Dear Editor,
It is very sad that a United Nations Initiative, the International Year for People of African Descent, has led to a kind of bullying in Guyana.
I have not seen all the news and all the comments. I agree with two publicly stated opinions, both from sources I am not in touch with. Mr Barrington Braithwaite repeated the opinion of ACDA that it is not a “Drum and Dance” activity. I fully support this opinion. The second is the complaint by the PNCR that the process is being manipulated. This has to be watched in an election year.
True, science has held for some time now that we are all ultimately African descendants. Spencer Wells believes that he has demonstrated this through tracing the Y chromosomes in men in various places he considers significant. This can never be stretched to mean that historically developed communities have no right to their traditions, their history and the tasks bestowed on them by experience. These interests and realities make them neither superior nor inferior, but as human as others. I make bold to borrow the phrase in which Dr Sylvia Winter of Jamaica enfolds and explains racial and climatic differences as “ways of being human.”
The Government of Guyana does not have an enlightened view of race, or how ethnic matters should be approached. In an editorial of August 1, Emancipation Day, 2007 it boasted that it had been returned to power by the overwhelming majority of a certain race of Guyanese. I have previously asked, So what? The warning was in part an abuse and a misuse of the confidence their supporters place in them. I have experienced all of Guyana’s political and cultural leaderships for over six decades. This was a warning from the victor, as cold as any the PPP has complained of. It has not been withdrawn. It is also a suggestion that it, the victory, gave the victor freedom of action. It is a pity so many missed it or pretended not to see it.
I had warned a previous regime in another context against using culture as a political tool. All I can do is draw the attention of the people to a great injustice planned by the country’s government. It will be a disaster for this Year for People of African Descent to be treated as a year for denying Africans their dignity and their way of being human, regardless of the figureheads chosen to give the process validity. The major parties which won or took the privilege of governing Guyana both showed tendencies of ethnic manipulation and the habit of ordering people around. It was during the Rodneyite civil rebellion that the people of Guyana at all levels felt most liberated and carried out much self-organisation. This is not a political observation, but the spirit of that period is what seems to be most useful, when compared with known governmental mandates.
Finally, I invite all friends of Guyana to study the claims of the various parties and investigate whether the spirit of this year is fairly understood by the Guyana government, and to let their findings be known. At the bottom of it is self determination. Even though it should be open for all to participate according to their own lights, there should be no question where the location and the driving force should be. Even in a country at peace with the best inter-racial relations, the Year for People of African Descent signals a support of self-determination which must not only be genuine but must appear to be genuine.
This is only my first comment on this. Like others, I hope that the essence of the year is not to be polluted by the mixed fumes of election year.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
