Slavery having disappeared as a structure, it is discourse and behaviour that constitutes our only access to the reality. Today, though slavery has been abolished for more than a half-century on the level of power as much as production, daily language abounds with references to the noble-slave contradiction, perpetuating the valorisation of one and the symmetrical contempt of the other.

Though the FulBe no longer have any rights over the RiimaayBe they used to own, the memory of the old relationship is still very much alive in both groups. Individuals vary considerably in how they feel about the past, but it is fair to say in general that the FulBe regret the coming of the French, the loss of sovereignty, and the ‘“theft” of their RiimaayBe labor force, while the RiimaayBe are glad of it.

Slavery casts a long shadow into the colonial period and when adjustments in relationships must be made they are made within the weakened idiom of the known world, just as the relationships of the slave period had been accommodated within the idiom of pre-existing kinship systems.