‘African Guyanese identity and resistance’

Aug 04, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Among others, I was invited to speak at the Eusi Kwayana Emancipation Symposium at Tipperary Hall, Buxton later today and I hope the following will provide some initial food for thought for those intending to attend.

The theme of the discourse is ‘African Guyanese identity and resistance in the context of state sponsored and other forms of racial discrimination.’ Although much space will be given to the behaviour of the Peoples’s Progressive Party (PPP) towards African Guyanese over the last two decades, that is not my major concern.

What bothers me is that rather than energetically taking the present opening constitutional reform offers to try an heal the major problem that has undermined good governance and African welfare for decades, the major opposition party, the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), has succumbed to a form of historical naivety that seeks to build a democratic multiethnic society without first attending to the present ethnic political antipathy that pervades the society.

Man is a rational social being who is capable of externalising and knows that she is externalising herself, e.g., could sell his body, his labour, etc., in the quest for a good life with maximum freedom. This universal human project requires the individual to have control over himself, his relationships, his labour and the product thereof. Of course, absolute individual freedom is socially impossible and thus equity in decision-making, distribution, etc., and democratisation is the modern expression of maximum human social freedom.

Identity is a social construct: it is a view of oneself in the general scheme of things. It changes over time and is relatively strong or weak depending upon the enduring nature of specific relationships. Those who seek by coercion – physical, economic or otherwise – to deprive one of the opportunities to make equitable choices deprive one of freedom and thus various forms of resistance become inevitable. Given what has been taking place in Guyana under the PPP regimes, the only question for the African community and those who have organised this symposium is ‘What should be the nature of the African response?’

The fact is that the identities of Africans and Indians are rooted in a history of political hostility and over decades they have established their ideological and institutional defence mechanisms. As suggested, these are social constructs and can change, but not overnight and the application of coercion as the PPP is attempting, only contributes to the strengthening of defences. Changes in support patterns will only come about when Africans and Indians feel that they do not need the PPP or the PNC to protect their basic socio/political interests.  Otherwise, they will not voluntarily vote for the other side in any significant numbers, and universally, no individual side has been capable of achieving this foundational requirement.

Talk about building some kind of ‘one Guyana’ has been proffered to no avail since independence by far more creditable persons than the present political incumbents. But it will not become a reality without a generalised ethnic political safety net. Indeed, even if an adequate political safety-net is put in place today, it would still take a about three election cycles for the resulting democratic dividend to become relatively substantial. I realise that the kind of approach suggested here, is asking the oligarchies of both the major ethnic parties to adopt policies that will in the medium/long term possibly destroy their hold on political power and willl not be easily accepted.

‘One Guyana’ cannot be forced upon a population and certainly not upon a deeply ethnically political divided one such as Guyana. The PPP is merely camouflaging its drive for ethnic dominance as it tries to win a few gullible and/or self-interested African votes. Was this not so, having the resources it now has and given the internal and external pressures under which it is to demonstrate that it is indeed an inclusive and equitable government, it would have not, like most dictatorships tend to, be asking its detractors to provide the evidence. It would have long done what a liberal democratic country would have done. It would have completed an independent ethnic disparity analysis that would have cleared the air on what is taking place and what should be the future direction of ethnic policy. But clearing the air is the last thing the PPP wants to do: it must waddle in the mucky/intransparent water of ethnic discrimination if it is to achieve its domineering objective.

Where good, inclusive and equitable governance is concerned, the PPP is a lost cause. In this chaotic political environment, what is of more importance to me is the opposition PNC, which has the responsibility to defend the interests of Africans.  With its substantial and long historical memory, the West, led by the United States, has for decades been stating that for Guyana to be properly democratically, managed the present winner-takes-all political system needs to be replaced by a more inclusive one.  In 2015, the PPP ‘lost’ government to the African orientated APNU+AFC which promptly reneged on its promise to radically reform and introduce a more inclusive political system. Instead, the report of the European Union observer mission on the 2020 elections claimed that between 2015 and 2020, when the APNU+AFC regime was unceremoniously removed from government, the electoral list grew by 15.8% (Region 1 grew by 30%) ‘the significance of which is difficult to assess.’ Suggesting – by my reading – that instead of reforming the system, the regime was set upon entrenching itself in government! (https://www.eeas.europa.eu/sites/default/files/eu_eom_guyana_2020_-_final_report_0.pdf)

The PPP is now back in government, behaving even more viciously towards Africans and their representatives, but instead of forcefully confronting the discriminatory policies that are directed at their constituency, the PNCR, with its utopian vision of winning substantial Indian votes, is sugar-coating their destruction. For example, we hear it suggested that the PPP is discriminating against everyone except their, cronies, families and friends. The fact is that relative to Indian communities, African communities are extremely disadvantaged because of how wealth is accumulated and deliberately distributed by the regime. This year, the PPP doubled the allocation going to capital works that are dominated by its Indian constituency but has halved the pittance going to public service income.  It then uses what should be public service salaries to undermine the local government system and to build grandiose projects and attempt to use these to impress Africans to vote for it. Is this not like digging the plantation canals and building the seawall that benefits the exploiters all over again! In South Africa, those non-Africans who wanted to join the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela had to recognise the reality on the ground. If he had ever sought to finesse the reality to win white support, Mandela might never have taken up arms and the life of the apartheid regime might have been much longer.

What is of vital importance at this stage and can be achieved by way of the upcoming constitutional reforms, is the immediate establishment of an ethnic political safety net that protects the population from the brazen extremes to which the PPP has gone. Where in the democratic world can a ruling party, particularly one with only a single seat majority, refuse to treat properly with the official opposition because they are in a legal dispute over an election that the opposition maintains was manipulated?  The basic socio/political interests of Indians, Africans and Amerindians should be constitutionally protected: their basic civic rights and wellbeing should not be dependent upon which party wins government. Once adequately crafted and institutionalised at the national, local and civil society levels, it will eventually lead to the development of a more issue-based liberal democratic system.

Sincerely,

Dr. Henry Jeffrey

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• Buxton, Dr Henry Jeffrey, Emancipation Symposium, Eusi Kwayana, Tipperary Hall

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