Man's Inhumanity To Man

The system of slave trade in Africa began in the sixteenth century originating from the coastal tropical regions of East and West Africa towards the Central part of Africa.
A slave is a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them and work excessively hard. Slave trade is the procuring, transporting and selling of these human beings now known as slaves.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were specifically three different types of slaves which were domestic slaves which were women forced to work and often lived in the houses of the slave owner, hard labour slaves who were strong and healthy men who worked in plantations and mines, and breeder slaves who were women used for experiments sexually or generally called sex slaves.

The slave trade began with the Portuguese who sort to have an interest in a much more readily commodity, which were slaves, leaving the fabled deposits of gold in Africa.
Later on, the external slave trade evolved according to certain reasons acclaimed by the Europeans.

There was the growth of mercantile capitalism in Europe which refers to the earliest phase in development of capitalism as an economic and social system.
This stimulated a mass trade in slaves because for capitalism to be attained on a large scale there was the need of cheap labour which could be acquired from Africa and Asia, Europeans believed that Africans had greater power, were resistant to diseases and could work under hard conditions.

Some Europeans wanted to expand their empires but there was the need for a work force and this could be obtained from Africa because Africans were believed to be excellent workers. Industrialisation began in Britain because of its involvements in slave trade which generated a lot of capital.
Senegambia, a state in West Africa, between the years 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of its population was enslaved. Britain had the worst trade which was believed to have amounted to 2,5 million slaves.

Most European countries had quite small populations and yet needed to improve their industries. The growth of plantation economies also caused slavery in Africa. Slaves were obtained in order for them to work on early plantations in Europe such as cotton and sugar plantations.

Competition in industry and agriculture arose in European countries and there was a need to maximise profits, by so doing, more slaves were brought in to Europe increasing the rate of at which slaves were being sold. Apparently, the slave trade was not initiated by Europeans, slavery was not new to Africa.
According to some African traditions like in Senegambia, they believed that dead kings needed slaves to accompany them to heaven.

There was always a rich pool of war captives in inner and inter-tribal conflicts, these were sold into slavery, as well as political enemies to reduce their increasing population. African chiefs sold criminals and wanted elements within their societies like witches, wizards and murderers into slavery as a way of punishing them.

The slave trade led to the rise of philanthropists who believed that slave trade was against the will of God. It was abolished in Britain in 1772, it still continued but was further abolished in 1823. It was realised that it was more profitable to trade with humans than to trade in humans. The slave trade killed African traditional institutions and disrupted some cultures.
Slave raids created insecurity. It generated misery and created wars that implied regional integration which dropped orderly progression. Slavery was not a unique phenomenon to Africans, it was a crime against humanity by man against fellow man.

Should Students Have A Mandatory Drug Test

This is a controversial issue as the school disciplinary committee may initiate the system of drug testing at the school even without the approval of parents and guardians of the students at that school.
For example, urine, hair, blood, sweat or saliva can determine the presence or absence of specified parent drugs or their metabolites.

Teenagers should be tested for drugs because it is at this age when they are vulnerable to drug use because they would want to experiment on new ideas, being pressurised into drug activities by their peers and the fear of being left out.
If a school is to have compulsory drug testing it should be done randomly at any given time as a set timetable can easily be beaten by kid abstaining and detoxing before the test.

Basically, for a school to carry out a mandatory drug test, it would depend on the location of the school, the activities carried out at that school and the type of students that learn there depending on how their behaviour is.

Currently in Zimbabwe, the use and abuse of designer drugs seems to be an illness encroaching in some schools where there are students who can afford to buy the stuff.
In other schools there may be isolated cases of marijuana smoking especially among boys but the problem is not really big. Thus, the affected schools are coming up with the proposal for compulsory spot tests for drugs to combat the problem before it gets out of hand.

Students with deplorable behaviour and those that participate in extra-curricular activities should be targeted for random drug tests.
Schools having complications and a higher rate of students using or abusing drugs should carry out this programme as it may reduce or even stop drug use on children at the school.

Repeated drug use can lead to addiction so testing and counselling the intoxicated children while it is early is a better solution.

Alcohol may also be considered as a drug and its use among young people is a serious problem. However, one scholar by the name Christine Tanhira said that ''students should have the compulsory drug test on if suspected of consuming drugs otherwise it will be unnecessary harassment''.

Drug testing does not stop the use of drugs amongst the students as it is quite difficult to refrain drugs once an individual has started consuming them. One major problem is that some drug tests may not be reliable and bring out negative results while in actual fact they are positive or vice versa.
There are some drugs which cannot be detected by the tests for teens and by having more drug tests for teens there will always be increasing ways used to fool the tests.

Drug tests would keep the students away from danger and it can help them in a way by getting off them. Some schools would find it unnecessary to carry out drug tests but at least the school should somehow provide a counselling programme on abuse of drugs and their effects.