WHAT must be understood was that the era of emancipation and the endeavours of the African were not met with admiration and applause, but rather with a vindictive scorn that would not be tempered easily. The Africans who were brought into slavery, and those who were later brought into indentureship, came into this part of the world and found common ground. But the planters would ensure that the Asiatic were not to find common ground under the view of the Plantation Massah with the Africans. A conflict of putting the indentured non-African against the African would be subject to the orchestra of propaganda and foul definitions that would be levelled at the African, and in saying this it embodied Africans of all shades.

The fact that it was African labour and knowledge that civilised Demerara would not be recognised. The sea had to be kept out, and this was achieved by building massive concrete sea walls. These walls must also have sluices at intervals fitted into them, through which excess accumulation of water is propelled out at low tide. The swampy waters are held back, and, for this purpose, the lands are impoldered with dams constructed at the back and sides of each rectangular tract of land, which is the plantation layout, while water is let in for irrigation by way of long canals running through the middle of each rectangular tract.

To think that the plantocracy of that age pronounced on Africans as lazy, for negotiations of better payment and medical presence on the plantation work fields. See Scars of Bondage by Eusi and Tchaiko Kwayana, a book that deserves continuous shelf presence.

It has been pointed out that the development of a peasantry is always an historical step. In many of the communal villages, the villagers established collective farms. This cooperative peasantry had, as we have seen, founded a great enterprise, developed it with marked business acumen, and were forcing into the colony what seemed to the colonists a very dangerous doctrine. It was the most revolutionary attempt, though small in scale in global terms, of the African and of any people at rehabilitation after slavery. Together, these communal villages and collective farms represented a break from plantation society. The African was thus immediately able to set up an economic system and a civilisation that rivalled that infant capitalism.

The plantation immediately went into action against the cooperative village system. In the London Times, the cooperatives were attacked as “little band of socialists living in communities.” Under the combined attack of the plantation, and the government from outside, and the Church from inside, the cooperative economy collapsed. See Scars of Bondage.

I must reiterate that it did not fail for all time. I can recall when apples first returned to this country, I bought a few. My eldest, then a child, was at my home, and I washed one and gave it to her. I continued to converse with my colleague. Andy whispered to me, “Like yuh daughter ent know how fuh eat the apple.” I called her, but before I could speak she responded, “Daddy I ent like this kinda mango, it ent got juice.” At that time, this book was not yet published. I took it back and, to her pleasure, gave her two mangoes.

As a onetime teen secretary of an agro-industrial cooperative, we – my friends and I – had a long chat on the subject of cooperatives. This movement that followed emancipation was well reborn and alive by the morn of Independence.