WE are in the period of the birth anniversary of Forbes Burnham and the birth anniversary of the PNC, the party he founded. Mashramani and Republic Day are inseparable from the legacy of Burnham, but those two events are intricately connected to the role in Guyanese history of African politicians who became both head of government and head of state.
The other two are Desmond Hoyte and David Granger. We are in a period in current history where several high-profile African actors sing two songs – African entitlement and discrimination against African Guyanese since 1992 when the PPP came into power and reigned until 2011 and are now back in power.

I believe both concepts cannot stand up to rigorous analytical examination. I will not discuss state discrimination against African Guyanese because I believe Guyana has a unique president not seen before in the British West Indies and I cannot see him pursuing a policy that minimises or ignores African insertion into the future of Guyana. If given another five years, I think Dr Ali will transform the race narrative to the point where it loses any resemblance to its natural face since the Jagan/Burnham formation broke up in the early 1950s.
Have the past three presidents secured entitlement for African Guyanese? I would say no, but qualify my negative answer. I think Burnham sought to diminish the huge Indian role in the economy of Guyana as a waterproof guarantee of perpetual state power. This is not an easy subject to ruminate on.
When you do so, you meet head-on with the argument of Indian academics that Burnham generated African control of the political economy, so he delivered African entitlement. The role of Burnham in pursuing African entitlement is not as simple as it appears. You succumb to the concept of African entitlement under Burnham if you examine raw and unbridled African authority under Burnham from 1968.

But there was an invisible deception to that hegemony and indeed Guyana was a state controlled by African elites and African middle classes. But the study of African entitlement under the Leviathan control of Burnham cannot be examined through the African totalitarian control of the state. Holistic class analysis has to be applied to Burnham’s rule. When that is done, Burnham did not secure African entitlement and Hotye and Granger were in fact non-achievers in bringing about African entitlement.
Hoyte and Carl Greenidge (Hoyte’s finance minister) in fact devastated African entitlement and there is no reason why African people should pay any homage to Hoyte and Greenidge. I wonder how Greenidge looks back at his role as Hoyte’s finance minister when he sits down and reads his own excellent book, “Empowering a Peasantry: The case of Land Settlement Schemes in Guyana, 1865-1985.”
Greenidge should write another book and take it past 1985, the period where he completed his work in dissolving African entitlement. For a pungent elaboration of what Hoyte and Greenidge did to the African population, see “Structural Adjustment and Good Governance: The Case of Guyana by Tyrone Ferguson.”

When it comes to President Granger, his tenure was situated inside the fortress of neo-liberalism.
Any left-wing Third World university student studying the world economy would know that neo-liberalism cannot entitle the working class. It entitles the bourgeoisie. Strangely and most disgustingly, the man who spent 40 years at UG as a professor in economics writing against neo-liberalism, Dr Clive Thomas, became the leading economist in David Granger’s neo-liberal government.

Back to African entitlement under Burnham. Using class analysis, Burnham entitled the African middle class not the African proletarian and the small African rural peasantry. In fact, the embourgeoisification of the African elites under Burnham was a myth. They had state power but not capitalist assets. This explains their impoverishment when Hoyte pursued extensive and frenetic de-nationalisation.

The African elites, nurtured by Burnham from 1970 onwards suddenly found themselves not only without state power, but without employment itself. It would be vulgar theorising to say that Burnham’s total economic planning did not benefit the African working class and the Indian rural peasantry. The NIS, Demerara Harbour Bridge, Canje Bridge, the multilateral schools, and free education cannot be dismissed in their entirety.

But it is academic misdirection to postulate that Forbes Burnham’s rule from 1970 to his death put African entitlement on the front burner. The graphic evidence of the non-existent life of African entitlement was in the form of Walter Rodney.
African working class swarmed him like bees on a honey tree. They knew the charismatic, eloquent Burnham had failed them. It would be wise for African people to begin a discourse with President Ali. With him there are endless possibilities.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.