‘This land is my land’

‘This land is my land’
Frankly Speaking...
By A.A Fenty
Stabroek News
June 27, 2003

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The caption is the title of a popular American folk-song, the sentiments of which have been adapted and used by many other song-writers and `patriots’ in other lands.

Though today’s offering is just to keep my unbroken record intact - as I’m once more mentally fatigued with our intellectually-sapping `issues’ - let me share a few notes on what I perceive to be another most-contentious `issue’ in the making. Replete with all its deliberately-manufactured politicised characteristics.

You see, I’ve just studied two persuasive letters on the subject - as it relates to Afro-Guyanese relationships with this land and claims to it, as represented by the African Cultural Development Association (ACDA) based on alleged historical ownership. The other correspondence rejects a `Ravi-Dev school-of-thought’, which, according to the writer, Lin-Jay Harry-Voglezon, purports to catapult “the Indian contribution” to Guyana’s development, individually and collectively, distinctly above, superior to and unmatched by any other group, which found itself here. And though I won’t agree with Harry-Voglezon’s view that “to make Indian Arrival Day a holiday is to fundamentally insult the Afro-community in particular,” I am mightily impressed by his other arguments in his well-presented short-essay in last week Saturday’s Stabroek.

The piece, claiming that many Guyanese have no clear perspective of our history and social evolution, describes the travails of the freed African Slaves of 1838 to around the 1860s, when all the barriers were placed, by a bitter plantocracy, to prevent their economic self-development, of which they were quite capable, if the laws, ordinances, physical/geographical sabotage and other stifling manoeuvres were not thrown up against their every effort. I commend Harry-Voglezon for this simply-written but well-researched Brief. And I’m going to save it. As I expect soon, the defence of the `Indian’ suffering, determination and spirit, to be mounted.

For, you see, Harry-Voglezon made the point forcefully that the indentured immigrants were assisted immensely by the planters for obvious reasons. But then there is a (new) issue that I’m beginning to discern these days and which intrigues poor me, which surfaced in Harry-Voglezon’s essay: The planters’ persistence with the assistance and exploitation of the new indentured `Indian’ labour - on maintaining sugar as the dominant industry in the post-emancipation economy, actually under-developed Guyana! It is indeed an intriguing and provocative thesis: Was sugar good or bad for Guyana’s long-term survival and development? From 1838 to 1938 to 2008? What was earned and contributed? For whose benefit? How should you and I - react to Harry-Voglezon’s contention that the plantocracy and the use of the indentured system “prevented all meaningful attempts at diversifying and building forward and backward linkages within the economy.” Or that: “had the sugar industry collapsed, or its labour-capital ratios altered, Guyana-like the USA, Australia, etc., would have been importing labour for a range of development needs; not the constricting sugar industry.”

Wow! What a robust debate might devolve from this view, gaining some vogue these past months. But let me return to the land.

Whose land?
Whilst that piece quoted above touched on the African’s troubled relationship with the land, so often undermined by others through the debilitating Crown Lands Ordinances (1856/1851), for example, ACDA’s call for an African Land Commission is its now-usual strident demand for the return of real estate, historically the property, right and legacy of African descendants.

ACDA claims that some `African Guyanese’ have expressed alarms over the `growing loss’ of African-Guyanese `ancestral lands’ by a variety of nefarious means. It is now calling for the establishment of an African Land Commission similar to the Amerindian Land Commiss-ion. Poor PPP/C. They want “constitutional protection of ancestral properly as a fundamental right”. In presenting its case, ACDA quotes precedents from around the world and hints at the legal, constitutional and even cultural hurdles that would attend - or impede - its objectives.

My take on all this, of course, is not the legitimacy of the claims, to be proven. It is the reason for these calls at this time. Pressure-pressure-pressure? Perhaps these calls (for ancestral property and reparations) were made when Hammie Green and his party were in power but I seemed to have missed the stridency then? ACDA does remark that “probably the greatest damage done to the Afro-Guyanese psyche... has been by the previous administration which sowed the seeds for the destruction of ancestral property, a process subsequently heightened by the PPP/C government.” It is referring to the 1980 entrenched Land-to-the-Tiller Section which later gave the state power to enter upon land not beneficially occupied for the purpose of expropriating it without compensation payment.

Land. Land. Whose land? 215000 square kilometers. The Amerindians arrived first and inherited it. To this day arrangements are still being made for them to legally own certain demarcated portions they purportedly own by occupation. African slaves did toil and actually buy coastal plantations. Indian immigrants both acquired and were granted land to settle. Others acquired pieces of the country in more `normal’ ways. My view is that there is still enough of Guyana to go around. Whilst African latter-day indifference to land is explained often, there is no excuse for him to want to access that, which was legally acquired by others. Even those abandoned by the African fore-fathers.

Even the Burnham administrations had the devil’s job convincing young Afro-Guyanese `to turn to the land’. That’s partly why the GNS failed in its really - grand objective - to develop and settle the Hinterland! The Bronx, Brooklyn, Brixton and Barbados were already developed. So the youth gravitated there to benefit from or contribute to other people’s pioneering achievements.

This PPP/C administration, whatever is said of its alleged favouritism, its alleged partisan land distribution policy and programmes, has given out pieces of Guyana to small people more than I’ve even experienced before. So, even as I hear of one Indo-Guyanese businessman acquiring large tracts of the Rupununi Region, I urge ACDA and others to seek acquisition, by legal means, of similar big bodies of land. Think of Ivor Allen and his persistence in rice, against all odds. And solicit the brilliance of say Kenneth King, Clarence Ellis, Clive Thomas, Eric Phillips and Hammie Green - and five PNC-types - ten minds to acquire land for building and manufacturing. Capital? Can’t you do it? Yes the diaspora can. Like `the others’ do!

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Ponder...
1) I recall that when Louis Farrakhan came here, years ago, besides being impressed with Aubrey Norton and upset with Kit Nascimento, he preached the virtues of owning land. His messenger is now here with us.

2) Coming Next Week: After I vote... inclusive governance.

3) Believing the bandits: The crooks, when cornered must be taken alive. That is so that they may be interrogated to give information, `intelligence’ on the Bigger Bosses Behind Crime. The Big Businessmen and the Politicians who allegedly run things.

But remember now the bandits can say anything about anyone. They might have been briefed and prompted. So their disclosures must be verifiable. Great if they have the video-tapes their teleactivists talk about. We’ll also hear about the whereabouts of the millions in blood money taken. Take them alive(?)

4) The NBIC lines/queues are torturous - if you need the tellers. Please!

5) Please PNCR, if we get the US$244 Million for Poverty Reduction, don’t make the IDB change its mind.

`Til next week!