EDITOR’S NOTE: Dear Readers, the below includes the third and fourth posts in a series we are featuring on trafficking, human smuggling, and forced labor. Along with earlier posts from Ruby P. Andrew, Benjamin N. Lawrance, and Richard L. Roberts, upcoming posts will include commentaries from Margaret Akullo, Kevin Bales, and Jody Sarich.
Part 3: “Slavery and Human Bondage in Africa”
Joel Quirk and Darshan Vigneswaran
In early 2010, journalists from all over the world descended upon South Africa to report on preparations for the FIFA World Cup. Since this was the first time that an African nation had hosted this major event, much of the media commentary focused on potential complications, such as concerns about public safety and the challenges of stadium construction.
One prominent intervention came from Stop 2010 Human Trafficking, which released a short online video featuring well known South African celebrities testifying to the dangers associated with human trafficking and legalized prostitution. This video included the startling claim that as ‘many as one hundred thousand victims’ were expected to be trafficked into slavery during the lead up to the World Cup. Writing for Time Magazine, E. Benjamin Skinner similarly reported on the existence of ‘[m]ore than 500 mostly small-scale trafficking syndicates – Nigerian, Chinese, Indian and Russian, among others – [which] collude with South African partners, including recruiters and corrupt police officials, to enslave local victims’. Partly in response to this apparent problem, the South African government introduced new anti-trafficking legislation to parliament. Yet when the World Cup came to its successful end in July 2011, it subsequently emerged that most of these reports had been inaccurate and unfounded, with researchers determining that ‘the sex worker population stayed relatively stable during the World Cup period and that, contrary to popular fears, there was no influx of children into the sex work industry’. Once the World Cup was over, the South African government no longer felt the same level of urgency on this issue, and the legislation tabled in 2010 has still not yet been approved by parliament.
This sharp divide between moral panic and more mundane reality invites critical reflection. While there is no question that human bondage continues to be an ongoing problem – both in South Africa and elsewhere – recent efforts to come to terms with the issues involved have too often taken the form of sound bites and sensationalism, with the language of ‘slavery’ being invoked indiscriminately.
In order to make sense of the issues at stake here, we need to be clear about what it is that we are talking about, and how what is happening today relates to the larger history of bondage in Africa. Rather than focus on the ways in which governments and civil society have recently responded to the ongoing problem of slavery and human bondage, we propose approaching the matter differently. Instead, by teasing out causal and constitutive linkages between past and present, we assembled a group of scholars who aspire to uncover some of the reasons why so many efforts at contemporary emancipation have struggled to successfully identify and assist persons in need, and how the history of slavery and abolition can be more effectively marshaled to further refine ongoing interventions and responses.
To understanding these connections, we place particular value on research primarily based upon new archival and/or ethnographic material. Our main rationale for this orientation stems from two main considerations. Firstly, and most fundamentally, we feel that credible information on many aspects of human bondage in Africa currently remains in short supply. Much of the existing literature on recent and ongoing practices is heavily reliant upon secondary sources, and thereby frequently reproduces prevailing orthodoxies. New information is required in order to advance existing conservations in meaningful directions. Secondly, we believe that analytical approaches, theoretical arguments, and public policy responses can only go so far in the absence of empirical substantiation. We seek to contribute to a series of larger arguments about the changing characteristics and cumulative consequences of human bondage in various settings, and these arguments should be taken seriously thanks in part to the primary material marshaled in support of these positions.
The outcome of our research group is a new anthology of essays. These scholars provide a more nuanced and developed appreciation of the linkages between the history of slavery and emancipation in Africa, and the wide variety of forms of human bondage on the continent today. Collectively, we propose three important new arguments. The first component takes the form of a brief negative critique, where our chief claim is that a number of high profile media reports and remedial efforts associated with contemporary bondage in Africa have suffered from various analytical and political shortcomings. The second component makes the argument that any effort to understand and eradicate slavery and human bondage needs to be clear about the defining features of the various practices involved, and that the most effective way of addressing this issue is by making use of relevant definitions that are already codified in law. The third and final component revolves around the value of historical analysis as an important – yet to date largely neglected – aid to contemporary understanding. Far too many recent analysts and activists have failed to sufficiently take into account the key features and enduring legacies of the history of slavery in Africa, and thus ended up with an incomplete diagnosis of the causes and characteristics of practices today.
