The focus of this article is on contemporary slavery with some remarks about the past. I am not an expert on the subject, but one does not need to be to speak out against suffering and abuse. I believe that people ought to pay attention to and fight against modern slavery. Please do follow some of the blue links in the text if you wish to read more on the topic.
I decided to write this after visiting a small community in north-central Alberta. At the turn of the 19th century black pioneers settled in north-central Alberta in a place called Amber Valley. They were trying to find a more tolerant home than Oklahoma that had enacted laws limiting black rights. Slavery had ended, but not the discrimination. Discrimination and racism sadly still exists in Canada, but not to the extremes of “negative othering” that exists elsewhere.
While visiting the small museum in Amber Valley I was reminded of horror stories from West Africa. While I thought of the horrific trans-Atlantic slavery of the past, I am mainly thinking of Mauritania, Niger and a few other Western Sahara states. In Mauritania, the owning of slaves was abolished in 1981, but laws that actually criminalised slavery were only created in 2007. Despite this there are upwards of 600 000 people in Mauritania still enslaved.
When slavery is discussed it is far too often overshadowed by its history instead of a focus on the present. It is discussed as a past practice that needs to be addressed by western nations. There are still calls for apologies and for reparations. I am not certain that reparations are feasible or possible for slavery. I also worry that this type of a focus on the past gets mired in notions of entitlement and victim-hood. I think that thorny issue is fraught with difficulty. Legally, no crime was committed by those involved in slavery as it was legal at the time and they of course are long gone from the earth. I wonder how would such a programme of redress be performed by all those involved? Who owes and how much and how is it to be paid?
Debt held by poor African nations should not be forgiven because of past injustices and horrors wrought by colonisation. They should be erased because it is the right thing to do. The debts held are often set at usury rates and often seen as one of the largest barriers to economic growth in very poor nations. Canada wiped out 9 million Canadian dollars owed by Senegal, Ghana and Ethiopia as part of the ongoing “Canadian Debt Initiative”. More and more debts have been written off for the poorest nations, and I am interested to see the results of this in the future.
To return to slavery, I am perplexed and saddened by the silence on the issue. The African Union has little to nothing to say on the topic. Documents that I link to here discuss in broad terms that slavery remains a problem but the main thrust is once again on the legacy and the need for addressing that legacy through reparations.
Slavery has been deemed a crime against humanity by the United Nations, but yet the African Union only discusses reparations for western slavery. Why are there no calls for sanctions or demands to stop contemporary slavery in Africa? I worry that the African Union has a difficulty in critiquing its members while condemning human-rights abuses done during colonialism. It should not stop critiquing the past, but needs to adopt a more critical eye on actions taken by African states.
I have mainly been discussing chattel slavery where people are bought and sold like cattle. The focus needs to also be on the sex trade, human trafficking and debt bondage. All these horrific acts need to be given just attention.
Slavery was not just something done to Africans, but is an ongoing human-rights abuse too often unremarked upon. The African Union needs to play a role in critiquing its own as well as actively stopping human-rights abuses on the African continent.
Awesome post Michael. For an interesting read on Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery work I can highly recommend “Team of Rivals”. If anything the book can teach us important lessons about how to deal with slavery in a modern context.
I have no problem writing off all the debt but it should go with an agreement for no more loans.
I have done the same to my son. Time to stay on your own legs and no more blaming the past as an excuse for more hand-outs.
Is somebody asking the arabs for reparations? They used to run the slave trade. In Europe the slavs may be asking for reparations too. Some descendents of the slaves that are now millionaires should pay too for the opportunity created for them through the sacrifice of their ancestors.
Slavery was, is, repugnant and cannot be condonned. But, it did not start in Africa. It began long before that in fact, as soon as one tribe of early man conquered another. African slavery was abetted by Africans. What better way to dispose of your enemy in the next valley by assisting your sworn enemy and even profiting by it. The British Government abolished slavery in 1807 and by 1833 they had succeeded in eradicating it in all areas under their control. 200-years on my generation cannot be held responsible. Africa – like the rest of the world – must move on and take responsibilities for its own actions.
@Benzol – Loans to non-democratic countries should especially be stopped as they do not represent the will of their people. Kind of like a thief taking out a mortgage on your house.
Old loans were given under duress with the World Bank putting ‘conditionalities’ (which were really just conditions) on them such as dismantle health care or social support. These conditions are another reasons debt should be canceled.
Trade not aid is the new refrain, although I am not against the giving of support to poorer nations such as British involvement in Mozambique. It is great to see roads improved north of Maputo and health care assistance for the needy. I worry to tough of love approach would be deadly when real hunger exists.
