African Guyanese leaders must be much more development oriented

Dear Editor,

During my last discussion with Cheddi Jagan around 1990, he said that the PNC government was preparing the Afro community to fail. He meant the high concentration of Afro Guyanese in the bloated public service sector which was unsustainable, and the practice of giving them opportunities on the basis of party cards, as a way of up-keeping the government, would backfire on the community. He meant that when the system of things changed the community would be uncompetitive for it would by then have nurtured the wrong ethics, expectations, and attitudes. The psyche of dependency on the state would be so ingrained that it would fail to be as resourceful as it is ought to be and was capable of being. Walter Rodney said as much in a different context. He warned, “The time will come when the belly will feel what the head fails to understand.”

I have argued in the past that the Afro community, owing to its historical conditions of survival, had crystallised a false sense of importance and security under PNC governance. I indicated that it is not a government of black faces, PNC or otherwise that would transform the Afro communities, but transformation in cultural ideas and economic groundings, which could be induced through changed conditions of survival and an improved understanding of self. Of all Afro leaders, Walter Rodney was best trained and equipped to lead that transformation. His death was a tremendous loss.

This additional response to Osafo Modibo’s letters is that the problems at Buxton are fundamentally symptomatic of cultural and economic deficiencies. While Modibo accuses myself and others of being silent on the extremities in that village he fails to acknowledge that the very executors of the excesses are mainly Afro Guyanese. The Afro community should realise that the highest form of emancipation would be when every black child grows up with the doctrine that he must be black, honourable and economically creative. So whether he is poor, rich, or an officer of state he must never pawn his common sense and dignity to others.

It is time that the Afro community begins to assess the ways it is the enemy of itself, rather than have an obsession with complaints. When it introspects, it should realise that its empowerment and emancipation from its inflictions and afflictions, in our context of survival, will not be delivered through reckless emotionalism and cheap politicking, but through rational and creative thinking, effective networking and unity in purpose. For example, persons within the Office of the President were creating opportunities for Afro contractors to access more state contracts.

But while Afro contractors were busy trying to be their own Tzars, Indo contractors networked, built capacity and took advantage of the opportunities. That’s fair. Who should complain when the Afro contractors became victims of their culture of internecine distrust?

Afro leaders are at core products of their cultural environments. From my days at university to now, I found that they are more hustler than development oriented; generally self-serving office grabbers, bigoted, and little Tzars. Even within the Afrocentric groupings and the trade union movement, what they talk and live diverge. Not that the Singhs and Persauds have any less degenerative inclinations, but they merge it with development ideas and practice. Example, the Caribbean Single Market Economy (CSME) engenders tremendous economic possibilities. While the Singhs and Persauds are alerting their communities to the potentials and prospects of poverty reduction, the Afro leaders are stressing hopelessness and joblessness (wage slave mentality) at the expense of any developmental vision for economic transformation. Not even those who are critical of the PPP’s governmental and political arrangements are grounding and grooming their communities developmentally.

At introspection, the Afro community should realise that its rate of development would be marginal insofar as the habit of internecine distrust persists. It should realise that it inadequately invests in its own interests, too wanting of others approval, too disrespectful and obstructionist to its own, too expectant of being in other’s employ; it is time to realise that he who pays you never sees you as his equal.

Yours faithfully,

Lin-Jay Harry-Voglezon