Dear Editor,
Mr Sultan Mohammed published a letter in the Stabroek News on December 12, apparently taking on Dr Clive Thomas’s analysis of the sugar industry. He denies CY Thomas’s right to have an opinion on sugar, because, he states, he never sold “fried plantain” at the street corner. Is he sure that is not a ‘tribal’ statement? He sees African culture as ‘tribal,’ so I ask that question. Mr Mohamed seems to be compiling his own African stereotypes. “Fried plantain” is not a bad start.
President Donald Ramotar sat on the GuySuCo Board for years as the corporation ran into crisis. Did he ever sell sugar cake at the street corner to qualify? This is the kind of question Mr Mohamed put to Dr Thomas. I supposed Mr Ramotar as he then was had a natural entitlement to sit on GuySuCo’s Board. No problem. If this statement seems tribal, I am only learning from Mr Mohamed’s shining intellect and example. After all he may be saintly for all I know. Why should I not imitate him?
Mr Mohammed thinks he is clever the way he unloads anti-African stereotypes, hiding behind his facility with words. Even his political history is not so perfect as he thinks. He shows signs of the very transplanting he reminds me of. Dr Luncheon can talk about “democratic centralism” as the way the government works and that is all right. He is on the side of Light. Those who differ are on the side of darkness. The truth is that Mr Sultan Mohamed knows quite well that he is borrowing from the most rabid anti-black traditions and examples.
The wonderful thing is that Mr Mohamed’s unedited letter is in the government’s Guyana Chronicle. This is very instructive. I am sending a fuller version of this letter to the Guyana Chronicle. Let us see if they will publish it.
Another writer had told the public that the National Service and cooperatives came from Tanzania “via Eusi Kwayana,” a brazen invention I have not answered. He made that claim on January 29, 2012 in Kaieteur News. He had first claimed that “Indians” saw the National Service as a means of “miscegenation,” the special word he pointedly used for race mixing. My only connection with National Service was in active opposition to its compulsion.
By the way! I almost forgot. In 1978 Dr CY Thomas advocated in a special paper on the sugar industry the use of sugar cane for ethanol. No one noticed. He had to go back to fried plantain. Last month the government announced that foreign investors were coming to Guyana to do just that, develop ethanol from sugar cane.
Be careful, Brother Sultan. In your zeal, you may be abusing your ancestors.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana