Guyana’s New Slavery, Its Chains, Whips, Massahs, House Slaves

By GHK Lall- There’s a new slavery in Guyana.  Like the old slavery on the old plantations, there is a Big House with a supreme Master.  Just like the old slavery also, there are house slaves.  A repelling term for these politically times, but utterly relevant, very fitting.  The new slavery has a feature that distinguishes it from the old: no chains.  Then another, no whips.  The new slavery has what is inseparable from the old one, and what a descendant of slaves cried out before the world.  Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.  Mental slavery.

Mental slavery bows with a practiced grin on the face.  Three words cover the vast grimness of mental slavery -sanctity of contract.  For those who stand in objection against it, mentally rebel against, they put the slave catchers and slave crushers to work.  After all, Massa has to protect the investment.  It has another name that serves just as well: preserve the corpus.

Mental slavery is to bow and scrape, and hordes of Guyanese have become very good at those aspects in their prostrations.  I hear their heels clicking, their words drooling, spilling.  Sanctity of contract.  I hear something else that stirs and saturates this new Guyanese slavery.  Sanctity of contract is spiritual admission of the supremacy of another man’s commandments, which means the inferiority of those yielding and obeying.

The supremacy of the Master in the Big House is submitted to by the inferiority minded-accepted, welcomed, cherished-by those bowing and scraping and averting the gaze.  My God! Hundreds of years have come and gone, and it is back to the blistering fields of anguish and despair.  Somebody should stand up, step forward, and sing a spiritual.  They have bishops at the ready to do the honors, others vying in the manner of crabs in a barrel for the privilege.

Mental slavery commands more than the mind.  Mental slavery commands and controls the body.  The voice.  The spirit.  Thou shalt not touch nor tamper…  and thou shalt not interfere or impair…  It is the stability and non-negotiability of the supreme law of Guyana -sanctity of contract.  For those whose psychic juices are stoked, whose intellectual powers are agitated, by the palpable, I assert, I attest, that sanctity of contract represents the chains of the new slavery.  If it’s not so, then what is it?

So, Guyanese (of all walks) celebrate what it is to be emancipated.  They think they are.  But do they have the smallest understanding of the fullest meaning of emancipation?  No, I don’t think so.  Not even close.  It is not only physical emancipation.  It is spiritual, it is personal and national and the whole moral compass that an independent nation is capable of embracing.

Emancipation in the past was surely an exclusively Black (African) moment of long-delayed grandeur, of freedom.  But no more.  Not anymore in Guyana.  For who needs to be emancipated more in Guyana today than the Black man?  Think, Guyanese, think.  When those few citizens who exercise the fullness of their emancipation and liberation mentally revolt against the shackles of a chafing, imprisoning, dehumanizing piece of paper, what are they called?  How are they slurred and slandered?

Naysayer is one term of art.  Critic floods the airspace -another putdown to keep quiet and keep down.  Naysayers, critics, and others of that ilk are the new language of the house slaves rushing to do the bidding of their masters.

Yet, I am told to think of how free Guyanese are, and how much they should be thankful for the benevolence of the new masters.  Oil paintings should be commissioned for them, and then hung over every lamppost in this enslaved country.  The international airports should be a superb starting point.  There is another address that is fitting: Vlissingen Road.  Rename that road and replace the ancient Dutch slave masters.  The new ones are closer to home, a quick hop on horseback, as hitched to the chariots that ply the sky.  From the old New Amsterdam up north to the newer one in Guyana, the riders come.  And from Houston (How-stun) in the Deep South to Houston on the East Bank Demerara.

The slaves are happy here.  Of course, the modern masters are not so crude as to call them that publicly.  Partners roll from the tongue sweetly, more caressingly.  In the new slavery that dominates Guyanese, there are no masters.  There are only investors.  Noble in intent.  Magnanimous in action.  Shoulder-to-shoulder in vision.  One for all and all for one.  The milk of corporate kindness flowing and overflowing in this Guyana of honey and prosperity.  And then, there is this jarring differentiator: the men in the Big Houses and their local liveried helpers eat caviar, drink champagne, while enslaved Guyanese are left to eat the cat that ate their dinner.

Sanctity of contract.  From the devil’s workshop emerged that devil’s brew.  Take a deep draught.  The new slavery is so sweet.  So, they sell, so they tell.  They are those living in the Big Houses on the big plantations and riding roughshod over enslaved Guyanese in their big horsepower machines.  Get an understanding Guyanese of the new slavery.  Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.