Emancipation vs freedom

Jul 31, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – On Tuesday we will observe “Emancipation Day” to commemorate that inaugural event of our country’s history: the emancipation of enslaved Africans on August 1st, 1838. On 28 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act had been given Royal Assent to come into force on 1 August 1834. As such it was not unreasonable that in Essequibo, Damon led a rebellion of hundreds when they were informed they had to continue working for another four years under the same conditions of “no pay”, as “apprentices”.   The full title of Act, however, revealed the sly caveats that made a mockery of the word “emancipation” and freedom: “An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies; for promoting the Industry of the manumitted Slaves; and for compensating the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services of such Slaves”. The so called “apprenticeship” period was hypocritically not for extracting another four years of free labour, but for “promoting the industry of the freed slaves”.

The ‘Anti-Slavery Society’, formed in 1823 was led by William Wilberforce who had argued: ‘To grant freedom to (the slaves) immediately would be to insure not only their masters’ ruin, but their own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom.’ This “training and education” was to be channelled through the Christian Churches, which focused on creating individuals who would act “properly”. This meant an acceptance of the stratification system justified by the “Great Chain of Being”, with a White God in heaven represented by his white son Jesus on earth, followed by white Angels also in heaven followed by humans, with Whites at the apex and Blacks/Africans at the bottom.

The category of “race” had been created to justify enslavement of Africans, who had been defined as bereft of souls. Other non-white groups were placed in intermediate positions between White and Black as the Europeans rulers saw fit. After the wholesale rape of enslaved African women by Whites on West Indian plantations, a new Coloured stratum was created here and given an intermediate position above Africans. After emancipation, “marrying up” meant marrying someone with a “fairer” complexion but since the offsprings’ phenotype could veer randomly towards “Black”, this precipitated a deep schizophrenia in that group.

Wilberforce’s “training and education for freedom” is the key point we should reflect on this Emancipation Day: the assumption by the White establishment, including the anti-slavery movement that the formerly enslaved workers were incapable of making responsible decisions in a “cash-based” economy and had to be tutored into its ways. Never mind that during slavery, the enslaved Africans had reared livestock, cultivated provisions and vegetables and sold them in Sunday Markets. As a matter of fact, even though the status quo was supposed to remain in place post 1834, with the freed Africans allowed to earn wages after completing their daily tasks, it was the manager’s killing of the workers’ pigs that pushed Damon and his colleagues over the brink to rebel.

The Churches were funded by the state to first establish schools in the villages that the Africans spontaneously founded after 1838. They focused on creating “Black Englishmen” along the lines of the Thomas Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education” to the Indian Parliament in 1835. This outlined how “Brown Englishmen” were to be created to serve the interest of the Colonial power. There was nothing but superstition in local knowledge and culture, which was to be wiped out.  Not coincidentally, Thomas Macaulay was the son of the slavery-abolitionist Zachary Macaulay. Queens College, founded in 1844, which eventually accepted Coloureds and Africans, epitomized that pattern of transmitting the European hegemony.

Because of the cruelties inflicted on Africans during slavery the planters were convinced that after emancipation, retribution would become the order of the new day. The Guyana Police Force was therefore organized by 1838 but its launch was delayed for one year when it was decided to model it not on the unarmed London Metropoliton “Bobbies” but on the armed Irish Constabulary that was organized as a pacification Force. Police Stations were soon established near the new villages and manned by immigrant Barbadian recruits with White officers: the locals were not trusted to discipline their “matties”. Our centralized and authoritarian police culture was inculcated from its beginning.

We need to appreciate Hanna Arendt’s observation: “…liberation may be the condition of freedom, but by no means leads automatically to it”. The formal and informal institutions and structures implicit in the mental chains of our “education” need reexamination.

Sincerely
Ravi Dev

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• ‘Anti-Slavery Society’, Coloured stratum, However, London Metropoliton, offsprings, The full title of Act

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