It was this Tacuma Ogunseye who spoke at a PPP public meeting when it was not fashionable for Africans to do so

Feb 28, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor

Kaieteur News and Guyana Times published a letter by Mr. Kit Nascimento in the Saturday, February 22, 2025, edition, captioned, “Neither Hinds nor Ogunseye has any place in politics in Guyana.” Permit my response.

I wrestled with whether to excuse Nascimento for his shift from principled politics to serving as a propagandist for the rulers who employ him, particularly regarding my Buxton speech delivered two years ago. Amid the heated controversy following the speech at a WPA meeting on Buxton Line Top, Nascimento wrote a letter claiming he had listened to Ogunseye’s speech, which he argued was being misrepresented. I responded both in the newspaper’s letter column and at WPA street corner meetings, acknowledging Nascimento’s principled stance and commending him for it.

Now, he has changed his position. As an African cultural and political activist, I see politics through an African lens using the African philosophical worldview, which prevents me from having an automatic tit-for-tat mentality. It was this Tacuma Ogunseye who spoke at a PPP public meeting when it was not fashionable for Africans to do so – and at a time when the PPP was in the political wilderness, in opposition, and had nothing to offer. I fought Burnham/PNC while Nascimento was a leading official in the government and who by the way had a long history of venom against the PPP. At that period, Dr. Jagan and Indians were claiming racial and political victimization, etc. I never question the Indian community or their leaders’ right to interpret and represent their struggle as they see it. Today, I demand the same for the African community and myself now that the PPP is facing similar accusations of racial/political victimization and apartheid governance. I now qualify for political “banishment” in the view of the rulers and their overlords and minions.

While I respect and will defend the right of any Guyanese to critically engage with my political statements, I reject the racist political culture that has emerged in our country in recent years, masquerading as objective criticism. Individuals of a different race are now shamelessly assuming the right to define African interests and determine who represents our community. I am willing to concede that Nascimento, as a member of a privileged class and ethnicity whose people were not subjected to enslavement, finds it easy to assume the authority to marginalize freedom fighters within the African community from the country’s political sphere.

In a country that their ancestors helped build, we Africans endured hundreds of years of slavery without receiving a single “cent” for the labor that transformed Guyana from a wild coast into a land suitable for human development—long before the arrival of indentured laborers, including Nascimento’s ancestors. Nascimento’s “banishment” mentality mirrors Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo’s similar declaration at his press conference in response to Dr. David Hinds and the WPA. How can anyone deny that Africans are facing new forms of oppression and domination? We Africans reject this assault on our dignity, freedom and human rights.

As I mentioned earlier, your letter writer Mr. Nascimento has abandoned principled politics and now serves as a propagandist for the rulers and his employers. His stance on my speech from two years ago has completely reversed under political pressure, revealing a dramatic about-face.

In his letter referring to Dr. David Hinds and me, he wrote: “They were both complicit, two years ago, in appealing to our security forces to attempt to remove an elected government from office. They both pursue an ugly, contemptible, racist and divisive agenda in the name of falsely representing the interests of Guyanese of African descent. Neither has any place in the politics of our country.”

The political behavior of our current rulers and their overlords is, in some ways, worse than that of the colonial rulers and governors. I cannot recall a colonial governor ever resorting to banishment to address political challenges. During the anti-colonial struggle, we condemned the Europeans for their racism and domination. And then, much like the PPP today, we also labeled some of our fellow countrymen as house slaves, collaborators, and similar terms as they cozied up the colonial rulers.

I end by asking-how democratic is our newfound democracy, alluded to by Mr. Kit Nascimento?

Yours sincerely,

Tacuma Ogunseye.

(It was this Tacuma Ogunseye who spoke at a PPP public meeting when it was not fashionable for Africans to do so)

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• Mr. Kit Nascimento, political wilderness, PPP, slavery, Tacuma Ogunseye

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