PUBLIC AFFAIRS: Freedom, democracy and justice ... for whom?

Peta-Anne Baker, Contributor

The television news of last Friday night presented us with horrifying video images of a person identified as a police officer shooting an unarmed man lying defenceless on the ground. In the moments leading up to this event, the man had been beaten with a baton by a uniformed policeman while the bystanders screamed with delight.

When that first shot was fired, a woman’s gleeful voice was heard urging what sounded like “Shat him again!” The subsequent police report stated that the man was suspected of having murdered a woman, attacked the police and was shot and killed. This time there will be no demonstrations demanding “We want justice!”, and most people will quickly subdue their disgust and dispel any idea that if this can happen to one man it has happened to others. They will try to rationalise the action as being that of one “out-of-control” member of the security forces.

People who challenge the right of the security forces to act with impunity or question the need for an extension of the state of emergency are being called “human-rights fundamentalists”. Public-opinion polls declare that the majority of people supported not just an extension of the state of emergency, but its expansion to other parishes, if not the entire island. Voices are being raised in the print media and on the talk shows calling for the suspension of all vestiges of democratic rule and the installation of a military government. (A variant has been to have one man “run tings”, at least for a while.)

Freedom’s just another word

In recent times, a group of intellectuals have engaged in a debate about whether words like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ have become so wedded to arguments about formal political structures like political parties and voting, or to larger national and international projects like the invasion of Tivoli or Iraq, that we have lost sight of what these concepts mean to the average person. For the man in Friday’s events, his “freedom” to live a life that was not subject to violent assault and of a normal length was radically eliminated that day. Indeed, if as the news report suggests, he was mentally ill, his other “freedoms” to have access to appropriate health care and to be treated as a dignified human being were obviously not accorded to him, even in the final moments of his life.

For the predecessors who some of us will remember over these days, freedom had very tangible meanings. Economic historian Woodville Marshall reviewed evidence of the hopes and expectations of emancipation among the free Africans and came up with an interesting list. For them it meant the choice of place of residence: plantation, hillside or squatter settlement outside a larger town. It meant the ability to determine how one’s labour was used: in the cultivation of one’s own ground or that of the plantation owner. If it was to be used in the service of the plantation owner, it meant control over the price that was paid for one’s labour.

Importantly, freedom was not only about material well-being – a factor which those who often appeal to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to justify inattention to matters like freedom and democracy need to consider. The free Africans also expected to find equality in the courts, to which they frequently had to refer in order to deal with the efforts of the planters to curtail their freedom.

In fact, other sources report that free persons of mixed African and European descent not only made use of the courts, but also of the colonial legislature, entering into alliances with sympathetic whites to pursue their political agenda, which included winning the right to represent themselves. This was how George William Gordon came to be a member of the House of Assembly for St Thomas.

Emancipation also meant that the Africans hoped to be free of restrictions on their freedom of ideas, worship and association. It meant that they no longer expected to have to hide the instruments of healing and celebration, and that they would no longer be bound within the Anglicised walls of the Christian churches, even those that were instrumental in supporting their movement to “full free”.

Free villages

The establishment of free villages actually began before the formal end of slavery, although the momentum for their creation increased significantly after August 1, 1838. It is well known that the churches, especially the Baptist Church, raised money and bought estates and lands on the outskirts of the estates on which the newly freed Africans could settle and begin their lives.

How many of us realise that the plots of land were sold, not given, to the formerly enslaved? Where did the money come from? It came from the savings they had been able to generate from the sale of provisions grown on the small plots they had on the plantations. The enslaved labour force on the plantation had been expected to feed itself, and so each family had its “garden”. Some were successful enough to produce for sale and to save some of the proceeds. This was what provided the basis for their new start in life.

Unfortunately, there were many who started that life in debt, as the cost of the land was recorded as a charge against future earnings.

There are other intriguing findings from research into the establishment of the free villages. For example, the fact that the plots had to be paid for meant that the residents had to have or demonstrate the potential to have a certain economic standing. This did not mean that they were wealthy, but neither were they abjectly poor as might be assumed, having been enslaved.

The allocation of land and the determination of the size of those plots appeared at times to have been as bedevilled by organisational and personal affiliation as is the distribution of housing and allocation of contracts today. However, instead of affiliation to political party, it was affiliation to church that was an important, if not determining, factor. Those who were drawn to the expanding Native Baptist Church were not as “qualified” (even if they had the money) as those affiliated to the Baptist churches whose English and American friends had raised the money to purchase land.

An examination of maps and other records found instances where the elder or deacon responsible for the distribution ended up with the largest plots of land. Others who were less well connected received much smaller and poorer quality allocations, often miles away from their homes. An overarching characteristic which emerged was the social and economic homogeneity of the new settlements and the degree of compliance expected of their residents.

Is it just?

Education Minister Andrew Holness had to do some urgent fire-fighting on Thursday this past week in response to The Gleaner’s front-page story that tuition fees for tertiary education were set to double. He tried to explain that this would not happen come this September, (although given cuts in funding for some public universities, some increases will be necessary). What the Government was moving towards was a system of open access to higher education, conditioned only by academic performance.

As Minister Holness puts it, he is pursuing a policy where anyone who has been accepted into a university will be able to access low-cost financing to pursue their dream. The Government will, by this means, be able to shift its limited resources from higher education to the lower ends of the system – an entirely plausible proposal.

One sticking point is timing. Although there are far more entrants to higher education with working-class backgrounds, we know that a lack of adequate support, not a lack of ability, prevents many more from producing the kind of academic results needed to gain acceptance to top-quality universities and colleges both in Jamaica and abroad. This means that the investments in early childhood and primary education need to be substantially increased immediately so that more of the graduates of these systems will actually be able to receive those acceptance letters and qualify for those loans if and when they become available. If this is not done, the access to opportunity represented by higher education will continue to be conditioned by social and economic status.

As we survey much of what passes for analysis and debate today, we do not seem to have moved beyond slogans in our understanding of freedom, democracy or justice after 172 years of emancipation and 48 years of independence. Perhaps we should add to University of the West Indies political scientist Brian Meek’s proposal to use the next two years to examine what our independence has meant, a proposal to use this as the beginning of a bicentennial project to determine the full meaning of emancipation.

Dr Peta-Anne Baker is the co-ordinator of the Social Work Programme at the University of the West Indies, Mona. She may be contacted at pab.ja2009@gmail.com, or send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com