African Extremism in an Age of Political Decay: The case of Guyana Frederick Kissoon Guyana is caught in the throes of an expanding ethnic conflict in which the only parallel of which one can think in contemporary Guyanese history was the pre-independence period in the 1960s when internecine, racial strife led to the loss of hundreds of lives, the victims coming from both major races- African and Indo- Guyanese. The lowest point in that conflict was the violent expulsion of Indians from the mining town of Linden.1 One of the causal factors in that tragic altercation was the covert and overt involvement of the US government against the commuistically sympathetic government of the People's Progressive Party (PPP)led by Cheddi Jagan.2 It can be argued then that the ethnic bitterness was partially engendered from outside and if this exogenous factor was not there, then maybe the mayhem would have been less intense and brutal. British military intervention and changes in the electoral system saw a coalition government in 1964. The government consisted of an anti-Jagan grouping of a Portuguese- based organization, the United Force and the major political party of African Guyanese, the People's National Congress (PNC), that eventually gave way to the domination of the state by the PNC from 1968 until the tenth month in 1992. From 1964 onwards, ethnic conflagration was almost absent from Guyana's political configuration, the reasons for which do not concern us here. But the long rule of the PNC had nothing to erase the deep and acerbic psychological mistrust on the part of Indians for the leadership and membership of the PNC and by extension African- Guyanese in general from which the PNC drew its support. The worst outburst of racial animosity since the fateful 1960s occured after the general election of 1997. All the victims were Indians.3 There were sporadic attacks on the commercial centre of Georgetown before the polls closed in the 1992 election but they were quickly extinguished through the exertion of pressure by US ex-President Jimmy Carter on the then government of Desmond Hoyte to restore order. The post-1997 ethnic attacks on Indians were dwarfed in its implications when compared to the atacks Indian citizens suffered after the results of the 2001 elections were made known. Individual Indians were robbed and beaten and Indian stores were looted and burned. The period from 1997 through the 2001 election and up to this moment in time has witnessed a crescendo of African extremism that today threatens the social fabric of Guyana. It may be more correct to say that the social fabric has already been severely lacerated and hangs in the balance at the present time. By extremism, we refer to a certain emotional approach to political discourse in which violent propaganda, race hate advocacy, extra-parliamentary machinations and psychotic violence form the agenda of African-based organizations that openly seek to remove the PPP government that they consider discriminatory, racist, corrupt, incestuous and beyond the politics of compromise. This paper looks at the main organizational structures of this African extremism. These include the post- 1997 ideology of the PNC; the changing personality make-up of Hoyte after he lost the 1997 poll; the violent, racist advocacy of the PNC aligned television station, HBTV, Channel 9; the African response to the Buxton conspiracy and Keane Gibson's book, The Cycle of Racial Oppression in Guyana; and the new, racially infused, political culture of the Working People's Alliance (WPA). 1. This episode in Guyana's history is well documented but for a vivid description of its tragic nature, see Dr. Cheddi Jagan's The West on Trial: The Fight for Guyana's Freedom (Berlin: Seven Seas Books, 1975) 2. Documents released a few years ago under the 'Freedom of Information Act' in the United States have added more facts on the role of the then US government in the destabilization of the Jagan government. 3. Guyanese Indian Foundation Trust, 'The Civil Disorder of January 12, 1998'. (Mimeo)