What better manner in which to begin my own Emancipation Mini-series of columns than to quote from President David Arthur Granger – the historian?
Seventeen years ago, as Army Major wearing his distinguished Historian’s Hat, replete with sociological analyses, Granger spoke on the occasion of the Guyana Pan African Movement’s Tenth Anniversary.
He chose to address what he perceived as the “alienation of the African Guyanese People”. After outlining the historical arrival, presence, contributions and tribulations, he had posited that answers had to be sought for the question: “What are the challenges to Afro- Guyanese people? Will the future of these people be obstructed with more daunting obstacles than those their fore-parents overcame over the past 350 years?”
How prescient was Granger then, in August 1998, as the spectre of a very young Jagdeo presidency loomed?
Next week I might return to the context in which Historian Granger located his concern for the stark sustained indifference to local African forbearance and triumphs, as symbolized by even August month and such historical happenings as the development of the freed-people’s village movement and even a Creole Culture.
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Carter, Domination, Alienation
Frankly Speaking, that Granger 1998 presentation was a literary/history-oriented Tour-de-Force in which he also colourfully described the cultural and intellectual dominant influences of the European Colonial values which saw the early Afro- Guyanese “middle –class” living “two lives”, before, ever so slowly, some fought to assume their rightful place in an emerging independent society- with reasonable authority and pride.
Granger quoted Martin Carter’s “I come from the Nigger yard” – “leaping from the oppressor’s hate and the scorn of myself.” But the historian had also suggested that the “African Guyanese (before and up to 1998) seem to suffer from too much history, rather than too little. Instead of drawing strength from their ancestor’s struggles over the centuries, some people seem to have been weakened and to have become powerless, purposeless…”
(I, Fenty, digress here to wonder whether some Afro-Guyanese males actually regarded membership of the army and police as being a vehicle to acquire some earned pride, authority and decision-making power. As apart from opportunities to be the “usual” professional public servant, nurse, doctor, teacher and lawyer. A Defence Force is for protection of people and patrimony, but it has certainly produced leaders for numerous Third World societies).
Here are a few more reasons for Afro-Guyanese alienation from the then larger burgeoning Guyanese society- and from even themselves – as proferred by Historian Granger: (i) “… was caused by the system of total domination under which they lived during and after slavery … their feeling of powerlessness was derived from the knowledge that their destiny – life and death – was determined by people other than themselves; their feelings of purposelessness … from their estrangement and exclusion from the established values of society and social relations; They were in , but not of society,”
The historian, now this country’s President with supreme “executive authority” also bemoaned some crucial consequences of alienation – pointing out that “People who are obstructed from the opportunity for participation in society not only doubt their capacity for achievement, deny their history and discredit their self-worth. They also find it difficult to sustain favourable attitudes about themselves and towards society and become susceptible to all sorts of anti-social behaviour. In this regard, any action by a dominant elite to exclude a large alienated group from the values of society will be met by an equal and opposite reaction.”
Between today and August’s end I’ll return to Historian Granger’s riveting address. For over the past fifty years I’ve developed a few strong views, even conclusions of my own, about the “Black Guyanese Condition”. Those opinions do acknowledge the mental scars of the plantation and the colony; of the behaviours of Burnham, Jagan and Jagdeo; of the Afro-Guyanese attitudes to agriculture and commerce and church.
Have a reflective “Emancipation” this year. Just what can you do to make it real? Lasting?
Security! From so much!
Citizens and nations obviously crave and make arrangements for personal and collective security from crime and its numerous insidious, injurious effects on people’s well-being.
Vital as that type of security is a 1994 United Nations Human Development Report gave international (academic) impetus to the concept of human security. This is a fascinating enlargement of the notion of traditional security normally associated with personal protection and/or a State’s ability to defend itself.
Human security takes in that traditional; but now assumes dimensions of a people’s overall well-being – the “freedoms”; people-centred development; stability and relationships with economic, humanitarian and environmental factors which fashion, or should be made to fashion, mankind’s stay on the planet.
I’ll be returning to the concepts of human security – and insecurity. Meanwhile, as usual, I invite young journalists and scholars to pursue the concept.
Well, Well…
*1) Continue monthly, the cleaning, sprucing up of Parliamentary precincts. Let businesses on major streets of commerce clean drains in front of them daily. Give them MCC rebates, as done elsewhere.
*1b) Some necessary “quick-fixes” before lasting, long term solutions: MCC and Infrastructure Ministry must send around three trucks laden with appropriate materials to patch, fill holes in major streets and roads now ; say nothing of the rains; start refurbishing school-buildings, where necessary, now; locate and prepare interim increases for Public Servants and pensioners – as promised.
*2) What compelled, influenced the Hinds character to begin singing? Or who?
*3) May the Guyanese-born warriors contribute more to final victories in Trinidad.
‘Til next week!
Comments? allanafenty@yahoo.com
