Slavery is as old as human history, and if like so many blinkered historians we consider human history as only being as old as written records, well then it’s much older. It stems from a really nasty need to own and possess another human being, to control not only their waking moments but when they are asleep too.
Many people’s visions of slavery centre around stereotypes of the Deep South of the USA, maybe coloured by Gone With the Wind or Roots. It is far too easy to see slavery in simple racial terms: the abduction of black children to work for white people. But this is simplistic: slavery has existed within Africa for centuries, maybe millennia. What’s more the Roots stereotype whereby the young Kunta Kinteh was kidnapped by greedy white monsters and torn from his black brothers to enter a world of degradation and exploitation was not that common. It was far more common for the young black boys (and girls) to be captured in internecine conflicts and then sold to white slavers by local African rulers in return for money, weapons or often mere trinkets.
Most people assume that slavery was ended in the US by the Civil War. They also know that it was replaced by a culture of repression and discrimination of black people every bit as horrible as slavery. Some people will also have heard of Hull’s most famous son, William Wilberforce who persuaded the English government to turn its back on slavery in the early nineteenth century. Few people will be aware that slavery still exists; one of the regions where it seems endemic is in a belt of territory in Africa embracing the nations of Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
These countries have outlawed slavery. Mauritania did so in the late ’70s, yet it is estimated that up to 18 per cent of its’ population live as slaves. Recently, a former slave has won compensation from her country’s government for its failure to resccue her from enslavement despite claimng to have outlawed the practice in its territory.
Hadijatou Mani was born in the impoverished nation of Niger twenty-four years’ ago. When she was twelve her family was compelled to sell her to a farmer for the equivalent of $500. She was raped and forced to bear her owner’s children. She was also beaten incessantly. All the while she had to work as an unpaid domestic and farm-worker performing tasks including carrying water and looking after animals. On numerous occasions she attempted to escape and flee back to her family, and each time they, no doubt reluctantly, brought her back to her “owner”. Two years’ ago he granted her a “certificate of liberation”, yet he insisted on viewing her as one of his wives and when she married another man she was charged with bigamy and jailed.
In 2003 the government of Niger formally outlawed slavery in its territory, though most observers (both inside and outisde the country) viewed this as mere window-dressing. Hadijatou learned of the decree and also learned, even more importantly, that the status of being a slave she had been compelled to accept was unnatural and illegal. This year she brought a case against her government for failing to protect her from being treated as a slave and its failure to enforce its own ban on the practice, and this week a regional court found in her favour, granting her compensation. Significantly the government of Niger has accepted the judgement and has promised not to appeal it. Hadijatou has vowed to spend the money on building a house, buying land and sending her children to school sp that they can gain the education she was denied during her youth.
The judgement was handed down by the court of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). When this was set up there were many who felt it was no more than a joke, yet it has shown that it has the capacity to make real-life decisions that impact positively on the livest of the many million of mainly poor people who inhabit the ECOWAS territory.
Hadijatou Mani is a very brave young woman, yet there are many more young girls like her who are still in slavery. Some don’t even realise they are slaves and that their conditions are wrong. Hopefully Hadijatou’s victory will help them too.
