Bitter Chocolate by Carol Off Page B

Cadburys held meetings with Portuguese officials, who attempted to reassure the chocolate-makers that reports of labour abuse were highly exaggerated. The Portuguese fell back on old arguments used by King Leopold to justify his own actions in the Congo. It wasn’t really slavery, they said, but employment. The Africans were not captives but willing partners in what they called the
serviçal
system. They were engaged to work for some years as wage earners and then allowed to return home. If they stayed on the islands for the rest of their lives, well, that’s because they were better off in São Tomé than in Angola, where there was nothing for them to do. One shouldn’t judge labour conditions in Africa by European standards.
    The Cadburys clearly wanted to believe such lies and Burtt, when he wasn’t struggling with grammar lessons, was anxious to please his chocolate-making masters. The problem for all of them was that the evidence of slavery was stacked so high. The Anti-Slavery Society’s
Reporter
documented over and over again that the Angolans wouldn’t be in shackles if they were willing labourers; they wouldn’t be dying at an appalling rate if they were part of any normal workforce. And the records show that no one ever returned home from the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe.With his assignment from
Harper’s Monthly Magazine
and some funds in his vest pocket, Nevinson arrived in Angola to launch his investigation in December 1904. He spent the next six months following the slave route from its source all the way to the island of São Tomé. He learned that the Portuguese had already sent tens of thousands of Africans to the Angolan ports of Luanda and Benguela, where they were bundled onto ships and brought to the islands to work. The road leading to the ports was littered with the bleached bones and corpses of those who never made it. Nevison came upon small groups of natives being transported by gun-toting guards, and he heard the crack of the whips and slap of the paddles used to punish those who attempted to escape.
    Nevinson identified the sham of the
serviçal
tribunal system. The Angolans were required to swear before a judge that they were going to the islands of their own free will. Nevinson could see that the natives had no choice—their responses to questions weren’t even recorded. Everyone Nevinson talked to made it clear that the passage to São Tomé was a one-way trip. He later wrote in
Harper’s
of the sleight of hand that turned “slave” into
“serviçal”:
“The climax of the farce has now been reached. The deed of pitiless hypocrisy has been consummated. The requirement of legalized slavery have been satisfied … They went into the tribunal as slaves, they have come out as ‘contract labourers.’”
    What disgusted Nevinson almost as much as the cruelty was the derision white people demonstrated towards the Africans. He watched an Angolan woman with a newborn baby attempt to mount an unsteady gangplank to a ship bound for São Tomé. She lost some of her belongings when they fell into the water, and stumbled several times before she finally struggled into her place with the other slaves. As pitiable as the scene was to Nevinson, he realized that the spectacle was merely amusing to other European passengers on board. The boat served as both a cargo vessel and a passenger ferry, so Nevinson was able to observe the scene from the upper deck, along with a large crowdof first-class passengers: “I have heard many terrible sounds,” he later wrote, “but never anything so hellish as the outbursts of laughter with which the ladies and gentlemen of the first class watched the slave woman’s struggle up the deck.”
    Nevinson eventually got to São Tomé, and it didn’t take him long to learn why no African workers returned to Angola. Many died of disease and abuse.