Dear Editor,
“One People One Space One Destiny”. This caught my attention as I listened to the address of the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso to the General Assembly of the United Nations. The audience of international delegates, and indeed the world watching on television, were told that those words comprise the motto of the Confederation of Sahel States. The aspiration, in 2016, is to further galvanize the peoples of 3 African nations belonging to different tribes, into thinking and acting as One Confederation.
Guyana’s national motto, like others created in the 1960s as Great Britain relinquished colonial control over countries that today form the Commonwealth of Nations, reflects the coloniser leaving with goodwill and handing over to independent people the stable polity colonial management had created. Guyana’s “One People One Nation One Destiny” could easily have been Jamaica’s “Out Of Many One People”.
Our national motto was not seriously intended to do more than congratulate the United Kingdom for giving the people of the former British Guiana, the English language, the English education system, a British-styled civil service and not driving on the right side of the road – but on the correct side! Unlike the AES’s motto coined in 2026 out of patriotically founded and supported military takeovers, our national motto neither generated nor fostered feelings of unity amongst Guyanese as One People over the past 60 years since Independence.
It is good that we have continued to acknowledge we are a land of 6 races – perhaps not the same 6 as in 1966 – for our Portuguese-heritage brothers and sisters have never considered themselves White, although ever conscious that despite arriving as indentured servants, their European origin and pale skin afforded them many practical social benefits. Guyana’s 6th race today is in reality made up of all whose heritage is any racial mix of Guyanese blood. Most Puddagee Guyanese are indeed mixed with a drop of some other Guyanese heritage.
To develop onward and upward from this good starting position towards a true unity of Guyana’s sons and daughters, a unity that goes beyond the inherited British institutions that are an indelible part of what Guyana is, we need to truly aim to see ourselves as One Guyana. Yes, One Guyana encompasses it all – One People One Nation One Destiny – in an easy 2-word expression which when uttered or even thought of feels like Oneness…like togetherness…like just what it means; One Guyana.