Shimbo Pastory and Johnson Mwamasangula
This article was published in The Citizen Newspaper – Tanzania on 6th November, 2022.
Anti-Slavery Day is a global educative commemoration marked every year on 18 October to raise awareness of human trafficking and all forms of modern slavery and encourage governments, local authorities, companies, charities and individuals to do what they can to address these problems.
This is because slavery is not a mere historical issue; it has actually found its way into the very waft and weft of our societies.
Slavery walks with shoulder high in its multiple faces. While people are rarely put in chains in caravans or whipped in big sugar cane plantations, on a global scale many people are in enslaving entanglements in their home countries and abroad, being forced into dangerous things they would not freely choose to do.
In history, the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1807, and slavery has ever since been prohibited internationally by Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other United Nations decisions. The declaration was the base of progressive resistance against slavery globally. It also laid the foundation for joint advocacy against racism.
Statistics produced this year 2022 by International Labour Organization (ILO) in collaboration with Walk Free, and International Organization for Migration (IOM) inform us that there are still estimated 50 million people across the world in slavery today, forced to work for little or no pay, trafficked with the promise of work and greener pasture only to find themselves trapped in lions’ dens, forced to sell their bodies for sex, working as cocaine bags, having their body organs ‘stolen’, and many other debasing activities.
A living example is Sir Mo Farah who was trafficked from Somalia to the UK where he was forced to work as a domestic servant. With these remnants of slaving mentality still existing in the world, it is time we cast a critical eye on the subject and think of making improvements in our local situation.
Tanzanian Situation
Reflecting the situation in Tanzania, both slavery aftermaths and modern slavery still haunt our society. Modern forms of slavery can be witnessed in factories, farms and small businesses due to the inexistence of effective labour protection policies and regulations.
How can the government effectively protect people whose work agreements are not written at all, in jobs that have no clear terms and conditions, and who work in factories and farms with safety and security risks?
What about domestic workers/house-helps (house girls and house boys) and babysitters in the cities, some of whom are minors who should ideally be in school? There are regions in Tanzania today that are famous for supplying house girls for the big cities.
There are also incidences whereby young girls have been transported from neighbouring countries like Malawi and Zambia for the same.
Coming from poor backgrounds these people are made to stoop even lower for little favours, just because of their needs. We need to reach a point whereby every productive engagement that earns one a living will be monitored and moderated by the government. This will also give these people a voice and legal protection in the event of maltreatment, violence and abuse.
Domestic workers are taken to the cities to work for such low payments, without contracts, without dignity, and at high risk of gender-based abuse like rape by their male bosses, assaults by their bosses, and denial of nutritious food and access to health services. This is a locally wired kind of human trafficking the government has not yet laid hands on successfully.
The historical bigger picture of slavery is that of foreign nationals with guns in our country, but deep within our communities, slavery in its modern forms is rampant.
There are also other areas where there is still unorganized remuneration for our people working in the mining industry, in farms and in factories. In the West, and many other developed economies people are paid per hour, regardless of the type of job.
But when Western companies come to Tanzania they don’t pay the factory and farm workers per hour, they underpay for the productive hard work invested and make tons of profit in return. We need national labour and workplace policies that favour the emancipation of working citizens (and residents) from modern slavery.
This day also gives us a good chance to educate young people who are zealous to go and work abroad. Sometimes things are not as good as they seem. It is good to be sure of everything before embarking on journeys abroad so that one does not end up trapped in the hands of traffickers, enslaving work or drug chains.
