Uganda, Jan. 29 -- South Africa occupies a unique position in the minds of many Africans. Some are old enough to have followed events as they happened under apartheid. Younger Africans read their history books and find the emotional resonance to relate to the South African experience.

From the 16th century, traders had been shipping Africans by their thousands to America to work as slaves.

Just as (in today's context) African despots, their officials, labour exporters and human traffickers are not touched by the fate of millions of Africans who end up in near-slave circumstances in the Middle East, there were African chiefs and village hoodlums who facilitated and benefited from the cross-Atlantic slave trade.

If the traders, their age...