Patricia Green | Why Colonial era laws still govern land and housing?

“Yu nebba see sumoke widout fiyah” proverb translates from Jamaican into “you never see smoke without fire”. The emancipation of enslaved Africans across British territories became effective August 1, 1834. ‘The-Gleaner-and-Weekly-Compendium-of-News,’ No. 1, Vol. 1 was first published on September 13, 1834. I decided to revisit this first publication on its 189th anniversary, and what a discovery I made! There were two key types of plantation workers at the time of Emancipation. The enslaved Africans were termed ‘peasants’. Persons of European origin were referred to as ‘labourers.’

Reporting on page four about the state of the island, this first edition wrote, “...greatest care and protection should be taken to prevent any outbreaking or the exhibition of any disorderly spirit among our peasantry ...”. Encyclopaedia Britannica elaborated that ‘peasants’ as a class have tended to disappear as society industrialises, resulting in the consolidation of farming plots into larger units, with accompanying emigration to the cities and other sites of industrial employment.

Also on page four is that Peter Daly, Esq, a gentleman of considerable property in Manchester but residing in England, was sending to his estate, “... Irish families for the purpose of being employed as labourers ...”. Peter Daly did in 1834 what King Charles I proclaimed in 1661, giving Jamaica lands to free-born British subjects. Britannica defines ‘labourer’ as a person who does hard physical work for money.

Another interesting revelation on page three, is Abou Rekir Jadiki. However, his enslaved name was Edward Doulan. His appreciative owner, Mr Anderson, reported as proving in 1834 “... to the world how highly he esteemed Edward ... to purchase his freedom, and granting him his Emancipation ...”.

DIFFERENTIAL ADVANTAGES

Careful interpretation of these 1834 Gleaner articles reveals that a European ‘labourer’ had differential advantages by receiving money for work, but the African ‘peasantry’ received only freedom from enslavement. Even then, the African had the additional burden of a four-year apprenticeship until ‘full freedom’ came in 1838.

Population data for Jamaica, elaborated by Barry Higman, shows a total of 378,050 persons in Jamaica in 1830, containing five per cent white, 10.6 per cent freed man, and 84.4 per cent enslaved.

At Emancipation, the British government paid out £20 million to slave owners for their loss of enslaved persons. Their descendants benefited continuously for 181 years, until 2015. The initial payout has a net value today of about £16.5 billion, although estimated at more than £200 billion of the public debt burden.

In my Gleaner article of September 17, ‘In search of tangible solutions for the housing conundrum,’ I suggested that a resolution to the daily contention of Jamaican house and land issues may only be resolved at the highest governmental level by radical and innovative local decolonisation interventions.

Extremely commendable is, according to an IRIE FM report, Minister of Housing Andrew Holness announced at the Jamaica Labour Party Central Executive meeting in Ocho Rios, St Ann, on the same publication day of my commentary, that, because of the state of old informal settlements, it is hard to regularise persons. The minister started considering programmes to help low-income earners access land at cheaper prices. Also, he promised to renew old informal settlements and address ongoing issues of squatting. Anxiously, Jamaica looks forward to concrete actions turning those promises into reality.

Why should successive governmental administrations continue to perpetuate colonial practices of marginalisation of the majority of African-Jamaicans who are repeatedly crying out for house and land ownership? Why are Jamaicans restricted from ownership of generational family lands for income generation and recreational purposes? Why are Jamaican beaches and heritage assets being consolidated into gated tourism properties that exclude and evict Jamaicans?

REMOVED PERSONS

Writing in 1946, C. K. Meeks, in A Note on Crown Lands, highlighted colonial land practices that continuously removed persons from ancestral and family lands on the continent of Africa, in the Pacific, and in the Caribbean regions. The term ‘Crown’ or ‘State lands’ may be confined to those lands over which the State has unqualified control, whether by succession to the absolute rights of former rulers, or by purchase, or by the process of legislation. There is another category of ‘other lands’ or ‘non-State lands’ that Meeks identifies, where the State might possess statutory powers, giving it the position of a trustee, or right of control over alienation to non-aliens, or of acquiring lands for public purposes.

In Africa, Britain took administration of Northern Nigeria in 1900, gaining a sole title privately for commercial concerns. These lands included a number of villages, and the villagers became labelled under the global environment as ‘squatters’. Likewise in Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe [formerly Rhodesia]. In the Fiji Islands, crown lands include the foreshore and beaches. In the Caribbean, Belize [formerly British Honduras] is mostly ‘crown lands’, which underlines the reception meted out to the British royals during the 70th Jubilee Caribbean tour.

All nations formerly under plantation slavery and colonisation should be mindful of the historic decision on September 21 in Brazil’s Supreme Court. This ruling addressed indigenous groups driven from their ancestral lands being declared unconstitutional. The legal thesis presented by big landowners, including agribusiness-backed, attempts to restrict the demarcation of indigenous lands not physically occupied with challenges to obtain written proof that remote (sometimes uncontacted) indigenous tribes were occupying lands in the years before the 1988 Constitution. The Supreme Court rejected the proposed regulation and guaranteed the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands. One judge remarked about caring for the ethnic dignity of a people who have been decimated and oppressed during five centuries of history, as an unpayable debt to the country’s indigenous peoples.

In Jamaica, there is the demand for registered land titles. However, continued marginalisation, coupled with consolidation of Jamaican lands, makes this untenable and unjust today, recalling that over 80 per cent historically former enslaved ‘peasantry’ were emancipated landless and without wages. They remained on plantation marginal lands assigned to them during enslavement, usually around a water source but unsuited for large-scale agriculture. As conglomeration and urbanisation occurred, many were pushed off these lands. The resultant uprisings of 1865 and, subsequently, 1930s unrests testify to such actions, the root centred around housing and land injustices. Such colonial government legacies and practices persist today. The descendants of these over 80 per cent emancipated ‘peasantry’ living on historic family lands are being called today, ‘squatters’.

Cartoonist Las May, on September 1, illustrated a woman addressing ‘Andrew [Holness]’, mouthing “... Brogad you mash up squatter houses ...!”, then turning angrily to ‘Dayton [Campbell]’ uttering “... and you mashing up the PNP ... !” Are there pending lessons from the judicial victory in Brazil for Jamaica?

Patricia Green, PhD, a registered architect and conservationist, is an independent scholar and advocate for the built and natural environment. Send feedback to patgreen2008@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com