Have Afro-Guyanese Become Like Afro-Brazilians?

The following commentary, written by renowned columnist, Freddie Kissoon, appeared in Guyana’s Kaiteur News Online.

By Freddie Kissoon
Kaiteur News Columnist

Today I will walk into the National Park with some of my African Guyanese activist friends. I will meet with many African activists whose main agenda is to save what they believe is a dying political economy of African Guyanese. A year will pass and if I am alive, I will repeat the routine in 2015. And if I am alive in 2016, I will repeat it again.

Then I will say to myself in 2016 what I said in preceding years after leaving the National Park and walking back to the mainstream of life in my country – so where are the changes?

Make no mistake about it; the challenge to Robert Corbin’s leadership by Team Alexander was not about power. Maybe it was. But it was surely not the motivating factor. It was about the direction of the PNC’s praxis.

Make no mistake about it; the challenge to David Granger’s leadership was not about power. Maybe it was. But it was surely not the motivating factor. It was about the direction of the PNC’s praxis. Make no mistake about it; African Guyanese may embrace individual African activists, shower them with love and respect, but when it comes to the PNC, African Guyanese believe that it is the only organization that can stop the PPP and reclaim a position of worth in Guyana for Africans.

Corbin is gone. Granger has not lived up to expectation, but it will be impossible for a new force to come up and replace the PNC, a force that African Guyanese will embrace. Any new entity that emerges on the scene that will capture the imagination of the descendants of the great slave rebellions will not have access to resources and personnel of immense standing. The former is not easy to get, because the African communities don’t have that kind of money. The latter Guyana is in dire shortage.

What is likely to happen if Mr. Granger doesn’t have an attitudinal metamorphosis (a term popularized in Guyanese political discourse by Forbes Burnham) in the coming weeks, not months, is that Afro-Guyanese will shift over to the AFC, particularly given the presence of Nigel Hughes in that party and the continuing alienation of the WPA from APNU, particularly in the form of Dr. David Hinds.

But I doubt it would be in numbers so large as to render the PNC into a dwarf (pardon the description, no insult meant to that category of people). One thing for sure; if Granger remains Granger and leads the PNC into the next general elections, the PNC will lose votes and seats.

This may very well be the last Emancipation Day where things will be quiet. The pressure on David Granger and the former soldiers in APNU, and the PNC leadership, to stop the horrendous assault on the political economy of African Guyanese is colossal. One should not envy David Granger, but feel for him. African Guyanese are desperate. They feel that with every passing year, they are losing their place in Guyana.

I have two degrees in history. At the first degree level and in my Master’s thesis, my research was on the political economy of the emancipated slaves. I say without fear of contradiction, and I say unapologetically, that at no time since emancipation, has the political economy of Africans been in such a fragile state that survival does not look good. If any researcher on Guyana’s sociology wants to see what Africans have been reduced to in this land, all they have to do is look at the recently concluded World Cup in Brazil.

Over sixty percent of Brazilians are non-white. For every Black Brazilian attendee you saw in the stand, there were ten thousand white faces. When you looked at the people in those stands during the entire life of the World Cup, you would think that Brazil was a white European country. Afro-Brazilians were not in the stands at the World Cup. Where were they? I really don’t know, but my academic mind can make a guess. Outside the stadium selling sugar cake and plantain chips.

The analogy with African-Guyanese is graphic. If you came from planet Mars and looked at the IPL cricket, the World Cup and now the CPL cricket on our television stations, you would believe that Guyana was an Indian country. The thousands of sponsors were all Indian firms. If you dine at the Princess Hotel or the upper tier of New Thriving or the classy joints on Sheriff Street, you would think that this country only has Indian people.

But then you see that Guyana has a population that is half Africans who are the security guards, police constables and army privates taking home G$40,000 (US$200) a month.