Maravi

4 Responses to “No compensation for slaves”
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TMan
August 29, 2012 at 12:04 pm

I wonder if Mr Alleyne would be interested in examining the causes of the decrease and decline of the African professional and intellectual population in T&T. This pool is slowly drying up presenting challenges with regard to filling political and corporate vacancies in T&T.
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Linda Edwards, class of '67
August 29, 2012 at 3:28 pm

This is not a reply but a comment. I am a descendant of the Freed Negroes- called Merikins by some detractors, who have cultivated their own land in the Company Villages since 1815, when my father’s people arrived. I am glad Mr.Alleyne expoed this myth of Indian Industriousness, which if believed, could case someone to ask why then did they not prosper in India?

A jumpstart in a new land is essential. This is why Jonas Mohammed BAth, a West African sultan, petitioned the crown for compensation for those MAndingoes who had already purchased their freedom. He never got a reply. In contrast, my African friends-malawians, Ghnaians, Nigerians have lived on their own land for hundred of years, and the landowning families intermarry, keping and extending property holdings. Some of the Company Village residents lost their land to chicanery. People rented out their holdings, and often and over time, the taxes were paid by the renter, who was Indian. Bitish law is, if you pay the taxes in your own name, after 21 years, it is your land. The Africans did not know this. Their ladholdings are traditional. Everyone knows its yours.

Now there is a mad scramble for regularization of title to lands in East Africa, as extensive mineral wealth has been found in Zambia, Malawi and Congo. One such case involves a friend of mine. She knows where the boundaries of her mother’s family land aare. they have lwys been there.Mother is illiterate and 97 years old. how does one prevent the rampant theft of their copper and iron ore rich lands?
what happened to the African in the Caribbean should be classified as genocide- a deliberate attempt to wipe out the gene pool, by outsiders.
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Linda Edwards, class of '67
August 29, 2012 at 8:11 pm

It was in Antigua, where I went to work as a consultant in 1988 that my eyes were opened to the possibilities denied us in TnT. All the liquor stores, jewellry stores and fancy boutiques in their airport were owned by very dark women, who in TnT woul have had a market stall as a business opportunity, and maybe, expanded to two market stalls. Women, African women in Antigua owned trucking businesses, a set of beauty supply stores and salons, owned by one woman, and deparartment stores. The head of Antigua Commercial Bank at the time, John Benjamin, was the only AFRICAN bank manager I knew, and they owned a number of other businesses besides the bank. I began to study their society, and that of Barbados and Jamaica, and found that it was only in Trinidad(not Tobago) where the East Indian had been inserted by the Brit, and supported in their position, that an almost permanent underclass had been ceated among African people.Of course most Trinis have traveled to North America and Europe, but not taken a critical look at their neighbouring islands, so they are unaware of how differently Trinidad fared in the emerging business scene.For less to start thinking of the resons for it. Even in Martinique, the African originated people owned busineses. I first went there in 1976. In Guadeloupe, however, almost everything was white-owned.This difference could be explained by the leadership of Aime Ceziare, Mayor of Fort de France, and a leading French Intellectual, founder of the concept of Negritude. We need in upcoming years to take a more critical look at the emergent business climate in Trinidad. An analysis of small business loans by any bank, could be quite revealing, but the will power, and the laws that would release the documents to an analyst, are not there, or not working. We prefer to believe in the myth of the Lazy African, and we resent the ones from Nigeria who come here and set up small businesses, while we gladly seem to do business with the new immigrant Chinese.

Incidentally, the ONLY Afro-Trini jeweller I know, is a descendant of those free Africans from 1815. His family has the deed to the land they were given, framed and hanging on the wall. A jump-start is a powerful thing.
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Mamoo
August 29, 2012 at 10:30 pm

I have always believe that slaves and their descendants should be compensated. I think $7 billion should be enough to make them happy. I would recommend Mr. Alleyne start a campaign by gathering before the British Embassy and making this claim. The slaves after slavery ran away from the land, to this day in Africa starvation is a common feature because of a lack of farmers. Haiti was perhaps the only nation where the people had the land for themselves yet it is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Why? Mr. Alleyne must explain. Also much of the Caribbean is owned by descendants of slavery.

Trinidad and Guyana saw the jealous descendants of slaves wanting more. Burnham tried that experiment by taking lands and giving it to descendants of slaves these lands remain uncultivated while indos fled this tyrant. Many have done extremely well for themselves. In Trinidad islanders were brought in “en mass”. Many of them received houses and today we are seeing the result of this with uneducated boys using the gun to slaughter without a conscience. Mr. Alleyne must understand capitalism, in a capitalist nation you can purchase property at market value. The real question for Mr.Alleyne is why descendants of slaves are prone to be unproductive, lazy and gun lovers.

Finally all descendants of slavery can get on board an airplane and with a one way ticket return to their African motherland. Mr. Goodluck will be happy to receive them.