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By Rev. Dr. Rudi R. Guyan, Tehuti-Heru
In respect to the historical relevance of Emancipation to Guyana, two perspectives need to be documented for the records. The first is that Emancipation gave Africans freedom. Such a statement is in all respect a deception, if not false. The second according to Dr Rudi Guyan in his Lecture titled, “A KaMaatic Perspective of the Early History of Guyana: 1630s to 1838”, Emancipation was concocted not for the freedom of Africans, but to reform the Plantation system which was on the brink of bankruptcy.
Due to the active war to assert that they were free people and passive resistance that rendered the plantations very short of labour hours, the plantations became uneconomical, and many had to be abandoned. Abandoned estates lost their real estate and land values. Even though price of land fell, there was no demand for land. That is why Africans were able to buy so many plantations after August 1834.
To make up for the non-cooperative African labour, immediately after Emancipation, German labourers were brought into British Guiana they all died before 1838. Please note carefully what I have just said. Germans: Caucasian: European labour was the preferential choice for British Guiana, not labour from India. Everyone here must be aware from this day that in 1945 after the war, there was a plan to settle 500,000 European Jewish citizens in Guyana (British Guiana), South America. Guyana was to be in all respects, a Jewish state.
Now let us talk to the miseducation about history. Free Indigenous Africans were kidnapped and brought to this part of South America which is presently called Guyana, during the first half of the seventeenth century. From that period until July 31, 1834, Africans took every opportunity to show that they considered themselves to be free persons. So assertive were Africans in respect to their freedom, that Amerindians were imported into the areas of the Plantations to be employed as armed prison warders and bounty hunters, for the sole purpose of preventing Africans from leaving the Forced Labour Prison Camps called Plantations. Africans escaped from Plantations to express their freedom and their non-dependency upon the Plantation system, to be free from the oppression of the Plantation, and to found independent communities called Maroon or Seminole nations.
By any means necessary
By any means necessary, Africans took every opportunity available to show that they will not surrender their right to be free. In 1763 Africans led by the Ghanaian Kofi (Cuffy) and others, waged war against those who wanted to make unfree men of them. Another major attempt at revolution was undertaken in 1823, by Africans from villages along the East Coast of Demerara. According to the Forced Labour Prison Camps operators, the 1823 revolution failed. However, the objective reality of Africans who were active in the day-to-day struggle to protect their freedom was achieved. The 1823 Revolution was an overwhelming success.
In the aftermath of the 1823 Revolution, labour to work the plantations became very scarce and disruptive. The shortage of labour made farmlands unworkable, therefore devalued. So successful was the 1823 Revolution, that by 1834 the economy of the Forced Labour Prison Camps (Plantation) system was operating at forty percent (40%) deficiency. In other words, liquidation of the system was the most pressing option. It was because of this reality, that a plan was concocted to reform the Forced Labour Prison Camps, or Plantation system.
The presenters of Emancipation gave the impression that slavery was the issue and the freedom of Africans from slavery was recognized: that the gates of the Forced Labour Prison Camps were swung open, and Africans especially after 1838, went their ways with an independent mind-set of affecting changes in their own living experiences. Such thinking was far from the truth.
Africans freedom
On August 1, 1834 a legal document was said to give Africans freedom. If that were so, why was Damon arrested in Essequibo on August 11, 1834 for declaring the Independence of Africans in Guyana on August 9, 1834, when he hoisted a white freedom flag? To show that such an act was not considered by the authorities a jester, Damon was arrested; taken to Demerara; tried in a court of law; found guilty of sedition under Dutch, Roman Law, and was lynched at mid-day on October 13, 1834 on a “hurriedly constructed gallows,” built on the front lawn of the Public Buildings (now Parliament Building) in Brickdam, Stabroek, Georgetown.
If there should be truth-to-history and to Social Cohesion, then logic should dictate that on the front lawn of the Parliament Building, Georgetown, is where a representative Monument to Damon the Martyr for African Independence, should be erected?
