Dear Editor,
I have long come to the conclusion that there is a hard-core segment of Guyanese society, predominantly African Guyanese, that would never under any circumstances come to grips with the fact that the PNC and its founder-leader, Mr Forbes Burnham, committed grave excesses when they occupied the seat of government. The debate over the Rodney CoI Report has reconfirmed this feeling. This same segment of the population would give the party and the leader every credit for every positive development, small and large, that occurred in Guyana between 1964 and 1992. The leader gets credit for every positive thing but is denied the same for the negatives. In fact, many would deny that any negative developments occurred during that period. We know that that is not humanly possible, but in our pursuit of hero worship, we silence reason.
That kind of popular political instinct comes from a particular place. It is both a response to and defence against a similar instinct that resides on the other side of the political divide. Dr Jagan and the PPP are constantly constructed by a mainly Indian Guyanese segment as incorruptible, saintly and devoid of any political immorality. The party and the leader are presented as the opposite of the deeply flawed Burnham-PNC.
This narrative of self and the other is deeply embedded in our political psyche. It varies in its intensity within the respective groups, but it’s there. It gets very crazy at times. How can people defend, with a straight face, the state when it comes to Walter Rodney’s assassination, but in the same breath indict the very state for the assassination of Courtney Crum-Ewing and vice-versa? The reason is that we divide the government and state between theirs and ours. Theirs are bad and ours are good—good versus evil.
Speaking of Rodney, his greatest sin in the eyes of those who are wedded to the African Guyanese narrative, is that he, an African, opposed an African government. The anti-Rodney narrative in the African Guyanese community fuses three sometimes contradictory elements. First, the Comrade Leader had nothing to do with his demise. Second, he was wrong to oppose his fellow Black leader. Third, because he did so, his murder is justified.
Why Rodney couldn’t work with Burnham rather than opposing him, they ask. They conveniently forget that one segment of Rodney’s party, ASCRIA and Kwayana, worked closely with Burnham during the years 1964-71 and that that relationship ended over ASCRIA’s perception that the government and state were becoming authoritarian. The point is that by the time Rodney arrived in 1974, the government had already gone astray. And what is also forgotten is that thousands of African Guyanese joined Rodney’s resistance against the very government they voted for. Guyana’s politics are not as simplistic as the dual-narrative suggests.
As an African Guyanese, I am pleading with the African Guyanese community not to descend to the point of justifying government and state violence. As a people who have for 400 years been victims of extreme forms of state violence and still are. We have to set an example to others both in terms of our conduct in government and in our outrage against official violence. We have to value all lives, including the lives of those opposed to our views.
We Africans are a diverse people and have always generated diverse ideas—it is one of our beauties. And if we have not learned by now how to treat with that diversity of thought and action without resort to mindless violence, we will be forever doomed. Let us learn to love our idols without hating their rivals. There has to be a way to praise Burnham’s virtues without denigrating Rodney.
And there has to be a way to look our past, the good and the not so good aspects of it, straight in the eye and acknowledge both our beauty and our ugliness. The ultimate test of humanity is our ability to be human even in the face of adversity. Many are asking for us to move on, but we cannot move on in denial; we have to be honest with ourselves. It was our poetic voice, Martin Carter who penned the following thought—“From the nigger yard of yesterday, I come with my burdens/ To the world of tomorrow I turn with my strength.”
I am also calling on our political leaders to do better. Now is the time for visionary leadership. The role of the leader is not only to run a government, but to be a source of reason. As political leaders we have to find a way to quarrel less and reason more. Difference is normal, but when we attach bad meaning to difference it becomes dangerous. Guyana has to learn quickly how to deal with differences in our politics. Our leaders have to set the example and if they do, our society would be a healthier place.
Yours faithfully,
David Hinds
