Dear Editor,
I’d like to acknowledge Dave Martins’ excellent article ‘With scant regard for the other’ (Sunday Stabroek, September 7). I am humbled by his reference to my letter of August 28, the day the Janus Cultural Policy launched our three-day ‘Conversations on Citizenship.’
The first day was themed ‘Acts of Citizenship’ during which we looked at citizenship both from the legal perspective as well against the framework of citizen participation. The second day we focused on tolerance and the marginalization of citizens, held under the theme, culled directly from our national pledge, ‘To love my fellow citizen.’ The final day, we tackled the elephant in the room, ‘Race and Citizenship,’ under the theme ‘Truth and Reconciliation.’ Over the three days, we had frank and open discussions on various aspects of citizenship, on what it meant to different people, on who was eligible for citizenship and who was not.
The final conversation, on race, was without question the most revealing. We started by simply asking participants to tell us one truth about themselves and one truth about their society from the perspective of race. What we found in summary is that there is a great deal of pain that Guyanese have had to deal with, not simply in large, abstract terms but in very individual, very direct ways.
An Indian woman, a member of an African-dominated NDC spoke about the commitment she had to the work she was doing on behalf of the community, and the automatic opposition she faced because of her presumed ethnic allegiance.
One University of Guyana lecturer spoke of the disrespect she received as a woman of African heritage from male Indian students, one of whom in class told her derogatory words to the effect that her ancestors came as slaves.
Another woman of Chinese ancestry spoke of being born in China to a parent of Guyanese and Chinese heritage, returning as a young girl and having to face ethnic slurs being thrown at her. She also spoke about the resurgence of anti-Chinese sentiment in the wake of the BaiShanLin exposures in the media.
While there were stories of prejudice, what we had also were tales and personal opinions that were redemptive or at least pointed toward the path to redemption. One Indian young man pointed out the need for more introspection by Indians, particularly on the issue of colour prejudice even within the Indian community in Guyana, as part of the process of reconciliation. Picking up on this, a young woman of African descent spoke about a charity event in which she volunteered to take in two young orphans on Christmas Day, only to have second thoughts when the names randomly selected for her turned out to be Indian; she eventually invited them over and felt better for it.
One presenter spoke to two types of conditioning he had as an Indian youth in the 1970s. The first was the direct attacks he suffered because of his race and his political affiliation; the second, the conflation by his elders of the persons responsible for him being attacked with all Africans, and the corollary inflation of the fear and mistrust that this conditioning engendered. This fear and mistrust was something that was only repaired after he migrated and spent years in Canada, and while today he is an executive of an Indian cultural organization this does not prevent him from participating in African cultural events.
Perhaps the most visceral account was from a young Amerindian woman, a recent graduate of the University of the West Indies, who took some young family members to enjoy the Mashramani celebrations in Georgetown only to be addressed in racially derogatory language by a food vendor because she didn’t choose the food the vendor wanted to sell her. She responded angrily but was upbraided by a relative who explained to her the need to apologise to the vendor, which she eventually did.
To be sure, there were times that tempers flared. There were also instances in which several people contacted me personally politely explaining why they could not turn up due the presence of some group or the other there – others simply did not turn up. What was important however was that the majority of people who came, even with their conflicting views, stayed throughout the sessions.
In his column, Martins calls for a “pan-societal engine, engaging all Guyanese,” based somewhat on the model of the South African [Truth and] Reconciliation Commission. While I agree with him at a fundamental level, I disagree with his contention that “the cultural change we need to see here will have to be propelled by the government of the day taking on the issue.” From a basic pragmatic point of view, no government that has itself benefited and continues to benefit from this cultural cleavage is going to take the lead for any such initiative; indeed, no political party, and by this I refer to both our major players, is going to be enamoured of participation in any such mechanism.
I am currently reading, Stretching the Truth: The Uncertain Promise of TRCs in Africa’s Transitional Justice, by George Wachira, a UN diplomat currently based in Guyana, in which the pitfalls of TRCs are examined. In his conclusion, Wachira writes:
“…this study recommends that national level truth-seeking mechanisms such as TRCs be deployed sparingly as tools of last resort, with measures taken to ensure that they are rooted in the specific contexts and sites of the violations and divisions they seek to address. TRCs must not obviate other processes of accountability and justice and should go hand-in-hand with the reform of institutions that may have contributed to past human rights violations and the changing of attitudes and structures that may have caused social divisions.”
I believe that the truths we have to come to grips with in Guyana, the ones we have to acknowledge as the first step in our path to reconciliation, are far too nebulous, too deeply embedded within our scattered skeleton, the marrow of our collective history, to be extracted by any formal commission. Indeed, if anything, the farce that is the current Commission of Inquiry into the death of Walter Rodney is proof enough of this.
As Martins himself points out, we are a very conversational society, except to each other. His taxi experience in which an Indian taxi driver excoriates Africans, and in which an African taxi driver excoriates Indians, is one that has been recounted by writers external to Guyanese society from Brackette Williams (Stains on My Name, War in My Veins), to Rahul Battacharya (The Sly Company of People who Care), to John Gimlette (The Wild Coast).
If we are going to heal, it is time that we direct the conversation towards each other, and this should not be led by politicians, but by, as Wachira recommends, “in the absence of strong icons and moral pillars… the formation of coalitions of civil society groups, eminent persons, religious and traditional leaders, etc., who can help safeguard the political-moral space needed…”
When we sent out the invitations for our Conversations on Citizenship, we did not exclude anyone – we asked ethnic groups, human rights associations, political parties (their youth arms in particular), advocacy groups, religious organisations as well as individuals. Some came, most did not. If anything what our experience of August 30 showed was that ordinary citizens, even sharing the same space with as prominent a citizen as Speaker of the National Assembly, Raphael Trotman (who graciously not only turned up but took the time to participate), were capable of engaging in an honest and open conversation about race. In the upcoming few months we are going to hold another conversation on citizenship and we will again invite everyone to the table. We will also be offering the format and structure of our ‘conversations’ as a model for other such interventions around the country. Please join us.
Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson
Janus Cultural Policy Initiative
