Eusi Kwayana’s politics — Ravi Dev — Opinion

Eusi Kwayana’s politics

October 18, 2026·3 min read

Dear Editor,

Eusi Kwayana has transitioned at the age of 101 after a very eventful life. I first met him personally in 1986 in Queens, NY after inviting him to give a talk to a political group agitating for free and fair elections in Guyana. Having returned to Guyana in 1988, I would visit the WPA’s HQ on Croal Street, where we continued our dialogue intermittently.

Growing up as Sydney King in Buxton in the aftermath of efforts by the Negro Progress Convention and Garvey’s UNIA to address challenges facing African Guyanese, the 21-year old schoolteacher was attracted to the Marxist approach of the newly-formed, multiracial Political Action Committee (PAC) in late 1946. Three PAC members ran for office in the 1947 elections but only Cheddi Jagan, competing in the Central Demerara Constituency that included Buxton, won a seat. He was supported by Sydney King and another young man, Balram Singh Rai from BV.

Before and after the determinedly multiracial PAC-successor PPP’s victory in 1953, King thwarted Burnham’s quest to seize leadership of the party on several occasions. However, in the fallout of the PPP’s removal from office, he became disillusioned with several of Jagan’s moves – especially after Burnham’s 1955 split.

Jagan’s condemnation of King as an “ultra-leftist deviationists”, his rejection of the proposed WI Federation and his 1956 written address to the PPP Congress^[1] (to mobilize upper-strata Indians he now defined as “progressive”) convinced King that Jagan was pandering to Indians, to the detriment of Africans. The final straw was King deciding to run as an independent candidate in the 1957 elections and the PPP-Jagan opposed him with Balram Singh Rai, while PPP-Burnham supported him. He lost, became even more strident about Jagan and the “Indian threat” to Africans and became Vice Chairman and General Secretary of the PNC launched in 1958 and editor of their organ “New Nation.

In a series of unrelentingly strident articles in 1961, with Queens master HH Nickolson writing pseudonymously as “Vigilance” in New Nation and the Chronicle, King helped label the post-1957 PPP government as an Indian government out to destroy Africans. He was expelled from the PNC just before the 1961 elections^[2] for opposing Burnham’s support for independence possibly under Jagan’s PPP.

He co-founded the African Society for Racial Equality (ASRE) with HH Nickolson and proposed “joint and equal prime ministership” or partition. In his 1962 booklet “Next Witness”^[3] – a compilation of incidents of 1961 election-related “violence” by Indians against Africans, while ignoring those by Africans against Indians, he declared his intention to expose, “(‘the coward’) Jagan’s racial insolence and his cold-blooded organisation of the East Indians for the conquest that has always been their dream.” He concluded: ‘The (PPP) Government, the GUILTY party in the matter of racial conflict, wished to hide the truth because it wants immediate independence under a constitution, which will leave it free to strangle the breath of the African people and the minorities, to create here an East Indian State, to plant the East Indies in the West Indies.”

Readmitted after the PNC was installed into office in 1964, King was rewarded with several appointments including Land Settlements and Chairman of the Guyana Marketing Corporation, enabling him to assist African farmers. He formed the African Society for Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA) after he toured nine African nations on Burnham’s behalf and changed his name to Eusi Kwayana – black man from Guyana.

He fell out with Burnham in 1971 after accusing the latter of betraying African Guyanese by selling out to “Indian and Portuguese interests”. ASCRIA coalesced with Moses Bhagwan’s Indian Progressive Revolutionary Associates (IPRA) to form the “multiracial” WPA, even though Bhagwan assured me personally then that his grouping was “political” and not culturally oriented like ASCRIA. Earlier in 1970, I was part of a student-group that walked out of a meeting at Queen’s College after Black Power advocate Stokley Carmichael, invited by ASCRIA, announced that Africans had to organize separately from Indians. Kwayana supported Carmichael’s stand. It was after Walter Rodney, who defined Black Power in the Caribbean as including both Africans and Indians joined the WPA in 1974, that the party earned its multiracial reputation.

To his credit, Kwayana apologized in 1978 for conflating his assessment of Jagan’s racism onto his Indian supporters between 1961 and 1971 but by then he had established the premises of modern African-Guyanese politics. He also denounced the 1998-beatings of Indians by African Guyanese and the killings by post-2002, Buxton-based gunmen.

