By Ryhaan Shah
e all agree that Guyana’s underdevelopment is rooted in the racial/political divide and with no political will on either side to heal that divide, it stands to reason that both our major parties must profit from it.
Many were fooled by the APNU/AFC Coalition’s campaign for change. They have since realised that they had been completely taken in since the country is experiencing a renewed vigour in racism at every level of society.
From the time the Coalition won, African-Guyanese took to the streets to taunt the “coolie” with their victory in a naked show of racial triumphalism and with the tacit approval of the Coalition partners. The “coolie” of course has been in the crosshairs of Guyana’s racial/political violence since the 1960s.
Premier Cheddi Jagan and Home Affairs Minister Janet Jagan were both aware of the issue of Indian insecurity since then. During the two-day spree of brutalities known as the Wismar Massacre, the Jagans knew from official reports that African-Guyanese police stood by and watched as Indian women and girls were raped, and Indians were assaulted and their properties burned.
Both the International Council of Jurists’ and the Disciplined Forces Commission’s reports – compiled over three decades apart – recommended that the country’s armed forces must reflect the diverse racial composition of the society if ethnic stability and peace are to be secured.
The PPP/C during its 23-year tenure effected no such reforms. The million dollar question is: why?
The party must feel that it profits from Indian insecurity as much as the PNC does. Indians huddled together in fear of the PNC and its supporters must be easy political pickings for the PPP. Ensuring a common enemy is the laziest strategy ever used to unite people.
The PPP might win office but they never hold power. Its appeasement policies towards African-Guyanese are limited in their effectiveness and even the manufacturing and commercial sectors, seen as PPP supporters for being Indian, invest cautiously since their business premises are often targets for destruction during PNC-led political protests.
Perhaps, if African-Guyanese owned city businesses the threat of “matches being lit”, as was openly voiced in the days after the last general elections, might be tempered since they would also stand to lose. But with city vendors who have held “spots” for upwards of one or two decades not translating profits into business expansion or property ownership this might not happen anytime soon.
For the PNC, keeping the racism alive also works for them in their quest for political dominance. They have discovered that they can actually get away – and literally – with murder. They control the armed forces, the public service and the country’s streets and even when they are not in government their formidable force of “kith and kin” are always at their beck and call.
They have a battery of African-Guyanese leaders ready to justify their political/racial violence through sycophantic media outlets with cries of marginalisation and victimisation, neither of which ever holds up to scrutiny.
Also on their side are the Indians whose psychosis of self-hatred is given much media space where they display their inverse racism in order to gain acceptance from African-Guyanese. The universal idea that Africans are the world’s victims by way of slavery and racial prejudice plays well for African-Guyanese.
Perhaps, the PPP’s appeasement arises from an acceptance of this narrative of African victimhood which always puts Indians in the defensive position of having to explain themselves even when they are the targets and victims of African-Guyanese terrorism.
It’s understandable that the diplomatic community of former slave-owning colonies might well support this world view. They helped to leverage the PNC back into power through the farce of AFC “unity” which has since unravelled. The local government elections, on which they insisted, simply endorsed the ethnic arithmetic that never changes anything but which satisfied them of our democratic credentials.
And the concept of social cohesion borrowed from Europe which has to craft policies to deal with an influx of immigrants is mere talk here. However, the talk show is probably all that is required since the divide keeps us poor and dependent on international aid, and makes Guyana vulnerable to foreign manipulation.
Given that the key political players gain from Guyana’s racial divide, the racism will continue even as our pattern of migration northward shows that we, the people, do want to live in progressive countries where fairness, merit and justice are the guiding principles of nationhood.
We must ask ourselves, then, why we continue to support the divide that furthers Guyana’s failure.
