I say to Mobutu, “thanks for the moments we shared together”

Jan 25, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I didn’t know Mobutu Kamara had died, until last week when I got an email from Dr. Nigel Westmaas. On Friday last, his wife, daughter and grandchild turned up at Kaieteur News to see me. Based on our discussion, I recommended that they see Tacuma Ogunseye of the WPA so that he could make arrangements with the WPA (which I strongly believe is a caricature and a deception) to arrange for the things they requested of me.
I was courting my wife in 1978, and one of the first persons from the WPA she met was Mobutu. We were enchanted youths together in the WPA; he and I became very close. I would say of all the WPA youths at the time, he and I were closer. My parents got to know him because he visited my D’Urban Street home often. When I got married in 1979, he came often to my house and became the first, yes the first, person from the WPA my wife got to know personally.
Mobutu and I renewed our friendship when I came home in 1984, but as the years went their way, we went our ways too. But the friendship was always there. He visited me infrequently in Turkeyen. He had a little farm up the East Bank and I patronized him. Our last sojourn was four years ago when I took him to the Georgetown Hospital for a growth in his intestine. The hospital put a date six months after.
I intervened and asked the then CEO, Mike Khan to bring it up, since Mobutu was suffering. As the name Mike Khan is mentioned here, let me tell the hypocritical leadership of APNU and the AFC that they may be willing to embrace certain persons who were associated with the PPP regime and ostracize Mike Khan, but this columnist can verify the countless times Mike Khan, as CEO, rescued people at my request who needed urgent attention.
The list includes two of my Kaieteur News colleagues – Dale Andrews and Leonard Gildarie, the daughter of AFC Parliamentarian, Michael Carrington and my mother-in-law. Several of my requests consisted of poor people who came from far away.
Let me say to APNU and the AFC, if I had to choose between Mike Khan and those PPP elements referred to above, to be employed to serve Guyana, my choice would be Khan, and I say that unapologetically.
Let’s get back to Mobutu.
Always when Mobutu visited me, the conversation was how the present WPA leadership shamelessly abandoned the working class members of the WPA. In fact, this leadership’s behaviour was and is depraved. The current WPA leadership, minus Desmond Trotman and Ogunseye, as a matter of policy, has completely severed their relationship with these cadres. I never saw any of them at the funerals of these fine activists.
“Toddy” was a sugar worker who was in the WPA from the beginning. Toddy died four years ago, and only Desmond Trotman, Ogunseye and I were there. To see the house Toddy lived in was a colossal indictment of the big wigs in the WPA. Toddy deserved better for his years of sacrifice. When Adeshina died, I gave the funeral eulogy in the burial ground. Only Ogunseye was there. Mobutu, Toddy and Adeshina deserved better from the elite leadership of the WPA.
I write so much, so people would seldom read all my pieces, but twice in these columns I stated that the most elitist, snobbish, middle class political party ever seen in this country was the WPA – even more than the League of Coloured People and the United Force of Peter D’Aguiar.
It is unacceptable that someone like Bonita Bone-Harris could have struggled together with people like Mobutu, Toddy and Adeshina, and never wrote a word about them, but she could wax lyrical on the qualities of Hindu priest Aksharananda.
It is my right to express my opinion outside of libel and bad taste, and it is my opinion that Aksharananda does not possess the positive traits Bone-Harris accepts he has. But then again; she too has the right to her opinion.
I will always remember my life in struggle with fine Guyanese like Mobutu Kamara. Those memories will never go away. I think of those memories with Mobutu and I know at heart that I will always be and will die as a working class boy. It pains me deeply that Mobutu suffered so much and lived so much in want. I hope one day the next generation will recognize the courage and patriotism of people like Toddy, Adeshina and Mobutu.
Farewell my dear friend! Goodbye forever!

2 thoughts on “I say to Mobutu, “thanks for the moments we shared together””

Henry Horton January 25, 2017 at 5:13 pm

very good and informative for those who were not around at the time. Keep up this valuable work.
19CAGriffith48 January 26, 2017 at 12:29 am

“I stated that the most elitist, snobbish, middle class political party ever seen in this country was the WPA – even more than the League of Coloured People and the United Force of Peter D’Aguiar. ”

For those who do not know the leadership team of the LCP (Dr. Denbow) and the UF (D’Aguiar), I’m happy and blessed not knowing the leadership team of the WPA who may have been members of the old Georgetown Golf Club on Kelly Dam, now known as the National Park.