The aftermath of slavery in Buganda/Uganda

Doreen Kembabazi (Ghent University)

Although Uganda contained hundreds of thousands of slaves, the majority of whom were women, we know very little about their lives. We have exemplary studies of the politics and social struggles around slave emancipation on the Swahili coast, but very little information on the aftermath of slavery in mainland areas such as Uganda. Better-studied comparative cases in West Africa and the New World show that typically, slavery has a long afterlife. In Uganda, colonial administrators and missionaries preferred to keep quiet the continuing marginalization and exploitation, as it would have undermined the narrative of colonialism as a force against slavery. Because of this blanket of silence, we know little about the afterlives of formerly enslaved Ugandans. The gender and family dynamics of emergence from slavery, ex-slaves’ migration routes, their negotiations for access to productive resources and status, all remain to be established. This project aims to;1) establish what happened to the thousands of slaves present in Uganda in ca. 1880 and to their descendants over the twentieth century, 2) to explain why the aftermath of slavery is so little discussed in the written sources and historiography of the region, and 3) to trace the social and political legacies of slavery up to the present.

ALL ARE WELCOME

• No registration necessary. Zoom links will be sent in advance
• Convenors: Wayne Dooling wd2@soas.ac.uk and Shabnum Tejani st40@soas.ac.uk