Trade unionist, Mr. Lincoln Lewis, the great-great-great-great grandson of former enslaved, Mr. Cudjoe McPherson, has accused the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Mr. Anil Nandlall S.C, of abusing the state’s resources in efforts to deny his family ownership of their ancestor’s land and by extension, wealth.
Around 4:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon 22 policemen, using seven (7) vehicles, turned up at Kingelly, West Coast Berbice and began interrogating members of the McPherson family who were present in the vicinity of the property where the family is constructing a play park. Lewis told this publication the police were drawn from Fort Wellington Police Station and Weldaad Police Station.
Nandlall, in a Department of Public information interview, on Tuesday, whilst sidestepping the matter of the police’s presence at Kingelly, accused Lewis of making claim to land he has no documentation of family ownership. Lewis produced to this publication evidence of ownership as seen here.
Cudjoe McPherson’s Transport #4216, dated 6/7/1851, issued in the County of Berbice.
The backstory to Kingelly
Plantation Kingelly was bought by Cudjoe McPherson from the colonial authorities in 1850 and transformed to a village. McPherson, a pioneer of West Coast Berbice Village Movement, in February 1868 commissioned William Chalmers to survey the village. 32 lots were assigned to 32 persons on the southern side of the public road and the entire northern portion of the village was kept by Cudjoe. To this date, by transport, northern Kingelly remains in Cudjoe McPherson’s name.
However, they are persons who are not from the McPherson’s family claiming ownership to un-occupied land on the northern side. These persons are Nandlall’s clients who he represented in his personal capacity as an attorney.
Lewis said he believes these persons also have the support of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C). “The dirty hands of the PPP/C leaders are all over as evident in the representation of Shadu, a known party activist and beneficiary of a piece of the McPherson’s land as a result of the generosity of my uncle, Clinton ‘Rex’ Thompson.”
The interview
In conversation with Village Voice News (VVN) Lewis provided answers to the following: –
VVN: Why is the Attorney General (AG) making the claim the McPherson family has no ownership to the land?
Lewis: First and foremost, in 2020 when Nandlall went to Kingelly after the PPP regime returned to office he told the land grabbers the document in the McPherson’s possession is not valid because at the time when land was bought, in the 1850s, transport was not in existent in the country’s legal system. He is lying because the Transport in the McPherson’s possession is dated 6th July 1851.
He has since said the McPherson has not provided any evidence of ownership of the land and the land belongs to the state. He further said I went before the Land Commission of Inquiry in 2017 and presented documents about ancestral ownership.
He can’t even keep his lies together.
It must be recorded that throughout the land grabbing efforts Nandlall has been retained as the lawyer for these covetous people. Now that he is in government office, as Attorney General, what he could not achieve on his own he is seeking to place at his disposal the force and resources of the state to disempower the McPherson family of what is rightfully theirs.
It is not lost on me the new scheme he is up and lying to the nation that he will have the MMA take control of land the state does not own. Obviously they are hoping they can confiscate the McPherson’s land and redistribute it to their supporters. It will not happen! Not now! Not ever!
VVN: The AG in the DPI interview, in apparent reference to the persons he is representing, said people have a right to defend their property if anybody trespasses on it. What is your response?
Lewis: We see Nandlall statement as an act of declaring war on the McPherson family, and the McPhersons will have to defend themselves from Nandlall and the landgrabbers whose intention is primarily to deny Africans from protecting what was left by our ancestors as generational ownership and wealth.
Nandlall, Jagdeo and the entire cabal in the PPP leadership fully well know what they are doing. They are seeking to pauperise AfroGuyanese and make them subservient and ultimately beggars. We must resist them with every fibre in our being.
The fence Nandlall claimed was destroyed is the McPherson’s fence which was erected in October 2020. This fence is located north of the second street and stretches across the entire northern side of the village.
VVN: How do you explain the presence of persons living on the northern side of the village, who are not related to the McPherson family, but are claiming ownership of land?
Lewis: Persons who are not from the McPherson clan and have occupied pieces of the land were initially paying rent to the McPherson family for the lands they occupied. The money was paid to my grandfather, John Thompson. Some of them have applied to the court for rights to the land they occupy and have been granted ownership. The McPhersons are not contesting those lands. What we are saying is that no one, outside of the McPherson clan, will get one square inch more than the land their house is built on and they have acquired by prescriptive rights.
VVN: The AG said there is no document proving ownership of land to the McPherson. What’s your response?
Lewis: That is not true. We have documentation, one of which I shared with you.
Let me go further to say, in 1965 a survey of the land was done as authorized by Joseph McPherson, the great grandson of Cudjoe McPherson. When the family moved to get transport for the land it was opposed by a number of the land grabbers’ parents, who our family allowed on to the land as renters or rent free occupants.
The pursuing of transport for the land, whilst consistent, came to a standstill after Donald Robinson’s chambers- the lawyer representing the McPherson’s family- was destroyed by fire in the 1990s. Efforts were made to reconstruct the files at the court but the files have disappeared.
In 2020 when the family approached the Registry at New Amsterdam to pick up a fresh copy of the document, establishing ownership of the land, we were advised the page in the book was torn out. I believe the page was removed after the matter became public and this is all part of the PPP’s shenanigans to deny the McPherson their lawful inheritance.
VVN: What is the McPherson’s next move?
Lewis: We will proceed with the development of our land and also all matters pertaining to ownership and ensure not one square inch, outside of what is presently occupied by others through prescriptive rights, gets into the hands of any who is not of the McPherson lineage. At the same time, it is not lost on me Nandlall is using the power of the state to dispossess the McPhersons of their ancestor’s land and by extension inheritance of their wealth.
