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Michael, I have followed your arguments closely. Am glad you made mention of the definition of slavery as presented by the Encarta Dictionary. You write, "..To my knowledge the Maasai never enslaved anyone, nor did the Khoikhoi, nor did the Yoruba, nor the Dagara, and so on....". Perhaps, this in itself provide a ray of light...meaning within African societies or societies that were found within Africa with a set of principles that made their living peaceful and not in conflict with each other, there was oneness. Homogeneousness was advanced as against breaking society into classes (Kawanga, V., 2006) as was the practice at the time of colonialism. In fact, Mike, you rightly allude to this when you intelligently argue that .."Colonialism has been enforced by way of deceptive economic tactics, and so on. Neo-colonialism continues to be enforced by way of these same types of means". I a in agreement. You see, these tactics exist today! One Prof. Fantu Cheru (an Authority on development economics) argues that Africa is a confusion of Agendas!. Even before one programme finishes another one is introduced. One culprit has been the Bretton Woods Institutions and the so-called first worlds.. The issue at hand is to itemise what constitutes indegenous. But, talking of indigenous from an African perspective, there is no such a thing as 'tribe' in its frame. The term tribe denotes is a sum total of clanal representation. Societies were made up of clans and not tribes. These clans and there representatives had particular territorial representations some were known as Abena Nsofu (ChiBemba language) denoting the Elephant clan, others Abena Nkalamo (or nshimba or Simba) denoting lion, Abena Ngwena, denoting crocodile.. etc.. from these leadership qualities were noticed and used in practice. Others were blacksmiths (present day mechanical enginners etc..) e.g. Lubunda of the North Eastern Lunda Kingdom of Mwata Kazembe. In summary, I think you have a good case in point and i implore you to develop arguments your own way to justify a cause.
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