Dear Editor,
When the Ali/Jagdeo regime announced September 1st as election day, my mind reflected on the intent of the timing. Why just weeks after African Emancipation observance and celebrations? Is the PPP telling Africans that after the elections, you have to deal with a new form of enslavement? Or is it the work of the ancestors that blinds them from seeing fixing elections for the day after the end of African Emancipation month, when our consciousness is high, can work in favour of our liberation agenda to kick the PPP out of office and save the African community and Guyana? We cannot be sure which of the above is at work. My brother/comrade, and fellow Co-Leader, Rohit Kanhai, would urge me to think dialectically.
What are the challenges facing the African community and Guyana? There are many, but I’ll focus on a few we rarely confront directly:
- Are we as a nation committed to using our oil and gas wealth to bring racial communities closer to economic parity, which is key to unity and national cohesion?
- Have we learned from history that major economic change often shifts demographics, and that in a small country like ours, locals can quickly become minorities, and new entrants or immigrants can become majorities?
- Can we confront Venezuela’s claim to two-thirds of our land while we remain divided?
These questions are closely tied to African Emancipation and our elections.
I began writing this letter before Jagdeo’s press conference on Thursday, July 31st. Having heard his ramblings, I decided to use this letter as a response to him. Among the issues he raised in the first part of his presentation is Ogunseye/David Hinds’ racism, and that if Walter Rodney were alive, he would have rejected/dissociated from us. Let me say a few things about Jagdeo’s self-serving logic and disrespect for Rodney. Jagdeo has no history of active participation in the struggle before Walter Rodney’s return to Guyana or during the struggles of the Civil Rebellion. He has no credentials that allow him to speak on what Walter Rodney would or would not do. He said Rodney worked with Jagan and the PPP and this is d presented it as the ” Holy Grail” of politics in Guyana. For his information WPA and I worked with Jagan and the PPP years before Walter returned to Guyana; Jagdeo is silent on this point, either due to ignorance or disinformation intended to miseducate the youths and the nation on the political history of the country.
In his usual contemptuous manner, a hallmark of his press outbursts, he said, ” Ogunseye, they rolled him out from somewhere. I don’t know where he was.” I will concede that Jagdeo was pulled out from “somewhere”. As an antidote for his ignorance, they rolled me from the pre-WPA struggles. In which I spoke on the PPP platforms representing the African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA). At that time, you had no meaningful political consciousness, more so involvement in struggle, no fault of yours. They rolled me out of the birth of the WPA, before Walter Rodney returned to Guyana. They rolled me out of the period of Rodney activism and the Civil Rebellion. They rolled me out of the struggle for restoration of democracy, which led to the PPP and you, Jagdeo, coming to power. They rolled me from the struggle against extrajudicial and state-sponsored killings under your administration. You now know where they rolled me from. As I said above, unlike your contempt, I respectfully concede that you were pulled out from somewhere.
Now let me respond to your accusation of racism and your claim about what Rodney would have done. I worked closely with Rodney, both publicly and privately. Some senior PPP members know this. I say without hesitation that I understand his political thinking far better than you, Jagdeo, ever could.
By your logic, Rodney would have supported the PPP’s actions, including corruption and abuses of power. He would not. He always assessed political realities objectively. Under the PPP’s 28 years in power, Africans and Indigenous people own less than 10% of the economy. There’s a record of state-linked killings of African youths, the assassination of opponents, rampant corruption, and enrichment of PPP insiders.
The PPP undermined collective bargaining for public servants, mostly African, while rewarding sugar workers, its support base, even as the industry collapsed. From 1992 to 2015, billions in government contracts largely bypassed African and Indigenous communities. The state demolished the homes and businesses of poor Africans and shielded those responsible for atrocities like the killing of 11-year-old Adrianna Younge.
Rodney would have judged based on these facts, not partisan loyalty and he would have been on public platforms and on the streets denouncing you and your acolytes.
Jagdeo weaponizing Rodney pays homage to Walter’s intellect and achievement as a renowned academic. In claiming that Rodney, if he were in Guyana, would have dissociated from Ogunseye, David Hinds, and the WPA, is an insult to Rodney the thinker. According to Jagdeo, Rodney would have approved the PPP high jacking of the nation’s oil money, treating it as PPP property. Since the PPP returned to power in 2020, it has spent more than 4.5 trillion G$, the majority of which is oil money. The APNU+AFC government, 2015 to 2020, 1.5 trillion G$, no oil money. By Jagdeo’s logic, Rodney would be blind to this gross disparity and its impact on the economy, politics, the working people and the country and would hail it as PPP magic and nd not the result of an unprecedented spending windfall of oil revenues.
We are led to believe that Rodney, the great historian and poor people’s activist, on hearing of the PPP government’s position at the UN conference for the Decade for Africans, that Africans in Guyana’s present condition is the result of poor choices made by our ancestors at the end of enslavement to plant provisions instead of rice. According to Jagdeo’s view of Rodney, he would have hailed the government’s position as the most enlightened understanding of our history, deserving of a Nobel Prize.
In a previous letter, I said that this position articulated by the PPP government at the UN conference was not an accident. The Vice-President and PPP leader confirms the correctness of my observation, restating their position on the African condition on the eve of African Emancipation. He reiterated that he and the government are not interested in improving the African condition, but the condition of Guyanese. Therein lies the PPP racism, denial of centuries of African enslavement and loss of generational wealth, the historical basis for our impoverished economic and social condition. It is not surprising that, having stood before the world body and distorted our history. Consistent with their racist apartheid policies, that add to the underdevelopment and destruction in the African community over 28 years of the PPP’s rule, he seeks cover under the notion of development for all Guyanese. This is something a colonial governor would have said, concerning the development of the colony and its people. Jagdeo’s position is profoundly worse than that of a colonial governor.
I end this massive by rejecting Jagdeo’s trivializing of our African Emancipation Day. I call on Africans to reflect on the 187 years since we broke the chains of European enslavement and pledge – never again. Come September 1st, we will make good this declaration. Since Jagdeo has thrown Walter Rodney into the African Emancipation commemoration and election engagement, I contend that Walter Rodney’s legacy will live on as a great revolutionary. The annals of history will record Jagdeo as a dictator and a racist who rose to power on the back of the anti-dictatorial struggle and destroyed Guyana in the name of democracy and “One Guyana.” We in the WPA stand against any race or political party whose agenda is domination. Happy African Emancipation. Get ” battle ready”. September 1st is Redemption Day.
Yours sincerely,
Tacuma Ogunseye
