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Feeding the mob

“Peter denied Christ thrice,” Tara said in amazement. The headline was bold: “PNM minister denies knowledge of Abu Bakr.” Mr Manning is a born-again Christian and Mrs Yuille-Williams has not denied moral and spiritual values of that creed.

“Abu Bakr was defended as a proper ally of the PNM,” Tara reminded Dr John of Mr Manning’s defence of a religious leader’s right to mobilise black and poor to vote PNM.

“Politics is about power,” she added, “and UNC politicians talk race in and out of Parliament. Panday included Africans to broaden UNC cabinet—Kuei Tung, Theodore, Assam, Yetming, Jerlyn John, Carlos John. That policy caused UNC to mash up.”

“Caused is a strong word,” Dr John said. “You mean apart from Panday’s Brer ’Nancy behaviour, giving power to Afros was resented by Indian hegemonists and that undermined UNC’s cohesiveness?

“No one thing caused collapse of the UNC. The PNM has not collapsed because Rowley, Imbert, Bereaux, Achong and others have personal reasons to suffer Manning’s leadership, but PNM government has collapsed. We drift in a sewer of hopelessness, devalued daily despite gas money. Community leaders run PNM money while cabinet denies Abu Bakr. Blacks are as embarrassed as ‘Indians’ who can’t afford to run to Miami are scared of kidnappers.

“I mean cause. Use the mind of Camille Robinson-Regis, Fitzgerald Hinds, and Dr Rowley. They claim to be black, proud, symbols of Africans’ dignity in this country. Their vision has led the ghetto to despair. Theirs is a view of the way things must be.

“Listen to Watchman, Aloes, Cro Cro and Cudjoe, they articulate a same sense of self, what the Germans call Weltanschauung—one’s view of the world. That feeling converts grievance to policy, like Cepep or the way some tell lecturers, ‘No African must fail, they could get C, but you must pass them,’ the idea behind the University of Trinidad and Tobago, and...” She was interrupted.

“You were explaining how Panday’s Africans in the cabinet caused UNC to self-destruct,” Dr John insisted.

“Yes. The Indians who destroyed Panday have the same ideas like those in the PNM cabinet who use power to implement an African agenda—target blacks, preferential access to medical school, Cepep, scholarship quotas, restrict Indians in public service or business.

“Weltanschauung—view of African talk radio hosts, PNM calypsonians stereotyping Indians or demanding ‘me grandfather backpay’ from Mouttet, Sabga, and Indians who got passage grant money—has a UNC version, and educated Germans built death factories.

“Some of the most ignorant people about Africa are MPs calling themselves Africans. They must make Trinidad like Haiti, or Africa they affect to love, a disaster, in spite of gas bonanza. They don’t know ideas keep Africa (or ghetto) backward, not white people (or Indians). Ideas destroyed UNC-racist ideas about Carlos John, ethnic power or ministries denied UNC members,” she responded.

“Tara, you credit ‘African’ MPs with too much. They don’t read. They laughed at Dr Job because he quoted your novels, and taught children music. You write novels. I liked Golkonda—illiteracy, incest (the father and the sons raping all the female relatives, real ram-goat life in Caroni), alcoholism (Hindu women), brutality against wives and daughters-in-law, suicides, crass vulgarity of Indos who starved and saved to make money so they could show off (spending more on a puja than the neighbour, expensive saris or trips to India).

“Naipaul wrote nothing so glaringly honest about the myth of the happy Ram Ram, Sita Ram Hindus of Felicity. Mrs Manning will never serialise your novel. Lord Krishna may intervene at her level of incompetence, bereft of moral or spiritual criteria justifying elevation to eminence, but her ministry will serialise no ‘Indian’ novel.

“You are right about ideas. Robinson gave Panday Prime Minister in 1995, traumatised blacks, and Hindu fascists began writing about ‘Indian government and Hindutva.’ They poisoned the air with anger. Black response was swift and brutal in calypso tent and Emancipation Day parade.

“Despite Kuei Tung, Wade Mark and Robinson, to gratuitous Africans Payday’s cabinet looked like one from Bombay. ‘African’ sense of self was wounded. The black chorus for six years was, ‘Indians tief, UNC corrupt, Africans bite the dust, PNM the only relief from oppression and racial insecurity, black and proud, support your race.’

“African racial mobilisation provided for emotional needs of insecure, or hungry, illiterate, unemployable mobs drifting their lives away in delusions of African racial arrogance. PNM litany was (like Hutus on radio summoning the tribe to kill Tutsis): ‘In the name of Ogun, Obatala, Oshun, African spirits, support PNM.’

“Indian doctors exploit Africans, cut out their wombs, Hindu idolaters… Jesus saves. Vote PNM. Hitler did not design better propaganda to simplify poverty with no remedy except blame UNC.

“Every problem in Laventille had the same solution: get rid of UNC, give blacks key to the Treasury. Absurd or banal assertions mesmerised ‘Afri-cans’ like Hitler at Nuremberg.

“Massa (PNM) knew the state of mind of the mobs. Feed it racist demagoguery, exploiting poverty anxiety: Indian money reflects African poverty, ‘dey tief we Treasury;’ Africans love people; Indians love money; God made kinky hair; Africans must unite. ‘Steel pan’, ‘African’, ‘PNM’ and ‘calypsonian’ have obeah power, irrational emotive power. Words?

“Every child must see Hotel Rwanda. Trinidad: 600,000 illiterates, daily killings, daylight executions, inflation. I am losing hope. Manning sent $100 million to Grenada, and two pumps to Guyana after the flood, to pump mud? Water every day in Laventille, none for months at Mamoral: African Weltanschauung? Frequently, kidnap victims are freed at Morvant, after black boys collected their ‘grandfather backpay’ or ‘reparations’ as African MPs, novelists and calypsonians instructed them,” Dr John said.