After European rule ended in the colonies, two concepts symbolised class division in the post-colonial world.
The ruling class, whose leaders were in the intellectual forefront for the demand for independence, analysed the situation between the developed world and the underdeveloped, free territories as one of economic inequality buttressed by domination of world trade by the metropolitan centres. If the hegemony of the developed world was to be challenged then world trade had to be the starting point
This is too short a discussion to unravel the intricacies that divided the post-colonial world and the capitalist centres of global trade in the seventies, but two institutions were used to confront the developed world – the Non-Aligned Movement and the North-South Dialogue.
One of the responses of the capitalist countries was that if they were to restructure the world economy to the benefit of the newly independent states, then those countries had to move their societies on a higher plane of democracy as what obtained in Europe and North America. That meant, an independent judiciary, free elections, trade union rights, religious freedom, right to dissent etc. In liberal democratic theory, this is called pluralism, meaning: a society with different and competing poles of power.
The third world rejected this, arguing forcefully in the words of people like Forbes Burnham, Kuanda in Zambia, Nyrere in Tanzania, Nasser in Egypt and a school of other dictators that such a demand was reminiscent of colonial rule and it impinges on sovereignty.
Sovereignty was the key to staying in power without free elections and without bowing to the condition of the outside world. Since independence then, the concept of sovereignty is crucial to understanding the political sociology and economic ideology of the post-colonial leadership.
Opposed to this precious and life-saving belief of the ruling classes was the concept of survival by the working people.
They had a different interpretation of what sovereignty meant. It had no political connotation for them. They saw the independent territory as one whose main goal was to bring economic prosperity to the toiling masses.
The inevitable clash occurred shortly after independence between the ruling classes on the one hand, and the masses and their new romanticist, revolutionary intellectual leaders, on the other. The masses resented money being spent on a large army, on statutes, on presidential mansions, on the trappings of European society, while wages and salaries remained depressed.
This confrontation and its inevitability are best described by two brilliant West Indian intellectuals now dead – Martiniquean thinker, Franz Fanon and Trinidadian genius, CLR James.
Against this historical background, one must understand the frenetic desire on the part of the ruling PPP to get a cricket stadium for the 2007 World Cup and the support that project gets from the opposition PNC.
Both parties are wedded to the culture of sovereignty and have had experience in using it for political purposes. The stadium must come, no matter how expensive it is. We must have it because it compliments our sovereign status as an independent state. The cricket stadium is yet another sign of our maturity. We have an army, we have a university, we have a Central Bank, and we must have a national sports complex of international standing.
Fine arguments for sovereignty but what about the concept of survival? Can Guyana survive with what we have at the moment? Let’s briefly examine our social structure to see if we can afford the World Cup stadium. The Traffic Chief’s recent pronouncement that it may be impossible to repair the traffic lights tells a story of vanishing sovereignty. Can a modern, sovereign nation have a civilised traffic culture without traffic lights?
Which modern country in the world today does not have traffic lights because of financial weakness? The Traffic Chief is saying that his force cannot repair the lights because of money constraints. There are hardly streets lights throughout Guyana. Is this sovereignty for you?
Georgetown’s water supply is hazardous. It is a medical risk to rely on the potable water Georgetown residents are supplied with.
Only poor ‘Georgetowners’ drink tap water. Our water supply comes from the Lamaha Canal that is a dumping ground for discarded objects and rotten animals. Why don’t we fence it? We don’t have money.
The residents of Georgetown have to endure water discontinuation from 10.00 hours until 17.00 hours. Then it goes again at 22.00 hours until the next morning.
Our electricity supply has been erratic before the present generation was born. There is no guarantee that the next generation will see a free flow of this modern essential service that is vital to economic development.
Our city stinks. Georgetown is dirty. But a nightmare awaits you as you leave the capital city. From Sparendam onwards up the East Coast, ‘smelly’ garbage lines the East Coast Highway. It is the same with the East Bank and the West Coast. Guyana is a country waiting for bubonic plague to happen. Bubonic plague hit the Indian state of Gujarat two years ago that is not as dirty as Guyana despite a high rat population.
Sovereignty, if it is to mean something, if it is to symbolise nationhood, then it must reside in economic prosperity.
Sovereignty is synonymous with a functioning social structure and people that are fed, educated and treated well. Our country is ‘dirt poor’, our literacy rate has fallen, our life span has declined and our university, which is supposed to educate the next generation, has collapsed.
It means therefore, our sovereignty has collapsed too. Where is Guyana’s sovereignty when the IMF and the World Bank and the donor countries are the real policy-makers? And why has our sovereignty declined? Because economic survival became precarious.
So the belief in survival as espoused by the masses after independence was more a realistic theory than the concept of sovereignty.
We are going ahead and build an expensive cricket stadium because it enhances our sovereignty.
But this is a myth. This is runaway illusion. We don’t have sovereignty here in Guyana. Only our leaders believe in it. The people don’t. And even in countries like Botswana where one in every four persons is infected with HIV, our teachers are swarming that place.
In certain districts in New York, high school kids are a dangerous species, yet our teachers are flocking there to work. They have turned their backs on sovereignty like a majority of Guyanese.
Come 2007 after the cricketers leave, we will sell the stadium in order to survive. Survival has always been the name of the game.