THE African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA) says despite the end of slavery there are persons and organisations that are still bent on keeping African–Guyanese under subjugation and at the margins of economic life of the country.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the body said this was blatantly evident during the 23 years of the previous PPP government where African Guyanese had been structurally and purposefully excluded from the Guyanese economy, both by the PPP and also by the dominant players in the Private Sector, including the Banking Sector.
The body noted that racial economics has resulted in the procurement contracts, licences, jobs, land, oil concessions and other national patrimony steered towards non-African and Non-Amerindian communities and businesses.

“The United Nations through Ms. Gay McDougall reported on these phenomena in 2008. The election of the APNU+AFC government and the immediate focus on Social Cohesion set the expectation that fighting against inequality by targeting discrimination and poverty would be the central focus of the administration. Two years after the election of the APNU+AFC government it is clearly obvious that the PPP, its agents, supporters, some media houses and persons, have started a vicious and rabid propaganda campaign against any effort to level the economic playing field laid by the previous PPP government. This campaign seems to have rendered the APNU+AFC government fearful and hesitant to work towards economic parity for African-Guyanese.”
ACDA said this failure is evident in the lack of spending of even the approved budgetary allocations, high unemployment among our youths, slow access to lands and the lack of infrastructural projects that would create work in our communities. “We still stand aside and look at the contracted works being done that are awarded to persons outside of our communities, a skewed procurement system and the retaining of persons who have and continue to work at sabotaging every effort that would appear to bring economic justice to African-Guyanese.”

“ACDA believes that the government is put in this position because of its failure to clearly develop, communicate and implement empowerment policies to eliminate inequality. The result is that African and Amerindian Guyanese are being cheated, while other Guyanese (including many African Guyanese) feel that greater political representation and other minor gains are enough and see our demands for economic inclusion as audacious.
“In short, this administration’s Empowerment Policy leadership failure is being expertly exploited by the PPP, the entrenched private sector (particularly those built on government largesse), and sadly, most often with the support of the media.”
As such ACDA calls for an Ancestral Rights Bill similar to the Amerindian Act of 2006 which involves a Ministry of African-Guyanese Affairs and Land Justice; the APNU+AFC Government to move past just the recognition of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent, and to begin to take concrete steps to make the necessary financial resources available; as well as the economic, social and educational opportunities available to enable the People of African Descent in Guyana to begin to move away from the disadvantaged economic position we now occupy.

In the area of procurement ACDA said this is a critical area of inclusion in the Guyanese economy for the excluded class of African businesses and entrepreneurs. “The PPP had changed procurement rules to build and enable their supporters to be economically empowered, resulting in most of the procurement contracts awarded (being) dominated by a select group.”

Additionally, ACDA calls for village diversification by the setting up of a Rural Development Fund; assistance to the City Council so that they can offer a permanent solution to the plight of vendors; ensure that adequate workable mining lands be made available to the newly formed mining syndicates and recognition that in Guyana the Africans and Amerindians own a very small piece (3 to 5%) of the economic pie.
ACDA said with oil on the way, these groups should be given some oil concessions in order that they would be able to form joint ventures with experienced and financially viable groups. “The APNU+AFC Government has to be more pro-active or the historical inequalities (poverty) will continue.”

Meanwhile, ACDA said next Thursday it will join with other African-centered organisations and First Nations globally, to commemorate and host a Holocaust/Maafa Memorial programme at the Seawall Bandstand. The programme will start at 08:00 hrs. High tide is at 09:45 hrs, ACDA said in a release, adding that floral tributes are encouraged.
According to the organization, in Guyana the gathering is meant to memorialise the more than two centuries of brutal removal of African people from their lands, their subjugation, the heinous acts committed against them during chattel slavery and the decimation of their families and cultures.
“The Holocaust /Maafa refers to the largest mass murder and the largest economic genocide of a race of people. The African Holocaust/Maafa has been described by the UN as “the greatest crime against humanity,” ACDA concluded.