© Copyright Barbara A. Worley 2013
Please type the citation to this article as follows:
Worley, Barbara A.
2013 “Playing the Slavery Card.” Tuareg Culture and News. February
20, 2013. Accessed on the Internet [date] http://tuaregcultureandnews.blogspot.com/2013/02/playing-slavery-card.html
Some of the worst enemies of the Tuareg people are Westerners who make
their livelihood by spreading fear and hatred for an entire population that
they do not know. Several days
ago, USA Today published an article [1] by a young American reporter who wrote
that “Tuaregs have long kept slaves,” and implied that Tuaregs are still
“taking slaves” today and holding them captive. This is incorrect.
The Tuaregs do not own slaves today, and do not capture people or hold
them as slaves. The reporter based
her article largely on propaganda she heard from one individual in southern
Mali.
The key to understanding why people in southern Mali are spreading such
propaganda is contained in the USA Today writer’s own observation: “Human Rights Watch said the Malian army and black African
civilians are holding all Tuaregs and Arabs
responsible for the recent months of terror and human rights abuses, whether or
not they participated in the crimes.”
In order to report truthfully on the situation in Mali, the writer
should have taken her cue from the fact that the Bamako government, the Malian
army, and various people in the south are vilifying “all Tuaregs,” who live mainly in the north.
The
stigmatization of an entire population of hundreds of thousands of people is a
propaganda war. It can lead to
genocide. In Rwanda, the action
began unrolling as Hutus started publicizing hate messages about Tutsis. The Tuareg people are fearful of
genocide.
The
Malian army and government are dominated by ethnic groups in southern Mali that
are opposed to the Tuareg people.
Various people in the south have been spreading fear and hatred of
Tuareg people in order to gain Western financial, military, and political support
– and to justify the Malian army’s gross abuses and atrocities against the
Tuareg civilian population., which have been documented throughout this past
year by human rights organizations.
Mali
has often played the “slavery card” against the Tuareg people to sway Western
support against them. However, we
must keep in mind that raiding, trading, and keeping slaves was practiced by
many peoples of Africa, and by ancestors of practically all the cultural groups
in Mali. The predominant Bambara
culture in southern Mali was no exception [2].
The
“slavery card” is a propaganda tool that is used to stigmatize a people
unjustly, to motivate Westerners and others to sympathize with the accusers,
and to downplay or ignore the legitimate grievances of the people who are
accused.
Slavery
in Mali was formally abolished in
1905 after the French colonized the region where Mali is today. Raids by the Bambara, Tuaregs, and others
to capture people and enslave them ended in the 1800s, and some slaves left
their masters after the 1905 emancipation. Tuaregs no longer own slaves, and the inheritance of slaves
stopped decades ago.
Some
people – in nearly every ethnic group in Mali – continued to maintain slaves for
some years during the colonial period.
The term “Bella” is a Songhay term for “slave” that was applied by the
French to slaves in every ethnic group in Mali. The Tuareg term is iklan. The French did little to enforce the
anti-slavery law. There were few options
for slave-status people to obtain work elsewhere. Slaves were emancipated. But iklan remained
a recognized social status in a residual social system that included nobles,
vassals, marabouts, blacksmiths, and slave-status members, all of them
considered Tuaregs.
By
the mid-1940s, the majority of emancipated slaves had left their masters and
began living independently. Other
freed slaves continued to live in a patron-client relationship with their
associated families, who provided them with work and income or payment in kind. The political turmoil of the 1960s, and
especially the drought of the 1970s greatly impoverished the Tuareg
populations. Many Tuaregs fled
Mali to escape government oppression and army massacres. Nomad populations,
including the iklan, were denied food
aid during the drought, and many Tuaregs lost their livestock in the
disaster.
By
the mid-1970s, the vast majority of Tuaregs, no matter what their social class,
were living in abject poverty and could
no longer afford to support servants.
Members of the “noble” social class were performing domestic chores such
as grinding grain and hauling drinking water. In some cases, descendants of freed slaves continued to live
in proximity to the families of their ancestors’ former masters. They did so by choice, because some
Tuaregs treated iklan like friends or members of the family, and
the iklan had special roles to play
in family gatherings and rituals.
The
Tuareg social system has gradually evolved over the past 100 years since the
abolition of slavery. Tuaregs have
welcomed the transition to democracy, recognizing that all Tuaregs, including
descendants of former slaves, have equal rights under the law. The social
system that recognized “slaves” as a social class is in decline.
In a video documentary
titled “Modern Day Slaves - Niger” [3] a Niger government official says it is a
falsehood to say that “slavery exists.”
Social status terms like iklan
exist as artifacts of the evolving social system, but the practice of slavery
does not. The film also shows that
some iklan continue to live with
their associated families, in patron-client relationships. The director of the Niger anti-slavery
association Timidria explains:
“You will not find a slave market in Niger; nor will you find a shackled
slave, and even less a slave transaction.
On the other hand, what the type of slavery we experience shares with
the former slave trade is humiliation, stigmas, the labels of persons who are
considered sub-human.” In other words, the practice of slavery does not exist –
it’s the stigma of being descended from former slaves that exists, at least in
some places. In the film, a
Timidria agent tries repeatedly to coerce a Tuareg family to admit that they
are “slaves” working for a “master,” and they repeatedly deny it. The film’s narrator says, “That has
made it a problem for Timidria to prove that there are 870,000 slaves… The
central government’s representative here … says there are none.” The governor of Tahoua then says, “I
can tell you that to my knowledge as the Governor of the Tahoua region which I
have been leading for almost six years, I have never been made aware that
slavery exists in the region.” The
film’s narrator says, “The government has long accused Timidria of inventing
claims of slavery, to get money from international donors.”
It
is possible to make a comparison with the U.S., following abolition, when
slaves were freed but many Americans in the south continued to think in terms
of the old social system. It takes time for a population to make a full
adjustment to a major change in social organization. African-Americans
today still feel the pain and stigma of their ancestors who were once slaves,
and discrimination has not disappeared.
Slavery
was formally and legally abolished in America over 150 years ago, and in Mali
over a century ago. Social change is
an ongoing process, as people continue to adjust to a different social system,
and different ways of thinking.
There is a difference, however, between a “slave” social status and
“keeping slaves.” Both are
repugnant, and all of the ethnic groups in Mali and Niger are gradually making
the transition that Americans and Europeans have had to make to achieve a more
truly democratic society. Democracy
is relatively recent in Mali and Niger, since the early 1990s. The fact is that Tuaregs today do not capture,
own, or keep slaves, and they recognize the value of democracy.
The
United States, and many European countries, also had a long history of
slavery. Slavery is a sad part of
our history that we share with many African peoples. Like Americans and Europeans, African peoples are making the
effort to move past that history.
Many
Tuaregs are dismayed by the falsehoods reported in the USA Today article. Tuareg voices are being expunged from
the media by a powerful propaganda campaign promoted by various political
voices in the south, reinforced by Western journalists who do not understand
the political dynamics in Mali. We
must help the Tuareg people communicate the truths of their suffering – and the
vilification of their population by people in Mali and by Western reporters who
do not even know them.
--
Prof. Barbara A. Worley, The University of Massachusetts
[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2013-02-15-French-incursion-frees-some-slaves-of-Mali_ST_U.htm
[2] http://tuaregcultureandnews.blogspot.com/2012_07_30_archive.html
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfsB5g-R9eQ
