women. Many boys have told adult slaves, with a great sense of humiliation, that they were raped repeatedly by their masters. Upon returning home, one escaped slave boy from Gok Machar was said to have told his mother that the forced sexual contact between him and his captor had happened so often that he had sometimes wondered whether this was a natural occurrence for all men, and he almost believed it was so. When I heard of this boy and went to interview him in 1998, he told me that his only indication that this was unnatural was the pain he had experienced, the dreadful anticipation of his master’s visit upon him night after night, and the shame he had felt the day following the molestation. He said that he could not stand the look on people’s faces when he considered the possibility that other people knew what this man was doing to him. He still recalled the faces of other boys and girls still in captivity, and the possibility of similar things happening to them made him nauseous.
Another escaped slave provided a further insight about slave experiences. Angong Chan, a mother of three children, was captured in Warawar market during the May 1998 joint PDF-Murahileen attack. She was captured together with her children. The slaver Babikr Salah took her to al-Nuhud and renamed her Zeinab. He was from the Misseria branch that had once reached a truce with the Dinka and he had worked at the Warawar market. He sold two of Angong’s children. Her other children were kept away from her because the slaver thought she would not run away leaving her children behind. In the interview, Angong said:
There was no point for me to be there since I was not with my children anyway. Every day, I was made to carry big water plastic containers from the borehole five to seven times a day. I brought water for bathing, washing cloths, and cooking. I would bathe the children. When they wanted me to go to the borehole after dark a male adult had to go with me as a guard. I was also grinding and pounding grain and cooking. For the whole time that I was staying in al-Nuhud, I was made to do all kinds of chores including things that were not traditionally women’s activities in Dinkaland such as going with the cattle to distant pastures29
Some of the most horrifying examples of abuse came from freed slaves, those who managed to escape, those who were allowed to leave by their compassionate masters, or those whose freedom was purchased through the various slave redemption programs.30
One woman, Abuk Akot, was captured during a raid on Marial Baai in February 1999 and was taken to the North. She had a very young child left behind, and she kept begging her captors to release her for the sake of her infant. The captors thought that she definitely acted like someone who was going to attempt to escape, and they chained her arms together at the elbow. Because her arms were tied so hard, there was no circulation and they started to rot. Yet she was determined to run away. She said, “I refused to be a slave of the Arabs. I was ready to do anything to prompt them to kill me instead, and I told myself that running away would either get me killed or get me home. I managed to escape only to come and find out that my husband had been killed during the raid and my property was totally destroyed, and my arm is rotting…. I will not accept to be disabled by this. I will do everything possible to regain the use of my arms. It is the only thing I have got now.”31
Garang Anei, a forty-year-old man from Aweil West, had lived in western Sudan before returning to Dinkaland. He had witnessed the slave trade and explained that “Many Dinka women who were abducted by the Rezeigat were ‘married’ by Arab men for years and after giving birth to a child or two, the women were told to go back to Dinkaland. Some went back upon the realization that the children they had given birth to were not going to be their children anyway, and others decided that they could not leave their children behind. They now linger in limbo. No children, no going home, no job, so they sometimes accept enslavement.”32
Another former slave whose freedom was obtained by his relatives provided an insight to the lives of slaves. Arop Ajing is a fifteen-year-old boy from the Tuic Dinka who was captured while grazing south of the Kiir River near Abyei. He had been a slave in a place called Chiteb in Kordofan. His aunt who was living in the North purchased his freedom. He explained why many slaves got killed in the North instead of being used as laborers. “When the Misseria hear that some Arabs have been killed by the Dinka in the South, revenge is carried out against the slaves. After all, it is easy to go back to Dinkaland for more during the next raid. The life of a Dinka person does not count for much in the eyes of the Baggara.”33
The southern captives were sold and distributed, and those unfit for anything were left to die or to live in limbo between Arab villages, for they did not know their way back or were too weak to travel back to the South without adequate food. Some of them managed to make their way into one of the northern cities after a year or two. By this time their captors would have forgotten that their arrival in Khartoum, for example, might expose the practice of slavery to expatriates or human rights activists residing in the capital city. Many of the stories of slave’s lives became known in Khartoum through the narratives of the few captives who were deemed unfit for enslavement and were let go. Other narratives came from children who were very young at the time of capture and were taken to Islamic schools in the northern cities, and managed to sneak out of such schools.
One concern that investigators of slavery in Sudan have had is whether or not slave markets exist and what the going rate for slaves might be. Officially the slave trade is illegal, but the only effect of this has been that the slaves are not sold openly in any known markets. For fear of being found, the slavers have made sure that there were no slave markets that lasted for more than a few hours following the arrival of slaves from the South. The longest the slaves were allowed to stay in the zariba was one day. Only in rare cases did the newly abducted slaves congregate in one place for as long as two days.
But what the slavers fear is not legal redress from the government, but rather outsiders learning about their activities and reporting them to the world. What became the tradition with the slave raids was that after the slave raiding forces had crossed the Kiir River on their way back to the North and felt safe in their territory, they would stop at some established points of rendezvous on the outskirts of the towns. Here, the slavers would divide the slaves and the booty taken among themselves, thus scattering the slaves in the slaving communities, leaving behind very little trace of their activities. The division of the loot is based on several factors: the taxes to be given leaders back home; the individual firepower of those carrying weapons; and the decision that each militiaman may keep the slaves he individually captured. Any remaining slaves that could not be sold quickly were sometimes offered as presents to local government officials. These local officials have quickly learned the language of the central government of categorically denying the existence of slavery in Sudan while becoming prime movers of this practice. One escaped slave boy from the Tuic Dinka, Achuil Deng, testified to this point.
The government does not question the Arabs about their activities against Southerners. In Angreb near Muglad, one Dinka slave boy held by somebody called Khojli Muhamed one day refused to herd cattle. He told the Arab that he wanted to leave and the Arab took him to the police station of Angreb. The police officer in charge ordered the boy to return to work and warned him against attempting to run away. He told him, “if you try to escape they will kill you.” The police are usually Misseria, and they help their brothers to retain their slaves. An Arab killing a Dinka slave boy is very easy. If he suspects that you are being disloyal you get a bullet without warning.34
The absence of slave markets has been held by the government of Sudan as the main argument against allegations of slavery, and has discouraged researchers trying to investigate reports of slavery. In addition, the area that has become the slavery zone is extremely difficult to enter. Educated South Sudanese and foreigners are heavily scrutinized in the area. Because foreign aid is needed, however, expatriate relief workers are allowed to go to the area but are not permitted to make any contacts with displaced Southerners without permission of government intelligence. The international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the transitional zone are required to employ only the local staff recommended by the government, so the NGO local staff are actually security agents who monitor the movement of expatriate staff. Expatriate aid workers
