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Jun 01, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I sat next to Tacuma Ogunseye and chatted about the lawyers’ angles in their cross-examinations. Then I went to a row in front and sat next to Eusi Kwayana. The first thing he said to me was; “How is your daughter?” I had taken her to see Eusi at Rodney House, the WPA’s head office, when she was less than a year old.
He took her tiny hand and said to her; “Welcome to the world, little girl.” I took that phrase from him and have repeated it to babies that have been introduced to me countless times. As recent as last month I uttered those words to a baby.
I always remember that about Eusi whenever I talk to my kid about my political heroes. Strangely, she can only recall Father Andrew Morrison doing magic for her with his handkerchief. We didn’t get to talk in depth because the voice came over the microphone announcing his name. It was time for Eusi to take the stand. He got up from his seat as any man in his fifties would, without betraying any characteristic of a man entering his 90th year. He clutched his crutch and Tacuma asked him if he would like to be assisted. He declined.
Then came the journey into Guyanese history. Kwayana began his description of the terror of dictatorship in the seventies that claimed the life of one of Guyana’s greatest citizens, Dr. Walter Rodney. The event of course is the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry being held below the library of the Supreme Court in the court’s compound.
The young generation of Guyana is not among the audience, just a sprinkling of them. They should have been there but no doubt the media will record it for them. I had warned the admirers of President Forbes Burnham that the contents of that Commission they should be prepared for. It will remind the older generation, will inform the younger generation, and show the world at large that Forbes Burnham was no low level, harmless oligarch. He was possessed of tyrannical power and he used that power without rational reflections.
It is simply mentally agonizing that admirers of Burnham could dismiss a decade of untamed power as if it doesn’t exist. It is as if one writes a history book and left out the period of the most defining moments in the history of that nation. Surely, no one can find that acceptable. Surely, of course, Burnham had his triumphs that made him a huge contributor to national development. It would be silly; bordering on academic prostitution to deny some of the great things about Forbes Burnham.
Equally it would be morally sick to gloss over what he did to those who opposed him in the seventies. I will omit details of my own disgust with Burnham over his mistreatment of me. Day after day in that air-conditioned room in the High Court compound this country is being reminded of the death and destruction that dictatorial government brings to a nation. It was there with Burnham. The mayhem is still with this nation even though Burnham died almost three decades ago. It only goes to show how tragic has been the history of Guyana, a tragedy that refuses to go away.
Eusi Kwayana is a very unique man. A radical crusader for change all his life, his tone of voice does not give off even a modicum of hint that he has been a no-nonsense man his entire life. He speaks softly with episodic descent into biting sarcasm and beautifully enjoyable humour. With an inimitable style, he describes the violent mechanisms and cruel methodologies of President Forbes Burnham.
As a victim on that Macbethian stage in the seventies, you stare at Kwayana as he recalls the moments and the madness of the seventies, but your mind is elsewhere. Your mind takes you back to the street lamp whose darkness provides you a canopy as you run from the terror that pursued you, hoping to survive another day. Your soul takes a journey back in time as Kwayana’s words to the attentive room reads like a Shakespearian character philosophizing on the evil that humans generate in their quest to dominate others.
Kwayana in the witness box reminds me of so many movies I have seen on the brutalities and bestialities of communist Eastern Europe and at the end of the closing scene, a voice would say, “We must never let this happen again.” I always remember those words.
I close, invoking memories of me and Dennis Canterbury (now a doctor in sociology teaching in the US) running for our lives and seeking shelter in a dark, empty room in the First Federation Building on Croal Street. The time was the seventies. The seventies are long gone, but I am still running to save my life. It should never happen again. But it is. Will it ever end?
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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