Is Guyana an Apartheid State?
One of the claims which is being made by the opposition in Guyana is that under the leadership of the People’s Progressive Party, Guyana is on its way to becoming an apartheid state. Freddie Kissoon wrote a piece which challenged this notion of Guyana being an apartheid state, but it was rejected by Kaieteur News and Kissoon was subsequently fired from the newspaper following this rejection.
I will begin by stating here that Guyana is not an apartheid state. To state this would be to downplay what apartheid was in South Africa. It was not just a racist system, but a brutal system. The type of naked aggression and brutality which was witnessed in South Africa is not happening in Guyana. Opposition leaders are not being imprisoned, tortured, and beaten to death. This is not to suggest that Guyana is a nation which has been free of authoritarian practices and abuses, but the reality is that both of Guyana’s major political parties — the PPP and PNC — have been guilty of these abuses.
Both parties have also been guilty of stirring racial division in Guyana. After all, when the PPP was in opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo accusing the government of engaging in ethnic cleansing. Much like apartheid, ethnic cleansing carries a particular type of connotation which is too extreme to describe Guyana’s situation. Rhetoric such as this is also dangerous considering that Guyana has a history of racialized violence between Africans and Indians.
One of the criticisms that I have had of President Irfaan Ali is that he has downplayed the dark history of political and racial violence in Guyana by suggesting that the extrajudicial cleanings which occurred during the last time that the PPP was in power did not happen. This is an insult to the victims and their families. I have not forgotten that when Courtney Crum-Ewing was murdered, both Jagdeo and President Donald Ramotar wrongfully suggested that Crum-Ewing was a criminal. The implication is that he deserved to be murdered. To this day, his killer has not been brought to justice.
Guyana is a nation which does have a history of racial conflict between the African and Indian population. It is also a nation where the political leaders stir up these racial insecurities, particularly during election time. The claims of apartheid are a deliberate attempt to not only invoke this feeling of racial oppression, but to also create the impression that the opposition in Guyana is leading some sort of liberation struggle against the PPP. The reality is that the PNC has proven itself to be just as opportunistic as the PPP has been. The racial conflict in Guyana makes it difficult to move beyond this conflict between the two parties, however.
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