IN our last installment (part 2), we made the point that Red Thread began to show its true colours after the death of one of its founding members, Andaiye. One of the tragic stories of race and class in Guyana is the relation between dark-skinned African middle-class folks and the Mulatto/Creole class (MCC). This article which is about Red Thread, the sub-theme of dark skin in a world of light skin in Guyana, is relevant because it brings out the Freudian agenda after 2019 in Red Thread after Andaiye died.

Some notes on the dark-skin predicament are useful in understanding both the nature of Andaiye and her role in Guyanese class and race structure and how that role played out in Red Thread. Two middle class Africans with the darkest skin colour that I have ever seen in Guyana were Hugh Chomondeley (deceased) and Sandra Williams who later changed her name to Andaiye.

They both became integral members of the MCC but lived their lives as people with deep psychological burdens. Chomondeley’s parents were very stylist middle class folks. Chomondeley’s father was a special adviser to Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham. My elder brother, Harold “Lightweight” Kissoon worked as the gardener for the Chomondeleys.

Chomondeley entered broadcasting which at the time was dominated by members of the MCC. He stood out as the only dark-skinned member in the media industry and secured his media status through the patronage of the Prime Minister whose adviser was Mr. Chomondeley’s father. It is eerie how the path of Chomondeley and Andaiye were uncannily identical.

Dark-skinned middle-class Africans had a hard time integrating into the MCC simply because of their colour. They had to face the inherent perception of the MCC tribe that once you were of black skin then you were a descendant of the field slaves. The MCC in Guyana and Jamaica are some of the world’s most obsessed people with skin colour.

So how did Chomondeley find acceptance? By befriending MCC personalities and marrying MCC personalities. His best friends were the crème de la crème of the MCC – Stabroek News founder, David DeCaires and Miles Fitzpatrick. I cannot describe the Freudian mind of Chomondeley because I did not know him at all. But I knew Andaiye, up, close and personal.

Like Chomondeley, she buried her conscious understanding of the disadvantage dark skin carried by embracing the MCC. Andaiye married a White man and a Caucasian woman became her best friend. Even though she was a leader in the Working People’s Alliance, her closest companion was that Caucasian woman- the wife (deceased) of Guyana’s Foreign Minister in the Burnham Government, Rashleigh Jackson.

The web page of Red Thread has the images of the founders of the group – two Portuguese sisters from the WPA and three MCC women, from the WPA too. Andaiye was the only person in the group that was not of light complexion. My deepest felt belief was Andaiye’s multi-racial and grassroot politics was derived from her ever-present awareness that despite the reverence she received from the MCC, she knew she could never get away from her skin colour.

It showed up in the 1970s when she was very popular in both the WPA and the Guyanese society. By that time many academics from UG and UWI frequented the company of WPA leaders and there was both an openness and freeness in intimate behavior but none of the “sweet boy” revolutionaries ever tried to date Andaiye. They preferred MCC women.

She buried her awareness of the disadvantage into her Freudian mind and that led her to engage with Indian activists that other MCC women would have no time for. Of all the WPA leaders, she had a greater reach with dark-skinned Africans and non-Christian Indians. I recall my friend from London, Leyland DeCambra, who helped to birth the London WPA group told me he lost all respect for WPA leaders given what they became after 2015 but not Andaiye.

She singlehandedly steered Red Thread into the direction of working-class service. By the time she died, she had no use for the type of politics WPA was practising. I will end with a strange thing about Andaiye. I think because of her contacts with individual WPA leaders, she knew a plan was afoot to rig the 2020 election.

She told David Hinds months before she died that he has her blessing to campaign for the APNU+AFC in the 2020 election but she warned him not to support rigged elections. I don’t know if David Hinds would acknowledge that conversation. If she was alive between March and July in 2020, she would have denounced the rigging in Red Thread’s name. Part 4 is forthcoming.