FOR decades I have heard derogatory labels attached to Afro-Guyanese who choose to support the PPP. The labels seemed ubiquitous and perpetual. However, the more recent attacks have been more targeted and savage than I have ever heard them.
I took the position that Afro-Guyanese in the PPP should keep their focus, serve in sincerity and do not respond to the labelers. However, I recently ran into Vincent Alexander and what came out of his mouth was flabbergasting. He had some strong theories that are very divisive and if allowed room to grow can gnaw away at our social fabric and masticate our fragile ethnopolitical social order. For this reason, there needs to be a strong fight back against the dangerous racially charged outpouring of Alexander.
The Freddie Kissoon Show for this evening was prerecorded and Vincent Alexander is our guest. Alexander zeros in on James Bond, who he claims to know very well and has taken the time to study his behaviour enough to make an informed comment and analysis. He concluded that Bond’s support for the PPP is as a result of him suffering from two classes of trauma: historical trauma suffered by all Guyanese Africans that was handed down from the plantation system and, with it, certain traits and proclivities that was eventually burned into our DNA; and secondly, Bond is responding to more specific and personalised trauma that pushed him into the arms of the PPP.
Alexander concluded that Bond is politically wretched because he took a negative view of certain PNC leaders while choosing to praise President Ali, who has taken an anti-African stance, and by merely doing so, has hurt the African community. He further concluded that Africanness is coterminous with PNCness. In other words, Africans have no business being outside of African-led formations. Bond by his actions has traumatised Africans like David Hinds. As such Hinds and others are justified in responding to this trauma with savage condescending racial epithets.
Alexander has descended to levels lower than the recent notorious Hinds outrage; this is a more deeply dangerous, revulsive, racist and socially divisive political pathway. Why? Because Alexander is essentially attempting to formulate this racist mumbo jumbo into a formal socio-scientific academic theory. It is also apposite to note that Terrence Campbell, AFC’s option for Presidential candidate, spoke on a recent GlobeSpan programme in similar vein as Alexander. in undeniable support for Hinds’ racial invective.
To save Guyana from this kind of destructive racial contortions of Campbell, Hinds and Alexander, it must be met with repeated robust responses, simply ignoring them into oblivion will not work. Their theory has to be stoutly confronted with alternatives especially from the very “community” of Africans who believe that Guyana can thrive in unity.
Campbell’s justification for the use of racialised attacks on Afro-Guyanese who support the PPP is the “diabolical use of resources” by the PPP and Alexander claimed that President Ali went to Mocha-Arcadia to open a new road and took sundry other actions while refusing to engage or consult with the Chairman of the NDC. These are the two examples in their specificity that warrants Africans to keep away from the PPP. There is a lot to unpack here. If these gentlemen were making these statements from an honest place, then the corollary to their postulation would mean that Africans should equally abandon the PNC if it committed similar offense against Africans as the PPP is being accused of; 2015 to 2020 is repleted with examples. Or is it one of those traits burned into the DNA of Africans to be self-defeating and to act against their own self-interest when a leader from their community does not act in their interest. Or is it more honourable to perish under African leadership than to seek unity and thrive under non-African leadership?
The funny thing though, is that apart from sporadic outbursts, occasional letters to the press and many failed attempts at administering groups with quasi reference to African interest, none of these gentlemen can point to any specific body of work, use of resources or set of policies enacted by the APNU in government or left for the PPP to follow that were responsible for indelibly changing the circumstances of “the community.” In fact, I would be happy if they can point to definitive plans of the current PNC or AFC formation, either jointly or separately, that is designed to advance African interest if they were to take power tomorrow.
The PNC was handed a gift by the UN when it came to office, in the form of a programme called “International Decade of People of African Descent.” Why was this a gift? The PNC if it cared about the interest of Africans would have used this moniker to set in motion some form of affirmative action programme and used their majority enact laws that would enshrine African development and craft budgets to ensure the circumstances of Africans are set on a path to irreversible positive changes.
Instead, the PNC leadership instigated the formation of a private company called IDPADA-G and funneled money to it, in the vicinity of G$100M per year, and there is little or nothing to show for it.
This double standard and racialised sputum coming from the likes of Alexander must be confronted. They want us to keep faith with a group of leaders who has not demonstrated a capacity to represent the interest of Africans outside of sporadic theories of division. I will stand against this double standard and entreat young Afro-Guyanese to break from the dungeon of divisiveness these old men are trying to suck us into.