Coffy

Coffy — more commonly rendered Cuffy, and in Akan, Kofi, the day-name given to a boy born on a Friday — was an Akan man of Coromantee heritage, born in the 18th century on the Dutch Gold Coast, in what is today southern Ghana. Trafficked across the Atlantic into bondage, he was held in the Dutch colony of Berbice, on the coast of present-day Guyana, where he labored on the Berbice River as a cooper, a maker of barrels.

On 23 February 1763, enslaved people on Plantation Magdalenenberg along the Canje River rose against their enslavers, and the rising spread swiftly through the plantations. Within days Coffy stood at the head of the movement. He gathered thousands of the enslaved into an organized force, appointed Captain Accara over military affairs, and declared himself Governor of Berbice — not merely a rebel, but the sovereign of a self-freed people.

For much of 1763 Coffy governed a liberated territory and negotiated with the Dutch, at one point proposing that the colony be divided between Africans and Europeans. But the coalition fractured under the strain of war and rival captains. When Captain Atta turned against him, Coffy took his own life rather than submit; his death was reported to the colonial governor on 19 October 1763. The wider rebellion fought on until the last insurgents were taken on 15 April 1764.

Today Coffy is honored as Guyana's first National Hero. The anniversary of his rising, 23 February, has been the nation's Republic Day since 1970, and he stands cast in bronze at the 1763 Monument in Georgetown's Square of the Revolution. He raised a colony of the enslaved into a free people, and his name endures as a beacon of dignity and defiance.