I have noted some interventions following the apology of the Gladstone family for their role in “slavery and indentureship.” Unfortunately, rather than using the fortuitous occasion presented by this specific family, which owned the plantation on which the 1823 slave rebellion was sparked and also initiated the introduction of Indentured labourers into Guyana, to look at both institutions as methods of extracting labour as cheaply as possible in the early development of capitalism, emphasis was once again placed on which group “suffered more”. The point of that comparison, of course, has been to argue that the group that “suffered more” has a greater claim to the national patrimony. In one of the earlier iterations of this trope, Mr Eusi Kwayana had suggested that we should rather agree that we all “suffered equally” and move on. In that vein, when asked to speak at the funeral of Mr Ronald Waddell, who to me sadly represented one nihilistic futility of comparing suffering in a plural society, I pointed out that we had all cried when we sat by our Rivers of Guyana and remembered our own Zions.
I have repeatedly asked interlocutors that our individual group narratives acknowledge the separate historical contingencies but take cognizance of the implications of odious comparisons. We must attempt to craft a national Guyanese narrative that is based on the premise that we each have an equal place in this mosaic that forms the Guyanese nation. Take, for instance, the strict dichotomy that is assumed between the descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured labourers. One recent interlocutor mentions Portuguese, Indian, and Chinese indentured who was introduced after the abolition of slavery, but studiously avoided mentioning the 40,783 Bajans and small islanders, along with the 13,355 “liberated Africans” straight out of Africa, who also came as indentured.
The last group had never been enslaved, and those who chose not to return to Africa brought and practised their West African cultures. Not subjected to the same intensity of violence from the colonials as had the original enslaved People of African Descent prior to 1838, they were living exemplars of African culture. From the records, some of them ended up in the villages across the coast where we see higher levels of African cultural retention.
When we compare these overall 54,138 indentured of African descent to the 82,000 local Africans who had been freed, we would appreciate the significance of African indentureship. Especially when we know that the 82,000 who had survived the slave regimen continued to suffer a higher mortality rate. Ironically, there were several instances recorded of Indian indentured – along with freed enslaved Africans – protesting that the West Indian indentured were undercutting their wages! For several decades after the formation of the Guyana Police Force in 1839, most of the policemen recruited were immigrant Barbadians, to ensure that the orders of the White officers were carried out. In my village of Plantation Uitvlugt, we had a separate “Bajan Quarters”, distinct from the old “Nigger Yards” Martin Carter wrote about, and in which, ironically, the new Indian and other early indentured were housed.
As late as the 1920s, after the much-criticized “Colonization Scheme” was eventually aborted, 1729 West Indians of African Descent were contracted to work on the plantations, as opposed to 607 Indians. The 100th birthday of one of those Bajans from Uitvlugt will be celebrated this coming October. Both Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte had Barbadian forbears.
Incidentally, a pernicious falsehood being peddled in one divisive narrative is to claim that the land being titled for our Indigenous Peoples is for “reparations”. It is nothing of the sort. The European colonists had treaties with the latter group, and Annex C of our Independence Legislation acknowledged their pre-colonial ownership of land occupied.
As I have stressed, it was the working of the systems imposed on us by the British, whether political (imperialism), economic (pre-capitalist), or cultural (cultural hegemony), that kept us all in thrall. Today, we are still busy blaming each other for our mess, and not questioning whether those bequeathed systems are not still contributing to our problems. And that we should get busy, as a first step, in modifying them to assist in leading to greater equity and justice for all of us. Colonialism continues as “coloniality”, and those narratives that stress greater rights for some citizens over others facilitate its divide-and-conquer imperative.
