THE destructive imprisonment of African Guyanese under two People’s National Congress presidents has few parallels in world politics.
I will leave David Granger, Robert Corbin and Aubrey Norton out of the equation because I think the level of betrayal of African Guyanese by Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte were so horrific that it would be an analytical vulgarity to include the other three PNC leaders (cited above) in any comparison.

This is a complex topic to discuss in a newspaper article. What follows are brief notes intended for African-Guyanese to reflect on as Guyana celebrates 58 years of Independence. Within these 58 years, Granger, Corbin and Norton are part of the huge PNC failure to empower African Guyanese but failure is a mild word compared to what Burnham and Hoyte did to African Guyanese.

I think the collective African-Guyanese psyche has not recovered from the devastation brought on by the psychological make-up of Burnham and the cruel economics of Hoyte. For this reason, I will look at the era of Burnham and Hoyte and cut out the years of PNC leadership under Corbin, Granger and Norton.

At the time of privatisation in 1989 and onwards, it compelled African Guyanese to ask themselves if Burnham ever did anything for them. The presidency of Burnham did not result in African empowerment. Burnham empowered himself through a gargantuan programme of nationalisation. State enterprises were administered by a stratum the PPP, WPA and other critics of the Burnham administration mistakenly described as a state bourgeoisie.

The bourgeois class owns assets. The stratum that controlled the countless state enterprises after nationalisation did not own anything but was simply a “state-ist” middle class, and even this term is open for debate because the state-ist middle class was not rewarded with huge income. Professor Linden Lewis, in his recent biography of Burnham, cited the case where one of the members of the state-ist middle class refused a directive from Burnham to contribute a tenth of his salary to the PNC which all state administrators were required to do (page 129).

Burnham empowered himself through his hegemony over the massive state enterprises but his managers were in receipt of status and power and not income. So, when President Hoyte put up dozens of state companies for sale, by the time the sale was over, less than five per cent of the purchasers were Africans. Privatisation led to the pauperisation of the state-ist middle class because the new owners did not want to keep them.

Burnham feared Walter Rodney terribly because Rodney found Burnham’s Achilles’ heel – Africans were not empowered. That explains the mesmerising penetration of African Guyanese by Rodney. One wonders what Burnham must have said in his grave as Hoyte sold off every state company that Burnham birthed and Africans were left in a state of unemployment.

If Africans did not fare under Burnham then Hoyte drove the last nail in the coffin. One of the best books written about Guyana is the moving, piercing account of the economics of President Hoyte. Titled, ‘Structural Adjustment and Good Governance: The Case of Guyana’ by Tyron Ferguson, the book was given to me by Kaieteur News (KN) journalist, Kiana Wilburg at around 14:00 hrs in KN offices. I went home and read right away.

That book has left a lasting impression of me. Ferguson tore into Hoyte’s cruel policies of structural adjustment (SA) that almost killed off African Guyanese existence in this land. This is how I put it here but the way Ferguson described it through an array of impressive statistics, he meant it the way I have written it here – that is, SA was jeopardising the existence of African Guyanese.

Ferguson describes the West’s imposition of SA as the purest form at the time. He noted that two other similar SA programmes were imposed on Jamaica and Venezuela respectively and it led to massive uprising and widespread violence. Ferguson noted that in Guyana, this pure form of SA was simply implemented without resistance.

I will always remember what the Burnhamite power-house, Elvin Mc David, told me after he was dethroned by President Hoyte. Mc David took a liking to me and invited me often to his Queenstown house.
His house was typical working class and one day he said to me that all he has to earn a living was his hotel in New Garden Street.

I vividly recall his words; “Freddie that is all I have.” Burnham empowered Mc David with raw power but not money power. Hoyte pauperised McDavid through structural adjustment. He died a broken man in Jamaica.
What happened to African entitlement under Burnham and Hoyte? After 58 years of Independence, maybe African Guyanese should try Irfaan Ali.