Ridiculing Silent Evils: Depictions of Human Trafficking in Apio Eunice Otuko’s Zura Maids (2018)

Abstract

The evil of human trafficking has often been propagated on social media for many years, and people have had little information about this social problem. Apio Eunice has creatively and vividly portrayed this evil of human trafficking in her first novel, Zura Maids (2018). This creative portrayal has made the reader feel the forceful involvement of innocent vulnerable youths in the business of human trafficking. The artistic depth of Apio Eunice in her novel Zura Maids (2018) is punctuated with the stark reality of social, political, and moral issues in Ugandan communities, especially in the northern region which had been ravaged by war as well as capitalists who deal in human trafficking within the country and abroad. This paper examines how the novelist exposes the moral degeneration perpetrated by unscrupulous individuals whose aim is to amass wealth by trading their fellow human beings as commodities. This paper depicts Apio’s advocacy for the re-evaluation of the social, moral, political as well as cultural values which underscores the rehabilitation of the Ugandan youths to ensure better and affordable conditions of living and the achievement of human labour and dignity especially in the previous war-torn northern part of the country as part of the setting of this novel. This paper also provides the key factors that fuel the menace of human trafficking, as portrayed in Zura Maids (2018).