RECENTLY, we witnessed the stirring of a hornet’s nest. Deep down within us we sensed alarm, fear, and a primordial panic …all because of land. There was an underlying anxiety that we were again becoming a landless people; we began to relive the hopelessness our ancestors felt when they were taken from their land in Africa and brought here to cultivate this land.
The land we had been brought here to cultivate, the land that for hundreds of years was beyond our grasp, the land that our local heroes Bradshaw and Simmonds had secured for us and put within our grasp, thereby righting the wrongs of three hundred years… yes, this land was about to be taken from us again relegating us to the status of being a landless people.
“Hold on to your property, and will it to your children” sang the late great King Arrow.
But what of those who do not yet have property? Will they and their children be destined to roam this land with a deep feeling of inferiority and the stigma of being “forever landless”?
This situation could have been avoided if sugar workers, who along with their ancestors had toiled on our lands for over three hundred years, had been allocated portions of land on the closure of the Sugar Industry.
By now we would have developed a peasantry – a bloc of people who would not have to be told to make agriculture a priority at this time – a bloc of people who had collateral and had become “bankable”, who could afford to live off the land without looking to government for handouts.
This tsunami of emotions we are now experiencing are as a result of the earthquake of revelations coming from the Land Bill - the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank (Vesting of Certain Lands) Bill which was approved in Parliament on Friday 21st September, 2012,.
Both the Prime Minister and the IMF representative had agreed that although St. Kitts Nevis was highly indebted (200% of GDP), it was “asset rich”. It was therefore OK to borrow US $84 million from the IMF.
There was no doubt from the statements that the assets referred to was our land.
The confirmation came from the Prime Minister:
“One of the groups that we have been speaking with is the IFC which is the private sector part of the World Bank, and they are working out a strategy as to how we can use this enormous asset of our land to help retire some of our debt, especially as the debt repayments become due,” the Prime Minister said.
LAND FOR DEBT
How could we equate our land, our historical asset that appreciates annually, to a 15 year debt? But what fills us with consternation is that the Prime Minister and one other Minister appear to think that there was no other alternative.
At the time of the Govt/IMF Press Conference, the matter seemed to be already out of the hands of the Prime Minister and he was not even sure what would happen or how much land would be sold according to his self-confessed statement on the matter - as reported by WinnFm.com.
“One of the groups that we have been speaking with is the IFC which is the private sector part of the World Bank, and they are working out a strategy as to how we can use this enormous asset of our land to help retire some of our debt, especially as the debt repayments become due,” the Prime Minister said.
“WINN FM asked Dr. Douglas how much of the country’s sugar lands were being held as security by the National Bank and whether or not monies from the IMF would be used to settle SSMC debts.
“We do not know what the debt advisors are going to do,” he responded, referring to British debt consultants hired by the government.
“They’re now mapping out their strategy as to how they’re going to deal with it. But let me say that when we did take over the SSMC debt, we knew then that 1200 acres would satisfy that entire $400 million.” (How much land, we wonder, would satisfy 3 billion dollars)
So as we hang…dangling in the wind, we are forced to ask, “What happens when we become ‘asset poor’ and are still indebted?”
This is the issue which we ought to consider for it is said that if we do not know our history we are prone to repeat mistakes we have already made.
Our ancestors worked for hundreds of years in the canefields and they were never paid. We are indebted to THEM. They toiled on land that was never paid for; it was taken.
The principled stand required to tilt this imbalance of history thrust upon is to ensure that our sugar workers and our indigenous people get easy access to this same land that fashioned our history - now that it is in our hands.
Making it more difficult for our people to own this land and making it easier for those who had taken it years ago to regain it, is tantamount to perpetuating this historical imbalance.
Is a 15 year debt enough for us to give up our 300 year birthright? How can this situation be reversed?
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