By GHK Lall- Mac Maharaj. Knew the name. South Africa, Mandela. Apartheid, the struggle. Then, 592Guardian shared a piece on Saturday, and I realize that I didn’t know the man at all. There’s a biography of him in the house, somewhere among the thousands of other books. Must find and read. If only to gather what made him tick, what made him stick through the barrage of brutality he absorbed.
Thanks to 592Guardian, I got a sketch of Mr. Maharaj. The fighter for freedom. Against the depraved and bestial. Long odds for people with a short stick, a few bricks, to stand in defiance against a well-equipped killer army coming after them. With blood in its eye. Hate in its heart. And inhumanity in its corpse of a soul.
But Mac Maharaj was one of those men and women with an indomitable will, and a spirit that just couldn’t be defeated. By racists of the worst sort. By demagogues who would kill a man, and burn a village, then kneel in church, worship their gods, and go home to their families. They hung him from the seventh floor of a high-rise building.
From a window he dangled, held by one ankle. He didn’t cave. For almost sixty days, he was tortured, then beaten unconscious, left with a paralyzed arm. And still, this man of steel, Mac Maharaj, would not yield. Not a whisper, not a syllable, would he give to his animalistic inquisitors. Nothing. Nothing.
After a dozen years in one of those South African dungeons and fortresses that was specially reserved for the hardheaded and hard of hearing, he was released from Robben Island. To Swaziland, he escaped. From there he carried on the fight that lasted just under two long, grim, unending decades more.
Mac Maharaj was a man among a band of glorious men and martyrs, a pack of patriots that never knew the word surrender. Mandela and Tutu towered above them all. South Africa is different because of them, and their sacrifices. The world is a better place, for their unceasing fighting spirit. They made a pact with the despairing, denied, and degraded Black and colored people of South Africa.
And they never walked back, never even looked back for a fleeting second. The thought of crossing the floor and shaking hands with the devils (Malcolm X), never surfaced. Despite the prods and electric shocks, the stone killers and the wormy white politicians. They persevered through all the punishments that were thrown against them.
I cross oceans. Redirect gaze from South Africa to Guyana. What Guyana has makes me want to spit first, then puke. Men and women made of mincemeat. Froth. And a financial calculator for a brain. They throw in the towel, as soon as pressures brace. They climb backsteps. Roll across floors. Lick boots. Excellence in leadership. When hunger multiplies. While poverty stretches, intensifies.
Their own people betrayed and sabotaged. It’s for the country. I say it’s for the money. I say it’s for the rewards of sucking up and brownnosing. And still thinking that there is no smearing. Across face. Across now rancid existence. The simple people committed to, the simple people that trusted, now sold out for a clap on the back and a book of dirty deeds to do to prove oneself.
Where are their guts that don’t deflate, the stones in them that don’t shatter? Cheddi Jagan and Walter Rodney could have plastered a foolish grin on their faces and toadied up to the powers of their time. The thought never crossed, and neither did they. What kind of men do Guyana have today? But those that plot the quickest and easiest way out. Why wait and miss the boat, find the gate closed?
Seize the moment and spring out like a jack-in-the-box to the life of a puppet, or some disparaged flunkey. A mannequin on display in a lingerie showcase. The fight has gone out of those who signed up, who stood before the people, and swore to them: your pain is my pain, your struggle is mine. Until they collapsed in cowardly submission. Until the carrots dangled proved too much to resist.
Guyanese want life at the top. Ease, no squeeze. Crawling through mud and heat and sleaze is for people of stronger dispositions. More principled and patriotic makeup. Like a Mac Maharaj, and a Mandela. Guyana’s honest and honorable fell first. The strong and the brave succumbed long before, and in more numbers now.
