Abolition and Family Ideologies: Memories of Becoming Forced Labourers in Southern Somalia (1903-1950)

In the decades following abolition, colonial authorities in Somalia reduced the complex social positions of formerly enslaved people into a single category of cheap, coerced labour. Regardless of their background – whether descendants of long‑freed families, recent escapees, or those newly manumitted – all were treated as potential agricultural workers. Within Somali society, especially among pastoralists, farming carried low status, yet both Somalis and colonizers acknowledged its economic importance for the economy and for food supply. This chapter draws on oral histories collected between 1985 and 1989 from communities along the Juba River, recounting experiences of people whose ancestors escaped enslavement, and records of witnesses of the times of forced labour in Somalia. It examines colonial attempts to reshape slave labour into a workforce serving the colony’s construction. The 1903 directive advising colonizers to treat descendants of slaves as “family members” and the 1925 Fascist conscription law enforcing their use as forced labourers were steps towards this objective. Even those emancipated long before formal abolition were coerced back into servitude. The study also highlights the gendered aspects of this exploitation: women endured forced marriages, mothers and infants were neglected, and brutal punishment maintained discipline. These practices fostered new forms of patriarchal hierarchies in colonial Somalia.