Slavery, Migration and Contemporary Bondage in Africa is forthcoming with Africa World Press.
Joel Quirk is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Witwatersrand and author of The Anti-Slavery Project (Pennsylvania, 2011).
Darshan Vigneswaran is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity where he coordinates the Global Cities/ Open Cities project on segregation in the Global South and co-coordinates an international working group on Public Space and Diversity. He is the author of Territory, Migration and the Origins of the International System (Palgrave, 2012).
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Part 4: “Household Demand and Child Trafficking For Domestic Use in
Oyo State, Nigeria”
Oludayo Tade
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF, 2003), about half of African countries recognize trafficking as a problem, and child trafficking is usually perceived as more severe than trafficking in women (UNICEF, 2003). In West and Central Africa, where trafficking is perhaps more widespread and recognized, more than 70% of the countries identify trafficking as a problem, compared to one-third (33%) of countries in East and Southern Africa (UNICEF, 2003).
In Nigeria, trafficking of women and children as exploited domestic servants and commercial sex workers has assumed such an alarming proportion that leaders are breaking their normal culture of silence to address the issue with the urgency it deserves. For example, the Nigeria Television Authority routinely carries prime news items and special features on human trafficking to educate the public and raise awareness on the plight of trafficked victims (Adepoju, 2005).
Yet most studies of human trafficking in Nigeria have concentrated on sex trafficking with very few related to trafficking for domestic use. Even, these few studies do not fully explore the factors underlying demand as well as supply. They also neglect the severity of the exploitation being experienced by the underaged who are employed in third party households. Against this background, I examined the factors that propel demand for domestic servants; child susceptibility in source communities; and the process of trafficking and recruitment of domestic servants.
Adepoju (2005) notes that there are different levels of trafficking in the sub-region, including exploitative labour and domestic work and sexual exploitation of women and girls within and into countries of the region. Veil (1999) identified six types of child trafficking in West and Central Africa: abduction of children, payment of sums of money to poor parents who hand over their children on the promise that they will be treated well, bonded placement of children as reimbursement for debt, placement for a token sum for specified duration or for gift items, and enrolment for a fee by an agent for domestic work at the request of the children’s parents. Many child domestic workers are forced into labour in the sixth form, when their parents are deceived into enlisting them under the guise that they will be enrolled in school, trade, or training. But instead, most work as domestic servants in informal sectors or on plantations (UNICEF, 1998, 2000). Parents are often forced by poverty and ignorance to enlist their children, hoping to benefit from their wages and sustain the deteriorating family economic situation (Adepoju, 2005).
Deepening rural poverty among poor families (Dottridge, 2002), deteriorating living conditions, persistent unemployment, conflicts, human deprivation and hopelessness (Salah, 2004) make trafficking flourish in West Africa.
In Nigeria, trafficking in persons (whether internal or external) is prohibited by the establishment of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and other Related Matters (NAPTIP). The NAPTIP Act of 2003, as amended in 2005, defines trafficking as:
“All acts and attempted acts involved in the recruitment, transportation within or across Nigerian borders, purchase, sale, transfer, receipt or harbouring of a person involving the use of deception, coercion or debt bondage for the purpose of placing or holding the person whether for or not in voluntary servitude (domestic, sexual or reproductive) in force or bonded labour, or in slavery-like conditions” (NAPTIP, 2003:72).
