Slavery suit settled ahead of Obama visit

Dar es Salaam/New York. The government is said to have paid $170,000 (about Sh272 million) to settle a lawsuit that a US commentator had earlier argued could lead President Barack Obama to cancel his July 1-2 visit to Tanzania.

Washington Post commentator Dana Milbank reported on Friday that the payment was made this week to Ms Zipora Mazengo, a former domestic servant of Mr Alan Mzengi, when he was working as a Tanzanian diplomat in Washington.

According to columnist Milbank, Mr Mzengi himself paid “a small amount” of the $170,000 total, with the government providing the rest. The claim has been refuted by a senior state official, who however, acknowledged that the matter has already been settled.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that the government involvement in the matter was aimed at facilitating the channelling of the money to the claimant.

“It is not true that the government has paid that amount. He cleared it himself (Mzengi) and the government’s involvement was to ensure the money reaches the claimant and her supporters who engaged both the US and Tanzania governments on the matter,” the official said in an interview yesterday.

Ms Mazengo alleged in her lawsuit that Mr Mzengi had kept her as a virtual slave at his family’s home in a Washington suburb.

She said that she worked there without pay from 2000 to 2004, often forced to spend more than 100 hours a week performing domestic chores and caring for three children of Mr Mzengi and his wife, Stella.

A US court ruled in favour of Ms Mazengo in 2008, ordering that she be paid $1,059,349 in back wages and compensation for the abuses she had suffered.

No payment was forthcoming from Mr Mzengi, however, even though Ms Mazengo had said she was willing to accept only the $170,000 she was owed in back wages.

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post commentator quoted an attorney representing Ms Mazengo as saying, “An official visit from the US president is a gift that is utterly inappropriate after a Tanzanian government official committed horrifying human rights violations just a few miles from the White House.”

President Obama “would undermine all credibility on trafficking” if he travelled to Tanzania with Ms Mazengo’s case still outstanding, added the attorney, Ms Martina Vandenberg.

Mr Mzengi himself paid “a small amount” of the $170,000 total, with the Tanzania government providing the rest, Post columnist Milbank reported on Friday. Mr Mzengi left the United States in 2008.

Ms Mazengo had come to the United States in 2000 on a type of visa diplomats can arrange for prospective nannies. In 2006, US officials gave Ms Mazengo a special visa reserved for victims of human trafficking.

Detailing the abuse she had suffered, Ms Mazengo told a US Congress committee in 2007 that Mrs Mzengi had once “hit me in the face and sent me out in my summer clothes to stand outside in the snow” as punishment for failing to prepare breakfast.

Mrs Mzengi also threatened that if Ms Mazengo complained, “blood would fall on the floor,” the former servant added.

She said the Mzengis had refused to allow her to receive medical treatment for a foot condition so painful she was unable to wear shoes. Ms Mazengo testified that she was once forced to shovel snow barefoot.

Reported by Kevin J Kelley in New york and The Citizen on Sunday Reporter in Dar es Salaam.