He was born in
Lusignan,
British Guiana (now Guyana), and his family moved to
Buxton when he was aged seven. He became a primary school teacher at the age of 15. In 1956, he founded and became principal of County High School, later renamed Republic Cooperative High School, in Buxton. During the 1940s he began to be politically active at the village level. Around 1947 (at that time known as Sydney King), he became a member of a small group of politicians, led by
Cheddi Jagan, who formed the
People's Progressive Party (PPP). After the PPP won in Guyana's first election under universal adult suffrage, Kwayana became Minister of Communication and Works. After the British government suspended the constitution and threw the PPP out of office, in October 1953, Kwayana and others were made political detainees for fear that they would cause civil unrest. He was an executive member of both the PPP and subsequently the
People's National Congress (PNC). Kwayana met his wife
Tchaiko Kwayana (formerly Ann Cook), a pan-Africanist, and civil rights activist from
Georgia, in 1968, as she was travelling from Brazil back to the US. They married in 1971 in Georgetown with Yoruba rites and she was involved in Kwayana's organizational building. Kwayana co-founded the
African Society for Racial Equality (ASRE), and later, the
African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA), which in 1974 became part of the Working People's Alliance (WPA). He was a member of the WPA's collective leadership and worked closely with the late
Walter Rodney. He is the author of several books, including
Next Witness,
The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics,
Scars of Bondage,
Guyana: No Guilty Race,
Buxton in Print and Memory,
Morning After,
Genesis of a Nation: The Indo-Guyanese Contribution to Social Change (in Guyana) and
Walter Rodney: His Last Days and Campaigns. Kwayana also wrote the lyrics of the party songs of Guyana's three leading policial parties, the PPP, PNC and WPA. A production of his play
The Promised Land, performed by a young cast from Buxton, won the "Best Play" Prize in the Youth Category at the British Guiana Drama Festival of 1965. In 2002, he retired and moved to
California in the United States. As of March 2021, he lives in
Atlanta, Georgia. ==Selected bibliography==