Friday, February 7, 2025

Inside Botswana’s thriving slave trade

Botswana is running a thriving underground slave trade. For the right price and with the right connection you can buy exotic sex slaves imported from Bangladesh, farm slaves who are a dime a dozen rounded up from Basarwa settlements and house slaves who are usually provided by relatives.

The extent of Botswana’s trade in human beings has been exposed in the US State Department “2021 Trafficking in Persons.”

Bangladesh – one of the world’s largest exporters of manpower – is also a source country for human trafficking and a number of them are being sold to the Botswana market as sex slaves. “Bangladeshi traffickers have brought Bangladeshi women to Botswana for sex trafficking”, states the US Department of State report.

The Southeast Asian nation, which has a population of about 165 million people, is also home to nearly a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. The majority of Rohingya refugees are women and girls, many are poor and without a male breadwinner. They are vulnerable to traffickers looking to make a fast buck by recruiting girls into the international sex market.

The report suggests that Botswana offers an easy market for these trafficked sex slaves because the country’s laws do not “prohibit labour recruitment practices that traffickers commonly exploit, including the charging of recruitment fees, confiscation of workers’ passports, unilateral contract switching, and withholding of wages.”

Bangladesh has a backlog of about 4,500 human trafficking-related cases that are pending trial, according to government data. The nation has been striving to clear them. While 75% of 354 trafficking cases analysed in a recent research by NGO Justice & Care involved Bangladeshis being trafficked abroad, just 4% of the legal files included evidence from overseas authorities. Sunday Standard was unable to establish if Botswana authorities were among the 4% that provided the necessary evidence. The US Department of State report however revealed that, the Botswana government has begun collaboration with an international organization to identify foreign recruitment agencies operating within the country. The Botswana government however, “did not make efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts.”

Bangladeshi sex slaves who are being trafficked into Botswana are only a small portion of Botswana’s thriving trade in sex trafficking. “Criminals exploit some Batswana girls and women in commercial sex within the country, including in bars and along major highways”, states the report. The Dukwi refugee camp is also reported to be a haven for sex traffickers. “Restrictions on freedom of movement and systemic delays in obtaining refugee status and permission to work render the approximately 800 refugees, most located in Dukwi refugee camp, vulnerable to traffickers. There are reports child refugees from the camp are exploited in sex trafficking, including by South African truck drivers transiting Botswana,” states the report.

From the report, it emerges that for the most part however, Botswana’s modern day slave trade happens right under the nose of authorities. While some, trafficking is being implemented by organized criminal gangs, in most cases it is farm owners and ordinary Batswana who see and exploit some kind of vulnerability in migrants who are illegally in a country and so do not know where to turn to for help. That’s why it’s so difficult to spot, because a lot of people in Botswana’s modern slavery look like they’re in normal jobs, but there is something more troubling behind the surface.

In other cases, extended family members may subject their young Batswana domestic workers to conditions indicative of forced labour, including denial of education and basic necessities; confinement; and verbal, physical, or sexual abuse. 

The report which mentioned that the government of Botswana did not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but was making significant efforts to do so highlighted the nexus between sex trafficking, illegal immigration forced labour and Botswana government’s laissez-faire attitude.

In fact, it is worse than a laissez-faire attitude. The report actually accuses government officials of being complicit with some white commercial farmers from neighbouring South Africa in exploiting some Batswana.

““Most cattle farm owners are white emigres from South Africa, whose relationships with local government officials allow them to avoid inspection,” the report says adding that some officials even tipped off the farmers prior to inspections being conducted by the Department of Labour. 

It emerges from the report that, “officials acknowledged the forced labour of adults and children of the San ethnic minority group in private cattle farms in Botswana’s rural west, particularly in Ghanzi district……. “Inspectors lacked funding and covered large swaths of territory that made routine inspections impossible. Labour inspectors reportedly did not visit Ghanzi province, where officials acknowledged private cattle farmers exploited San individuals in conditions indicative of forced labour since 2014. The government largely permitted child labour in agriculture, in some cases forced, to continue without oversight because of its cultural nature; the government did not identify any child labour victims in 2020. Enrolment in school required an identity document, usually a birth certificate or other national card known as an O’mang,” the report reveals.

Says the report, “many San families did not have either document, which rendered their children unable to enrol in school and more likely to work on farms, at times in exploitative conditions. The government did not have procedures to screen for trafficking in the labour recruitment process; it relied on recruitment agencies to proactively do so and self-report.

According to the report, many trafficking victims in Botswana are Central African economic migrants intercepted by traffickers while transiting Botswana to South Africa. 

“Traffickers transport some child sex trafficking victims through Botswana en route to exploitation in South Africa. Within Botswana, traffickers target unemployed women, the rural poor, agricultural workers, and children. Some relatives force their family members into domestic work, cattle herding, and commercial sex. Some parents in poor rural communities send their children to work for wealthier families as domestic servants in cities or in agriculture and cattle farming in remote areas, increasing their vulnerability to forced labour,” the report says.

“Some traffickers entrap victims through social media, including through advertisements for fake employment opportunities. Traffickers exploit Zimbabwean and Namibian individuals in forced labour in agriculture in Botswana. Traffickers likely exploit some undocumented Zimbabwean children in commercial sex and forced labour in Botswana,” the report says.

It further states that traffickers transport Batswana individuals to Zimbabwe for forced labour. Organized trafficking rings subject some Batswana women to trafficking internally or transport women from neighbouring areas, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, and East Africa, and subject them to sex trafficking in Botswana. 

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