To complete the reforming of the Plantation System or Forced Labour Prison Camps, the planters brought into British Guiana in 1838 more than 200,000 migrant workers from India. Other racial and ethnic populations of relatively negligible numbers were also brought to British Guiana. In 1838 there were approximately 40,000 pre- Emancipation Africans in British Guiana. The newly Reformed Forced Labour Prison Camps (Plantations) system called Emancipation, had as its objective the preventing of Africans from ever achieving self-determination, and seemingly eventual biological genocide against Africans. If not, then divide 40,000 by 200,000 and note the negative result.
Before the Ghana Day Organisatiom and The Forum For the Temples of KaMaatic Spirituality began their Communities Re-education Programmes, the standard programme of mis-education in lower and higher institutions of education, mislead Guyanese into believing that Africans were children of slaves, and that people from India were indentured workers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The people who came to British Guiana from India were migrant workers. In India they were not petite farmers, but poor jobless citizens who were victims of a cruel rigid Caste System, based on besides other things, skin pigmentation. Such class of labour was called “collies”. Those poor wretched people [The Wretched of the Earth (Franz Fanon)] wanted a better life after living in a country where the institution of slavery existed for over 800 years. Like drowning persons clinging to straws, they pawned (indentured) themselves to greedy Englishmen and Upper Caste Indians, who promised them a better life, if they agreed to go to work in a strange land, for an agreed length of time.
What is remarkable about all this is that from 1838 to 2020, no writer of history in Guyana or the Caribbean has seen it his/her ethical or moral duty to research to the truth of the historical relevance of Emancipation, especially in respect to Guyana. Irrespective of the social relations between the planting class and the Africans on, and after August 1, 1834, what is most significant is that all who “set their feet”, on this land were compelled by law to be paid wages for their labour rendered. It should also be made very clear that any racial or ethnic group, who by the law of their homeland were slaves, became free (no longer slaves) men and women as soon as they landed on the shores of British Guiana after July 31, 1834.
History enlightens us that every migrant worker who came to British Guiana in 1838 was by the law of India, a slave. However, because Africans freed this land, Indian migrant workers who “arrived” in 1838 became free. Of a truth, all the East Indians migrant workers who came to British Guiana in 1838 became free from slavery because of the struggle of Africans to free this land.
It is time that the truth is told. It is time that the truth is revealed. If there is to be Social Cohesion, the African saying: “man, woman know thyself” must be a reality. Emancipation ended by law, the institution of forced unpaid labour (forced labour prison camps) in British Guiana on August 1, 1834. It was not until nine (9) years later: in the year 1843 with the Enactment of the Indian Emancipation Act, that Slavery was officially abolished in India.
Let it be stated categorically: Africans did not leave their homes as slaves. Africans were the only group of humans who did not come to South America to found shelter, food, or a better life. For that reason every group coming to this land except Africans, had and still have an “entry plan,” and an “exit plan.”
It must be brought to everyone’s attention that Africans were indigenous people of Africa. They were kidnapped from the land of their Ancestors, Africa. They were trafficked for sex. They were taken to strange lands (displaced), and they were imprisoned in forced labour camps called Plantations where they received no payments for their labour rendered.
East Indians left India burdened by a double jeopardy. They were legally slaves, and they were further coerced to pawn (indentured) themselves to their greedy Upper Caste Hindu country-men, and the British, so as to be able to pay the cost of their journey from India to British Guiana, to toil as migrant workers.
It was not only the need for work that prompted the people of India to pawn themselves for the opportunity to flee India. It may have been also the constant threat of death by famines (1837 to 1838) in regions such as Delhi and Hissar, where the death toll was about 800,000, and again in Delhi and Hissar divisions of the Punjab and in the Eastern Rajputana where famine took the lives of two million (2,000,000) people of India in 1860 to 1861.
In reality Emancipation did, and still has some positive social effects. In presenting Social Cohesion for example here in Guyana, we must first acknowledge the gratitude Indians should give to Africans in Guyana for the overwhelming contribution Africans made to their liberation, freedom and existence by causing the oppressors of Africans from 1630s to July 31, 1834, to enact the Emancipation Proclamation on August 1, 1834, and the Heroic action of Damon and the over 700 Africans at the Trinity Church Yard at Le Belle Alliance, Essiquibo on the 9th August 1834 when they hoisted the White Flag of African Independence which should be acknowledged by all Freedom Respecting People of Guyana.
HAPPY AFRICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY, 9 AUGUST 2020
Ashay! Ashay! Ashay!