Dear Editor,
Permit me to respond to Mr Dennis Wiggins’ letter captioned “Armed struggle is not an option; peaceful co-existence is our only hope” (07.11.04).
I wish to begin by saying that I am deeply disappointed with Brother Wiggins’ response. He, instead of addressing the main request of my letter for a discussion on the social and political forces in the society in order to determine what are the political options and forms of struggle available to Guyanese people and more particularly the African Community, chose to spend a lot of his time telling us about the dangers of armed struggle and doing it in a way that sought to suggest that we are not aware of those dangers.
In relation to his point that “Peaceful co- existence in Guyana is our only option” I wish to remind him that Guyanese for most of our history have co-existed peacefully. However, our history has demonstrated that to simply co-exist peacefully does not guarantee us a just society.
I am surprised that Brother Wiggins continues to commit the error of seeing the struggle only in terms of black and white. To underscore this point Wiggins in his letter said, “So when Bro.Tacuma Ogunseye posed in his letter the question does peaceful struggle stand a chance of achieving our political goal of shared governance/executive power sharing I am forced to answer that the alternative to peaceful struggle which is armed struggle is a non option.”
I would like to make it very clear that I do not agree that armed struggle is a non option. This form of struggle is always an option that is available to the oppressed once they are willing to make the necessary sacrifices. However, I believe that if Wiggins was being objective he would have pursued the possibility of forms of struggle or options between the two extreme poles of peaceful co-existence or armed struggle. His failure to do so convinces me that his position is fixed and is inflexible.
Unlike Wiggins and in spite of the fact that my position is that the African community has to consider the option of supporting an armed resistance and give it political legitimacy, I am open to be persuaded on other options once those options stand a chance of achieving our political objective. It is for this reason that I am trying to get a serious discussion going on the existing social and political forces in the society to determine what form the struggle should take. It was therefore my hope that Wiggins and others similarly endowed with keen analytical minds would have used their academic training to explore this area and give us some guidance. Unfortunately, Wiggins on the issues I raised has demonstrated timidness. I really believe that an examination of the disposition of the social and security forces in Guyana is a pre-requisite if we are to begin to develop a real understanding of what we are faced with here. Not until this is done will we be in a position to say that this can or cannot work.
I will concede that although we have to learn from the experiences of other people’s struggles, as was eloquently demonstrated by Wiggins in his letter, we have to be careful not to behave as if other people’s situations are our reality. Our challenge is to map out our own path to our liberation as an African community and as a Guyanese nation. Our past and present experiences in electoral politics conducted in the framework of an entrenched racial voting culture and a winner take all political system have shown the limitations of that form of political struggle. This situation is threatening our ability to continue to co-exist peacefully.
I am optimistic that others will join the discourse not only on the forms of struggle that are open to us, but more importantly, on an assessment of the social and political forces in the society and their capacity to struggle for either meaningful political change or the preservation of the old order. A correct assessment of these forces is an absolute necessity for the success of any options or forms of struggle we chose.
Yours faithfully,
Tacuma Ogunseye
