in the face of government’s willful disregard of regulations pertaining to salary negotiations for public servants. My contention over the last five years is that the PNC, which exerts tremendous influence on our public service unions, by not actively ensuring that this issue was resolved during its 2015-20 stint, has no interest in delivering relief to African Guyanese in the public service, but instead is keen to keep public servants under-paid and financially distressed to whip up support for itself at national elections.

The PNC has been and remains the cause of systematic under-development of African Guyanese. Its origins were rooted in morally corrupt, anti-social ideas, the devious perversion and desire of Forbes Burnham to acquire power at all costs at the encouragement of the then British Government. He became an embarrassing political pawn of the British in their failed attempt to save Guyana from perceived communist political influences in the PPP during its early years in Government in the 1950s. (pgs. 160-65; West On Trial) (African Guyanese who continue to support the PNC today unwittingly play into the hands of the politics of ethnic division of the British back in the 1950’s, even as this has been abandoned by the British and remains a very destructive force today.) Burnham had become enamored by the idea of the British of him leading either the PPP splitting to form another party to vie for office in Guyana, and having imbibed on the politics of dictatorship in Russia at the time, employed subversive Machiavellian tactics to break away from the PPP.

As chairman of the People’s Progressive Party back in the 1950’s, instead of holding fast with Dr. Jagan and the PPP against the British insurgent forces who toppled the government of the PPP in October 1953 (Pgs. 124-125; West on Trial), Burnham became intoxicated by examples of Soviet dictators Lenin and Stalin. After failing to seize the leadership of the PPP, he birthed the PNC (he originally tried to steal the name of the PPP itself) as the vehicle to break away and compete for power with the PPP, the very party and government in which he was securely entrenched.

Burnham’s history of dictatorship, elections-rigging and marginalization of Indians Guyanese are a matter of public knowledge, but his politics of marginalization of Indian Guyanese unfortunately became part of African Guyanese culture as they were irrationally conditioned to see Indian Guyanese as competitors both politically and economically. Having endured tremendous economic and social cost at the hands of Burnham and what remains of the PNC even during their recent 2015-20 reign in government, Indian Guyanese will likely never again vote for the PNC in the foreseeable future, as much as they have suffered under Jagdeo and the PPP. The mass of the PNC which remains today still continues in the basic philosophy and ideas of political control of Burnham, today standing in embarrassment at having attempted to once again return Guyana to dictatorship in 2020.

The challenge for African Guyanese today is to reject the brutal, cruel nature of the incompetent, dictatorial politics and historical ethnic incitement of the PNC, and strive to create better, stronger, productive bonds and relationships with Indian Guyanese. When Indian Guyanese can finally satisfy themselves that African Guyanese are no longer a political or economic threat, then the opportunity arises for Guyana to finally create new national leaders and build a new political party strong enough to beat the PPP and offer new and better government to Guyanese with policies aimed at delivering a strong governance framework for managing our oil wealth and other natural resources, raising our incomes, increasing pensions, stimulating investment and job creation, providing welfare and unemployment insurance, and establishing a programme of re-education of Guyanese failed by the education system administered by the PPP government. If there is anything that African Guyanese should consider setting themselves to achieving, it would be this, since accomplishing this would be the surest way to combat what I consider the greatest obstacle to economic and social advancement of they and many other Guyanese today, Bharrat Jagdeo and the PPP.

Happy Emancipation 2023 to African Guyanese. Remembering that a house divided will fall, may we resolve throw off the chains of fear, mental slavery and ethnic division foisted upon us by the PNC and PPP, to unite with our Indian brothers and sisters, our native Amerindians, to live up to the virtues of the motto that has so long escaped us, who we are: One People, One Nation, One Destiny.

Yours faithfully,

Craig Sylvester,

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