Republic Day 2026

Today should be one of the proudest days in the life of our nation – Republic Day. While some may confer that honour on Independence Day, May 26th, we do believe that because our umbilical cord to the colonial power Britain had still been retained through the Governor-General who represented the British Queen, we were not quite “free”.  On February 23, 1970 when we chose to declare ourselves a “Republic”, we severed all those ties and assumed all responsibilities for our present and our future. We were finally free to chart our own course to make our own dreams and aspirations become reality.
It ought to be of interest to the present generation that while there was vehement disagreement between the two leaders regarded as the fathers of our nation, Dr Cheddi Jagan and Mr LFS Burnham, as to the date chosen for Independence, there was complete unanimity on February 23rd as the beginning of our Republican status. On this Republic Day, 56 years after that fateful beginning let us reflect on the reason for that fateful confluence of views.
February 23rd was chosen because it is accepted that on this day in 1763, the enslaved Akan Cuffy launched one of the earliest and greatest attacks on the institution of slavery – the epitome of oppression. Cuffy and his fellow enslaved Africans at Magdalenenburg, up the Berbice River, were making the most emphatic statement possible against that state of affairs. They placed their lives on the line – and eventually lost those lives – to declare that oppression is not an acceptable condition for any human being. Our early modern leaders acknowledged that lesson from their own experiences and those of so many other colonials who had to struggle for their freedom, 200 years after Cuffy.
Today though our Republic finally has a revenue stream from oil to facilitate our economic development, it is besieged by forces other than slavery and imperialism, but no less powerful, that would keep us in thralldom. Some of those early forces have morphed into more sophisticated and subtle neo-imperialistic forms represented by the omnibus term “coloniality” that has left us with hidden hierarchies of race, power, and culture. These must be discerned and overcome if we are to reap the benefits of Republicanism.
But we would also have to acknowledge that the forces that hold us back and down are not all from without. And in this we have apparently also forgotten the lessons of Cuffy’s rebellion, which our founding leaders signalled, in selecting this day as Republic Day. We not only have to remember why Cuffy and his fellow slaves rose up to fight oppression, but also why they were defeated. Maybe it is now a cliché to observe that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them – first as tragedy and then as farce. But, as with all clichés, there is a more than a kernel of truth in its explication.
One of the primary reasons for the failure of the 1763 Rebellion was the inability of the enslaved Africans to remain united against a resolute enemy and their refusal to maintain discipline to sustain their initial victory. They dissolved into warring factions and revelling bands. For Cuffy and his brave warriors, their ignominious end was indeed unfortunate. But when our modern leaders, claiming to be inspired by Cuffy, repeated the earlier mistakes; fractured the united nationalist movement and plunged the country into bloody internecine skirmishes, this was tragedy of the highest order.
We repeated the tragic exercise between 1998 and 2008, but with that behind us we will once again be celebrating our attainment of Republican status in our festival of Mashramani today. For one day at least we hope that our modern leaders – especially in the fractured opposition – will put aside their partisan mindset. We hope, therefore, that all the Mash celebrants will end up in one location so that we may rekindle our togetherness and give our aspiration for becoming “One Guyana” meaning.