6 - Structures of Bondage

Summary

Chapter 6 analyses systems of bondage on the lakeshore. It builds on recent works in Indian Ocean World history that have blurred the distinctions between slavery and freedom, and challenges trends in Africanist scholarship that have tended to analyse labour and social relations in these terms. It argues that the terms ‘slavery’ and ‘freedom’ do not do justice to the wide variety of bonded forms that existed on Lake Tanganyika’s shores. Most labourers living on the lakeshore were not concerned with the distinction of being either a ‘slave’ or ‘free’. Rather, they were concerned with who they were bonded to, the conditions of their bondage, and what this meant for their social status. In this instance (and perhaps paradoxically), some bonds(wo)men were able to claim ‘freeborn’ social status. They demonstrated this status through their display of material objects, their primary occupation, and their spiritual capabilities.