Emancipation from African Security Dilemma

With this piece written one day after Emancipation Day and one month before Elections Day, the question of how African Guyanese will be voting to choose the next Government inevitably poses itself. Just over a hundred years ago, after Indian indentureship ended, the explicit argument by a leader of that group on behalf of the sugar plantocracy that immigration should be continued so that an Indian majority could control the colony precipitated a reaction in the African/Coloured community that has influenced their political behaviour into the present.
They saw their interests in common against the foreign British rulers but pertinently also against the local Indians, who were not only becoming a numerical majority but also rising economically from their toehold in rice and retailing. The perceived threat from this group led to an attenuation of the salience of not only intra-class difference when it came to politics but also the historical inter-group difference with the Coloured/Mulatto, who affected a superior social status. By the 1950s, there had developed what we have called a “Black Ethnic Security Dilemma” (BESD) that persuaded most to aspire towards common goals defined by their “linked fate” against being “swamped and subordinated” by the numerically and economically resurgent Indians. Forbes Burnham used this dilemma to convince Africans/Coloureds to go along with his gutting of democratic practices through election rigging between 1964 and 1992.
That the BESD was alive in 1992 when “free and fair elections” returned was illustrated by the PNC receiving the same percentage of votes as in 1964, even though a 1992 Household and Income-Expenditure Survey (HIES) showed the African/Mixed standard of living had plummeted below that of Indians in an economy that was just above the poorest in the hemisphere – Haiti’s. Ever since the 1950s elections, however, political parties had overtly maintained that a “multiracial” political culture that included all our “six peoples” was the ideal and insisted they were practicing that culture.
The question at all elections following 1992’s – 1997, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2015, and 2020 – was whether ethnicity remained political destiny. The PPP, with its larger Indian base, won the first three handily. But with a confluence of incumbent fatigue and a shrinking base due to emigration, it only secured a Parliamentary minority in 2011. It snagged the Presidency, however, through our idiosyncratic constitutional stipulation that the largest party secures the presidency and there can be no post-electoral coalitions. This election was a watershed for the BESD since it removed one of its pillars – a built-in Indian majority.
While the PPP had always maintained it was “multiracial” – and its leader’s communist ideology buttressed this posture – its defeat in 2015 gave it a do-or-die incentive to court “outside” votes. It dropped its previously coy posture towards race and ethnic categorisations, especially Africans. With its return to Government in 2020 coinciding with the inflow of massive oil revenue, it aggressively and concretely addressed the historic fear of economic marginalisation of the African Guyanese to court support.
On the other hand, even though the PNC started out with a numerically challenged group – even when “African” and “Mixed” were conflated – they have not taken an aggressive position to court “outside” votes. In fact, David Granger alienated Indians who had been brought over in 2015 by the AFC to pip the PPP when he threw 7000 mainly Indian sugar workers out of work. In the process, he destroyed the AFC. His successor, Norton, appears to have been persuaded by his coalition sidekick, WPA’s David Hinds, that it was futile to court Indian votes and they should aggressively concentrate on solidifying the African/mixed blocks that approach 50% of the populace. But this “solidification” has been based on negatively condemning Africans/Mixed who gravitate towards the PPP as “BT lickers.” Strategically, it made more sense to positively reorient their program away from the PNC’s traditional downplaying of individual economic success, which has now become the mantra of the age. This contrasts with the PPP’s strategy to explicitly jettison socialism and its collective ethos from its constitution.
The new party WIN has expanded its founder’s clientelism – the targeted exchange of goods and services for political support – and judging from its mobilisation activities, appears to be resonating more heavily in African and Amerindian communities. With the attenuation of the AFC and the PNC ironically assisted by the WIN gesture – not a “movement” as claimed – the PPP appears headed for a solid majority on Sept 1st.