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RACE, STEREOTYPES AND POLITICS 97vation in this period in the Niger Bend created new conflicts between thepastoralists and their former sedentary dependants over access to pasture andwater around the temporary wallows and the river bank. 64 Neither did theformer masters accept the loss of control over their former slaves. Nevertheless,the scant evidence seems to indicate that the emancipation policies were successful.With regards to the Norben, Winter has provided evidence from onecamp. In 1951, the camp at In Ahara consisted of four imghad tents and tenbellah tents. By 1960, five of these bellah families had left (a sixth had diedout). Of the fifty-six descendants of the four tents remaining in 1960, only eightstill inhabited the camp, while seventeen lived in a separate bellah camp, andanother thirty-one lived in Gao or elsewhere in West Africa.In the early 1960s, the Keita Government still believed slavery had not yetbeen eradicated in Mali despite the US-RDA’s campaigns over the ‘bellahquestion’ in the 1950s. One of the major objectives of the new Government inthe North was to end this state of affairs. But slavery did not so much existlegally, as it did psychologically and socially. Most former slaves who had hadthe opportunity to leave their former masters had by then largely done so. Thiscan be said to a large extent for the more southern Tamasheq groups in theNiger Bend, where former slaves had easier access to new ways of existence,such as farming or leaving the area for the cities. Also, in these areas, the‘bellah question’ had been a major issue for both the colonial administrationand the US-RDA. 65 However, the same cannot be said for the Adagh, whereformer slaves had no opportunities to employ themselves in farming, and whereinfrastructural conditions did not make migration easier.Much still needed to be done therefore to emancipate the former slaves inthe Adagh. Before the 1963 rebellion, the new regime, wary of further strainingtheir already fragile relation with the Kel Adagh, did nothing to alter the socialrelations between former masters and slaves. Writing to Commandant de Cercleof Kidal Mohamed Najim in 1962, the Governor of Gao analysed the situationwith regards to slavery in the Adagh as follows.It is beyond doubt that the people, the party, and the Government of Mali haveabolished slavery once and for all. Nevertheless, as the President of our Governmenthas put it so well, there can be no standard solution in this vast country of Mali.Therefore, it would be prudent, given the actual context, a context you know all toowell, not to proceed immediately with the restitution of [slave] children who stayedwith the family of old ATTAHER. A political education is needed, since it isnecessary that, at the end of the day, the population itself understands the necessityof liberating the bellah. It is rather a national problem and, in waiting for a solution,we will be compliant and full of tact, as I have said above. In any case – our desire6465Marty, A. 1993.Klein, M. 1998.