Guyana is free because Burnham is dead
Freddie on Friday
Kaieteur News
August 6, 2004
When I drive past the Sheriff Street seawall on a Sunday evening, sometimes I wonder to myself if those thousands of lovers enjoying the Atlantic with their girlfriends and boyfriends would ever know the dreadful times some of us who are older than them had lived through.
We never got to romance at the Atlantic with the best beer in our hand and a delectable hamburger to go with a large box of Mr. Topco, or a Vitamalt. Guyana was a barren land then. Flour was banned, chicken was scarce, rice was of an inferior quality and only Mauby and sugar-cake you could have taken on the seawall if you wanted to enjoy the Atlantic. At that time, Guyana was Forbes Burnham's country. He ruled it as if it were his personal property.
Today, August 6 marks 19 years since he died mysteriously at the Georgetown Hospital and that death laid the groundwork for the rebirth of the freedom those young people now enjoy as they flock to the Sheriff Street seawall in their thousands. I have written exhaustively on Forbes Burnham but my moving pen will continue to move critically in his direction whenever his birth or death anniversary comes.
The day before he died, the Chronicle ran a front page photograph with him chatting with PHG officials. He had that characteristically jovial smile. Burnham always smiled whether in bad or good times. He was never preoccupied with disasters because he shaped his psychology to accept his manifest destiny, so that he would always overcome despite overwhelming odds.
But because of his belief in his natural greatness, he was not susceptible to human emotions. He couldn't therefore feel the way others felt when pain rivets one's psyche. Burnham couldn't understand the concept of emotions because he had none. He just nonchalantly watched Desmond Hoyte in his eyes, and persuaded Hoyte to address a Labour Day rally in Linden, even though Hoyte was trembling with grief because minutes before, he got the news that all his children had died in a car crash and his wife was near death.
It boggles the mind to know how Mrs. Joyce Hoyte could ever bear an inch of respect, toleration and fondness for Forbes Burnham. Mrs. Hoyte of course, knows that it was through the sole judgement of Forbes Burnham that her husband was made the President of Guyana and because of that he has now gone into the history books in a meaningful way. But she still has a valid reason to despise him for the disrespect Burnham showed to her two dead daughters.
This writer will always write of that meaningful role of Desmond Hoyte because Desmond Hoyte undid an evil act that Forbes Burnham had performed on this writer.
I had returned home from Grenada after the overthrow and murder of Maurice Bishop. Burnham never liked me. He never forgave me for "cussing him up" in a message I sent with one of the PNC's organising secretaries, Vincent Britton in 1979. I had just graduated with a superb record at UG winning a number of top prizes. Burnham sent to call me through Vincent. I sent back an abusive message. Burnham then swore that I would never work in Guyana. A Canadian scholarship saved me from starvation.
On arrival back in Guyana, Burnham ordered that all of us who went to Grenada shall not be allowed to work in Guyana. Among the group was the sister of former WPA executive, Bonita Bone-Harris and Christopher Ram. I don't know how the other returnees from Grenada related to Burnham but I ended up as the one completely banned from working in my own country. After his death, Mr. Hoyte was approached to dissolve the ban on me working at UG where I had obtained a job. Hoyte agreed and I have been at UG since then.
There has to be something unnatural about any human mind that can use that mind's capacity for reasoning yet arrive at an interpretation of Burnham being a good, positive human being. Forbes Burnham was diabolical, tyrannical and sadistic. He was saved from inclusion in the big league of dictators like those in Latin America, former communist countries in Eastern Europe and African tyrants because his toll of victims were small. But Burnham had the willingness and the capacity to murder on a large scale. The reason he didn't is because there was no opposition to him.
A politically naïve, intellectually limited and ideologically extremist opposition leader, Dr. Cheddi Jagan allowed Burnham to manoeuvre himself to take possession of Guyana. Burnham found Jagan an amusing and a silly little man ruminating about the ideals of Soviet Communism and perambulating the world preaching the virtues of a communist vision. But in Guyana, Jagan had no vision just irrelevant beliefs.
These beliefs were alien to Guyana, unworkable and inexplicable. This unbelievable short-sightedness was a permanent gift to Forbes Burnham. It allowed him to rule without threats to his power base. Burnham loved Jagan. Jagan kept him in power. Burnham prayed that once he Burnham ruled Guyana, he would do anything to see nothing happened to Jagan. Jagan was his trump card.
We give Burnham too much credit for being an astute leader. There can hardly be a doubt that he was intellectually strong, politically perceptive, had conceptual complexity, possessed of a deep intuitive ability and endowed with leadership qualities particularly in the concept of situational keenness; he had this uncanny talent to know when to make his move. But these were not the qualities that made Burnham last so long in power.
He had no opposition. When the opposition came, and the threats to this power base had concretized, he resorted to torture, murder and assassination. He devastated the Working People's Alliance. He murdered Walter Rodney in 1980 and for the five remaining years of his rule and life, he didn't kill anyone because resolute, determined and actively aggressive opposition to him ceased. At the time of his death, he trusted no Guyanese surgeon, only the Cubans. But in the end, the Cubans did to him what he did to Vincent Teekah. It was a nice piece of poetic justice. Anyone who can say Burnham was a good leader doesn't deserve to be part of modern democratic society. Guyana is free today because he is dead.