African Extremism in an Age of Political Decay: The Case of Guyana

• Author: Frederick Kissoon
• Pages: 194-213

African Extremism in an Age of Political Decay

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African Extremism in an Age of Political Decay:

The Case of Guyana

Guyana is caught in the throes of an

expanding ethnic conflict in which the only

parallel of which one can think in

contemporary Guyanese history was the pre-

independence period in the 1960s when

internecine, racial strife led to the loss of

hundreds of lives, the victims coming from

both major races — African and Indo-

Guyanese. The lowest point in that conflict was

the violent expulsion of Indians from the

mining town of Linden in which committed on

Indian.1

One of the causal factors in that tragic

altercation was the covert and overt

involvement of the US

government against the

communistically sympathetic government of

the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) led by

Cheddi Jagan.2 It can be argued then that the

ethnic bitterness was partially engendered

from outside and if this exogenous factor was

not there, then maybe the mayhem would

have been less intense and brutal.

British military intervention and changes in

the electoral system saw a coalition

government in 1964. The government

consisted of an anti-Jagan grouping of a

Portuguese-based organization, the United

Force and the major political party of African

Guyanese, the People’s National Congress

(PNC), that eventually gave way to the

domination of the state by the PNC from 1968

until the tenth month in 1992.

12 F R E D E R I C K K I S S O O N

University of Guyana

From 1964 onwards, ethnic conflagration

was almost absent from Guyana’s political

configuration, the reasons for which do not

concern us here. But the long rule of the PNC

had done nothing to erase the deep and

acerbic psychological mistrust on the part of

Indians for the leadership and membership

of the PNC and by extension African-

Guyanese in general from which the PNC

drew its support.

The worst outburst of racial animosity since

the fateful 1960s occurred after the general

election of 1997. All the victims were Indians.3

There were sporadic attacks on the

commercial centre of Georgetown before the

polls closed in the 1992 election but they were

quickly extinguished through the exertion of

pressure by US ex-President Jimmy Carter on

the then government of Desmond Hoyte to

restore order. The post -1997 ethnic attacks

on Indians were dwarfed in its implications

when compared to the attacks Indian citizens

suffered after the results of the 2001 elections

were made known. Individual Indians were

robbed and beaten and Indian stores were

looted and burned.

The period from 1997 through the 2001

election and up to this moment in time has

witnessed a crescendo of African extremism

that today threatens the social fabric of

Guyana. It may be more correct to say that

the social fabric has already been severely

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lacerated and hangs in the balance at the

present time. By extremism, we refer to a

certain emotional approach to political

discourse in which violent propaganda, race

hate advocacy, extra-parliamentary

machinations and psychotic violence form the

agenda of African-based organizations that

openly seek to remove the PPP government

that they consider discriminatory, racist,

corrupt, incestuous and beyond the politics of

compromise.

This paper looks at the main organizational

structures of this African extremism. These

include the post-1997 ideology of the PNC;

the changing personality make-up of Hoyte

after he lost the 1997 poll; the violent, racist

advocacy of the PNC aligned television station,

HBTV, Channel 9; the African response to the

Buxton conspiracy and Keane Gibson’s book,

The Cycle of Racial Oppression in Guyana;

and the new, racially infused, political culture

of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).

We will attempt to show how the extremism

came about, how it continues to evolve and

the factors responsible for its consolidation and

its relentless restlessness. In arguing for the

existence of an African extremism in Guyana

today, the study will also examine the claim

that the emergence of this African extremist

activity is a response to an entrenched Indian

authoritarianism in the state structure in which

anti-African antipathies, power domination,

party paramountcy, political incestuousness,

and ubiquitous corruption are impossible to

root out given the particular electoral

demography.

In other words, we are dealing here with a

chicken and egg dilemma. Did the decayed

state of the political culture of the ruling PPP

bring into being an African extremist response

or is the inexorable drive of the extremist

forces forcing the PPP to adopt protective

measures which conflict with good

governance? A caveat is in order here. This

paper identifies three types of African

extremism. They are not necessarily listed in

order of importance in the lines below.

Separate analysis has to be assigned each one

of these phenomena because their continued

existence is

derived from different sources in

each of the three cases.

One is coming from the African middle class

both inside and outside of Guyana, and

strongly associated with ACDA and certain

Black business groups. In this category, I will

situate Hoyte as distinct from the PNC. As the

paper unfolds, I will explain what seems to be

an anomaly but in fact carries a very logical

explanation; the second type of African

extremism is embodied in the new personality

of the PNC. The third is expressed in the

traumatized, angry politics of the WPA.

The Hoyte Administration

The insertion of the Hoyte regime into the

PNC’s evolutionary rule holds tremendous

importance in understanding the intractable

opposition of the current leadership of the PNC

to the ruling PPP. The Hoyte administration set

upon a course of reversal of the policies that

the PNC had adopted during the Forbes

Burnham administration both in social affairs

and foreign affairs. But what was even more

phenomenal was its break with the political

culture which informed policy-making. We

can only speculate on the causal factors for

this radical and revolutionary transformation.

One popular opinion is that Hoyte was

catapulted into his twin policy of glasnost and

perestroika because of western intolerance for

a continuation of party domination, rigged

election and economic statism.

A challenge to this viewpoint is that Hoyte

had become a psychological and political

reformer. With his elevation to the presidency

and no longer living with the helplessly

overwhelming hold his mentor, Forbes

Burnham had over him, Hoyte felt free to

pursue his goals of restoring Guyana’s rightful