Sunday Village Voice News began publishing presentations made about Guyana’s land issue in light of growing concern the government’s land policy is not meant to be fair and inclusive but to dispossess descendants of ancestral land. Such dispossession will primarily affect Africans and Amerindians, the former who acquired lands via their ancestors buying plantations and converting them to villages, and the latter through indigenous identification and ownership as Guyana’s First People.

This publication is presently featuring Associate Professor Dr. Wazir Mohamed’s presentation to the Land Commission of Inquiry which was made on November 23, 2017. The associate professor, continues below, his presentation. In Part 1 he dealt with the historical root of the problem, noting that “Land policy was a primary tool used after emancipation to control movement and price of labour. A reading of the land ordinances of 1835/36, 1839, 1851, 1852, 1856, 1857, 1861, and 1898 render an understanding of the history through which our current land tenure structure evolved.”

Part II (below) continues in same vein with attention given to the Labour and Land Policy

Labour and Land Policy

It must be recalled that despite the paucity of labour in the final years of apprenticeship (available labour was approximately 83,000 in the final years before emancipation), the planters  became worried that they would lose the formerly enslaved workforce upon emancipation in 1838. Because of this fear, the Gibbon Wakefield approach to use land in labor control was adopted from as early as 1835/36 – two years prior to emancipation.¹

Since the planter class had the monopoly over all available arable agricultural lands; land was proffered as their tool of choice in the organisation of labour. In the climate of incessant labour shortage and the sandwiching of the population into the narrow coastal area, from sea dam to crown dam, several measures were sanctioned in the period immediately before and after emancipation to prevent both illegal and legitimate use of available Crown Lands (lands beyond the Crown Dams).

–       In order to prevent squatting on these lands the Apprenticeship Order-in-Council was established. Its provision made clear that any ex-slave (apprentice) who was found wandering five miles from his/her plantation of residence was to be punished by being imprisoned for three months with hard labor. This order also provided for the destruction and dislodgement of any squatter settlements ex-slaves were able to establish.

^{(Citations) 1}

Gibbon Wakefield, a colonial official was heavily involved in fashioning labor control mechanisms through land in the colonies of Australia and New Zealand.

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–       In furtherance of this policy and to prevent the enslaved and those formerly enslaved from acquiring these lands legally; land ordinance policies were introduced and passed in 1835/36 and re-introduced again in 1839 to regulate the sale and purchase of Crown Lands.

The colonial state had recognised at least two years before emancipation that they needed to put mechanisms in place to control what they felt would have been an escape from plantation labour. The Gibbon Wakefield approach to labour control which was tried and tested in Australia was recommended by the colonial office for implementation in the colonies of the Caribbean with “abundant land.”² Governors in the Caribbean were directed to control the sale of Crown Lands. These lands were to be made available only to those with capital.³

–       This law permitted for Crown Lands to be made available in parcels of 100 acres to individuals at 1 (one) British Pound per acre. This effectively made it impossible for emancipated Africans to acquire lands outside the established plantation space. Even if any African was able to afford the initial capital, they could not raise the required sums necessary to cover the cost of polder construction, maintenance, and other investments to make these lands workable.

–       This law in essence sealed the deal for Africans who had their eyes set on establishing themselves and their lives away from the plantation zone.

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^{(Citations) 2} Gibbon Wakefield was an author and colonial promoter who rose to prominence because of his theory of systematic colonization. He was very influential to the British Colonial State as it pursued its interest in creating the Empire. Also see Correspondence from Lord Glenelg to Governors of the West India Colonies, January 30, 1836, Parliamentary Papers xxx, (1846): 3-4. Young 1958: 10

³ Philip Curtin. Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Country (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 137.

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This law which prevented movement away from the narrow coastal area was complemented by other actions and impositions which were designed to starve the African population into submission and to tie them to the plantations of residence.

Honourable Commissioners, what other justification could exist, to explain the actions of the planter class as reasons why in the weeks immediately after emancipation many planters destroyed the plantain walks and fruit trees on their estates, depriving the freedmen of the accustomed sustenance they had during slavery.⁴ One planter, Barton Premium in reminiscing on his role in this process remarked in his writings that he destroyed 100 acres of plantains on his plantation to demonstrate to the Africans that freedom meant work.⁵

Honourable commissioners, these plantain walks should represent in historical memory, and form part of what we are searching for as an explanation of “ancestral rights.” According to the “Creole,” one of the native newspapers in its June 27, 1858 edition, the action of the planters to cut down the plantain walks represented the destruction of part of African history and folk memory. Despite these kinds of actions, the former enslaved continued in their quest to establish forms of independent life. A primary issue for them was control over destiny, through independence from plantation housing. To achieve this aim, land was important – This thirst lead to the village  movement, the erection and evolution of two types of villages. As we engage this discourse, we must I think or look at the villages that emerged in terms of preservation of nearness to the ancestors. (ResearchGate)

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⁴ During slavery each plantation were required to provide food rations to its slave population. The plantain walk was one such source of food. Each slave family was entitled to a weekly supply of plantains. Fruit trees were planted by slaves on dams, provision grounds and in other areas. James Rodway, History of British Guiana from the year 1668 (Georgetown, 1891-4), 106

⁵ Barton Premium, Eight Years in British: Being the Journal of a Resident in the Province if British Guiana from 1840-1848 (London, 1850), 14.

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About the author/presentator

Dr. Wazir Mohamed is an Associate Professor, Sociology, Indiana University East