National Service was a failure

I have seen mentioned somewhere about National Service having its origins in Germany . I want to set the record straight as to how and where Burnham came up with this idea of National Service.

In the seventies, we had a joke about Jamaica imitating Guyana . It was the talk then that everything that Burnham did, Michel Manley followed suit in Jamaica .

What people did not realise was that the biggest copycat in the region was not Manley but Burnham. Copycat Burnham gave us the President's College, which he saw during his visit to the Soviet Union . When he came back from North Korea , he introduced Mass Games and in 1980, he promulgated a constitution with an Executive President, an idea he got from Zambia .

But Burnham did not become a copycat in the eighties. Burnham copied the concept of National Service, not from Germany , but from his old Buddy Julius in Tanzania . In 1963, there was an organisation of social development workers formed in Germany .

This was something similar to the international volunteers we have today, who go around the world offering their skills to others countries.

One of the first countries, which the social development workers from the Federal Republic of Germany went, was to Tanzania . The national service that was however introduced in Tanzania was something completely different from that of the social development globe-hopping volunteers from Germany .

National Service in Tanzania emerged as part of a plan to change the public image of the army. One of schemes used to popularise the military in that country was that of national service. It was first introduced in the schools and later those benefiting from free higher education were required to do national service as a way of paying back for their free education.

When Burnham decreed that students of the University of Guyana had to serve National Service before being allowed to graduate, he was only copying from the process in Tanzania .

Uncle Adam is my friend. I hate to trade words with him but I have repeatedly urged him in these columns to try to not be gullible and fall victim to historical propaganda. I have tried my best with him. I shall have to give up on this project with Uncle Adam.

I do not know just what Burnham did to him. He had said that Burnham touched a part of him. But I do not think that it was only his heart that Burnham touched. It may have also been the case that Burnham got into his head.

I have said before in these columns that there is reflexive tendency for people to justify their actions. Just a few days ago, I mentioned how people who were forced to go to Hope Estate would come back to their desks and try to hide their humiliation by creating reasons to justify what they did.

They would, for example, state how the experience was not all that bad and how they learnt what is was like to be an agricultural worker.

I saw the same thing when the military, paramilitary and civil servants, were ordered to go and cut cane during the sugar strike in the mid seventies. These workers were told that they were rescuing the economy of Guyana by being scabs.

Local politicians have always been adept at selling ideas. The PNC was particularly versed in this skill. As part of Burnham's plot to exercise mass control, he needed to create the New Guyana Man, someone who would be malleable to his intentions to an authoritarian society. Burnham therefore sold us a scheme that spoke of creating the New Guyana Man.

The Guyana National Service was one such scheme. Its stated objectives were to provide training and skills, self-reliance, increased local production, develop and populate the hinterland, the promotion of unity among the races and to foster personal self-discipline. This was the glossy package within which National Service was presented to the nation.

In reality, National Service was part of a process to de-culturalise the Guyanese people, to militarise society, to populate the interior with para-military bases to offset the military threats from our neighbours and to allow Burnham to have a greater stranglehold on the country while providing jobs for his supporters. Socialist indoctrination was a crucial element of this programme.

The way that Burnham foisted National Services upon the Guyanese people was another example of dunderhead politics. Burnham was not interested in fostering skill creation. He could have done this outside of the National Service. He could have developed the interior without resort to Kimbia and Papaya.

Self-reliance did not require the National Service and definitely National Service divided the nation further rather that forging unity amongst the races. It was also rumoured and reported in at least one international source that the youth arm of the PNC received military training from the Guyana National Service.

What Burnham wanted was to control the society by controlling our thinking processes. Thus, the stress on socialist indoctrination. For a scheme that was supposed to provide training in skills, National Service was highly militaristic. These skills could have been provided more cheaply and effectively in vocation education centres, many of which existed at the time and still exist onto this day.

Where are these skills today and how did they help to transform Guyana at the time? And National Service was also highly politicised with heavy recruiting taking place in PNC strongholds to provide jobs for party supporters, bankrolled by taxpayers.

National Service was a failure. Some people may have enjoyed the experience. There were things happening at interior bases that would have given certain officers a great deal of power over others and thus a great deal of satisfaction. But National Service failed because at the heart of it was political control and indoctrination, rather than development.

From cotton-rearing to pigeon peas cultivation to the plan to grow onions, all failed. National Service was a failure and Desmond Hoyte did the right thing in downsizing it to the point where it no longer ceased to be an entity of national significance. The PPP/C merely completed the last rites, except that they themselves still claim that the National Service is still around but it is changed.

Many Guyanese only see the smaller picture and continue to accept that National Service was a good thing because it kept idle youth off the streets. What are we really saying about National Service when this has become one of the prime justifications for National Service?

Are we saying the State sector should be expanded and burdened with National Service just to keep idleness at bay?

National Service marginalised the youths of Guyana by being an assured safety valve to which they could turn. It encouraged dependence on the State for jobs. Young people have to get up and get and forget about drowning out idleness in schemes such as National Service.

Government programmes have to be about success and National Service was no success story.

The best solution for unemployed youth is to the enhance private sector growth and development, thereby creating jobs and encourage competition for skills.