The Politics of slavery in Mauritania: Rhetoric, reality and democratic discourse

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 35, 3, 2010 © The Maghreb Review 2010 This publication is printed on longlife paper THE POLITICS OF SLAVERY IN MAURITANIA: RHETORIC, REALITY AND DEMOCRATIC DISCOURSE BY E. ANN MCDOUGALL∗ In 2007, Mauritania experienced its first genuine democratic election. The longstanding slavery question which had attracted political and humanitarian support in international circles since 1980, became part of a truly domestic discourse. ˘r�tın, freed–slaves, those living in slave-like conditions and those long-descended from slave ancestors,1 voted. It was not just the rhetoric that carried weight; it was the ˛art�ni community itself. To the extent that discussion of the slave–˛r�tın question remained prominent in public discourse, it did so directed to a domestic audience–one that was 40-45 per cent ˛art�ni. The politics of slavery is the story of how slavery and issues associated with it played out prior to this election. But it also has to do with rhetoric – who drew upon it and why, who listened to it and why, who was affected by it and how – over time. This article sketches a framework for this analysis, concluding with some observations and questions (see p. 19) deriving from events since the 2007 election. ‘THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY’: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES Slavery has a long history in Mauritania. It was a subject that drew Saharan fiulem� (scholarly clerics) into intensive debate in the 19th century.2 It was a catalyst to local-level politics during colonialism3 with administrators trying to further careers on its back (McDougall, 1989), even as ‘masters’ sought to control what they saw as their own reproduction (McDougall, 2007). It also generated a discourse recognized internationally which allowed French colonialists to speak of free salaried labour while rooting traditional slavery in Mauritania’s colonial economy. Freed slaves they called ˛r�tın became the new working class. But appropriating the language of the modern to represent the pre-modern was not a French monopoly. Mauritanian masters successfully attached Islamic to their practices, arguing that this embedded domestic slavery in culture and religion, both of which the French had promised to respect. ∗ University of Alberta 1 ˘r�tın are not a fixed, easily-definable group; this article is in large part an attempt to unravel the strands of contemporary ˛art�nı identities. 2 Abdel Wedoud Ould Cheikh, ‘Islam et esclavage en Mauritanie’ [Workshop Presentation. Thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada for funding this workshop]. For the western part of the Sahara see also responses by Ahmed Baba to an anonymous Moroccan questioner on the subject of legal slavery in the 17th century (Hunwick, 2000). 3 The French justified moving into the Western Sahara with the argument that the ‘white’ (bidh�n) nomads had to be stopped from raiding and trading for slaves in French West Africa (modern Senegal and Mali). 260 E. ANN MCDOUGALL Arguments that ultimately shaped Mauritanian administrators’ responses to authorities in Dakar, Paris and the international community situated meaningful abolition in Islamic manumission. Ironically, the religion earlier argued by French colonialists as providing a justification for slavery, now became a savior: left alone, Islamic Slavery would die a slow but natural death. A NEW NATION SEEKS A NEW IDENTITY: DEFINING‘MAURITANIAN’ When Moktar Ould Daddah, first president of the new Islamic Republic, signed the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1961 ensuring that equality for all was enshrined in the nation’s Constitution, Mauritania was still rooted in a traditional hierarchy that included slavery. This was a nation in name only. The government focused on creating an Arab identity for it, privileging both ˛assaniya-speaking bidh�n and a large population of acculturated ˛r�tın. Although French-speaking Negro (African)-Mauritanians4 who had profited from French colonial education occupied many of the better remunerated professional and civil service positions, a clear policy of imposed Arabization quickly generated tensions in the 1970s.5 But there were more immediate problems. The devastating drought that gripped the Sahara-Sahel from the late 1960s had killed the herding economy and driven impoverished nomads and shepherds into the country’s few towns. The northern iron-ore industry attracted many of...