Second Decade of People of African Descent

Jan 29, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

The WPA welcomes the United Nation’s launch of a Second Decade of the People of African Descent. We think this is a very progressive step by the world body, which launched the first decade in 2015. As the UN contended at that time, despite anti-discrimination legislation by governments, African peoples across the globe continue to be victims of structural racism. It called on governments to use the Decade to address this malady. The designation of a Second Decade suggests that the UN is not satisfied that this objective has been adequately addressed.

Government failed miserably

WPA feels that Guyana, which is a signatory to this UN initiative, has failed miserably in this regard.   While the David Granger led Coalition government committed to meet its obligation by granting an annual subvention to the local umbrella organization, International Decade of the People of African Decent-Guyana (IDPADA-G), the succeeding PPP government almost immediately moved in the opposite direction. It withdrew the subvention on the unproven and downright false grounds that IDPADA-G was misusing the funds. The government failed to separate its partisan politics from the larger responsibility of the State of Guyana to honour and respect the right of its individual ethno-racial groups to recognition, justice and development as mandated by the UN.

The PPP government, which coincided with the second half of the decade, appeared to be tone deaf on the matter. Instances of extrajudicial killings of African Guyanese men continued even as resistance to government’s arbitrary acquisition of African Guyanese lands was met with brute force by the police. On the economic front, African Guyanese workers, particularly those in the public sector, have been denied a living wage in the midst of the country’s increased revenues from the oil windfall. In the meantime, the government turned a blind eye to the documented imbalance in the distribution of state resources to the country’s ethnic groups, with African Guyanese lagging far behind other groups. Instead of working with IDPADA-G to realize the goals of the decade, the government sought to divide the African Guyanese community by setting up parallel and competing groups with the overt blessings of the ruling party.

The first UN designated Decade, therefore ended with no discernible shift in the status quo. In fact, the government went to pains to contend that structural discrimination against African Guyanese does not exist. This, in the face of documented evidence and historical truths about the consequences of slavery and colonialism on African Guyanese, who were the prime victims of these inhumane systems.

WPA condemns the government for this gross insensitivity towards one of our major ethnic groups. We feel that the government’s action coming from a ruling party whose composition and support base are derived from a competing ethnic group is ultimately unhelpful to national cohesion.

Demands of the Second Decade

Against this background, WPA urges the African Guyanese community to aggressively take steps to ensure that the Second Decade yields better results. Ultimately, as the African American freedom fighter, Fredrick Douglass warned, power concedes nothing without a demand.

Second, we call on African Guyanese and their organisations to become overtly political in their activism. Separating cultural activism from politics is foolhardy. Slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism were first and foremost political in their orientations.

Third, WPA also calls on the government to honour its obligations to its darkest citizens who have disproportionately suffered as Guyana evolved.

Fourth, as the Second Decade begins, we demand a reinstatement of the subvention to IDPADA-G.

Fifth, we urge the government to immediately include African Guyanese history in the school curriculum.

Sixth, we call on the University of Guyana to begin work towards setting up an African and African Guyanese department at the University of Guyana.

Seventh, we call for the setting up of an African Guyanese task force with the expressed aim of recommending initiatives to the government s to break down the walls of structural discrimination and racism in Guyana.

Eighth, we demand that the government begins forthwith a process of racial equity in the distribution of state resources.

WPA salutes IDPAD-G

Finally, WPA salutes IDPADA-G for the sterling work it continues to do in the face of government hostility and urges the organization and its officers to stay the course. For us, IDPADA-G is our Organization of the Decade.

David Hinds

Co-Leader, WPA

(Second Decade of People of African Descent)

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• African Guyanese, Government, Guyana to honour, International Decade of the People of African Decent-Guyana, Second Decade

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