Freedom and freeness

Aug 01, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – Today is Emancipation Day in Guyana—a date we mark not merely on calendars, but in the deep memory of a people. It is the anniversary of that blessed and brutal moment when slavery was declared over, when the law, at least, conceded that a human being could not be owned like a mule or a mop. It is a day of solemnity, but also of music, pageantry, celebration. And rightly so.

But there is another kind of celebration happening today, too, one not announced by the drum or the poet, but by the motor horn. This Emancipation Day, Guyanese are free of bridge tolls. The Berbice River Bridge, the Wismar Bridge, the Demerara Harbour Bridge all now free to cross. No more toll booths collecting a few hundred dollars from the driver and a silent curse from the passenger. People are rejoicing, and why shouldn’t they? A burden has been lifted. Or so it seems.

But there is always a difference between what seems and what is, between what is given and what is earned, between freedom and freeness.

Freedom, the kind our ancestors fought for, was never a matter of getting something for nothing. It was about paying—in blood, in hunger, in defiance. The enslaved did not sing spirituals for freeness; they sang for freedom. And freedom never came cheaply. It came slowly, unevenly, painfully.

Freeness, on the other hand, is different. It is the feel-good cousin of freedom. It arrives without struggle, costs you nothing at the gate, and leaves you poorer at the till. It gives you the pleasure of not paying, while quietly arranging for someone else to pick up the tab.

The Berbice Bridge once asked drivers to pay $2,200. It was not popular. Persons felt they were being overcharged. They questioned how it is that to cross the Demerara Harbour Bridge one paid $200 but to cross the Berbice Bridge one had to fork out eleven times this sum. The reason was a financial model that benefitted the private owners of the bridge.

When the APNU+AFC promised to reduce it, they dropped it by a paltry $300—a reduction so thin it could hardly be called a promise kept. That was a major disappointment and betrayal. A $300 reduction was an insult.

Now the toll is gone entirely. That will be a relief to many. But it will not be free.

Bridges are not held up by patriotism. Steel does not keep its form because of good vibes. The concrete joints do not repair themselves. These bridges, like anything else that spans a river, require money—steady, substantial, and ongoing. And when that money no longer comes from the user, it must come from elsewhere. From the State. From the budget. From the people. From you.

I have never trusted the word “free” when it is handed out by governments. In nature, nothing is free except the breeze, and even that comes with hurricanes. In government, freeness often means something has been taken from one place and relocated, like a stolen mango dropped into your lunch bag. You feel grateful until you notice the bite marks.

The danger is not just fiscal. It is also moral. For what is the value of something we get for nothing? What habits does it build in us, this expectation that the bridges of life ought to be toll-less? Freeness builds entitlement. Freedom builds character.

E.B. White once wrote, “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.” Perhaps. But freedom is the persistent reminder that we must be willing to pay the price for the things we value. Not always in coin, but always in care. If the bridges are now free, let us not forget to care about them, to ask how they will be upkept, who will foot the bill, and what else must be foregone so that we can pass without pause.

Emancipation was not freeness. It was paid for in human sacrifice. We do our ancestors no honour if we cheapen their struggle by confusing liberty with a toll-free crossing.

So yes, enjoy the ride today. Cross the bridge and smile. But remember: the toll may be gone, but the cost remains. And freedom—real freedom—still demands more of us than a drive and a sigh of relief. It demands memory, maturity, and a refusal to confuse the value of liberty with the convenience of not having to pay.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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Elections, Emancipation Day, Freedom, freeness, Peeping Tom

One thought on “Freedom and freeness”

rudeo August 1, 2025 at 11:02 am

If you were trying to make a point here….I am still waiting for it..,,

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