THE question is of significant importance. For instance, what if some level of reparations is identified to be paid to Guyanese of Afro-descent, who can identify with a lineage that survived chattel slavery? Then, how will such an act commence towards justified realisation, void of what exists as treats, existing in ‘shut-button authorities’ and self-serving ‘goodwill’ cartels?
So far, there are no suggestions to stem the metamorphosis across the now-dangerous modern distance we have travelled since purchasing the villages back in the 1840s, such as the development of a political class, a middle and professional class, etcetera.
And now, we have a Republican status of nationhood. But there is an order of accountability that can facilitate as a guide towards evolving with definitions towards real needs and people. This requires reaching back to Pre-Colonial Africa, and the Old World to the construct of the ‘GUILDS’. The reality is that whether reparations materialise into small droplets, or with impressive figures or not, we still need to know where people are, what they are doing, their challenges and their needs towards effectiveness, and what the prospectus of their specific interests contain.
What are guilds? Though the term may be new to some readers, these were talent and skills-driven organisations over a thousand years ago, and even today, with current terms like associations, which, as with most things in our age, has dual meanings that are at times deceptive. A guild, back then, meant skills and talent, and was strictly meritocracy in content, be it “drum makers, cloth weaving, religious dancers and costumes- metallurgy and metalwork towards arms, tools and casting of statues; farmers and livestock custodians and more.”
They did not waste time; they planned and executed what was necessary and innovative, without most of the tools we now have, and the technology. Nothing that was proven useful was left behind. Across the human world, they traded, improvised and sometimes created local interpretations.
The suggestion of the ‘Guilds’ revolves around a vacuum in Guyana. Not too long ago, the guilds were alive, perhaps not as registered entities, but they knew each other through a code of trust; recommended each other, and existed by rules. Breaking some rules could have ruled you out of the game, unlike today, with one look at some current Real Estate activities. I recently saw a young man’s house being sold by persons unknown, unbeknownst to him, three times.
And, only last year, I saw the home of a retired GDF officer being put up for sale without her permission. Those examples and others, including the recent incidents in Beterverwagting, point to a cultural deterioration, or desperation, that requires urgent systems of correction and accountability. The question may well be, how can this be executed? The answer lies with those resources we know. For example, in the Arts, I can, with a few helpful minds, point to who is real in certain disciplines, even identifying what their needs are. The same can be recorded and cross-checked. Therefore, it is sensible to assemble a register of professionals in various disciplines under the category of Guilds to help ascertain where their expertise rests; their resume, and what their major development concerns are. This would also help the general public survive the numerous mediocrity hordes in so many areas that have manifested themselves as if from another dimension.
In closing, the murder of six million Jews over five yars by the Nazis in the Final Solution cost Germany 86.8 billion dollars in reparations. Over 100,000,000 Africans perished during the Atlantic Slave Trade that lasted over 400 years, as well as during the raids in Africa, at sea, on the plantations, and in British Guiana after Emancipation, due to the neglect of village drainage. Thus, reparations are not an unreasonable expectation.
Thus, if a meagre $100000 is paid by an old lady from a plantation-owning family, every cent must be accounted for directly to the Guilds of most needed. As for you folks who think that Braithwaite and Brathwaite amount to differences, it’s all the same. Folks from some plantations in Barbados, some bought their freedom, manumitted, some were possibly deported for actions against ‘De Plantation’; nah worry, same name. Google it!
