THE SLAVE TREE

This huge tree of the Afzenias species is an emblem of the city, near the center. A survivor from the colonial era, it has become a symbol of the slave trade, whose negotiations took place in the shade of its foliage in the 1880s. Indeed, Swahili slave traders, the most famous of whom were Chipembere, Mwalabu and Chiwala, came here to buy slaves. They traded prisoners captured especially during the war with the Mambundu from Angola. They were then deported to the Swahili coast of the Indian Ocean and sold to Arab slave traders who operated the human trade from the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania, then under the rule of the Sultanate of Oman. They were then sent mainly to the Arabian Peninsula, and to a lesser extent to Indian Ocean colonies (Mauritius, etc.) until the 1900s, when British-protected Zambia abolished slavery. While the British sought early to intercept slave ships bound for the Americas as early as the 1850s, it was very difficult to control the opaque trade that took place deep in the Zambian bush, which was an advantage for decades for Swahili traders based in the region. In addition, the Arabs continued to illegally ship slaves even after the British took control of Zanzibar, as it was easy to send boats by night and with little fanfare.