Today marks another anniversary of freedom from slavery that is officially known as emancipation. Slavery is the most anti-human tragedy to fall on civilization. In many countries in Europe, a person can be charged for just being flippant about the Holocaust. Countries that were victims of African slavery should pass a similar law.
It is beyond belief that a living human can point to something in the history of civilization that is worse than slavery. There has never been such an occurrence. Slavery was just impossible for any human to imagine. I hope no East Indian of this country ever descend to mental vulgarity by comparing indentureship to slavery.
The word “emancipation” has taken on prodigious importance since the PNC (I prefer to write PNC than APNU though I concede APNU was the legal name for the party that won the 2015 general elections) lost the 2020 elections.
Since 2020, the slogan of emancipation is being contextualised by the opposition PNC and a racist cabal, (though not attached to the PNC, is considered an ally of the PNC), to promote an agenda of African entitlement.
There are two types of entitlement impulses that are being displayed in Guyana. One is from the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) that deeply feels that it is the natural inheritor of Guyana after the colonials left.
The entitlement demand of the MCC is based on possession of western culture including religion, skin colour and eugenics. This entitlement portfolio was bolstered by the preference for the MCC by the colonial power.
By the time colonial rule was about to end, the colonial administration in British Guiana had so favoured the MCC that the MCC had the honest belief that it should be in charge of Guyana after Independence.
The second entitlement mentality comes from the political party, the People’s National Congress that has its roots among working class African Guyanese who were the proletariat of British Guiana.
This proletarian stratum consisted and still does, of predominantly brown and dark-skinned Africans. The entitlement push of the PNC is frenetically supported by an anti-Indian racist cabal that does not have formalistic association with the PNC but supports the politics of the party. I refer to this group in my academic work as the lunatic fringe (TLF).
These two advocates of entitlement do not have any formal or informal relation and the reason for this lies in the class and colour mentality of the MCC. The MCC does not trust the PNC, does not want to socialise with PNC constituencies, but the insane pursuit of the MCC to prevent the acquisition of power by non-Christian Indians have historically resulted in the MCC tolerating the PNC and its proletarian supporters. I am yet to conclude my series on the MCC, so I will reserve further analysis for that series.
The entitlement bandwagon of the PNC and TLF has travelled with supersonic speed since the loss of power by the PNC in the March 2020 general elections. It is the goldmine for the PNC and TLF because a growing economy has allowed the Dr. Ali presidency the economic capacity to reach out to Guyanese of African descent who did not support the PPP as a party and as a government the past decades.
So, to remain relevant, the entitlement doctrine seems to be the only survival route for the PNC. The entitlement agenda has several manifestations of which two stands out – Africans are being denied avenues for social and economic advancement by the PPP government and to eradicate this the only solution is shared governance.
There are three gargantuan impediments that block the pathway of the entitlement activism of the PNC and TLF. 1- President Ali, a quintessential Jaganite (he comes from a long line of Jaganites in his family lineage) wants to leave a multi-racial legacy so he is reaching out to African Guyanese and offering resources to African communities.
2- Other ethnic communities do not accept the entitlement ideology because while they concede Africans came as slaves, they posit that their contribution to modern Guyana is equal to any other ethnic community so there cannot be special entitlement for any particular ethnic section of the Guyanese society.
3- The very party that is pushing African entitlement has two humongous burdens to bear that undermine the efficacy of the entitlement activism. First, the average African but more importantly, middle class Africans know that the PNC and the MCC were in power after 2015, and African empowerment did not take place. Secondly, Africans know the PNC and TLF are using them, lying to them and they will not embrace the doctrine of special entitlement. Africans know Guyana is becoming wealthy and that in the abundance of water, some are thirsty.