Slavery: when the past is not even past

 

Slavery -or human trafficking, as it is called in the 20th and 21st centuries- is a present practice in contemporary Africa, as Nobel Laureate from Uganda Wole Soyinha explains in a recent Podcast about writing and African politics.

Any cursory consideration of historical and contemporary evidence shows that slavery and bondage are common practices amongst African and Middle Eastern nations.

Professor Thomas Sowell wrote and explained extensively about the role of African tribal leaders and practices in the slave trade. 

Europeans rarely ventured into the Continent to capture and enslave Africans. Slaves were largely captured and sold in local markets by African warlords as a common practice documented since the 15th century -way before 1619 or 1776-.

Looking after current slavery in Africa we can find that there is an active and lucrative industry in many Subsaharan Africa countries, led by African human traffickers, fundamentalist terrorists and Middle East human traders:

"Uganda is a source and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Ugandan children are trafficked within the country, as well as to Canada, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Karamojong women and children are sold in cattle markets or by intermediaries and forced into situations of domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, herding, and begging. Security companies in Kampala recruit Ugandans to serve as security guards in Iraq where, at times, their travel documents and pay have reportedly been withheld as a means to prevent their departure. These cases may constitute trafficking.[1]

Pakistani, Indian, and Chinese workers are reportedly trafficked to Uganda, and Indian networks traffic Indian children to the country for sexual exploitation. Children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R.C.), Rwanda, and Burundi are trafficked to Uganda for agricultural labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Until August 2006, the terrorist rebel organization, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), abducted children and adults in northern Uganda to serve as soldiers, sex slaves, and porters. While no further abductions of Ugandan children have been reported, at least 300 additional people, mostly children, were abducted during the reporting period in the Central African Republic and the D.R.C.[1]"

Source: Wikipedia 

Well before European traders came in, African kingdoms practiced slavery and bondage in open markets. During the Middle Ages, African-captured slaves were sold internally and exported through maritime and land routes.

These facts do not by any means make slavery less abhorrent. On the contrary, they show that rather than the "original sin" of a single country or race, this practice has been the shared shame of almost all countries and races, and also that Africa -the cradle of the Homo Sapiens species- has also been and continues to be the place where it's more prevalent.

Present-day human trafficking, bondage, and slavery explain why millions of desperate migrants try to reach countries where the practice has been abolished in search of not just better economic conditions but of basic human dignity and human rights.

Independent readers interested in this dramatic reality that flies in the face of political agendas on the Left and the Right will find these two lectures by 1984 Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinha highly educational:

And with regard to the US Founding Fathers, it might be also good to look at slavery from a historical instead of an anachronistic perspective based on contemporary politics: