Jun 28, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

(Kaieteur News) – In the search for a moral compass and a nation’s soul, South Africa surfaces. It was the time of a rabidly racist regime. Apartheid was the name; racial domination the game. It wasn’t a game. But a harsh, bitter, gruesome time in Black South African life. Life was cheap. Black lives were cheapest. A big Christian Church was supportive. Not with the killing. But with separating and keeping down. Its leaders tried Biblical acrobatics to rationalize inequality, cruelty, and inhumanity. The Dutch Reformed Church, it was. A bad state spiritually. A few, the frail, in the finest Christian tradition, fought to find the soul of a bestial nation. To end the apartheid state, when the Dutch Reformed Church and cowardly men of God couldn’t find their voice. Couldn’t take a principled stand. Guyanese have those. They come in different outlines, have their lines ready.

Recall those who celebrated excellence in leadership. And those who stayed silent. And those who prefer anonymity, stealthy, shadowy safety. The common thread is they speak god’s language. Their god is a mystery to me. Earthly gods, maybe. A god made of money. How about political gods? Those men made of mud, whose minds are muddled, to be kind. A country with incredible wealth. A citizenry yoked to poverty. And, Guyanese absorb the slavishness of excellence in leadership. The equivalent of political rallies, political campaigning, in religious houses. Their own people are flayed. Their shepherds sell themselves for a penny. Insinuate themselves into high places. Pave their road to personal prosperity. Receive to receive a reward. They may pray in different languages. There is a language they know best, love the most. It’s the language of money. The Bible insists that nothing is impossible with God. Men and women of some god respond: who waan fuh try wid dah can try. They go where the money is. Plus, the prominence. They forgot two things that the man from Galilee counseled. Don’t seek the important places. Then, tend my sheep. Guyanese spirituals forgot. Or dismissed that exhortation. Now, let’s talk South Africa.