RIP Eusi Kwayana.

Sincerely,
Ravi Dev

References

Janet Jagan: politics, party and the pursuit of power — www.stabroeknews.com ↩
The record shows that Eusi Kwayana was expelled from the ... — www.stabroeknews.com ↩
Eusi Kwayana: Black man from Guyana — guyanatimesgy.com ↩

Janet Jagan: politics, party and the pursuit of power

www.stabroeknews.com

The Burnhamite faction tried to forestall the expected eviction with a putsch to displace the militants from the party’s executive in February 1955. This turned out to be unsuccessful. A few weeks later, the Jaganite faction held a party congress in Buxton that was chaired by Sydney King who was still regarded as a militant. A resolution was passed declaring the elections held at the Georgetown conference null and void, and members of the Burnhamite faction – including Forbes Burnham, Clinton Wong, Joseph Lachhmansingh and Jai Narine Singh – were formally expelled from the Party. With Cheddi That done, the stage was set for the second purge which targetted what Cheddi Jagan called the “ultra-left” elements and among whom were Keith and Martin Carter, Lionel Jeffrey, Sydney King and Rory Westmaas. As both Jagans’ movements restricted under the Emergency Regulations, the party took the unusual step of cyclostyling Cheddi Jagan’s address to the 1956 PPP Congress to be read to delegates. A copy was sold to the Chronicle newspaper which made it public knowledge by printing it in full. The document clearly explained and exposed the Jagans’ mindset, warning that the PPP “must guard against right and left opportunism.” Dr. Jagan attempted to attribute the errors which resulted in the suspension of the Constitution in 1953 to the “ultra-left” who had become “bombastic” and were “attacking everybody at the same time.” He also referred to certain members’ support for British Guiana’s joining the forthcoming Federation of the West Indies as “adventurist.” Darkly, he observed that “feeling as they do a sense of oppression, the Indians are 100 per cent against Federation.” This announcement signalled that the PPP had switched to an anti-Federation position. Since the gang of four – Keith and Martin Carter, Sydney King and Richard Westmaas –were regarded as the most “bombastic” Marxists in the Party and they also supported entry to the Federation which was one of the original PPP’s founding principles, they understood that Dr. Jagan’s announcement attacked them personally. Their resignation from the party was expected. After these two purges, Janet Jagan’s stature as the party’s most powerful political tactician was uncontestable.

Source

Eusi Kwayana’s politics in Kiskadee Watch, October 18, 2026

The record shows that Eusi Kwayana was expelled from the ...

www.stabroeknews.com

The record ... Eusi ... was expelled from the PNC ... 9 ... I just saw a report of the outgoing PNC leader’s address to the PNC’s bi-annual congress in another section of the media. According to the report: Mr. Granger cited Jai Narine Singh, the first General Secretary, as someone who allowed personal and political ambition to smother party allegiance and broke away to form the Guianese Independence Movement party; Sydney King, (later Eusi Kwayana), also a former General Secretary who broke from the PNC in 1961 and helped to establish the Working People’s Alliance; Hamilton Green, another former General Secretary , broke front the Party in 1993 and established the Good and Green for Guyana; Raphael Trotman, an elected PNC Member of Parliament, broke from the Party in 2005 and established the Alliance For Change. “The Guiana Independence Movement, the Working People’s Alliance, the Good and Green for Guyana and the Alliance for Change all wounded their ‘mother’ party.” ... I write not to contest Mr. Granger’s interpretation of the history of the PNC, but to offer some facts in regard to Eusi Kwayana and the PNC that he either may be unaware of or neglected. First, it is not true to say that Kwayana “broke from the PNC in 1961”. The record shows that he was expelled from the PNC in 1961. However, while he never rejoined the PNC, he continued to support the party and urged his supporters to vote for it at the 1961 election. When he was approach-ed by citizens to contest the 1964 election under the banner of ASCRIA, he decided not to do so after discussion with PNC leader, Forbes Burnham. Again, he urged his supporters to vote for the PNC at the 1964 election. When the PNC came to power in1964, Kwayana turned down an offer to represent the country at the United Nations. He instead opted to visit thirteen African countries to introduce the new government to African leaders. Kwayana would serve without pay in key non-cabinet positions in the PNC-led government. He campaigned for the party at the 1968 election and again urged his supporters to vote for the PNC. It was Kwayana who suggested to Mr. Burnham the “Coopera-tive” in Guyana’s Cooperative Republic. If Mr. Granger considers the above as wounding the PNC, then he has to explain,

