…no more to work
Some folks are all atwitter about the administration spending a week of carousing in honour of Independence. But c’mon, what would be “independence” if we can’t carouse? Isn’t that what the struggle was all about? Think about it. Two hundred years of slavery, almost a hundred years of Indentureship… work… work… work. Nothing but work. And backbreaking work at that. And if that didn’t work, they’d break your back on the rack!
So what would independence be but the freedom to carouse and frolic whenever and wherever we want? But to listen to some, you’d think slavery and Indentureship should be reintroduced. So what if with our refusal to work all the time, foreign firms are giving us a wide berth? Let the fools in China and Singapore work LIKE slaves. They never WERE slaves…and that’s why they don’t appreciate the stance our people are taking. Only those who feel it, know it!
Our stance to non-stop work is called passive aggressive revolt. We learnt it back in the day when the Man tried to have us bend our back all day long in the cane field. Not all of us could rise up like Cuffy and the fellas who stood up to bullets at Devonshire Castle and elsewhere. No sir… most just malingered and literally threw spanners into the works. And that was when Massa day was still going strong… why should we do any different now that Massa Day done?
But our rejection of regimented work and passive aggressive revolt isn’t just in REACTION against the Man… it goes back to our true nature before we were all messed up on the plantations. Before then, we lived in harmony with nature. When Columbus arrived, he thought we were living in jungles! How wrong he was! Fact of the matter we didn’t have to be planting no plantations of cane or whatever.
Our forefathers, the Indigenous Peoples just make a small clearing in the jungle, stuck in some pieces of cassava and yams and voila! In three months all they had to do was pull out our food when they were hungry! The rest of the time? Well… just loll around in their hammocks and let nature take its course, since boys will be boys! Burnham had tried to get us back to these idyllic times of all day frolic… but some anti-nationals refused to go along with “buy local”. They kept whining about “Dhall and aloo” being banned!
Guyanese are lucky we’ve finally gotten some leaders with the cojones to fulfil the vision of the Comrade Leader. Long may we frolic!
…no more to dependency
Thinking back about our ancestors living in the land of milk and honey, got your humble Eyewitness thinking back to his days at UG. There he was taught about why the Man could keep us working day and night in backbreaking labour even though we were all independent. Professor Thomas, now Chairman of GuySuCo, was his professor and he opened up your Eyewitness’ eyes to witness what was really going down.
We were stuck in a “dependent” relationship with the developed countries. Even though the Man was gone, he’d left us “underdeveloped” so we didn’t even know how to make a pin – which we just had to have. So we kept on planting sugar and rice and other backbreaking labour things and sold them to the Man so we’d get money to buy his pins. Professor Thomas had proudly stood up to the Man and told them if he had the power he’d CUT all links with him.
Is this why he’s closing all the sugar factories?
…to Protocol
With the Government so top-heavy with be-medalled military types, your Eyewitness is still befuddled as to why someone from their ranks weren’t seconded to rescue the Culture Minister who was clearly out of her depth.
Too busy pulling Dragnet?
