This is the season when we take stock, when we measure our steps towards nationhood. We feel ourselves quite grown up now and yet, on the world stage and in the long train of the history of nations, we bear more than a passing resemblance to the pimply youth who carefully cultivates a few wispy hairs on his upper lip to make him look a little older and wiser than he is. Our public affairs, our political and social environments bristle daily with the evidence of our relative immaturity and lack of sophistication.
For some Guyanese the reckoning is simple. They tally the nation’s report card either as a show of early promise and then a tapering off, or, quite the reverse, as a poor start with many false steps and then gradual (or at least partial) redemption. These assessments tend to belong to the older generations, to those who sought salvation in one camp or one leader and cannot or will not see the flaws and failures of those whom they chose to support. Increasingly though, there are other voices emerging. Less coherent and more tentative perhaps but more alive to the complexion and depth of our divisions and the difficulties that face our young nation.
Younger Guyanese are both more jaded and more optimistic. Rather than pitch their tent in a particular camp, they tend to feel that every period of governance since Independence has been a disappointment, that every regime has been compromised in the course of its tenure and fallen far short of its promises. The younger generation of Guyanese are, perhaps, less prone to (and prey to) starry rhetoric. They have heard it all before and have learned to judge by what is delivered rather than what is promised. Much of what is said by our politicians has become background noise for this younger slice of the electorate. They have a growing sense that it is neither uncommon nor unhealthy, in a modern nation, for all sorts of tensions to bubble and strain below the surface without tearing apart the whole. At the same time, they have acclimatised to coexistence with other social groups, they have grown up in a time when women are educated and work alongside men and they increasingly embody the inevitable blending and intermixing of colours, creeds and backgrounds that is our collective destiny.
Few would argue that our nation-building is still, very much, a work in progress. We have (slowly and hesitantly) embraced a democratic style of governance, but we remain an essentially autocratic and male-dominated society, where the ‘boss man’ expects his rule to remain unquestioned in his workplace and his house. The dynamic of the plantation and the colonial era, the habits of patronage and favour and the older patterns of power still cast a long shadow over our public and private affairs as well as our economy. Democracy, at a certain level is more than a system of governance or a collection of policies and practices. It is a modus operandi, a life-style, a way of being. In this sense, democracy is yet to become an ingrained feature of many Guyanese households, businesses or communities. Small wonder then that democratic practices and habits should stutter and stumble among the polity.
From time to time we have flirted, like coquettish teenagers, with the total unravelling of the moral and social fabric of our nation. There was a prolonged moment of madness in the 1960s and there have been flashes since. Yet we shy away from the endgame, the possible outcomes of a total breakdown in inter-ethnic relations or a wholesale dismantling of the rule of law and order. Can most of us genuinely countenance life in a country that is partitioned? Or life in a society where incidents such as the recent lynchings in Sophia and Port Mourant become commonplace? There are many unedifying examples of imploding societies playing out in real time elsewhere. We view them on our TV screens with a sense of detachment. We can identify with elements, with symptoms of the malaise but not the whole.
A little further below the radar, there are slowly disintegrating societies and we would do well to observe these closely. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, a Nigerian writer, recently analysed her country’s plight in the New York Times. She described how a thriving oil-based economy co-exists with massive disparities of income and life opportunities and prospects: a parallel universe where security is so compromised that armed escorts are necessary for routine journeys. As she observes: “Nigerians are brought up to believe that our society consists of higher and lesser beings. Some are born to own and enjoy, while others are born to toil and endure…This somebody-nobody mindset is at the root of corruption and underdevelopment: ingenuity that could be invested in moving society forward is instead expended on individuals’ rising just one rung higher, and immediately claiming their license to disparage and abuse those below.” Or in Pakistan, where, as the New York Times reported a few days ago, “electricity shortages, bad for years, have reached crisis proportions… Lights go out for at least 10 hours a day in major cities, and up to 22 hours in far-flung rural areas.” The article explains that electricity provision has virtually ground to a halt because an unsustainable portion of the populace has become more accustomed to stealing electricity than paying for it.
Our greatest failure as a still youthful nation has been the failure to devise a common agenda, a common plan, a common purpose that cuts across all putative divisions and outlasts each change of administration. It need not be lofty or lengthy. A sound education system, adequate primary healthcare, a strong focus on due process and transparency in all public spheres would suffice for starters. Our surroundings bear witness to this failure. Our infrastructure has been allowed to crumble and has been patched in piecemeal fashion. We have built roads without planning a comprehensive transportation system, and substituted a joined-up long-term strategy for education or health with crowd-pleasing and cosmetic building programmes. There are strong historical precedents for the short-term approach to governance and for piecemeal planning but we can, at this stage, choose whether to step free from this legacy or continue to embrace it. A century ago for example, there was an extensive and integrated system of transportation in much of Guyana. This network of roads and scheduled train and boat services linked much of the country but it was constructed with short-term gains in mind (the extraction of various raw materials from far flung regions) and allowed to fall into abeyance once it was deemed to have served its purpose.
Infrastructure is important but it must be underpinned by shared principles of equality, equal opportunities, accountability and honesty. The greatest threat facing our nation is probably the absence of any kind of moral framework to provide a consensus for action. Younger Guyanese do not necessarily seek or expect salvation to come in the shape of a politician or a political party. They might even argue that we suffer a surfeit of both. They ask only for a measure of consensus, for the space to allow structures and systems to emerge that regularise the state’s provision of services and stabilise citizens’ lives. We have not yet managed to articulate a vision for our young nation. Until we achieve this, until we can agree to act as one for the common good, we will continue to spin meaningless webs with our words.