Eusi Kwayana: Black man from Guyana

guyanatimesgy.com

#### Eusi Kwayana has transitioned at the age of 101 after a very eventful life. I first met him personally in 1986 in Queens, NY, after inviting him to give a talk to a political group agitating for free and fair elections in Guyana. Upon returning to Guyana in 1988, I would visit the WPA’s HQ on Croal Street, where we continued our dialogue intermittently. Growing up as Sydney King in Buxton in the aftermath of efforts by the Negro Progress Convention and Garvey’s UNIA to address challenges facing African Guyanese, the 21-year-old schoolteacher was attracted to the Marxist approach of the newly formed, multiracial Political Action Committee (PAC) in late 1946. Three PAC members ran for office in the 1947 elections, but only Cheddi Jagan, competing in the Central Demerara Constituency that included Buxton, won a seat. He was supported by Sydney King and another young man, Balram Singh Rai from BV. Before and after the determinedly multiracial PAC-successor PPP’s victory in 1953, King thwarted Burnham’s quest to seize leadership of the party on several occasions. However, in the fallout of the PPP’s removal from office, he became disillusioned with several of Jagan’s moves – especially after Burnham’s 1955 split. Jagan’s condemnation of King as an “ultra-leftist deviationist”, his rejection of the proposed WI Federation, and his 1956 written address to the PPP Congress (to mobilise upper-strata Indians he now defined as “progressive”) convinced King that Jagan was pandering to Indians, to the detriment of Africans. The final straw was King deciding to run as an independent candidate in the 1957 elections when the PPP-Jagan opposed him with Balram Singh Rai, while PPP-Burnham supported him. He lost, became even more strident about Jagan and the “Indian threat” to Africans, and became Vice Chairman and General Secretary of the PNC launched in 1958 and editor of their organ “New Nation”. In a series of unrelentingly strident articles in 1961, with Queen’s master HH Nickolson writing pseudonymously as “Vigilance” in New Nation and the Chronicle, King helped label the post-1957 PPP Government as an Indian Government out to destroy Africans. He was expelled from the PNC just before the 1961 elections for opposing Burnham’s support for independence, possibly under Jagan’s PPP. He co-founded the African Society for Racial Equality (ASRE) with HH Nickolson and proposed “joint and equal prime ministership” or partition. In his 1962 booklet “Next Witness” – a compilation of incidents of 1961 election-related “violence” by Indians against Africans, while ignoring those by Africans against Indians – he declared his intention to expose “the coward” Jagan’s racial insolence and his cold-blooded organisation of the East Indians for the conquest that has always been their dream. He concluded, “The (PPP) Government, the GUILTY party in the matter of racial conflict, wished to hide the truth because it wants immediate independence under a constitution, which will leave it free to strangle the breath of the African people and the minorities, to create here an East Indian State, to plant the East Indies in the West Indies.” Readmitted after the PNC was installed in the office in 1964, King was rewarded with several appointments, including Land Settlements and Chairman of the Guyana Marketing Corporation, enabling him to assist African farmers. He formed the African Society for Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA) after he toured nine African nations on Burnham’s behalf and changed his name to Eusi Kwayana – a Black man from Guyana. He fell out with Burnham in 1971 after accusing the latter of betraying African Guyanese by selling out to “Indian and Portuguese interests”. ASCRIA coalesced with Moses Bhagwan’s Indian Progressive Revolutionary Associates (IPRA) to form the “multiracial” WPA, even though Bhagwan assured me personally then that his grouping was “political” and not culturally orientated like ASCRIA. Earlier in 1970, I was part of a student group that walked out of a meeting at Queens College after Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael, invited by ASCRIA, announced that Africans had to organise separately from Indians. Kwayana supported Carmichael’s stand. It was after Walter Rodney, who defined Black Power in the Caribbean as including both Africans and Indians, joined the WPA in 1974 that the party earned its multiracial reputation. To his credit, Kwayana apologised in 1978 for conflating his assessment of Jagan’s racism with his Indian supporters between 1961 and 1971, but by then, he had established the premises of modern African-Guyanese politics. He also denounced the 1998 beatings of Indians by African Guyanese and the killings by post-2002 Buxton-based gunmen. RIP Eusi Kwayana.