Racism in Africa - Tanzania

Tanzania

Prior to the 16th century, the bulk of slaves exported from Africa were shipped from East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. Zanzibar became a leading port on this trade. Arab slave traders differed from European ones in that they would often conduct raiding expeditions themselves, sometimes penetrating deep into the continent. They also differed in that their market greatly preferred the purchase of female slaves over male ones. Zanzibar was once East Africa's main slave-trading port, and under Omani Arabs in the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the city each year.

David Livingstone wrote of the slave trade:

"To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility.... We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path. said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead.... We came upon a man dead from starvation.... The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves."

Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before ever reaching the slave markets of Zanzibar.

The Zanzibar Revolution of January 12, 1964 put an end to the local Arab dynasty. As many as 17,000 Arabs were massacred by the descendants of black African slaves, according to reports, and thousands of others were detained and their property either confiscated or destroyed.