Collective planning is impossible without an underlying general consensus on the nature of the problem and the proposed solutions. This goes for countries, organisations and even ad hoc processes such as that of the Guyana National Steering Committee for the Commemoration of the International Year (2011) for People of African Descent, which was established by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and compiled a plan for the advancement of the people of African descent. As we have seen (“In this International Year of People of African Descent government disengagement is not an option:” SN: 00/00/2011), many have argued with some justification that there was insufficient consultation with the major stakeholders and that thus the committee and the process in which it was involved were not properly representative of the African community.
Nonetheless, it is sometimes useful to consider even documents emanating from preferred adherents, if only to grasp their fundamental assumptions and enable some understanding of why they may be preferred. From this standpoint, the plan presented by the steering committee paints a most unflattering picture of the African condition and the government’s response to it. Indeed, the programmes proposed in the plan suggest that there is a near consensus among African Guyanese as to their status and requirements, and the latter are of such a scope as to make them un-implementable by the current regime!
In November 2010, the National Steering Committee with its guiding theme “Commemorating Our Past, Acknowledging the Present, Creating Our Future” completed its work which, we are told, was in keeping with the broad objectives of the IYPAD. Its goal was to strengthen national, regional and international cooperation for the benefit of people of African descent and to ensure that they participate and are adequately integrated into the economic, political, social and cultural life of society; to empower African Guyanese and to promote inter-ethnic equity. The plan has sections dealing with economic, political, social, cultural, civil and legal matters. Of course, it is no longer possible to meet the timetable set for this year but this is not a major problem for the plan itself cannot be completely implemented in a decade.
The economic section has eight policy positions, which, if ever implemented, will transform the African position in Guyana. Inter alia, it calls for the promotion of inter-ethnic equity in the distribution of land for housing, business and agriculture and foresees the access to arable state lands as compensation for the approximately 200 plantations purchased by the freed and manumitted Africans but made into villages by the British Government without their consent; the establishment of an effective land distribution mechanism with appropriate and legitimate representation of people of African descent; the promotion of a strategy to ensure Africans have access to funds for business and land development, entailing the establishment of a special revolving fund mechanism to enhance confidence in and ensure increased access of Guyanese of African descent to the banking system and the development of projects in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.
The programme also envisages the development of lands for economic activities in African villages, which will require socio-economic analyses that consider the health, education, skills base, youth expectation, etc of various African communities; the improvement of access roads, drainage and irrigation and the resuscitation of cooperatives in the villages; the promotion of strategies for the use of objective criteria in the allocation of resources of the state to African Guyanese villages and a national consultation to develop such criteria based on international standards. Still in the economics section, the “government’s plan” calls for the promotion of strategies for involving African Guyanese in the fisheries sector, which will require training in boatbuilding, pilot and fishery technology; the right of Guyanese of African descent to their ancestral lands and properties, which will require the location of transports for plantations purchased by Africans; access to information on lands redistributed via the mechanism of prescriptive rights that has dispossessed Africans; repossession and adequate and sufficient compensation for such dispossessions and the development of a foundation to manage properties of people of African descent who have died intestate.
Finally, this first section concludes with a demand for a strategy to ensure African villages are self-sufficient and sustainable and here the requirements are for the provision of scholarships and training in key and critical areas to sustain the skills base of all the communities; access to machinery and equipment to ensure sustainability and revitalizing and re-engineering the village economies to produce rice, ground provisions, coconut oil, etc; infrastructural development comparable with all other communities in similar contexts and locations; establishing a coalition of representatives of African descendants to share best practices and resources to resolve issues relating to the development and sustainability of the villages and the establishment of research unit at UG to focus on African descendants.
In the political sphere we need touch only a single issue. The programme demands the implementation of a system of governance in which Africans are effectively represented and participating and this requires the establishment of inter-ethnic equity in the governance of Guyana; inter-ethnic equity in representation on the Ethnic Relations Commission; a mechanism to ensure the approval by African organizations of adequate, appropriate and legitimate representation of their rights and a mechanism to ensure that the interests specific to people of African descent are addressed.
The “government’s programme” makes for sober reading and tells us in no uncertain terms that the vast majority of African Guyanese do not believe that they live in an equitable system. Its vision of this inequitability is holistic, including the government, the private sector and everything else. But in my view, what it tells us most of all is that the government as presently constituted does not have the capacity to address the African requirements. A national resolution of the demands made above will require major compromises on all sides and that must involve leaders in whom the various communities have confidence. Therefore, any objective assessment of the political requirements for implementing the IYPAD plan, which resulted from a process set in train by the government itself, must conclude that it simply does not have the level of legitimacy to solve the national ethnic dilemma as it is perceived by African Guyanese.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
