….. Jamaican British Obeah Law in Jamaica

Obeah has risen its head yet again and I continue to be mixed up, confused and befuddled, to use a nice English word, as to why this is even a conversation in present day.  In my thinking the British, in their nice English words, crafted and enacted a law, from a space of deep and many fears.  In actuality if you were in their shoes, you would also have been horribly, many sleepless nights terrified and in extreme fear of being separated from what you had so deliberately taken unto yourself in such unGodly, infernally evil ways.  A man and his wealth are never, ever easily parted.  And so the story, which is now as old as the saying, goes:

Led by your God and your Queen, perhaps your Queen and your God, (after all it was in her name that you claimed the land on which others already dwelled), and directed by your papal bull, you went out to capture not only parcels of lands, but whole countries.  But I err, you in fact went out near and far to buck down others, perform genocide, capture their lands, use their resources to generate wealth for you, you and only you, teach them a pagan religion and think up as many atrocities as you could to make yourself feel that you were exercising God given ‘dominion.’  

On my Island you started by terrorizing the people who greeted you.  You enslaved them and blessed them with your debauchery.  You tested your weapons on them and deposed their God (at least you made an absolutely devastating for them, effort).  You inserted yourself as their ‘master’ and made it as physically, mentally, spiritually, painfully, emotionally debilitatingly, (no this is not a nice English expression), clear, as you possibly could, that gold, more gold and only gold was to be revered, respected, worshiped.  But since there were no inhibitions whatsoever around my money making equating your life taking, gaining riches through the shedding of the blood, sweat and tears of the ‘mastered,’  resulted in even greater profit making investments being made.  My island of small farming technologies was converted to a money generating plantation system fostering the grand entry of more blood, sweat and tears from enslaved Africans to continue the ‘watering’.  

The ‘mastered’ grew in numbers and the ‘masters’ grew in the devising of the number of evil ways in which they could ‘master.’  The Obeah Law of 1898 was just another one of the evilly devised tools to victimize and drive fear into black people, to further disorient and disconnect us from our own ways of being, separate us from the ways we used to communicate with our God, remove from us our rites and responsibilities to worship God, venerate our ancestors and preserve our culture and cultural identity.  It served and serves to demolish our sense of self, destroy our identity, render us a people without roots.  Ones and ones but no community. Imagine for a moment how Christians in Jamaica would feel if it was made illegal for them to pray, sprinkle holy water, anoint with olive oil, cleanse with hyssop, take holy communion, read the Bible, talk and sing about Jesus. What if they were prohibited by law to call out to God, in the ways they knew how, if they were the ones persecuted, enslaved, or put upon in some other ways, by others?  

And yet this was not what the 1898 Obeah Law was truly about.  The law was about protecting the White European system of slavery that provided massive earnings, incomes, wealth, riches, money, call it what you may, to a people who had come with greed in their bodies, conquest in their minds and a pagan religion which, they may have reasoned, they would leave with us in reciprocity for all they branded, stole, raped, beat, bled, mutilated, tortured, stretched, burned, hung, purged from and out of us.  It was about ensuring that white people could retain their ‘supremacy,’ perform their moral depravity, guarantee their lifestyle and continue their exploitation of the economic and social structure of the Island to their sole advantage.  It ensured and protected the wealth, riches, prosperity of the white countries and white people who were the first to capture land, traffic humans, and generally introduce crime and violence into our space.  The Obeah Law was about doing everything possible, legalizing everything they could, to shut down the revolts and rebellions of our enslaved ancestors.  It was part of their response to the 5 parishes wide Takyi rebellion which clearly displayed the spiritual strength and prowess of the ancestors.  

So, if conditions have changed, if the Colonial period and government are no more and if the colonial ‘masters’ have shipped out, why has the Obeah Law not departed with them?  In an emancipated, 62 years independent Jamaica, are we not now ‘free’ to be who we are?  How can the racist, ignorant, desperate, protect me and mine at all cost slaver master – imposed Law, where the burden of proof is on the accused, be of any relevance in a country that claims post colonialism?   Who is the Obeah Law of 1898 serving now, today?  Why is a Law that strengthened and supported a system of slavery be tolerated in a country where we now say ‘formerly enslaved,’ acknowledging the rites and responsibilities of ‘freedom,’ still on our law books?  Who and what purpose is it serving?   Since the Law specifically mentions myalism how can that be so in a country with a constitution that provides for freedom of religion? 

What intelligent conversation do we really need, to agree that the 1898 Obeah Law, (recently amended, as part of a larger initiative to remove flogging), that holds you guilty until proven innocent, that allows for you to be arrested and detained without a warrant, that goes against the constitution and the fundamental presumptions of the Justice system of Jamaica, cannot possibly continue to be accommodated?  

There are no chains around our necks

No shackles on our hands and feet

No cat-a-nine stands ready to whip our backs

No dogs to chase us runaways

No plantation to work from dawn till dusk

No backra to sell our wife or child

No Queen Victoria to set us free

August morn has come and gone

For are we not our own slave masters

The brutal bonds of physical slavery

Replaced by the invisible chains and shackles

Which engage our spirits in mental slavery

But August morn has come and gone

Who will set us free

Am I the only one mixed up, confused and…befuddled, to use a nice English word?

Fofie

October 30, 2024