DR RITA PEMBERTON
The termination of the abominable system of apprenticeship and the implementation of what has been termed 'full Emancipation' on August 1, 1838, was marked by officially mandated church services and joyous celebrations by the very grateful freed Africans.
Given the contentious issues which emerged during the apprenticeship period (1834-1838), it was very evident that the transition from the confusing, conflict-ridden, half-free status that was apprenticeship to full freedom would not be smooth.
There were irreconcilable differences between the two groups which occupied the Tobago space. While the law changed the status of the Africans, there was no facility to liberate the planting community and its supporters from their enslavement to the notion of the operation of plantations with a servile work force under absolute planter control.
The ruling class remained obstinate in its opposition to Emancipation and its determination to nullify its impact as far as possible. Hence the House of Assembly enacted a number of restrictive laws to ensure that objectives of the ruling class were attained.
On the other hand, the law made no provision for the allocation of land resources to the free Africans, who presumably, were expected to remain within the precincts of the plantations and the responsibility of their former masters.
However, the freed Africans were anxious to shed the restrictions of the former era, pursue their ambitions and make Emancipation real. They sought to assert their freedom from planter control and become independent landowners.
The dream of land owning was not easily realised, because of the impediments deliberately set up by plantation owners in their effort to ensure that the freed population remained an available work force to maintain the operations of the impoverished sugar industry in the traditional manner.
Firstly, there were gentlemen's agreements not to sell land to the freed people; but there was no rigid compliance, because the Tobago sugar industry was an unprofitable enterprise.
Many estates were heavily indebted, few were able to break even and the desperate planters who sought to cut their losses advertised their properties for sale on the London market but failed to attract buyers. Some had little option but to sell to available purchasers.
Secondly, land was sold at the prohibitive price of £20 ($96) per acre, which was a strategy to make land unaffordable to free Africans, most of whom earned eight pence (16 cents) a day as estate labourers.
Such was the determination of some freed people that some who persevered and bought land fell victim to unscrupulous planters who sold them useless land - very hilly, with no access; marshy and uncultivable land; land that they did not own; in some cases crown land which the vendors had no authority to sell; and land with no title. In some instances, the purchasers were not given any receipts, so there was no evidence of the trans