The NAPTIP act sees a “trafficked person as a victim of trafficking while the trafficker is a person or an entity that intends to commit, aids, abets or acquiesces to an act of trafficking in persons” (NAPTIP ACT, 2003: 72).
Notwithstanding NAPTIP, there has been an increase in the internal trafficking of Nigerian women and children. While knowledge is still limited about internal trafficking networks within Nigeria, the recruitment processes adopted by traffickers and syndicates are diverse and complex. In Nigeria, human trafficking is a networked activity, highly organized yet with various types of decentralized actions (Tade 2010).
Many people are trafficked from rural communities of Oyo, Osun and Ogun States in the South-West; Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Bayelsa States, in the South-South; Ebonyi and Imo in the South East; and Benue and Kwara States in the North Central, to cities such as Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna, Calabar and Port Harcourt. Trafficking to these regions is predominantly for exploitative domestic work, farm labour and prostitution (UNICEF, 2006).
Against these perspectives, I researched child trafficking in Oyo State. My study was based on Institutional Anomie and Preference theories and was conducted in eleven endemic Local Government Areas in Oyo State. Copies of a questionnaire were used to collect data from 528 working women purposively selected from both public and private sectors while qualitative data were obtained through observation, in-depth interviews with 30 employers and 15 domestic servants. Key informants interviews were conducted with 15 officials of non-governmental organizations, the Nigerian Police, National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons, community leaders and traditional rulers. Data were analysed using frequency distribution, chi-square, logistic regression, content analysis and ethnographic summaries.
My data show that approximately 76% of respondents engaged domestic servants to execute household chores while 24% employed domestic servants for child care. Consequently, female domestic servants (88.3%) were preferred to male (11.7%). Respondents’ age (χ2 =9.53, p˂0.05), ethnic group (χ2 =14.59, p˂0.05), income (χ2 =11.60, p˂0.05), religion (χ2 =7.39, p˂0.05 ), marital status (χ2 =11.32, p˂0.05), type of marriage (χ2 =5.30, p˂0.05), and length of marriage (χ2 =9.78, p˂0.05) significantly influenced demand for domestic servants. Households with children were 1.14 times more likely to demand domestic servants than households without children. In Oyo State, which is predominantly Yoruba, Edo and Igbo households were 10.23 and 2.35 times more likely to engage domestic servants respectively than Yoruba households. This is likely because it is more costly for Edo and Igbo households to engage a relative than to hire domestic help in this area.
Workload, weakened extended family structure and need for companionship for older people or for women whose husbands do not live in the state intensified household demand for domestic servants. Serial monogamy, low literacy level, large family size, decayed infrastructure, and poverty in source communities were also reported to make children vulnerable to traffickers. Though trafficking occurs throughout the year, more children were recruited during festivals (such as the new Yam festival called Igede-Agba every September), frequently forcing servants to pay them hefty fees for delivering them to employers. Owing to the covert nature of recruitment, most respondents did not sign any type of agreement before engaging domestic servants, hence, servants had no agreed-upon working conditions. Not only are domestic workers at the mercy of traffickers and employers, but sometimes the latter verbally abuse, beat or sexually harass them. Traffickers also divert workers away from households that demonstrate the intention to break the chain of exploitation by sending workers to school or for vocational training. As a result, the exploitative employer practices and the profit-making goals of agents/traffickers also serve to undermine domestic servants’ aspirations for better work in the future.
Based on my research, I conclude that demand for domestic servants is a household reaction to structural and normative strains that affect both supplying and receiving households. Consequently, welfare programmes should be designed to strengthen vulnerable families in Nigeria. Government should continue to enlighten the general public about the negative consequences of child trafficking on children and the society; in particular, there is urgent need for NAPTIP to pay greater attention to internal trafficking. Most importantly, the domestic service sector should be regulated to ensure that fair wages and hours as well as educational opportunities are provided to all domestic workers in Nigeria.
Oludayo Tade is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Ibadan. He can be reached at dotad2003(at)yahoo.com.