Dear Editor,
Political discourse in Guyana can be draining-the sometimes meanness, emptiness, foolishness, narrowness and the disrespect for whole communities are a turn off. Take for example, Minister Clement Rohee’s recent letter captioned “Mr Ogunseye’s approach in rejecting compromise and realpolitik as reflected in the day to day struggle for a better Guyana leaves the political arena open to the worst elements in our midst” (08.03.21). There is a heavy dose of meanness, narrowness and ethnic disrespect in that letter. Because the minister treats with a subject that he obviously knows little about and because his intention is to demolish his “enemies, ” he ends up insulting a whole group of Black leaders, including the PPP’s token Black hero, Walter Rodney.
The minister takes on Tacuma Ogunseye for hurling insults at him- something he Rohee confesses he did when the PPP was in opposition. But the minister says his role has changed; he is in government now. But what he does not say is that Tacuma Ogunseye sacrificed several times more than the entire PPP cabinet to realize the government they now unjustly use as a medium for, among other things, the exacerbation of ethnic marginalization. Note I say exacerbation; the PPP did not start African marginalization but they have not discontinued it.
Minister Rohee, an African, brackets Ogunseye in the “Black Cultural Nationalism and political extremism” column. For those who believe that African people have no right to proclaim their humanity from their own standpoint, Black Nationalism has always meant political extremism. And as the minister warns, political extremists must not sit at the table. Minister Rohee may not know it or intended it, but by going after Black Cultural Nationalism in the way he has done, he has become a recruiter for political extremists. In the context of Guyanese politics Black Cultural Nationalism” has come to mean “Anti-Indian Black Racists.” Note Minister Rohee equates Black Nationalists to “East Indian racist and religious elements” of the 1970s. Presumably the latter no longer exist, but the former are alive and well.
Let me paraphrase CLR James: What do they know of Black Nationalism who only Black Nationalism know? I will not present a treatise on Black Cultural Nationalism. But the minister should be reminded that for Black people Black Nationalism is a rejection of white supremacy and other forms of ethnic and racial domination and an affirmation of Black pride, self-love and self-reliance. If that is “political extremism” it is only an extreme response to extreme violent forms of political, economic and cultural dehumanization of the African. There are some of us who use the label Black Nationalist but subscribe to a broader Black Nationalism that goes beyond race to include class and gender. We do not reject racial nationalism but we seek to enrich it.
Minister Rohee pins the violent tag on Africans. Those who have been the victims of sustained, systemic and deliberate violence for much longer than any other ethnic or racial group are the ones who are tagged as the natural embodiment of violence. Further, the notion that after being subjected to centuries of violence the African must not be angry or must not defend him/herself is simply ludicrous. That formulation is itself racist because it denies the African his humanity and his human right to self defence. And Black Nationalism is also African self defence.
Minister Rohee exposes Ogunseye’s nationalist and extremist credentials by pointing to his membership of ASCRIA, WPA and ACDA. He then links Ogunseye to the WPA’s “spectacular type activities and heroic symbolic acts….and sub terranean side in which Rodney himself was involved and which resulted in his demise.” Shame on Minister Rohee. But perhaps when your role changes you lose your sense of shame. Minister Rohee and his PPP comrades sit in government today because of those spectacular acts that he now sees as extremism.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the insults on the memory of Rodney and the other martyrs, including the Ballot Box Martyrs. The WPA of the 1970s was doing nothing different from what Minister Rohee’s heroes did in the mountains of Cuba in the 1970s and in Russia in the fight against the Czars. But you see Lenin and Castro were not Black Cultural Nationalists so they are not political extremists. Rodney, Ogunseye, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Stokely Carmichael, however, are the enemies of the law.
This attack on Ogunseye and other symbols of Black uprightness may at first glance appear to be PPP propaganda.
And part of it is. But there is something deeper at play here; there is a subtle and not so subtle mobilization of anti-Black feeling. It is the very “dangerous brew” that Minister Rohee warns about. After the recent slayings, East Indians are correctly apprehensive and angry. Now they are told that the “dangerous brew” that murdered their people was concocted by ASCRIA, WPA, ACDA, Ogunseye, Rodney, Malcolm X et al.
Finally I respect and encourage the move by the stakeholders to attempt to do something about the madness in Guyana. Something is better than nothing. But based on the PPP’s past attitude to these matters, I predict it will be one step forward and four steps backward. From the Herdmonston Accord to the present, the PPP manipulation of goodwill has been striking. But to invoke calypsonian David Rudder, I challenge the PPP to “please make a liar of me.”
Yours faithfully,
David Hinds
