My column – The world must be coming to an end

Jun 08, 2008 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

by Adam Harris

The whole world seems to be in turmoil and I have been caught up in it. So many things that I would not have expected to experience in my lifetime have happened and I am now left to wonder if there is going to be any more surprises. For one, when I was a very young boy anyone over forty was considered old and I still remember the day I sat and calculated how old I would be at the turn of the century.

That was so long ago and I was well past forty when the millennium dawned. In fact, I welcomed it by partying at Thirst Park and wondering about all the things about computers crashing because they were not programmed to function beyond the year 2000. That proved to be utter nonsense but the people who sold computers made a killing because they suddenly realised that all they had to do was to say that their product was millennium ready.

The next thing that I found surprising was the independence of Zimbabwe which was then Rhodesia, and South Africa. Those were countries that often brought tears to my eyes because of the treatment of people of my ilk. Many died because they happened to be of a different colour from the rulers.

The Prime Minister Ian Smith, despite pleas from the Queen, because Rhodesia was a British country, went ahead and hanged some people for protesting against his rule. I never dreamed that I would live to see Black rule in Rhodesia. Live I did.

I remember when Mr. Rashleigh Jackson accompanied a Guyana delegation led by the then President Forbes Burnham to Zimbabwe soon after Ian Smith abdicated. They returned to say that when they spoke to the Zimbabweans about the beautiful country they had, to a man they all said wait until you see across the pond, a direct reference to South Africa.

I also asked Mr. Jackson whether we would ever see an independent South Africa and he said, “Not in my lifetime.” Like me, he was surprised and pleasantly so. There was this Sunday morning when every eye was focused on South Africa. Nelson Mandela was to be freed.

Television had come to Guyana so we could all see the event. There were tears in my eyes. I was witnessing the unbelievable. Mandela went on to become President of the country that jailed him and I lived to see that day.

I lived to see a Black man playing cricket for both South Africa and Australia.

Then there was Iraq and Saddam Hussein. He seemed so all powerful that Third World Governments saw him as holding the balance of power in the Middle East.

I lived to see him hanged like a common criminal, a far cry from the immaculately uniformed man who sat at the head table to inspect parades.

But perhaps the greatest thing to happen was to see a Black man contesting the presidency of the United States. In this country where all of us are considered Black people we make subtle and sometimes not so subtle distinctions about our race. We are ultra sensitive and I am certain that there are people who must be saying that I am a racist for talking about Black people because I am of African ancestry. That is beside the point.

I distinctly remember Jesse Jackson crying at a Democratic Party convention because he simply could not get on the ticket. He invoked the race card and proclaimed, “I am qualified.” Those words still ring in my ears.

Long after that event there were times when some of us would sit and talk about a Black person becoming president of the United States. That was so far fetched that sometimes it was not even worth the talk.

We said that the United States was a White establishment and organized in a way that would preclude anything from rocking the status quo.

Then out of the blue, Guyanese who follow American politics saw a young man named Barack Obama become a senator. He had previously been an unknown. Women I knew swooned at his good looks, among them my colleague Julia Johnson. None of us, then, could even imagine that this brash but intelligent young man would soon be a candidate for the highest office in the world.

When he announced his candidacy I saw images of Jesse Jackson and said that the United States was not ready for that type of transition. I firmly believed that Hilary Clinton was going to be a shoe in and she was the front runner when the campaign started. It is now history that Mrs. Clinton squandered a thirty-point lead and allowed Mr. Obama to become the first Black man to head a Democratic ticket to the White House.

And from indications, he seems destined to become the first non-White president of the United States. These are all remarkable things and they have all happened in the last thirty years.

Of course, in one year I have seen gasoline prices reach impossible levels; I have seen policemen pushed back by criminals; I have seen drastic decline in education to the point where newspapers and radio could become obsolete. There are so many illiterates that I am left to wonder whether the situation could get worse.

I saw food lines in Guyana when there should have been none and I saw very small children living on the streets at an age when I would have been afraid of the dark. In fact, at seven, I could not even dream of being outside my house unless my mother was taking me somewhere and there were not too many places to which we went after dark.

The world must be coming to an end and there is global warming to compound the situation.

So, will I see a Black President of the United States come November, the month of my birth? Perhaps.

---

---