Posted to the web March 14, 2007
By Charles Onyango-Obbo
Two centuries later, the question must be asked; did slavery end in Africa?
This month 200 years ago (March 24, 1806), slavery was formally abolished by the British Parliament. Several slave trading nations followed in the next few years.
Many countries in the west, Latin America and the Caribbean with slave descendants are commemorating the abolition.
There are hardly any such commemorations in Africa, the continent where the slaves came from, and also the home of the infamous collaborators who helped capture and sell their fellow countrymen and women into one of the most shameful episodes of human history.
Matching the times
Perhaps because there were no modern parliaments in most of the Africa of the 1800s, none of the slave trading chieftains and kingdoms on the continent - like the Ashanti in Ghana - passed laws outlawing it.
Except in South Africa, hardly any other African chief or king since then has seriously tried to abolish it either.
The commemorations have also made us realise that there are some uncanny similarities between the campaign to abolish slavery and the fight for Africa democracy of recent years.
The lobbying to abolish slavery took about 60 years.
The fight for democracy in post-independence Africa has been going on for 40 years, and it seems in countries like Uganda it will be another 20 years before the citizens are truly free; for example before all Africans can go to an election with the certainty that it will be free.
Anyhow, it would seem that if you take 1957 - the year Ghana gained independence - as the beginning of the Independence era, it will also take 60 years (2017) from that point before we can have genuine liberal democracies in more than six African countries.
That year will be important for Uganda. It will be 30 years since the National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power. That of itself is neither here nor there.
However, President Yoweri Museveni would have just ended his sixth term in office, and would be starting his seventh - or he will have been defeated by the opposition (fat chance).
It is unlikely that the NRM and Museveni will by that point have turned 360 degrees and abandoned their current heavy-handedness and become lovers of freedom and liberty for ALL Ugandans.
If by then Uganda is still a benign autocracy, then it would have taken longer to abolish slavery than bring democracy to this fair country.
That said, while slavery was abolished in 1807, it took another 30 years for slaves to actually be emancipated. Ugandans would understand that very well, because it is like the case of the People's Redemption Army rebel suspects.
They were granted bail by the High Court (that is the Abolition Act) but it will be a long time before they walk free (the emancipation).
Why does it seem like little has changed? Perhaps because we never had our own local abolition of slavery, its infrastructure remains.
For example, human rights reports say torture by the security forces is still commonplace. Now one of the worst possible places one can be detained in Uganda are in the paradoxically named "safe houses". The tales of horror of the few who have been lucky to escape in recent years are spine chilling.
Imagine yourself a slave in the cargo hold of a slave ship, and in a safe house dungeon. In both places, you would be in very crowded conditions and chained, your toilet being where you are shackled.
Relatives of safe house inmates face the same uncertainties the relatives of slaves endured. You can never know in which of the many safe houses your dear one is being held. Just like relatives of slaves never knew where their kith and kin had been scattered. It could have been in the Caribbean, in a cotton field somewhere in Britain, or on a plantation in the Americas.
Apart from that, the interests of the Uganda government and slave owner would not be more different. Some slaves used to go into deep depression and on hunger strike. Because the slave owner could only make money if the slaves survived and got to the market, the trader would force-feed them.
Unmatched terms
In a safe house, the jailers have the opposite interest - to punish and break down the prisoners, so they do not feed them. The government has no interest in a rebel suspect surviving until he gets his day in court (the market), because the judges might then deliver a verdict of innocent, an outcome it has made clear it does not want.
The abolitionists (the equivalent of today's democrats) of the time eventually won. What is particularly distressing is that today's abolitionists are in jail, have been beaten into a corner, or are nursing wounds inflicted by the Police when they last tried to hold a rally.
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