…AG tells Afro-Guyanese don’t succumb to trap of hopelessness

ATTORNEY General, Basil Williams, told Afro Guyanese over the weekend that they should not succumb to the trap of hopelessness, pointing out that every community has its problems and that they are not without resources but must organise for action.

Williams was at the time representing President David Granger at the Annual General Meeting of the Guyana Assembly of International Decade for People of African Descent, held on Sunday at the Guyana Industrial Training Centre, Woolford Avenue. Williams reminded the Assembly that it is their duty to help improve the lot of the African Guyanese community through economic empowerment and education.

The conference was attended by a large number of affiliate African organisations, representatives, alternates and observers from around the country, a release from IDPADA said. Williams, in his address, stressed that the work of the Assembly is to accelerate local awareness of the International Decade and to take action in ensuring programmes that could uplift the Assembly’s constituents are advanced and implemented. The UN Decade was declared by the UN’s General Assembly in 2015 and is scheduled to run until 2024.

Williams said that programmes should not be achieved at the expense of de-recognising others, noting that justice for African Guyanese should not be at the price of injustice. “Development of African-Guyanese should not result in the underdevelopment of others. The Assembly’s programme is one aimed at ensuring African-Guyanese recognition, justice and development. It is a struggle ‘for’ rather than a struggle ‘against’ any other group,” Williams asserted.

He argued that every community in Guyana has its problems so the community “must not therefore succumb to the trap of hopelessness. The African community is not without resources to overcome its present difficulties. The African Guyanese community can find answers to its problems from within its bosom. The community has cultural resources, traditions and values passed on through the generations. If the challenges facing this community are to be overcome, if the problems that afflict persons of African descent are to be addressed, this has to be done through the efforts of the African-Guyanese community. African-Guyanese should therefore organise for action.”

He stressed that the community must rekindle “the kinship with land” as ancestors had a strong tradition in agriculture. “Africans need to return to the land. African Guyanese have a strong tradition in agriculture. We should reignite that tradition as a means of fostering African-Guyanese economic empowerment,” he said.

At the meeting, IDPADA-G Chief Executive Officer, Olive Sampson, presented the 2019 draft plan of action for the consideration of its member organisations. The plan will be further discussed and revised with input from the subcommittees and its coordinating council. Forty-one African Guyanese organisations are currently members of IDPADA-G, representing communities nationwide. The broad-based draft plan, while seeking to strengthen its member organisations’ institutional capacity, also addresses the needs of small business owners, farmers, and policy issues such as the inclusion of history in the school curriculum, the release stated.

The conference was also addressed by US-based Guyanese Professor Dr. Kimani Nehusi. Dr. Nehusi gave an in-depth presentation on the European trade in enslaved Africans, the deliberate efforts of the British to divide and rule the different races in Guyana and privileges given to the Portuguese and Indo Guyanese communities at the expense of Africans. He called on authorities to establish financial institutions which could empower people engaged in small, micro and medium scaled enterprises as Africans are still being discriminated against by lending agencies as they attempt to access loans and other forms of credit. Dr. Nehusi is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University, Pennsylvania. Before leaving Guyana in the 1980s, Dr. Nehusi was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Guyana and also had worked in England as the Founder and Director of the African Studies Center at the University of East London. He occupies the Walter Rodney Chair at the University of Guyana.