By Ryhaan Shah
Whenever the talk turns to race relations in Guyana, two clichés are commonplace: we talk of “healing the divide”; and that the Indian/African conflict is contained to the elections cycle. Neither statement is true but there is a general willingness to embrace the untruths because there is, as yet, none of the courage needed to confront and effectively deal with the reality.
To speak of “healing” the divide assumes that there was once a wholeness that became broken and which must now be mended. This was never the case. The Indian indentured labourer from the moment of his arrival was an individual who was dismissed as an alien, latecomer, outsider, interloper, etc, by the freed Africans slaves. Like the Portuguese and Chinese labourers before him, he was viewed with hostility by Africans who felt that his presence reduced their bargaining power with the plantation owners.
To the British colonials, the Indian was simply a tool of labour and any animus that arose naturally among the various race groups suited their “divide and rule” stratagem which assured their security from any largescale rebellion.
When the campaign to end the indentureship programme began in India, the League of Coloured People in then British Guiana supported it but not for any of the humanitarian reasons. The African community, by then, feared that the growing population of Indians would eventually outnumber them and rob them of the social, economic and political inheritance they felt was rightfully theirs because of their prior longer presence and their history of slavery and suffering.
This idea of greater African Guyanese entitlement is continuously forwarded by various African Guyanese groups and recent letters to the press from the African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA), Rastafarians, and other African Guyanese associations on the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) chair issue reveal that this entitlement gives paramountcy to racial considerations even over the law.
In its commendation of Granger’s illegal move to fill the GECOM chair with People’s National Congress (PNC) affiliate James Patterson, a group of Rastafarians has stated that it is a headcount of how many Africans and how many Indians that matters for “our sacred space and consciousness” rather than any constitutionality.
As for Indian Guyanese not wanting to be ruled by an “African Leader”, as stated by ACDA, it is not only that Indians voted for the APNU/AFC coalition to give them that slim majority that returned the PNC to power, but that over the years Indian Guyanese have fled to other Caribbean states – Barbados, Antigua, Suriname – which will always have African leadership.
Juxtapose this willingness with the solid vote cast for the PNC by African Guyanese in 1992 after nearly 30 years of the PNC dictatorship which left the country in ruins. It remains one of the most racist acts ever documented in Guyana’s political history and reveals the complete unwillingness of African Guyanese to be governed by an Indian-led Administration.
This racial solidarity has never been shaken and while African Guyanese feel fully entitled to thinking and acting as a racial bloc, they hardly ever recognise that other ethnic and race groups should be extended the same privilege.
There is no level playing field when one group asserts more rights and privileges than every other and can ever be allowed an ad hoc adherence to the law. This said, the PNC has a history of operating outside of the law through rigged elections, and human rights and press freedom violations that were hallmarks of its past dictatorship.
Whether this too arises from a feeling of greater entitlement, it should be noted that the Constitution of Guyana is the sacred, common ground of democratic values and principles formulated to guide our nation’s development and to act as the sole and just arbiter in matters that threaten stability and order. For any one group to try and upend the role of this globally recognised civilising force would threaten the very foundations of the state. And Guyana has been there before – during the Burnham era.
The outcome of the GECOM chair issue will determine whether Guyana will be returned to that state of affairs or have a chance to build on the democratic gains made since 1992.
While most of the citizenry view the unilateral appointment of Patterson as the dangerous first step to the rigged electoral system that kept the PNC in power before, the PNC’s support base of African Guyanese are defending the move in a show of solidarity that places race above all considerations of constitutionality and the law.
These are perilous times and Guyana’s future is in jeopardy of being a repetition of the PNC past.
