Niger Sudan and the Issue of Slavery

Slavery in Africa

Introduction

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 and, if they managed to survive, they were sold into chattel slavery to farm and till the lands of the New World in most cases. 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, to Niger, to other parts of Africa where slavery is still a norm in spite of laws that have been passed to ban it, there is a need for real human leadership to intervene and put an end to this suffering.

The stories of modern day slaves are important to hear because they shed light on the reality. For instance, Simon Aban Deng is a former slave of Sudan. He spent several years of his youth as a child slave: “at nine he had been taken to Northern Sudan by Abdullahi, an Arab neighbour, enslaved for three and a half years by Abdullahi's family. He was beaten, worked constantly, slept with the animals and ate leftovers” (Bederman, 2013). Yet he was only one of many thousands “sold into slavery in the north as concubines, domestic servants, and farm labourers” (Bederman, 2013). Indeed, in 2008, the Sudan government estimated “that at least 35,000 were still enslaved in the borderland of Northern and Southern Sudan” (Bederman, 2013). Who are these people? Many of them are Christians—“taken north and forced to convert to Islam or die,” their faces branded to mark them as the property of another (Bederman, 2013). The cruelty of slavery and the barbarity of this practice are recounted by people like Deng who have survived their ordeal, made it to the West, and told their stories in hopes of making a difference. Truly a difference can be made—but it requires a united effort on all fronts in order to stop this menace from spreading once more throughout Africa and, indeed, the rest of the world.

Logos

From the standpoint of logos, slavery in Africa can be ended because it is social system that requires only a passive and disinterested people to look the other way in order for it to continue. As Andersson (2005) notes, ending slavery would “require a social revolution. An entire section of the population would have to be taught that they are not intrinsically inferior to others, but that is what they have believed for generations. The slave owners, and the establishment, are reluctant to teach them.” This reluctance on the part of the establishment, on the part of the politicians and those who benefit from the system of slavery in place in regions like Niger and the Sudan and Mauritania, this obstacle is what must be addressed. Human rights observes and the UN can work to create a world without slavery—but they need to be more involved in the education of the people. There needs to be a greater intervention on the behalf of slaves throughout the continent in order for real change to be effected.
Deng, for example, has pointed out on numerous occasions how the UN does little to actually make a difference and work to stop the slavery that still exists in Africa. Deng attended the Durban Conference in New York in 2011 “to bring the travesty against his people to the public” (Bederman, 2013). He direct his concerns to the fact that the UN does little to address the issue of slavery in Africa and mainly focuses instead on the actions of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, Deng has routinely “taken the UN to task for its priorities. He pointed out that for more than 50 years, 82 per cent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state -- Israel, leaving his people to fend for themselves.” In order for slavery to be adequately addressed in Africa, organizations like the UN have to start giving it more attention. The people of Palestine are not the only ones suffering. With some work, thanks to activists like Deng, the voice of African slaves can rise up and be heard and the world’s biggest organization dedicated to human rights can take action.

Conclusion

Slavery has existed in Africa for centuries in one form or another. However, as human rights and respect for others diminishes, slavery’s forms become worse and worse. Children are sold into slavery, are beaten and abused—women, too; and men are forced to live as slaves their whole lives even though officially slavery is outlawed. In states like Sudan, Niger, Mauritania and others, slavery still exists in Africa because there is an economic incentive that comes from owning another person—free labor. The unstable governments of these regions, the civil wars, the quest for power by exploiting the earth’s resources and the nation’s people—all of this allows for slavery to be perpetuated. In order to stop it, activists are banding together and demonstrating in front of the UN, but is anyone listening? The problem with slavery in Africa today is that too many people are still willing to look the other way.

References

Andersson, H. (2005). Born to be a slave in Niger. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4250709.stm

Austin, Gareth (2017). Slavery in Africa, 1804-1936. In David Eltis; Stanley L. Engerman; Seymour Drescher; David Richardson. The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 4, AD 1804–AD 2016. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bederman, D. (2013). Slavery in Africa is alive, well and ignored. Retrieved from
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/diane-bederman/slavery-africa_b_3975881.html

Curtin, Philip D. (1972). The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. University of Wisconsin Press. 

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. NY: Continuum.

Klein, Martin A. (1978). The Study of Slavery in Africa. The Journal of African History,
19(4): 599–609

Lovejoy, P. (2012). Transformations of slavery: A history of slavery in Africa. London, UK: Cambridge University Press.