Dear Editor,
Mr Skinner, in his letter captioned “African intellectuals must be imaginative and consider new strategies other than aggression” (07.11.22) places the burden for the reduction of ethnic politics on Africans.
The accusation that African intellectuals have not placed emphasis on production strategies is false. Mr Burnham certainly placed emphasis on a production strategy that was anti-colonial.
It failed for the reason that it was not based on participation by the East Indian grassroots in its formulation and because it bit off more than it could chew in its challenge to imperialism. Mr Hoyte, after Mr Burnham, reverted to a neo-liberal market strategy in his Economic Recovery Programme that East Indians welcomed and benefited from.
It is the PPP that has been unimaginative about new strategies. Dr Jagan in 1957 intensified rice production to the exclusion of developing other agricultural activities. The current PPP management continues the 1957 rice production emphasis while deepening sugar plantation production at Skeldon. A great show was made in the early 1990s of enhancing agricultural technology at the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) which amounted to no more than re-inventing the wheel. Some aquaculture has been added to the colonial activities while ground provisions and vegetables have been expanded in East Indian communities for the domestic market and for export, primarily to Europe.
Messrs Stanley Ming, Eric Phillips and Kadz Khan proposed the Guyana 21 strategy in 1994 which Dr Jagan immediately squelched. Mr PQ DeFreitas, supported by investors from Germany and the United States, formulated programmes in the late 1990s for expanding bauxite industry products.
The PPP immediately killed those proposals. Mr Hoyte and Mr Greenidge left office with an energy plan that the IDB was prepared to finance to the extent of US$80 million. The PPP leadership rejected the offer on the ideological grounds that it included a private sector generating operation.
Recently the IDB made finance available for a road to Timehri that will parallel the East Bank road. So far, President Jagdeo has not drawn on the funds.
The parallel road was first conceived by Mr Burnham and was part of the Guyana 21 programme of projects. The rejection of a Burnham idea is a standard reflex response of the PPP.
In the meantime, the government has struggled along with what is, in effect, an ethnic development strategy.
The cricket stadium, the resurfacing and the lighting of the country roads, the airport improvement, the traffic lights, the Skeldon project, the Berbice River bridge, the accommodation of narcotic drug financed projects, the cosseting of money launderers, the under taxation of the East Indian business class-these efforts bias development away from western finance to a mixture of Indian and drug finance.
The effect of this PPP development approach is to keep the country in the plantocracy type rivalry between East Indians and Africans with the consequent concepts of either East Indian rule or African rule. Mr Ogunseye must be understood in that context.
When seen in these terms, even shared governance amounts to the most enlightened solution to the racial rivalry bequeathed to us by a plantocracy that used racial rivalry to prop up an ailing sugar industry. Consociational models are only relevant if perceived in terms of the plantation on which we still largely live.
Mr Skinner is a victim of the plantation. He is confused, thinking at one level that all East Indians have the same interest as the leaders of the bloc, and, at another level, that the PNC and the AFC can break into the bloc.
In respect of the second level, he does not specify how to break into the bloc.
Breaking into the East Indian bloc is more difficult than breaking into the African bloc because of the greater cultural cohesion of the East Indian group.
A division in the East Indian ranks will come about when East Indian workers and East Indian peasants are led to challenge the hegemony of the East Indian elite. If that challenge is seen as coming primarily from Africans, the cultural cohesiveness of the East Indians will lead to their closing ranks very quickly.
They closed ranks against Mr Ravi Dev, Mr Sharma and Mr Ramjattan and will do so more quickly if the challenge comes from Mr Corbin.
East Indian trade union leaders may have the best chance. They should see the commonality of workers’ interests and resist the emerging class society led by the PPP, the East Indian business class, the Colombians and the Brazilians.
Does Mr Skinner think that African intellectuals can break control by the criminal elite by thinking out of the box?
It is Mr Komal Chand and his colleagues in GAWU who must ask themselves whether they are satisfied with the fate of cane cutters who are consigned to eternal servitude.
Somewhat less than half of the cane that will supply the Skeldon factory will come from cane cutters. Why? Cane cutters are migrating to Suriname.
They are likely to remain in Guyana if they are cane farmers. GAWU should recognise that the FITUG fracturing of the trade union movement amounts to the strengthening of a PPP dictatorship that will be supported by Colombians and Brazilians and that will exert tyrannical control over the lower classes of all races.
In the meantime, Africans should consolidate their ranks to resist oppression. They have formulated development strategies in the past, which have been, for the most part, rejected.
Yours faithfully,
Clarence F. Ellis
