THERE is an absorbing African proverb that can be found in Baytoram Ramharack’s recently published mammoth book titled “The Wismar Massacre.” It goes like this: “Until the lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall glorify the hunter.”
There cannot be a deeper, philosophical reflection on the philosophy of history than this compellingly moving piece of wisdom. The history of the peoples of the colonies has been written by people who colonised the Global South. So, we read about the finesse and astuteness of Western politicians, but there is nothing on the deep minds of post-colonial leaders whose political minds rivalled most leaders of the Western world.
Cheddi Jagan was one of the most humane leaders in the world. Forbes Burnham was remarkably perceptive, but we don’t read about them in political texts by Western academics. In a book just published by a history professor at Cornell University, Russell Rickford, Burnham’s complex approach to realpolitik is documented, although Rickford does not devote any space to analysing Burnham’ craft.
The book, “A Proxy Africa: Guyana, African Americans and the radical 1970s,” is a rich addition to Guyana’s historiography. This is a sad book about humans yearning for happiness in a cruel world, only to escape one hell for another. It came in on Friday afternoon for me and I completed it on Friday evening, lying next to my wife. It made me sad and I wished I didn’t have to digest it.
The story of one of the American radicals who sought refuge in Guyana in the 1970s is told in the book and it made me sad. I met Larry Watani Stiner when we were students at UG. I credit myself with helping to turn him into an anti-dictatorship activist. Watani visited my home on D’urban Street several times. He ran away from political persecution in the US, but couldn’t stand the nature of the Forbes Burnham regime. Burnham resented his closeness to Walter Rodney. On learning that he was to be deported from Guyana, Watani disappeared. It was only on reading Rickford’s book, which I now learnt in 2026, that he gave himself up to the US Embassy in Suriname and ended up serving 20 years at San Quentin.
Rickford’s book is not for the fainthearted. It will break your heart to read how paradise was near yet so far away for the Black Panther Party activists and other radical Black Americans that fled American criminal persecution but ended up serving Burnham’s autocracy and when they could not take anymore, they knew that the greatest irony had visited their lives- an American jail was better than Burnham’s Guyana.
This is a good book that Guyanese should read because it is about their country’s political evolution. It is masterly researched. I think this is one of the most heavily footnoted texts I have ever read. I have the greatest respect for the scholarship of American professor Jay Mandle, who specialises in Caribbean political economy, but I do not agree with the final paragraph in his review of the book.
Mandle wrote: “Rickford makes no effort to address the radical contradiction that existed between the goals of the WPA and the émigré’s support of Burnham’s race-based rule in Guyana.” I beg to differ. There is no page or pages on this subject, but that contradiction is captured in Rickford’s elaboration on the confrontation between Eusi Kwayana and Burnham in chapter 6, which I think is the core of the book.
What I think Rickford is guilty of is not devoting a section of the book as to why Burnham encouraged so many Black Panther radicals and other Afro-American revolutionaries who fled criminal prosecution in the US in the 1970s. In fact, there is just one line on that subject in which Rickford wrote: “In truth, though, the Burnham administration’s view of refugees never changed.”
Burnham showed he was a brilliant strategist at realpolitik. Burnham encouraged the American fugitives because he saw political usefulness in them in a country torn by racial suspicions. With an entrenched PPP and an inflexible WPA on his heel, Burnham felt he could have used the American refugees to blunt the PPP and the WPA. It could only have worked if Burnham had democratic instincts.
Rickford left out the saddest case of neglect of one of the Black Panther radicals, Omowale, who was wanted in the US. After Burnham died, Hoyte had no use for the American radicals. He did not deport them but denied them any resources for their existence. Omowale, who shaped the musical programme in the Guyana National Service and who I came to know, ended up begging outside Banks DIH on Camp Street. This remains the most tragic case of the radical Americans in Guyana.
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.