There is a debate to be had about the role of aid and it is really quite complicated due to historical contingencies and factors, and so much in funneled into the hands of the wealthy elites instead of the poor. Sometimes foreign aid workers are disparaged when locals could be hired, but often their role is to watch the money as much as it is needed expertise. So I think anything given must be carefully done and done with explicit aims and purposes no free cheques and some government accountability.
A thought-provoking article,Michael.Your reference to contemporary slavery has prompted the following line of thought:The hundreds of thousands of Africans displaced,fleeing from famine,political turmoil,genocide,disease and migrating to South Africa from countries to our north,are subjected to the worst possible form of slavery imaginable
in the 21st century.
They have no rights in a largely xenophobic society,their labour is exploited and their physical wellbeing depends wholly on their survival-skills.Add to all that the fact that these 21st century slaves do not have people like the Wilberforce brothers(who took the British to task in the 1700′s)to champion their cause and engineer a situation where they are treated as humans with rights.
This article is interesting because I have met many Africans in the US and most of them are in denial of any knowledge of the slave trade in Africa. Next time I go to Canada, I will visit this community.
Excellent article, Michael.
I was reminded of the unfortunate connection between chocolate and slavery – did any of you know that most of the world’s chocolate is harvested and produced by slaves, often childen?
Here’s some sobering reading: http://www.chocolatework.com/chocolate-slavery.htm
http://vision.ucsd.edu/~kbranson/stopchocolateslavery/atasteofslavery.html
As for World Bank loans (colonialism by more subtle means, imho), the acclaimed documentary Life And Debt is an incisive, passionate account of how unfairly incurred debt (and subsequent ‘structural readjustment’) has negatively affected Jamaica: http://www.lifeanddebt.org
There’s a trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-tBG_F64E
If African
If I put forward that reasoning to my Bank they would show me the door. Debt was incurred on the assumption that states do not go insolvent and that a sound government was in place.
The conditions attached to the health service was a loan for health services that were in disarray.
A problem, unlike SA Africa that cannot run and effective health service.
It is the same as the agricultural reform attached world bank loans. All failures, because Africa did not spend the money where they should.
Like SA that receives huge gifts of money. If the ANC does not have a finger in the Pie then that gift is oft refused. Why?
No debt should be forgiven every African country has a President and others in favour who have huge Bank accounts.
If these countries had a tax base, a working government, and did not have coruption, servicing these debts should not be a problem.
Why do people so often suppose that black people had no hand in the enslavement of other black people? Early white explorers looking for the source of the Nile were horrified at the way tribes would conquer others in order to sell the vanquished off as slaves. And yes, the Arabs were part of it, but not all of it.
I would hesitate to cancel any debt in Africa at the moment. I generalise, a bad thing, but ten to one cancelled debt in many African countries would go the same way as other public money…to fund corruption. The more we accept, the more it seems, we waste.
And Hugh Robinson is quite correct…if African debt can be cancelled, so should everyone’s be! I can think of dozens of white people who are slaves to their debt at present, because they invested in Icelandic banks!
People who want to be thought of as equal must learn to be equal. I may think white farmers in Africa deserve to succeed, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the same about any hardworking black farmer.
Think: Who funded the rehabilitation of Pearl Harbour and London after WWII? Why does Africa refuse to accept that it also needs to cut emissions, even whilst playing catch-up? Often, these days, it is their own thinking that enslaves people, no one else’s.
MLH – I think what really concerns me is that African slavery is almost always referred to as a past practice done by the ‘West’ against Africans. I think we really be looking hard at current African slavery as being rather more important.
I am always torn about the aid debate as there is so much desperate need in places that I just could not say lets let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they do not have boots and someone is standing on their feet. I also hate the sense of entitlement that exists that perpetuates poverty while the rich live like Kings (some even are Kings).
I won’t get into it here as it is far too complicated for a simple statement of fund/not fund or other dichotomy. It is never as simple as not spending the money in the right place etc but often a combination of failure (some successes) from corruption, to poor planning, incomplete funding cycles (projects dropped before completion), wrong project or crop to be grown, massive tractors in an area of small scale agriculture so the result is an enclosure movement of sorts, draught, greed, theft, institutionalized begging, and so on so just as no single solution can be said to work in all places so there are times when loans are and have been appropriate, and other times they are theft. Alas no more room, so perhaps a future blog on the subject.
hi
i find it very disturbing that African Union and Africans in general tend to dwell so much on the past, when there are still evidence of slavery happening on the continent.
On the issue of reparations, does it mean the Africans who also took part and benefited from slavery will also have to pay?
In my opinion, we should be wise enough to use the “evils” of slavery and colonialism as lessons to develop our collective selves like Jews did after suffering from Vampire Adolf Hitler