H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – CLOTH FOR A KINGDOM

Oct 14, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse” was the plaintive cry of Richard III in his final desperate hour on Shakespeare’s battlefield. It was one that went unfulfilled. Contrast his fatal fate to what has been the story of a well-known material and its role in Africa, British India, and now almost unnoticed in Guyana. There is no horse, but kingdoms and empires were involved then. It is the same story now.

GHK Lall

In the place of a horse, there is cloth. A yard or a bolt of fine Madras cloth. Aside from the trinkets and assortment of toys offered by the slave traders for their human cargo, cloth came into its own as a prized medium of exchange in the coincidence of wants that climaxed in the sale of a human being. African chiefs prospered white slave traders and white slave masters prospered. So, too, did white society in Portugal, England, and below the Mason-Dixon line in the United States. Cloth was a crucial contributor to the slave trade, and its role is nodded at, but often overlooked.

In British India, the cloth industry was brought to its knees by the British flooding Indian markets with cheap fabrics and textiles, while imposing exorbitant tariffs on Indian cloth exports, which made such products non-competitive. In this manner, a bale of cloth was used as the battering ram to oppress further a subject people, to cripple their spirits, to make them even more economically subservient.

So, what does cloth have to do with Guyana? How does cloth and the use to which it is put feature openly or subtly in 21st century Guyana, now coming to grips with what it has inherited? Unlike the stricken Richard III, and his clarion call for any help that he could get, this is a different time, and involves warriors of a different breed. They are suave, they are slick, and they are, oh, so sweet.

Enter Exxon, and its brain trust. At the side of Exxon, and almost inseparably so, there are those fawning Guyanese, with top officials in the PPP Government at the head of the pack. In a nutshell, there is cricket, what Guyanese cherish so much. And then in the crowds, there is cloth that comes from Exxon, and in which more than a few Guyanese proudly drape themselves. Exxon’s name is brightly emblazoned on the T-shirts, and as an inexpensive corporate strategy, it is a masterpiece. Get the people being tricked and cheated, [and economically enslaved], citizens mainly from one tribe, to flaunt their slavish loyalty in delirious shamelessness to America’s enslaver, Exxon. It is the best publicity and cheap advertisement for Exxon, to use the swindled and savaged in Guyana to be walking and celebrating commercials for the glorious goodness of Exxon. For a piece of cheap cotton pulled over their shoulders, Guyanese give up their oil kingdom, surrender their manhood, join in the selling of their country, and betray and disgrace their biological and political ancestors. What the dreadful Coalition was cursed for, is now being celebrated under this disastrous PPP Government.

Matters have deteriorated to such a dismal level in this country, with this oil as the biggest stake, that the reports I received are of none other than His Excellency, President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali part of the rapturous ecstasies; I understand since he is a proven batter. I may be mistaken, but the President’s T-shirt did not have ExxonMobil on its front or its sleeves. I hope I am right for Presidents are not cheap endorsers, for what they had denounced.

No national leader-PPP or PNC or AFC-should be so crass and vacuous that he or she allows Exxon to use them. Or that they willingly prostrate themselves to the company’s schemes and sorceries. Cloth was one of the attractive lures used by the old enslavers to woo collaborating African tribal leaders to their side, and to sell their own people into slavery. Cloth was what used by the racist British imperialists and capitalists to rub the noses of subcontinent Indians (our ancestors) into the ground. Cloth has found favour once again, and come into its own again, and on this occasion, the setting is cricket, and the prize is national approval for billions of barrels of oil exploited and stolen under the rags of cheap banners and T-shirts, and whatever else is employed. For mere pennies spent on bolts of cloth and similar accoutrements that it charges back to Guyana, Exxon is given a much-needed boost to ship away Guyanese oil worth hundreds of billions of American dollars.

Surely, we can’t be this backward, this limited, given all the knowledge accumulated? Surely, we cannot be this self-disrespecting, this much of a pushover. Richard III would have swapped his kingdom for a warhorse that gave him an opportunity to overcome his enemies, and resume his rightful place at the top of the heap. What do Guyanese barter for the rich future, the limitless destiny that could be theirs? A scrap of Exxon obscene clothing to hide our pitiful weakness?

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