From Rebellions to Republicanism

by in Allan, Being Frank

Allan Fenty

This is but a brief, Brief on Guyana’s forty-third Republican Anniversary celebrations now concluding in the country as you read this.

Frequently described as “MASHRAMANI”, the Republic’s Anniversary is celebrated mainly by a month-long festival of cultural displays and competition now complemented by debates, lectures, exhibitions, historical dramas and other more cerebral events.

 First, CARIBBEAN TRAKKER’S readers must be made aware about why February 23rd was chosen to be the Republic’s Day forty-three years ago.  Between February 23 and 27, two hundred and  fifty years ago (1763) the African slaves, severely  abused by the Dutch plantocracy in the then Dutch colony of Berbice, the now easternmost part of the Republic of Guyana, unleashed a nearly year-long uprising against both planters and military .  The oppressed thus staged what was the colonized Western hemisphere most significant revolt, bordering on revolution, twenty-eight years before Haiti’s own successful rebellion and  take-over against the French!

 

So since the first blow  of 1763 was struck on  February 23, at Magdalenenburg on the Canje, Forbes Burnham chose that to  launch his Guyana Republic in 1970.  Two bits of important trivia to note; (1.) Forbes did  NOT  choose it because of his February 20 birthdate and (2.) Cheddi Jagan had No objection to the date.  (After all, one PPP ideological College was named  after ACCABREH one of the 1763 Rebel Slaves).

 

Briefly, I must also let TRAKKER readers know the significance of the East Coast Slave Rebellion of 1823.  That revolt featured an African Slave Deacon of a church who befriended the Reverend John Smith, a European  pastor from the London Missionary Society.  After the failed rebellion and the wanton slaughter of the East Coast rebels and their followers, the British both in Parliament and amongst the now moralistic public, began to seriously consider the abolition of slavery by Britain’s commercial/industrial interests.  Their conscience and the death of the condemned British Priest John Smith eventually contributed to the abolition of slavery in 1834.  Such was the importance of 1823 in Demerara!

 

What could we write, say, of Guyana’s Republicanism?  Yes, there was consensus to end constitutional and psychological  links to Britain Our local President replaced the British Monarch as Head of our Independent State.  Other Republican symbols abound.  But what is the substance today?

Let’s leave that for another time and essay.