Slavery in AfricaIntroduction

Throughout history, slavery in Africa has taken a variety of forms—from slavery stemming from the outcome of war, where enemies taken captive are sold into slavery, to debt slavery, plantation slavery and criminal slavery. For many African states, slavery offered an opportunity to boost their economies: Africans viewed slaves as commodities to buy and sell as well as free labor to work in the commerce industry (Austin, 2017). Today slavery still exists in parts of Africa, though the practice was officially abolished in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of the anti-slavery movement in Europe (Klein, 1978), with Niger and Mauritania being the last holdouts to criminalize slavery in 2003 and 2007 respectively. Nonetheless, it is widely reported that slavery as a practice is still alive in well, with an estimated 8% of Niger’s population being held in slavery (Andersson, 2005) and people in the Sudan being sold into slavery in the wake of the civil war there (Bederman, 2013). This paper will discuss the problem of slavery in Africa from the standpoints of ethos, pathos and logos.

Ethos

From the standpoint of ethos, it must be said that it is immoral and unethical for slavery to exist in Africa and it must be fought against. While slavery in the ancient times in Africa resembled more of a system of indentured servitude, with some slaves retaining some rights, the introduction of the concept of chattel slavery (slaves as basically less than human with no rights whatsoever) changed what little good existed about the practice (Lovejoy, 2012). Throughout the history of Africa, slavery negatively impacted societies and cultures, moving hundreds of thousands of people from one part of the continent to another (and even all around the world, once the Arab slave trade began). This destabilizing effect made slavery an immoral practice even though it was a financially profitable practice for those who engaged in the slave trade.

The Atlantic slave trade is seen as one of the worst examples of slavery to come out of Africa, with estimates of the number of slaves sold during this time to be between 8 and 20 million Africans (Curtin, 1972). This slave trade lasted for centuries, spanning the 15th to 20th century. Many people lost their lives because of the harsh conditions of this slave trade...

The immoral nature of this slave trade was hotly contested and debated among the civilized world in the West but it took centuries before the practice was finally abolished. Still, as parts of Africa are subjected to war (as in the Sudan) and the chaos of weak governmental oversight (as in Niger), the slavery of Africans still continues and this immoral practice is perpetuated from one generation to the next, forcing some people even today to be born into slavery in parts of the African continent, never to know their freedom. This is unfortunate because as Freire (2000) points out, “if I do not love the world—if I do not love life—if I do not love people—I cannot enter into dialogue…[and that] dialogue cannot exist without humility” (p. 90). In order to stop slavery in Africa today, there needs to be a greater dose of humility and love, and that is highly unlikely to occur as Africa’s resources become the focus of competing powers looking to exploit the earth and the people inhabiting the land to enrich themselves.
Pathos

From the standpoint of pathos, it can be said that everyone who has experienced slavery knows what it means to be held captive against your will, forced to work against your will, and made to serve someone other than yourself against your will. Slavery has a psychological and sociological ramification: it oppresses the minds of both the enslaved and those in society who permit it (Freire, 2000). In Africa, slavery existed for many centuries across the continent, and even as the colonial powers began to exert their influence in the states of Africa, slavery continued in various forms. People do not like to think that what they are doing is a violation of the natural law—especially when they stand to profit personally from it. But when a country allows slavery to exist, it undermines its own national character, its own spiritual health, its own justification for existing in the first place. Every person who is enslaved is a call to the rest of humanity—a reminder that the dark side of human nature still exists, and that people who are in a position of power have a responsibility to address this dark side and to restrain it. From the Sudan,…