Trade unionist Lincoln Lewis yesterday appeared before the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into African ancestral land matters and he offered proof that an ancestor bought the village of Kingelly on the West Coast Berbice in the 1800s and asked for assistance in reclaiming the remaining unoccupied land.
Lewis presented the transport for the village, which he stated was dated 1850, to the CoI. He had also told the commission that his great-great-grandfather, Kojo McPherson, had also bought the village of Lichfield, West Coast Berbice in 1840, but said that squatting was only an issue in Kingelly.
“…That my great, great, great grandfather Kojo did not leave a will for his descendants is a matter of perspective in the era that he lived; that the absence of such document may have caused others not of his lineage to think that it is acceptable to claim land that they did not purchase nor could not have inherited, our submission to this commission is to have this injustice corrected,” Lewis told the commission.
