Dear Editor,
The souls of our ancestors cry from the hallowed grounds of the sugar estates for common sense, the sugar estates in large part constitutes Guyana’s history insofar as it has been written. Where the lives of our ancestors were identified with the most terrible forms of human oppression as they laboured to eke out a living for themselves and their descendants.
Dr Walter Rodney spoke of cosmic forces in his pro-working class and resistance book; Groundings with my Brothers and noted, “You have to listen to them and you hear them talk about Cosmic Power and it rings a bell.” It is my belief that the Sugar Estates in Guyana carry a cosmic power that could positively influence the lives of the descendants of the enslaved and indentured labourers.
The bloodshed and lost lives of our ancestors should not be further impaled and lynched on an axis of perceived racism and misplaced economic priorities. Let there be no doubt that the planned closure of several estates is primarily based on racism or colour blind racism, which is being unleashed upon the sugar workers and their families. Let the labour of our fore parents that took place under the most oppressive of conditions be purposive; and not ending with a willy-nilly contrivance that speaks more to the triumph of racism over Guyanese unity that will cause irreparable harm.
In the Executive Summary of the CoI into GuySuCo, Section 5:45, states “The possibility of closure of some estates based on their comparative low levels of production and consistent loss positions, received much discussion and even debate. In the final analysis, two commissioners supported closure, while the remaining eight opposed such a recommendation.” Eight of the ten commissioners were against closure of the sugar estates; yet we are now hearing of the closure of Rose Hall and Enmore Estates by the end of 2017. The first two recommendations by the CoI is not premised on the position taken by a substantial majority of the commissioners as per Section 5:25 of the COI re: Final Recommendations two of six:
1. The privatisation of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), which is a State-owned entity, incorporated and regulated under the companies. The process should start as early as practicable and aim to be completed within a three year period.
2. As a consequence of (1) above, the State divests itself of all assets, activities and operations currently associated with GuySuCo.
So here we have a minority “final recommendation” that allows for the final recommendation to be contrary to the substantive position of the majority of the Commissioners. We can split hairs about closure/privatisation/divestment/re-engineering and such like – the reality is that the final recommendation is purposed to close GuySuCo.
A colleague of mine in response to my question on why the Government was closing the sugar estates said “the estates were making big losses”. I asked my colleague if the substantial majority of the workers and families were supporters of the current APNU/AFC coalition, would the Government have sanctioned the closure of the estates? The answer was silence. We must not call a spade a fork. Racism is racism, plain and simple, colour blind racism or otherwise, and we Guyanese must see estate closures and pending closures, within the racist prism and praxis as foremost drivers in arriving at this deeply divisive and discriminatory action. We as Guyanese must reject these oppressive actions against the working class. It is easy to find conditions in Guyana where economic factors can be used to justify repugnant acts, there are multiple such cases in each region of Guyana. Nor should we forget all the international grants and soft loans that have come to Guyana as a result of disruptions in the sugar industry… and evidenced by IDB loan(s) signed in this month of February 2017.
A classic rejoinder of the colour-blind racist is to say: It’s not race, it’s economics…
We must accept that race matters as Professor Cornell West, an American scholar, theologian, and activist noted in his book of the same name (see page 38) with slight paraphrasing: “How does one undermine the frame work of racial reasoning? By dismantling each pillar slowly and systematically. The fundamental aim of this undermining and dismantling is to replace racial reasoning with moral reasoning, to understand the struggle for freedom not as an affair of skin pigmentation and racial phenotype, but rather as a matter of ethical principles and wise politics… The failure of nerve via the politics of using government power discriminatively, results in our failure to undermine and dismantle the framework of racial reasoning.”
The cosmic forces are within us and the great son of Guyana, Dr Walter Rodney, noted in his epic analysis of the working class, the underemployed and unemployed and the underprivileged in his book Groundings with my Brother: “you get humility, because look who you are learning from”, and I say you have to use the messages emanating from our ancestors who laboured on the sugar estates and ensure that their descendants benefited from our ancestors toil and sacrifice…
Maybe our ancestors once dreamt of Guyana discovering massive oil reserves off the coast of Guyana in the devilish Atlantic Ocean that claimed so many of their lives. There is always a better way, always.
Sincerely,
Nigel Hinds
