Slavery in Angola existed since the late 15th century when Portugal established contacts with the peoples living in what is the Northwest of the present country, and founded several trade posts on the coast.
In the late 16th century, Kingdom of Portugal's explorers founded the fortified settlement of Luanda, and later on minor trade posts and forts on the Cuanza River as well as on the Atlantic coast southwards until Benguela.
[4] The Portuguese Empire conquered the Mbundu people of Angola, incorporating the local economy into the Atlantic slave trade.
Armed with superior weapons, Imbangala soldiers captured and sold natives on a far larger scale as every new slave translated into a better-armed force of aggressors.
The Portuguese sold thousands of Kabasa residents with 36 ships leaving the port of Luanda in 1619, setting a new record, destined for slave plantations abroad.
[19] Civil rights for natives, no longer treated as natural law, had to be "earned" on a case-by-case basis under the designation of assimilade.
"[14] Marcelo Caetano, Portugal's Minister of the Colonies, recognized the inherent flaws in the system, which he described as using natives "like pieces of equipment without any concern for their yearning, interests, or desires".
Galvão condemned the "shameful outrages" he had uncovered, the forced labour of "women, of children, of the sick, [and] of decrepit old men."
The government's control over the natives eliminated the worker-employer's incentive to keep his employees alive because, unlike in other colonial societies, the state replaced deceased workers without directly charging the employer.
[23] Workers employed by Cotonang, a Portuguese-Belgian cotton plantation company, revolted on January 3, 1961, calling on the Portuguese to improve their working rights and leave Angola.
The Portuguese authorities killed forty attackers before gangs of white Angolans committed random acts of violence against the ethnic majority.
The Portuguese Air Force responded by bombing a 320-kilometre (200 mi) area with napalm killing 20,000 people, including 750 white Angolans, within the first six months of 1961.
[26][27] In current day Angola, high levels of child trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, pornography, forced labor, sexual slavery, and other forms of exploitation are reported, in part due to the civil war-caused break down of social structures and traditional security mechanisms active before independence.
Angola is a source country for significant number of men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor or sexual exploitation.
Children have been trafficked internally and also to Namibia and South Africa for the purposes of sexual exploitation and domestic and commercial labor.