Dawn in darkest Africa

by John H. Harris

The hardships of contract labour are greatly increased by the prevalence of domestic slavery. We are sometimes told that domestic slavery is inseparable from native social life, and that from time immemorial it has been an integral part of African law and custom. For that matter so has cannibalism! There are many apologists for domestic slavery, including students of such eminence as Mr. R. E. Dennett and the Editor of the African Mail; the latter considers it would be foolish to abolish the House Rule Ordinance—or in other words the legalization of domestic slavery in Southern Nigeria. It is difficult to understand how a man with Mr. Dennett’s experience could possibly write the paper on this question which was reprinted in a journal of the Royal Colonial Institute. Mr. Dennett knows, or should know, that the horrors of early history in the middle Congo, the blood-curdling stories of Kumasi, the present-day slavery of the Portuguese colonies and a thousand other labour scandals rested and still rest in the ultimate resort upon domestic slavery. The cheap sneers at the sentimentalist, the innuendo that they are mere stay-at-home critics is entirely misplaced and no one knows this better than Mr. R. E. Dennett.

Domestic slavery is slavery pure and simple, although I agree that under the African chiefs it may not be so bad as under the old planter systems. Front rank statesmen with large administrative experience have recorded the lamentable results attaching to domestic slavery, and so recently as 1906 Africa’s greatest constructive Administrator—the Earl of Cromer—penned the following significant passage:—

“If the utility of the Soudan, considered on its own productive and economic merits, is not already proved to the satisfaction of the world—if it is not already clear that the reoccupation of the country has inflicted, more perhaps than any other event of modern times, a deadly blow to the abominable traffic in slaves, and to the institution of domestic slavery, which is only one degree less hateful than that traffic—it may confidently be asserted that we are on the threshold of convincing proof.”[9]

The broad lines of domestic slavery are common throughout West Central Africa. The slave becomes the property of the head of the house or chief, who can “contract” him to third parties without reference to the one primarily concerned, that is to say the slave himself, who in turn cannot hire out his labour without the consent of his master, and he may also be transferred in payment of debt. Upon the death of the owner, the slaves with their families—who are the property of the chief—are divided amongst the heirs with other goods and chattels of the deceased. The domestic slave can by native law everywhere, and by European law in some parts, be recaptured if he runs away. According to British law the slave becomes the property of the master in Southern Nigeria “by birth or in any other manner.” This only legalizes native law, it is true, but “in any other manner” throws the door widely open to a transfer of human beings in a way highly repugnant to British sentiment.

A REVOLTING CUSTOM

In the middle Congo a system is rapidly extending which violates every moral code in that it is none other than a wholesale prostitution. Under this custom, known locally as that of the “Basamba,” a man hires out a proportion of his wives on a monthly or yearly agreement. The basis is the principle of absolute ownership; a weekly or a monthly “hire” in cash, or its equivalent, is paid, and all the offspring handed over to the husband and owner. Thus the owner, or husband, obtains first a financial return for the hire of his surplus wives, and secondly he claims the offspring. In the event of males, they become domestic slaves, with which the chief may satisfy administrative and other demands for labour; while in the case of girls the chief possesses a further source of revenue either by hiring them out to “temporary husbands,” or by purchasing other and older women for the same purpose. This method of increasing the number of wives and slaves is by no means limited to the middle Congo, but in no other part of West Africa were we able to find it carried on so extensively. In those regions it is quite common to find men with ten wives hired out in the different villages, and a few cases exist of men who now carry on their trade with no less than fifty, and even one hundred, such surplus wives!

A CONGO CHIEF WITH SOME OF HIS WIVES AND “BASAMBA” CONCUBINES.

There are other means of obtaining domestic slaves. Many of them are, of course, “inherited,” and not a few are passed over as part dowry with a wife; others are taken for debt and some are captured in tribal warfare.

The relation between contract labour and domestic slavery is more intimate than appears on the surface. In West African practice an employer desiring a given number of labourers invites or “calls” the chief whom he informs of his requirements; if a merchant, he generally accompanies his request for boys with a gift; if a Government official, the demand more often than not is accompanied by a threat. At a later date the chief returns with the required number of labourers. If asked whether they are willing to work, they generally assent, for they fear to oppose their chief who, even if European prestige were not behind him, still possesses all the power of native law and customs—to say nothing of the awe-inspiring fetish.