Photo by Alice Bellagamba. All rights reserved.
The social and political stigmas associated with slavery did not end with legal abolition. In the highlands of Madagascar, as in many other places, the history of slavery continues to cast a long shadow, with the legacies of historical slave systems creating a fertile environment for contemporary forms of labour exploitation and continuing discrimination.
While the legal abolition of slavery in Madagascar in 1896 opened up important opportunities for some former slaves, the burdens of enslavement have often proved hard to escape. In many regions of the island, statutory distinctions divide the population into nobles, common people, and slave descendants. Marriage between people belonging to different statutory groups is forbidden, and slave descendants are considered inferior and have had difficulties being recognised as landowners. In some cases, they work as sharecroppers for former masters and their economic conditions are more fragile than those of high rank lineages. The local word for 'slave' (andevo) is considered an insult, and it is still used in private conversations by people of free origin to refer to slave descendants, who in turn often try to hide their servile origin.
