LOT OF SLAVES

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 123, 20 November 1935, Page 22

LOT OF SLAVES

BETTERED BY DECREES

ACTION IN ABYSSINIA

EMPEROR'S PLAN

Ethiopia's Emancipation Edict was issued in 1924, after the Empire had been accepted as a member of the League of Nations, and although it has not brought about the liberation, of many slaves, it had practically put an end to the slave traffic in most parts of the country and set in motion a social process that will eventually abolish slavery, wries E. H. Markham in the "Christian Science Monitor." According to official statistics, 17,193 persons have been freed during the last eleven years, which is certainly a very small number. There are individual chiefs in Ethiopia who own a fifth as many as that. How many slaves there still are in the entire country no one knows, for no one knows even the number of inhabitants. Some say there are 7,000,000, and others 15,000,000 inhabitants. Some also assert there are 2,000,000 slaves. Possibly the population of Ethiopia does not exceed 10,000,000 persons, and it would be surprising if a tenth of them are slaves. That number is decreasing by less than 2 per cent, a decade. However, such bare statistics make the slavery situation look much worse than it really is. In the first place slaves are usually domestic servants. They live with their masters and no great social gulf separates the two. For practically the whole population of Ethiopia, living conditions are extremely humble. Ninety per cent, of the people dwell in small, circular, oneroomed huts, almost devoid of furniture. A few families inhabit oneroomed apartments, situated, one beside the other, in long, drab, mudwalled barracks with corrugated iron roofs. An infinitesimally small number live in attractive modern cottages. A few kings arid princes have large crudely furnished stone dwellings. CENTRAL HUTS. Some of the big chiefs live in central huts or "tukuls" in large yards and let their retainers, servants, and slaves live in similar but smaller huts nearby. They may make their slaves till fields and gather crops. Most slaves, however, do housework and live in small "tukuls" with their masters and their masters' goats and chickens. Slaves and their masters are of the same colour, wear similar clothes, eat similar food, and go out together on the streets. A slave is a domestic servant or farm-hand, who is meagrely paid with food, clothes, and lodging, instead of with money. A free woman, selling grain, salt, pepper, and bread all day long in rain or shine at the open market, earns barely enough money to buy food and clothing and returns late at night to sleep on a mat in a wretched tukul. A female slave gets food and clothing and likewise sleeps on a mat in a tukul. There is not a great deal of difference. This is not saying that it is pleasant to be a slave. They are subjected to hardships and humiliation, and, of course, should be liberated. And the Emperor has put laws into operation that will eventutlly make them all free. Every slave beaten or abused by his master may obtain his freedom. If a slave woman bears a child to her master or his son, both she and the child are freed. Any child with one free parent is free and all children born to slaves since the emancipation edict may be freed. A slave who saves his master from a serious accident, who voluntarily goes to war with his master, or who becomes a priest or soldier may be freed. If a Moslem or pagan slave becomes a baptised Christian he is to be freed. No master may give a slave away even to a, relative. FAMILIES NOT DIVIDED. When a man and his wife are divorced the slaves of Jhe family may go all to the master, or all to the mistress, but cannot be divided between them. If they prefer, they may be freed and the Emperor will indemnify the owners. Every slave acquired by war is immediately freed on the death of his master. Every, slave acquired by purchase is freed seven years after the death of his master. If a slave flees,, no one has a right to catch him except his master. Formerly anyone could catch a fleeing slave and was given a reward for doing so. If a fugitive slave goes to a place of refuge and is not claimed by the master within eight days, he goes completely free. If a master catches a fleeing slave he must get papers from a Judge before he has a right to put him in bondage again. All traffic in slaves is absolutely forbidden. For a third offence capital punishment is prescribed. Within the last ten years 3368 slave dealers have been punished. It is believed that the traffic has almost disappeared, except on the very edges of the empire. No slave may be considered as the property of the master. He is merely award. This is looked upon as a provisional status which will eventually be supplanted by complete liberation. This then is the theoretical situation, according to Ethiopian law. In reality, the situation is not so rosy, for if prohibition laws, vitally affecting customs and material interests, are evaded in western lands, with well-organised States, how much more in Ethiopia! Still, seventy special bureaux or courts, for the suppression of slavery, have been opened throughout the country, and they are all working for the application of the anti-slavery laws. The Judges in these bureaux are friends and champions of the unfortunate thousands still held in bondage, and help them to obtain their legal rights. The chief one of these Courts is in the capital, and every day is surrounded by wretched men and women, who have come to complain of cruel masters or to demand freedom. PROBLEM OF FREEDOM. An effort is being made to provide the freed slaves with work and freed slave children are kept in a special institution started and maintained by the Emperor. The whole slave-freeing apparatus is directly under the Emperor's supervision. The bureaux are responsible only to him. One must be patient with Ethiopia, it has been argued. These are an easy-going backward people, and cannot be transformed with a stroke of the pen, of a whip, or of a sword. Institutions which serve as the basis of a social order, such as outdoor Courts, tribal organisations, loyalty to chieftains, and domestic slavery must be changed gradually, otherwise the cure is worse than the evil. Emperor Haile Selassie has been making decided advances along all lines and in no respect was he more successful than in his progressive solution of the slavery problem. The whole of Ethiopia needs emancipation from ignorance, slack government, cruelty, sorcery, and crass economic inefficiency. As that emancipation is effected, all slavery will disappear.

Smiling is less wearing than frowning; it takes fifty muscles to make a frown, while a smile calls upon only thirteen.