And here your Eyewitness thought that with all the stress in the lives of politicians: agonizing every minute, 24/7, about whether people gonna vote for them or their corruption would be exposed!! – they’d be prime candidates for early visits from the Grim Reaper with the scythe!! But Eusi Kwayana, who just celebrated his ONE-HUNDREDTH birthday, has proven to be an exception to the rule!!
How the heck did he do it?? Well, he’s a walking poster boy for clean living. Seems this man doesn’t drink alcohol; stopped after WWII ended in 1945, when he was twenty; eats mostly uncooked stuff, like nuts and fruits; and gets his full night’s sleep!!
Sadly, your Eyewitness is just the opposite: he enjoys his vino; loves his food well cooked; and just can’t get no sleep!! Your Eyewitness –who’s no spring chicken, thank you!! – can just imagine what it must’ve been like to grow up in the 1920s. Did we have a ‘swinging 20s’, like your Eyewitness read had happened in America?? Well, maybe we did, since it was said that Kwayana – who was born Sydney King – was quite a swinger in rural Buxton, where he lived!! So, what happened?? Did he, like Saul on the way to Damascus, hear a booming voice from the sky to keep him on the straight and narrow??
Well, almost!! Buxton always had a vibrant political culture born out of the village movement, and from where early leaders like a fella named Fredricks had gone abroad and returned with ideas about lifting up the African community. He formed the Negro Progress Convention to do just that.
King was exposed to those ideas, but had also – like all Africans, such as Critchlow – become attracted to the ideas of that Biblical -looking prophet Karl Marx and the brave new world being created in Russia based on those ideas, and was transformed.
The 1943 return of Cheddi Jagan, who also was influenced by Marx to mobilise politically, captivated the young King, and the rest, as they say, is history. King helped Cheddi get elected to Parliament in 1947, and became a PPP candidate and minister in the 1953 Government at the tender age of 28!! In the PPP split of 1955, he first went with Cheddi’s faction, then joined the newly-formed PNC after Burnham lost the 1957 elections.
Seems he was quite miffed when Cheddi put up Balram Singh Rai against him when he ran as an independent out of the East Coast Constituency!! That “betrayal” by Jagan was never forgiven, and King reverted to the Black nationalism of his youth: became Eusi Kwayana and formed several “African” organizations to support Burnham and take on Cheddi!!
Hell hath no fury like a protégé scorned!!
…blackouts
One of the distinguishing – NOT distinguished!! – features of the PNC’s twenty-eight years of dictatorship were blackouts!! That phenomenon’s been one every Government since has tried to solve, so as not to hear about being taken back to “Burnham days”!! The PPP tried every which way to keep the promise, but on Thursday, there it was again – blackout!! Now, we’re told the problem wasn’t generating capacity, but was technical; meaning we now have enough power to satisfy total power demand, and not to practise “load shedding”.
What we’re beginning to appreciate is that keeping a stable and reliable power supply in a country as far-flung as ours ain’t simple. There’s the generating side, that uses the generators we’ve been sourcing, including the power ship. But there’s also the transmission of that power to us the users, the technicality of which is very highly underrated. Luckily, Government’s now treating this aspect separately as it rushes to complete new power generation at the Wales Gas-to-Shore Plant.
We’re slowing reaching the no-blackout goal!!
…the poor
Pressie just announced that fees for writing the CSEC and CAPE exams in high schools would now be paid by the Government!! When the PNC boasted about “free education”, they ignored exam fees, which balked many a poor student.
