Smugglers of Flesh

Slavery is a touchy subject for Africans, who have both practiced and been victimized by it for centuries. When the United Nations made a recent survey of its members to discover the extent of slavery today, 14 African countries ignored the questions and many of the others were evasive. Though the report showed that slavery is gradually disappearing, London's 143-year-old Anti-Slavery Society claims that it still exists in many parts of Africa. Last week, in fact, Kenya and neighboring Tanzania were embroiled in one of the continent's messiest slavery scandals since the days of Stanley and Tippu Tib.*

Curse of the Kiboko. The scandal broke with the discovery that a band of Kenyan "slave masters" has been luring young boys from Kenya's remote bush district of Kisii, shipping them 400 miles away to Tanzania, then putting them to work as forced laborers in sawmills and on maize farms. Both the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments have launched investigations, arrested seven Kenyan slavers so far. By last week police had freed 48 boys between seven and 16 years old, were scouring northern Tanzania in search of 200 other youngsters who are still missing.

Ex-Slave Ongera Okeja, 16, told how a man had approached him more than three years before in Kisii and offered him $7 a month to cut timber. From the start, he had received no money at all, been given only two changes of castoff work clothes and a small daily ration of maize and soya beans. Ten-year-old Mageto was recruited when he was seven. Pointing to a raw, partially healed wound on his leg, he said: "We were always forbidden to leave camp, but I finally did and was lashed for it." Whippings in Mageto's camp were a regular daily ordeal, administered with a skin-shredding bark lash called a kiboko.

Working deep in the cold, damp rain forests on the Tanzanian slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, the boys put in a 12-to 14-hour day, slept in crowded grass hovels, huddling together at night for a little warmth. When a boy got sick or was hurt, there was no medical treatment. Otundo, a 14-year-old who spoke with a frightened stutter, told police about a friend who was injured by a falling tree: his throat was slit because he could no longer work.

Priority Treatment. Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere has ordered "priority" treatment of the slave scandal, and Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta--appalled by these "smugglers of living flesh"--sent a Cabinet aide to Kisii to direct the investigation personally. The governments are also tightening their laws. Up to now, slave masters who did not actually sell their victims could only be prosecuted under child-labor or minimumwage laws. In Tanzania, offenders face a maximum of $280 in fines, three months in jail, and payment of back wages. Kenya's maximum sentence is a $70 fine for first offenders, $140 fine for repeaters. To those who sell their slaves outright, the courts are tougher. A slaver convicted in Kenya last month was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and twelve strokes of the lash.

* Notorious boss of the Zanzibar-based slave trade in the 1880s who, as virtual ruler of central Africa between the Congo and Lake Tanganyika, became Stanley's business partner in return for providing him with "porters."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.