The role of narratives in unmasking modern slavery

Levina Mapenzi Ngolo, who was mistreated as a maid in the Majmaah town of Riyadh City in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. [File, Standard]

I have come to realise that there are moments in life when literature ceases to be a distant intellectual exercise and becomes painfully real. Not long ago, I was confronted with such a moment when my own niece, Catherine, returned home after two years of working in Qatar.

She came back a broken girl. She was physically present but emotionally shattered. The vibrant young woman we had known had been reduced to a shadow of herself. Her story is not an isolated one; it is part of a growing archive of modern-day slave narratives — a new sub-genre yet to be fully explored.