Dear Editor,
Barrington Braithwaite has written a letter published in a daily tabloid that there was no Buxton conspiracy and that Ronald “Waddle” (sic) was never an author of the violence against Indian Guyanese that raged unchecked for two years and more.
His denial puts him in very good company. The Neo-Nazis in Germany say there was no Holocaust.
Braithwaite is probably a supporter of the African Reparation Project in which Africans are seeking financial compensation from Europe – and from Guyana! – for their forefathers’ pain and suffering. Braithwaite et al must add Africa to that list.
The great early 20th-Century black writer of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, bitterly complained that, “the white people held my people in slavery here in America. They had bought us, it is true, and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw was: My people had sold me….My own people had exterminated whole nations and torn families apart for a profit before the strangers got their chance at a cut. It was a sobering thought. It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed.”
African kings were willing to provide a steady flow of captives, who they said were criminals or prisoners of war doomed for execution. Many were not, but this did not prevent traders posing as philanthropists who were rescuing the Africans from death and offering them a better and more productive life – as slaves!
The African Reparations supporters are talking a whole lot about getting justice. True justice is never blind and can never be lopsided. They must add Africa to their list in their demands for reparations. To deny any part of the truth would be an injustice to the other guilty parties.
Braithwaite and his compatriots are practised in the art of denial as in denying the Buxton conspiracy. But like Hitler’s Holocaust and the history of the African slave trade and all who were involved, the world knows the truth. They cannot hide behind lies and bluster.
Yours truly,
Shanie Jagessar
