Devon Dick
Today, Emancipation Day, marks the eighth year since Ezra "Jeff" Lewis died. At his funeral service, his son Howard said that his father would take the children on trips around the island and explain the heritage of Jamaica.
Since then, I have tried it with my own children. God told the Israelites to recite the history of deliverance from Egypt and erect memorials to that effect. It is a sacred duty to recall emancipation, lest we forget and be enslaved again. Unfortunately, the story of emancipation is not adequately understood and analyzed hence we make the same mistakes over and over again. There is not an understanding of the mentality of the oppressors. When the Act of Emancipation became effective on August 1, 1834 it stated that all were free in one clause and then in the other clause, the so-called emancipated were forced to give free labour. The act was giving freedom with one hand and taking it away with another. In fact, about 2,000 planters received £20,000,000 as compensation for losing not the services, but losing the propertied rights over the enslaved.
Slaves got tricked
And what did the enslaved get? They were kicked from their provision grounds and were told they had to pay rent for the huts to which they were accustomed. And the cost of the rent was more than the wages they were being paid. The consensus was that apprenticeship was worse than slavery. Apprenticeship to
slavery was moving one foot forward and taking two steps backward.
Britain made no provision for the enslaved to prosper after 1834. They got no land. They got no money. They could not vote or be political representatives. No schools were built for them.
Former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams, theorized that Britain moved toward abolition, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because of the decline of sugar and capitalism. It is apparent that Britain was not informed by any lofty principles of equality. In fact, after 1834, Britain still imported cheaper sugar from countries that produced the sugar through slave labour.
Even the actions of abolitionists were not grounded in equality. They were offended by the barbarity of slavery but it was not because of a feeling that the African was equal to the European. Even within the church, the African was seen as the cursed descendants of Ham and the Europeans as the chosen ones.
From my reading it was Baptist deacon Sam Sharpe who expounded equality. Any mention of emancipation without Sam Sharpe and his
fellow protestors is incomplete and inaccurate.
Just like the olden days
In Jamaica, the new slave owners are those who murder our people, engage in human trafficking and trap young girls and boys in the sex trade, extort from business without providing any service, and pay persons for
honest, hard work, which cannot provide the basic necessities of life.
When the taking of the life of a policeman gets a greater punishment than taking the life of an ordinary citizen then we are not serious about equality. When there is a proposed Bill of Rights that does not guarantee each citizen access to quality health care then we are still enslaved.
Politicians who look to the colonial master for our security, prosperity and jurisprudence means that we are still enslaved. Private sector leaders who defend the minimum wage paid to so many Jamaicans as adequate are mouthpieces for slave drivers. And a church community that fails to empower the people is still serving the interests of the slave masters.
Emancipation is waiting to exhale.
Rev Devon Dick is pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church and author of "Rebellion to Riot: the Church in Nation Building."
