On Generation Property (15 May 2004)

There is a lot of talk these days about generation property, the practice by which Bahamians have owned land throughout the archipelago throughout the ages. It's a problem, we're told; it impedes development. Time for us to fix the system.

Well, good. Just as long as we don't fix the system by making it just like every other land-owning system in the western world.

Keep in mind the following points. First, generation property is an oral way of organizing people's relation to land. The principles that govern the custom are fundamentally different from the principles that govern every other system of land ownership; and any bid to deal with the system must recognize and respect this fact.

Second, generation property is a strategy that has provided the descendents of slaves with access to land that is unprecedented in the Caribbean and Latin American region.

Third (and this point is closely related to my second), generation property has provided black Bahamians with the ownership of prime land in a region where the second-class position of people of non-European descent is pretty universally entrenched.

These are the main benefits. But what about the disadvantages — the inability of people who live in the capital to profit from their landholdings in far-off islands, or the inability of Family Islanders to generate cash from the land that they own?

Let me answer that with a story: the tale of The Creek, New Providence.

Once upon a time, it's said, long before Fox Hill and Gambier and Adelaide, well before the Loyalists had come to the Bahamas with their slaves, there was a settlement in the eastern part of New Providence called The Creek. The heart of this settlement congregated around the northern part of the area we now call Fox Hill, and took its name from the body of water that is now known as the Fox Hill Creek. Where these people originated is not known. We do know that they were a community of Free Coloured people, and some of their descendants believe that their ancestors included the Lucayans who inhabited New Providence before the Europeans came. The presence of the ancient structure we call Blackbeard's Tower on Creek land indicates the age of the settlement, and Creek people will tell you that they have been on New Providence for a very long time indeed. They will also tell you that there was a time when their forefathers and mothers owned all the land from the north coast to the south coast, from Johnson Road all the way to Yamacraw and the sea. Their property was generation property, and was passed from generation to generation, with all the owners living upon and profiting from the land jointly.

But The Creek no longer exists. In its place are the communities we know as the Eastern Road, High Vista, Mount Vernon, Sans Souci, Camperdown and Winton — upscale communities for the private and the privileged, whose homes can fetch in the millions, if you believe the prices you see on real estate websites, and whose property very few of the descendents of Creek families can afford.

How did this happen? Well, the popular story is that during the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s real estate developers stole the land from the owners, parcelling it up and selling it at great profit to those people who could afford to buy lots in a beautiful and fertile part of New Providence. It's a good story, but it's not strictly true. What did happen was that land developers ignored the custom of generation property and applied the legal definition of real estate to the areas they wanted to buy. What that meant was that they identified the single owner of the property — in law the eldest male in the family, and approached him with the offer to survey and register his land. That done, they identified tracts of land that he appeared not to be using, and offered him cash money for it — huge amounts of money that he had no other way of obtaining. What he didn't know was that those huge amounts were but a fraction of the money the developers could make from the resale of the land.

The problem wasn't the crookedness of the real estate developers, or the unscrupulousness of the uncles and grandfathers who sold their relatives' land without compunction. The problem was that the principles that governed generation property were fundamentally different from the principles that govern every other kind of land ownership in the Bahamas.

The western (European) way of dealing with land regards land as a commodity, something that an individual can own and sell at will, that can be valued according to the laws of supply and demand. This is a particularly literate way of looking at the world. Land can't move, and therefore can't really be sold; what is sold in these cases is pieces of paper that confer on individuals the right to own, sell and profit from a specific parcel of earth.

The custom of generation property regards land as a resource that must be administered and protected, but that cannot be owned or transferred. Families belong to the land, and not the other way around. And where land and people go together, the land can never be sold.

What the latter provides is access to land forever for generations of Bahamians yet unborn.

The challenge before us, as I see it, is to find a way to ameliorate the disadvantages of the custom while retaining the greatest benefit — the ownership in perpetuity by black Bahamians of prime property. Our challenge is to write a law that recognizes the principle of perpetual and communal land ownership for ordinary Bahamians, while at the same time enabling those Bahamians to profit from the land they own. Perhaps that will involve the creation of family corporations; perhaps it will make provision for the long-term leasing of generation property to second-home owners.

The answer is not to find ways to survey and parcel off and sell the land. Cash money can only go so far, and the beauty of our islands and the desire of rich Americans and Europeans for sun, sand and sea is worth far, far more than Bahamians can ever pay. Once sold, land is gone forever; and to take it from our grandchildren is not within our rights.