Editorial
Although Africans have lived in Guyana for over 360 years, it is only in the 163 years since Emancipation on 1st August 1838 that they have been able to exercise control over their own lives and destiny. Emancipation promised not only liberty, but also human dignity, equality and relief from the grinding poverty of their miserable past.
Stabroek News
August 1, 2001
The most spectacular manifestation of that Emancipation was the great village movement during the first decade of which (1839-1848) Africans spent over a million dollars in carefully hoarded coins to buy over 6,000 hectares of land on which they constructed new communities. Half of the African population - about 45,000 - built their churches, schools, homes and farms and practised a form of local democracy unmatched by the prevailing system of colonial government.
One demographic consequence of African Emancipation was the importation of large numbers of indentured immigrants from Madeira, India, China, West Africa and the West Indies who, together with the Amerindians, Africans and Europeans already living here, created a complex ethnic society. Even from the earliest days of indentured immigration, the shortage of females led to considerable miscegenation giving rise to offspring with such colourful names as the Cabukru or Boviander (African and Amerindian) Dougla (African and Indian or Chinese); Mulatto (African and European) and Santantone (African and Portuguese) indicating that many persons of mixed ancestry, who now constitute Guyana's third largest ethnic group, most likely are of African blood.
For this emergent society, Emancipation was seen not as a finite event, an end in itself, but a continuous process, which led to the struggle for social justice and representative government. Abetted by ethnic newspapers such as the African Creole, the Portuguese A Liburdade and others, the multi-ethnic movement for constitutional reform bore fruit in 1891, opening the doors of the colonial legislature for the first time to non-Europeans.
The growing mass of educated persons of all ethnicities, the emergence of an economic class of professionals, property-owners and entrepreneurs, and constitutional change, all encouraged the formation of multi-ethnic political organisations. One such group - the Popular Party which included A. Seeram (Indian); N. Cannon (European); J.P. Santos (Portuguese); and E. F. Fredericks (African), and E. G. Woolford (Coloured), for example - enabled the small number of qualified African and other voters to elect progressive candidates of all ethnic groups.
As late as the elections of 1947, the young Indian dentist Dr. Cheddi Jagan was able to enter the legislature with the help of African votes, canvassed in part by a young African schoolteacher named Sydney King (now Eusi Kwayana). Such was the level of political co-operation.
The formation of ethnic organizations - the BG East Indian Association, the African Welfare Convention, the Chinese Association and the Portuguese club - was a reaction to the social exclusion practised by the dominant European elite as well as an expression of ethnic particularism. But it did not obstruct political collaboration or obscure the vision of nationhood. For example, two of the prominent founders of the largely African PNC in 1957 - Jai Narine Singh and Joseph Prayag Lachmansingh - had also been executives of the East Indian Association.
Guyanese of all origins have broadly similar aspirations, attitudes, and values and share the same language, legal system, education, dress, food, and, occasionally, religion and kinship through intermarriage. All these provide a basis for mobilization while ensuring protection for the rights of particular groups.
With the introduction of internal self-government in 1961, however, it became evident that almost the entire electorate split along ethnic lines. By focusing on state power and demanding political loyalty above professional merit and personal integrity, the major parties ruined the old consensus on which the 'national politics' of the colonial era rested. Politics degenerated into ethnic arithmetic and the vision of nationhood was eclipsed by the manipulation of electoral systems and the mechanics of political strongholds. The victims have been the people of Guyana and the price was paid in political turmoil, social instability and economic stagnation which persist today.
Guyana attained the legal condition of statehood 35 years ago but the realization of nationhood has been elusive. Now, at the start of a new century, the promise of Emancipation - liberty and dignity - is in jeopardy as the State itself teeters ever so often or the brink of anarchy.
The first Emancipation in 1838 shook the foundations of an inhumane and outmoded social and economic order. A new Emancipation seems to be needed in 2001 to smash the old ethnic politics of the last forty years and lead Guyana to stability, prosperity and nationhood.