Dear Editor,
August 2023 marks another month, another year passed since the official emancipation of Africans from slavery in 1838. It offers another opportunity for African Guyanese to contemplate their origins, the humiliation, and struggle by their ancestors against the oppressive and degrading system of slavery instituted by the British. The principal concern I have regarding slavery is the apparent unwillingness for our governments to make reparations a national issue and initiate dialogue with the United Kingdom and other nations to which Guyana can make a substantive claim. The British compensated their slave owners for the ‘losses’ of their slaves.
The biggest question which for me should dominate contemporary discussions has been why after close to 200 years, many African Guyanese, particularly those in the outlying regions, still live in economically depressed conditions where many are burdened with the challenge of starting and running their own businesses, finding proper jobs, looking after their families and ensuring that their children acquire basic secondary education qualifications necessary to acquire jobs. The challenge for African Guyanese today is to strive to create better, stronger, productive bonds and relationships with Indian Guyanese.
When Indian Guyanese can finally satisfy themselves that African Guyanese are no longer a political or economic threat, then the opportunity arises for Guyana to finally create new national leaders and build a new political party strong enough to beat the PPP and offer new and better government to Guyanese with policies aimed at delivering a strong governance framework for managing our oil wealth and other natural resources, raising our incomes, increasing pensions, stimulating investment and job creation, providing welfare and unemployment insurance, and establishing a program of re-education of Guyanese failed by the education system administered by the PPP government.
If there is anything that African Guyanese should consider setting themselves to achieving, it would be this, since accomplishing this would be the surest way to combat what I consider the greatest obstacle to economic and social advancement. Happy Emancipation 2023 to African Guyanese. Remembering that a house divided will fall, may we resolve throw off the chains of fear, mental slavery and ethnic division foisted upon us by the PNC and PPP, to unite with our Indian brothers and sisters, our native Amerindians, to live up to the virtues of the motto that has so long escaped us, who we are: One People, One Nation, One Destiny.
Sincerely,
Craig Sylvester,
Https://dncgy.org
