Your Eyewitness is getting some dissonant vibes about what “Emancipation” means to some people. Now the word itself means “to free” or “to liberate”…and we all know Africans were enslaved for hundreds of years by Europeans to labour on plantations and finally, they were “freed” on August 1, 1838 – in the British Empire. Slavery continued elsewhere – like in the US where they had to fight a Civil War in 1863 for slaves to be freed by 1865. In Brazil – where over 40% of the slaves brought into the New World ended up – slavery persisted till 1888!!
In these latter countries – where slaves were a minority – Emancipation might’ve given the ex-slaves formal freedom – but in numerous ways, there were so many restraints on their rights as citizens, one would be hard-pressed to call them “free”!! Imagine it wasn’t till the 1960s that in the US South, Afro-Americans couldn’t even ENTER some restaurants!! Dr Cheddi Jagan, who studied there between 1938-1943, observed these restrictions firsthand and was permanently scarred by the experience.
But the slave experience went far beyond the physical constraints on the slaves – there were the more insidious and damaging mental aspects- that Bob Marley was to call “mental slavery”. This still permeates the minds of most of humanity -180 years after “Emancipation”. “Mental slavery” began with the insistence by Europeans that Africans – at the very best – weren’t equal to them in their mental and cultural facilities – and at worse – weren’t even quite “human”!! The rest of “coloured” humanity was then placed on a scale where the upper end was European and the lower end, African. And that’s something still deeply embedded in so many aspects of Western Education – which remains our standard.
However, we can rail all we want about what goes on in the US or Britain…but what about right here in our neck of the woods? Back when Walter Rodney was around, he shook up our just-independent British territories by showing that most of the leaders who’d inherited the “British mantle” took the description VERY literally. In Jamaica where he was teaching by 1968, he showed how PM Shearer was actually “anti-African” in his orientation – by suppressing the efforts of the Rastafarian Community to create a lifestyle more consonant with their African Heritage. Same for Burnham here!!
While Dr Jagan was steadfast in his opposition to anti-African racism, sadly the logic of demarcation mobilization – and the cynicism of Burnham – ensured that for the longest while we remained divided along racial lines. Thankfully, however, the youthful President Ali has announced a “One Guyana” policy that promises equity for all – especially African Guyanese.
This will be real emancipation!!
…FDI??
Your Eyewitness is wondering about whatever happened to Winston Jordan. After the elections the man was like the Scarlet pimpernel – here, there, and EVERYWHERE!! He was supposed to be the PNC’s economic wizard – another Lord Keynes!! Your Eyewitness remembers him bigging up the opening of the Massey Mega Storeas “a massive infusion of Foreign Domestic Investment (FDI) into the Guyanese economy”!!!
Did he really think that opening bigger stores to sell imported consumer merchandise to Guyanese is really “developing” Guyana?? Who’d have bought those consumer goods when his government had actually reduced the cash circulating in the economy by tossing thousands into the streets and increasing taxes on the remaining working stiffs to suck $ 90 billion out of their pockets?? Does he realize that all those Chinese supermarkets – now found in every nook and cranny in our dear Mudland – are now SUCKING out money and remitting it to China??
Anyhow, who’s the new PNC’s economic maven?? Can he run a cake shop??
…with the AFC leader??
With Ramjattan having suppressed his rural roots, he mightn’t appreciate the folk wisdom that, “chickens will come back to roost”. But as a fella whose favourite expression is “haul yuh ass!”, surely, he understands that things can “come back and bite you in the ass”!!
