SLAVERY IN AFRICA

Evening Star, Issue 19044, 12 September 1925, Page 14

SLAVERY IN AFRICA

INDICTMENT OF PORTUGUESE. The fads disclosed in a report on labor conditions in Angola and Portuguese East Africa, which has been forwarded to the League ox Nations Temporary Commission on Slavery, vividly recall the Cocoa Island scandals of twenty years ago (writes the Genova correspondent of the London ‘ Daily News 1 ). The report, which has been prepared by two Americans (Professor Boss and Dr Cramer), who made an investigation into conditions in these territories at the request of a number of American citizens interested in the welfare of the African natives, reveals a terrible state of affairs. The two investigators travelled extensively in the districts named, and state that they questioned from 6,000 to 7,000 of the native population through interpreters. Slavery in its old form, they say, has disappeared, but its place has been taken by a form of requisitioned labor which in its effects is far worse than the old domestic slavery. Under the old system the slaves were, of value as property, and were not underfed; slavery'was cruel only when the master was cruel in character. Now the natives, carried off from their homes under the poll tax, are in the grasp of a system which makes no allowance for the circumstances of the individual, and ignores the fate of the families of the labor recruits. Again and again through the pages of tile report one reads of deportations of natives who are never neard of again. 'Mon, women, and children are taken to work on the roads. "The soldiers come, catch the people, children included. and tie them up. They take about half the family, leaving the other half.” Women are constantly seen working in road gangs, many with babies on their backs. _ Forced labor began in 1914 after the British Government brought pressure to bear on the Portuguese Government, but it is said to have become worse since 1917. ” The laborers are supposed to be paid, but the money paid by the planters seldom gets past officials, and the native laborer gets none. When working near home on roadmaking the people ore supposed to feed themselves, but the serfdom -which has grown up in recent years leaves them practically no time or strength to produce food in their own gardens and fields. The result is that largo numbers are in a state of chronic semi-starvation. Mortality is rapidly increasing. The real rulers or the country are the native policemen, who have been given wide authority by the Portuguese officials. “Their usual procedure is to catch all the women they can in a village, and for each woman set at liberty they demand a carrier or a bribe.” Of the Portuguese generally, a European, Mr E., says: “No white man from Portugal ever conics here with the intention of doing a day’s manual labor. It never enters into the head o? any Portuguese cut here to gain his living by work. He always expects to live by Government job, by trade, or by making the native work for his benefit.”

The foregoing refers mainly to Angola, bnfc things are nearly as had in Portuguese East Africa. The report is forwarded to the League of Nations by nineteen prominent Americans.