Dear Editor,
Mr Clement J Rohee, Minister of Home Affairs, in a 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) is in content, incredible. Let me say from the onset that I do not seek to defend Mr Ogunseye’s positions neither do I seek to defend his politics. However, the opinions contained in Mr Clement Rohee’s letter are extremely insensitive to the historical struggles of African Guyanese and Africans in the Diaspora.
Mr Rohee stated that Mr Ogunseye “has persistently followed a path characterized by Black cultural nationalism and political extremism.” He further argues that “Black cultural nationalism and political extremism can be a dangerous brew in a democracy especially where certain racial and ethnic peculiarities exist.” I would like to ask Mr Rohee, what is Black Cultural Nationalism? There seems to be a consistent argument by some in the Indian Guyanese community that links Black Nationalism syllogistically to violence and extremism. In a letter last year one Mr Walter Persaud argued this case during an exchange with Mr Freddie Kissoon in the Kaieteur News, that Black Nationalism perpetuates violence against East Indians in the Caribbean. I responded to that letter in which I pointed out to Mr. Persaud that Black Nationalism is essentially an ideological, political and philosophical response to European violence and the racial doctrine that justified white supremacy and black subjugation. Historically it sought to ascertain and proclaim the African humanity. There is nothing extremist nor is there anything reactionary about Black Nationa-lism. There are black nationalists who espouse principles that are multi-ethnic in their response to global European-driven capitalist oppression. Black Nationa-lism in the Caribbean is also a historical discourse about liberation that recognizes and includes other oppressed ethnic groups in the struggle against, especially, Anglophone European doctrine and policies, which is exploitative of non- European peoples.
Not recognizing the historical context of the Black Nationalist movement in America and its contributions to the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Mr Rohee reached and pulled out figures that the American society has long recognized as champions of the civil rights movement (Huey P Newton, Eldrige Cleaver, Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael). He labelled them black radicals and stated “it is interesting to note that such movements (black nationalism) do not acknowledge a law-governed process of social and historical development.” If I did not know that Mr Rohee is from a third-world post colonial society, I would have thought he was an elitist right wing pundit. Let me inform Mr Rohee that the law-governed process in which these persons existed was one based on political, economic, social, and cultural exploitation by White America. It dictated that Black people were not only 3/5 of a person but their unequal status in the society maintained that they had to sit at the back of the bus; use separate toilets; go through the back doors of hotels and restaurants and were forced to live in economically depressed and segregated communities.
The same was true for the Black colonial experience in the Caribbean. It was partly the Black Nationalist struggle that contributed to the anti-colonial attitudes in the Caribbean, needless to say from which Mr Rohee benefited.
This insensitive view or lack of knowledge demonstrated by the Minister of Home Affairs about the Black experience is extremely troubling in a multi-ethnic society like Guyana, where Black people account for more than 35 percent of the population and especially when the Minister of Home Affairs regularly dismisses cases of torture, extra-judicial killings and various human rights violations of Black men in the society.
Mr Rohee is deliberate in his dismissal of Black Nationalism as an extremist ideology that does not “acknowledge a law-governed process of social and historical development,” yet as a communist sympathizer he embraces and celebrates the revolutionary activities of communist historical struggles such the Bolshevik and Cuban revolution as legitimate struggles, which some that preceded those struggles have termed struggles against the law-governed process of social and historical development. History has shown these struggles to be just. Mr Rohee is viewed by many as being part of the unintellectual cadre of the PPP administration; perhaps it is examples of this type of ignorance as seen in his misinformation about the historical struggles of Black Nationalism that informed the general impression of him, which is to some extent troubling. It would be prudent for Mr Rohee and others to investigate the conditions that gave rise to those struggles and to ensure that the PPP Government does not continue to perpetuate those conditions.
Mr Rohee also offers a view of African Guyanese that was once uttered by President Cheddi Jagan and which many in the society expressed as offensive, that is, “…the PNC was responsible for Afro-Guyanese finding themselves at the lowest rung of the social ladder”. I find it difficult to believe that the Hon Minister, Mr Clement Rohee is incapable of distinguishing between economic and social relations. The evidence of ethnic social relations in Guyana would find no group at the bottom of the social ladder. It is, however, true that large sections of the African Guyanese community more than any other ethnic group are economically depressed. There is, to the contrary view of some African Guyanese, large sections of the Indian Guyanese community, who live in economic depression. African Guyanese particular economic state is acknowledged by many of us who observe Guyana’s political economy, as attributable to the period of PNC rule, a period which helped to foster through a paternalistic approach to African Guy-anese existentialism political dependency, coupled with its mismanagement of the Guyanese economy as a whole.
But the question is what has the PPP administration done after 16 years of being in government to reverse the impoverishment of not only African Guyanese but all Guyanese. The answer if one examines the state of Guyana today is nothing. The PPP’s failed policies and lack of a sound economic approach have further impoverished Guyanese in all ethnic groups.
Some of these failures are: 1) The state of security in Guyana is at the worst it has ever been. 2) Wages remain miserably low. 3) The trade union practice of collective bargaining is ignored by the PPP government that arbitrarily imposes wage hikes on workers, often at rates far below the rate of inflation. 4) Educational subventions are withdrawn and withheld from a trade union educational institution. 5) There is constant political interference in the affairs of the University of Guyana. 6) Corruption, mismanagement and ineptitude are rampant in government. 7) Drug trafficking proceeds and money laundering accounts for a significant portion of the economic activities and cash flow, which threaten the state of security in the country. 8) Margin-alization and political exclusion governs political attitudes in the ruling party. 9) Extrajudicial executions and phantom squads subvert the rule of law. 10) Government advertisements are withheld from newspapers that criticize the government.
This is the state of affairs in Guyana, which gives rise to frustrated elements who find it difficult to compromise with a government that excludes them from participation. Mr Rohee labels this element as Black Nationalists and political extremists. Ironically, Burnham’s PNC had labelled Mr Rohee and others in his party as Indian Nationalists and political extremists for their unwillingness to compromise with exclusion from the political process. The question that Mr Rohee should answer is, will the Jagdeo’s administration compromise?
Yours faithfully,
Dennis Wiggins
