SINCE I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO READ ABOUT Africa, I have been fascinated by the Tuareg. For more than a thousand years they were the fierce, veiled, camel-riding, sword-wielding warlords of the Sahara until they were ruthlessly conquered in the late nineteenth century by the French Foreign Legion. But when I told my family I longed to journey to the Tuaregs’ Saharan heartland, they would tap their heads signalling that I was crazy.
That chance came after I read that ruthless, nomadic, Tuareg tribes in the small Saharan nation, Niger, ignored world-wide condemnation of their practice of keeping more than 40,000 slaves — women, children, and men — in lifelong bondage. It was known as inherited slavery.
These tragic people were born as slaves, possessions of their masters from the moment they first drew breath until they died. Their owners could do with them what they wanted, even castrate rebellious adult male slaves, and sell them or give them away. They gave slave babies to relatives and friends as gifts.
How was it possible such a slave-owning nation still existed? Why wasn’t the United Nations demanding that Niger stamp out the evil practice? Why did the many nations that honourably brought down the evil apartheid system in South Africa, avert their eyes from a system far worse?
Ten years ago a news story mentioned that the crown prince of a Tuareg kingdom in Niger was bravely fighting to abolish his people’s ancient slave-owning tradition. He was a person I wanted very much to meet.
BUT FIRST, FOR A BOOK I WAS RESEARCHING, Among the Great Apes, I journeyed to Cameroon. There, I found evidence of the essential connivance of historical African slave traders who sold slaves to white slave traders.
At Bimbia village, its chieftain, Alfred Ejong, confirmed that his ancestors were deeply involved in the slave trade. “Buying slaves and selling them to the white people was good business for our people,” he told me. “In the interior, there were always wars, and victorious kings and chieftains enslaved their captured enemies — men, women, and children. My ancestors went to the rulers to buy slaves and marched them back to Bimbia to sell to whites who came in big ships from across the sea.”
Alfred showed me rusted leg irons and a cutlass, its curved blade flecked with rust: “Our ancestors locked the slaves into chains and marched them here to the coast.” With a grim smile, he brandished the weapon. “Nafonde, a slave master from our village, got this from a white sailor and used it to behead any slave causing trouble. He licked the blood in front of the other slaves to frighten them so none would try to escape. Slave masters who came after Nafonde used the sword the same way.”
A dirt track led down a hill to the Atlantic Ocean. A hundred yards across the dark water was a small, uninhabited island called Niko. “Once the slaves arrived here, our ancestors took them by pirogue out onto the island. The ocean terrified the inland
