Dear Editor,
Colonialism: Control by one power over a dependent people, forcing its own language and cultural values. “When you are being educated by the person who made you a slave you are simply advancing towards your final destruction all this happens to us because the Colonizer have become the definer of our values.” – Mur-mar Kaddafi.
I was away for a while and only just caught up with a couple of the letters written by persons who were not entirely enamored with Mr. Burnham’s political strategy. However, when I do read these letters, I sometimes wonder if these former colonized people ever look at themselves, and accept some responsibility for our present predicament. But, then again, why should they when they could just blame Mr. Burnham. Was Mr. Burnham (a) naive or (b) egotistical as one writer claimed? Did he ignore the fact that he was dragging behind him over seven hundred thousand colonized people after that night of euphoria called independence? Don’t you think that he knew the task that lied ahead? He knew the internal and the external. Internally, he knew he was dealing with people who were already entrenched in the colonial way of life, and externally, the powers that wanted it to remain as is.
British Guiana then and Guyana now was always and is always controlled and run by the same ruling class. The intellectuals, the professional people, the rich people which include the business sector, the politicians along with the ethnicity business. These people enjoyed the ushering in of independence, but did not understand what living in an independent country meant. These colonized people thought independent was still living of the largess of their benefactors, they were being fed and clothed, and saw nothing wrong with that dependence, since they were paying for the luxury. Mr. Burnham told the population of colonized people that they needed to change their way of living. They resisted, and it became worse. These colonized people with their courageous family and other people threaded water, flew in the blue, even accepted the back track, their mission to replenish all the edible stuff that was lost in good old GT. But when they returned they brought nothing new, and what they returned with could have been easily gotten here with a little cooperation and some sweat.
Queen Victoria reined as Queen of Great Britain, Ireland and British Guiana for sixty three years. Somewhere in this land there is a village name after her. The colonial powers who were running things in British Guiana decided to build a building and named it after her, not satisfied with that, they put her on a throne in front of the same building so that she can overlook the sufferers on their daily jaunt. After the ceremony of independence, she was removed from her position and out of our sights. Unfortunately, however, after Mr. B passed, our chief colonial at that time did not only boast of returning “wheaten flour” he also returned his queen to her throne. Not a word of protest came from the newly independent Guyanese people, the old colonials took it in stride.
Back in the day a new shirt style for men busted on the scene, it was called the “Shirk Jac.” It was a fit for any occasion and particularly great for Guyana’s thousand degree heat. But the colonized kicked it to the curb, they preferred what their benefactors wore and probably never understood why. Seeing the sun in any European country is a blessing, and I should know. There is an aphorism that says “you can take the pig out of the gutter, but you cannot take the gutter out of the pig”. My personal aphorism for years has been, “you can take the colonized away from colonization but you cannot take colonization out of the colonized. But, of course, we could always blame Mr. Burnham.
Sincerely,
Milton Bruce
