Dear Editor,
The WPA’s Dr David Hinds wrote a letter in the Kaieteur News of 8-16-2024 titled “Brother Kwayana is 99 years old today” . However Dr Hinds left out significant bits of information about the Buxton sage who has undoubtedly shaped Guyana’s politics.
In order to get a more accurate and complete picture what Dr Hinds failed to write is that before the 1961 elections Mr Forbes Burnham’s PNC had promised to support whichever party won that election to take British Guiana to independence.
Mr Kwayana promptly attacked the PNC as selling out Black peoples’ rights. The PPP was widely expected to win that election and they did. However after Mr Kwayana’s attack the PNC of Mr Burnham reneged on their pledge.
Mr Kwayana’s criticisms of Dr Cheddi Jagan whom he viewed as a leader of Indians is nothing new. In his booklet “Next Witness” he attacks Dr Jagan as seeking to”establish an East Indian state in the West Indies.”
Mr Kwayana was later to advocate the partition of British Guiana into three countries. One was for African,one for mixed races and the third for Indians. There is no written record of Mr Kwayana ever repudiating that policy of racial divisiveness or apologizing for it.
In 1970,American Black Power advocate Mr Stokely Carmichael’s highly controversial visit to Guyana found symbiotic camaraderie with Mr Kwayana’s ASCRIA…a cultural organization championing exclusive African rights in the ethnically diverse Guyana.
Occurring at the height of the Trinidadian born African American militant influence, the trip was designed to clarify Black Power’s relevance to the Caribbean. But Mr Carmichael’s pronouncements roiled Guyana’s ethnically and racially complex society. While Caribbean radicals promoted an expansive definition of “Black Power” to include Indians, Mr Carmichael’s definition denied equality of the races who had a common history of exploitation by the British.
The Pan Africanist Mr Carmichael who chanted at Queens College that “there can be no remission of sins without the shedding of blood” framed Black Power as exclusively the province for Afro Guyanese. Indo Guyanese students heckled Mr Carmichael and many walked out. The result was that Mr Carmichael embarrassed his UG Ratoon hosts and the visit aggravated Guyana’s fragile racial antagonisms.
Instead of distancing themselves from Mr Carmichael,Mr Kwayana’s ASCRIA however embraced the Pan Africanist and held a traditional conky reception complete with African drumming. At the airport when he was leaving Guyana Mr Carmichael publicly declared that anyone who agreed with him should work with Mr Kwayana’s ASCRIA. Mr Kwayana’s militant Afrocentric path of separate development of the races in Guyana had received validation and fillip
By the time Dr Walter Rodney came to Guyana in 1974 the politics of Guyana began to undergo dramatic changes. The Internationally renowned historian defined Black Power to include Indo Guyanese. There was a radical. difference between the two African leaders. Both Afro Guyanese and Indo Guyanese soon began to gravitate to the charismatic historian. It would appear that Mr Kwayana and ASCRIA were not in agreement with Dr Rodney’s definition at that time.
While Mr Kwayana was an avowed Afrocentric politician,Dr Rodney analyzed politics by class true to his Marxist ideology.
.Ratoon which was formed by UG’s Dr Clive Thomas soon joined with ASCRIA and with .IPRA which was led by Mr Moses Bhagwan giving validation to ASCRIA they joined to form the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) in 1974. The Marxist Dr Rodney became the leader of the WPA but in 1980 he was assassinated by Mr Burnham’s PNC.
Mr Kwayana continued to play a significant influential role in the WPA advocating his Afrocentric viewpoint. He astutely coexisted with Dr Rodney in public even though the two had different goals for Afro Guyanese. But with the charismatic Dr Rodney attracting a significant Guyanese multiracial following, Mr Kwayana was to tone down his militant Afrocentric appeal to race.
What was a secret but which has now become established was that there was an agreement between Dr Jagan and Dr Rodney whereby the latter was to merge the WPA with the PPP.
Since it was well known that Mr Kwayana was historically anti Jagan and anti PPP any such merger would have evoked bitter push back from the Afrocentric Mr Kwayana.
The WPA leader had to be cognizant of Mr Kwayana’s opinions and consequently did not take many like him into his confidence. It is now public knowledge that he selected his brother to go with him when he was murdered as he was cognizant that the PNC government had infiltrated the WPA. However when Dr Rodney was assassinated the WPA quickly lost its multiracial appeal.
Fast forward to the 1990s. It was Mr Kwayana who was instrumental in the lead up to the 1992 elections where there was much debate as to who was to be the Presidential candidate of the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD). Mr Kwayana and Dr Thomas were adamantly opposed to Dr Jagan being the Presidential candidate. They dubbed Dr Jagan as a partisan Indian leader claiming that Afro Guyanese had no confidence in him. They wanted an African to be the Presidential candidate. They could not come to an agreement and the PCD broke up on the eve of the 1992 elections..
The results of the 1992 elections was that Dr Jagan’s PPP/C won in a landslide victory with 28 seats out of a 53 and 53.5% of the vote. He was subsequently sworn in as President of Guyana
In his tribute to Mr Kwayana on his actual birthday of 4th April Dr Hinds wrote in Demerara Waves ””Kwayana is not God. He is a human being who has made errors of judgment in the area of life which he chose to serve his country, region and the world. But I can say without hesitation that if there is a public person in Guyana who comes closest to the embodiment of political morality it is the “Buxton sage”. Happy belated birthday Mr Kwayana.
Respectfully
Sultan Mohamed