By Barrington Braithwaite
Slavery has existed as long as there exists records of human history. But the slavery that birthed the New World and the advent of Europe as a world power is foremost in our imagination. Experiments with New world slavery did not begin with Africans. Amerindian and European bond slavery preceded Africans, but the climate killed the vitamin-deprived Europeans who had no defence to tropical hazards. European diseases had a fatal effect on the Amerindians.
The presence of the 800-year Moorish involvement in Europe had a tremendous self esteem effect on Christian Europe. This propelled the prime kingdoms of once Moorish Europe – Portugal and Spain – to undo the Moorish Islamic and older Khemetic presence. The Bible eventually became europeanised. God and his angels would define and separate the advent of Europe from the Black Moor, who was then characterised in Christian lore as the devil. The African slave trade echoed those sentiments when John Hawkins, the father of the African slave trade, carried on the Coat of Arms of his slave ship ‘Jesus’. With the establishment of the slave trade, emerged a twisting and adopting of the Hebrew writings that constituted the Bible to fit into the doctrine of justifying African slavery. This planted the seeds of Euro-Ethnic supremacy.
African kingdoms had long mastered food production and storage. Through observation, trial and error, they had control over many of the tropical diseases that killed off Europeans. Europe traded with African kingdoms for tribesmen captured in war or who had offended the hierarchy. These tribesmen were brought from various kingdoms into the state of slavery. Sometimes the Africans who came into slavery came from tribes that were hostile to each other in their homelands. Slavery took their tribal identity. It attempted to erase their historical memory and self-worth. It succeeded in some areas, while in other areas the archetype became dormant in the face of specific trials as a springboard for survival. Plantation existence was a constant conflict of the planter wardens and holy men against the humanity that were fettered to this ordeal. Several methods were applied to undermine and destroy the strong values of tribal-family structures, from rampant savagery to mental manipulation. Africans fled plantations, created their own colonies as maroons, burnt and murdered plantation owners. In some unusual situations, they were able to manage where humane owners were smart enough to establish subtle collaborations. To justify slavery an entire era of literature was composed to define Africans as savages, less than human and deserving of slavery. Africans endured and, in many cases, defied the myths.
The plantation system of Demerara was further developed after the final English acquisition of the three colonies – Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo – in 1812. The British had made the trade of slaves illegal by 1808. The English had subsequently employed African troops in the now established West India Regiment from its colonies. But slavery was still slavery and the imperial race ideology was still psychologically intact, controlling lives and monitoring progress.
Throughout the age of the African slave trade – 1500’s – 1800’s – Africans did not have rights under the law. To subsidise the cost of feeding slaves, enslaved peoples were allotted garden plots. They planted crops, implemented drainage systems, and planted rice. They also cultivated plantains, yams, and oranges, while they raised livestock, chickens, and pigs. They then took their produce to the township of Stabroek and sold at the slave market, which was located where the St. Andrews Church and Demico House stand. The Africans also capitalised on the eager market of ships that entered the town’s harbours. These ships required fresh food items, especially limes and other citrus to battle scurvy incurred due to long periods at sea without vitamin C. This enabled the Africans to earn, save and plan for a better day. The Africans were doing something innate to a heritage that spanned from East to North Africa and from North to West Africa.
Before emancipation, the Stabroek/Georgetown and other plantations were not only populated by enslaved Africans and white masters. There were free men and women of colour (Africans) and manumitted Africans (those who had purchased their freedom). There were free Africans and Mulatto hucksters who occupied the small adjoining town of Bridgetown. These hucksters owned slaves who would take certain items to the plantations and tempt their brethren to buy their goods. The hucksters obtained their goods from the ships. They also had to purchase a permit to enter the plantations.
Despite these glimpses into the tribal cultural forms that they were now separated from, the enslaved African still worked to death. By 40, his body was broken, his spirit smothered, and he or his loved ones sold on the whim of some spiteful Plantation Manager. He died slowly if he was unable to run away. On many occasions, he revolted, and with indifference he looked death in the eyes. This birthed the folk song, ‘Me nah dead yet fly ah bother meh’.
Emancipation came and new levels of struggle emerged. The Africans terrified the cocksure plantocracy when he stepped forward, negotiated with them and bought their plantations. The planters were now made economically challenged by the loss of free labour. The emancipated African was rooted in the thriftiness and boldness of his ancestral archetype. But he was a different man. He had become, as Eddy Grant (our local International Super Star) once told me, as steel. The enslaved Africans had evolved through the infernal holocaust of slavery and its demeaning doctrines and philosophies. Even though they were brought and enslaved as ore-prototype, they now had new memories, new dynamics and allegiances, along with the scars, internal and external, the man of steel would endure.
The post-emancipation era was an arena between the freed African – whether he lived in the village or town – and the colonial planter class. With the coming of indentured peoples, new mechanisms of divide and rule were encouraged. Challenges were thrown at him to test his temperament and creativity. The wily planter would cultivate a divide and rule labyrinth of competitiveness and social unfairness which he tipped here or there. This resulted in the riots of 1856, when Africans rose up in frustration against the Portuguese. Taxes were implemented against the African villages by the Colonial state. Though intended for village drainage and services, these taxes were used in part to finance indentureship. Because of the 1856 riots, taxes were increased against the African small holders and wage earners to compensate Portuguese losses. Demeaning caricatures were imported, pasted up and used against the African psyche. Take some time to read ‘Scars of Bondage’ by Eusi Kwayana and Tchaiko Kwayana. Religion persisted, with the borrowed twist of the concocted slave trade-sponsored European state religious order, to justify slavery through the additions of fictions enveloping the Noah Curse. This affected the African believers, except for those who sought spiritual guidance in sects like the Jordonites.
In the conclusion, the African lifted himself from the fetters, knowing and knowing not, falling, stumbling, traumatised, while unknowingly clinging to the archetypical voice within – the dormant ‘I AM’ that pierced the layers of physical, mental and spiritual falsifications to ‘know himself’. He sought and recognised the simple human truths that assure his dignified humanity.
