The Struggles of African Slaves Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Struggles of African Slaves - Essay Example No one knows who that was until Nunu reveals a secret to the main character. She tells Shola that she was raped by a white man while being shipped for a trade. There is one more argument which proves that slaves were treated as objects and property. At the beginning of a film when Mona appears to be in the past, we see that white masters catch her and burn a brand on her skin with sizzling hot metal. Animals on farms also get such brands to show who they belong to. Such scenes help the viewers to understand how mistreated the African slaves were, and how desperate their lives were. Apart from sexual abuse, the enslaved people were subject to other types of discrimination. They suffered a lot from physical violence of their masters. Slaves were constantly brutally beaten for every fault and for each act of disobedience. There were special places where the slaves were tightened and severely whipped. The beating was conducted with such a strength that in many cases the victims did not s tand it and died. In one of the scenes from Sankofa, a pregnant woman Kuta is whipped to death, not having any more strength to stand the pain. To crown it all, the cruelty of white masters was sometimes aimed at innocent slaves. If there was some kind of a rebellion or disobedience, slave owners wanted to punish Africans. If they could not find guilty ones, they simply took a random group of innocent people and punished them severely. Poor slaves were locked up in small wooden cages, hung high on trees and left there until they died.