The Slave Lodge

“Slavery is the most extreme form of control and subjugation of one person by another; most often enforced through violence.

Slaves were usually acquired to provide labor and sometimes status for their owners; slaves were bought and sold as property.

The societies in which slaves lived accorded them few if any rights, while granting their owners almost unlimited power over them.

Slaves, especially those captured in war, were considered cultural outsiders. Even those enslaved through debt or born into slavery were usually treated as though they did not belong.

In many slave societies, including the Cape, slaves were denied the most basic rights, including the right to marriage and family life. Even children could be separated from their mothers and sold to new masters far away.”

-Slave Lodge, Cape Town, South Africa

I wrote this quote down during my first week in Cape Town, South Africa. My group toured the city and paid admission to see the “Slave Lodge”, a historic building once home to the slaves of the Cape. The living conditions were harsh and the treatment unbearable. Women were torn from their families and any children they had immediately acquired slave status. Slaves were publically hanged, tied up to trees and beaten, shackled to each other and bound up in packed rooms where they were kept with little to no sunlight.

Upon entering the Slave Lodge, I read this quote on the wall and couldn’t help but draw parallels between modern day slavery and the slavery that existed in Cape Town in the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Supposedly slavery was abolished in the 1800’s in South Africa. I believe when most people think of slavery, they imagine shackles, men working long hours in fields, whippings, beatings, and the hot sun. They imagine the Jews in Egypt or the slaves emancipated by Lincoln. All of these ideas conjure up images of history long gone. Few people realize the existence of slavery in the modern day. Every point made by the Slave Lodge quote remains applicable to the world even in the 21^st century.

The violence, the buying, the selling, the labor, the loss of rights, the inferior status all remain characteristics of the human trafficking epidemic that has plagued our century. Every aspect of slavery recognized by the Slave Lodge is still in affect in communities across the world. I believe this quote only emphasizes the gravity of this issue. People look at the past and our shocked by the inhumane treatment one race or nation casts upon another. However, when that same indignity exists in the world today, we are silent. We are unaware.

The issue of human trafficking should shock us just as much and even more than what lies in the past. To progress so much in some areas of society, such as technology and medicine, and then to realize we remain at a standstill in the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries when it comes to human rights is appalling. This is not the way it should be. Children should not be forced into child labor and women and girls should not be coerced into selling their bodies at the threat of personal injury.

This quote should not only serve as a reminder of the oppression that once was, it should serve as a wake up call to the world that the slavery we read about in history books and learn about in museums still exists today. And the presence of that slavery should shock us and compel us to act.