British Central Africa Through Nyasaland to Malawi

Di Giuseppe Bizzaro

Il libro riguarda episodi della storia di una piccola nazione Africana. La zona fi scelta come base delle prime missioni cristiane in Africa centro meridionale da Livingstone. Il Portogallo è l'Inghilterra ebbero una grave crisi diplomatica per queste terre. Il governo Italiano fu coinvolto nello stabilire i confini tra i territori inglesi e quelli portoghesi.

• Lingua: Italiano
• Editore: Youcanprint
• Data di uscita: 7 mar 2024
• ISBN: 9791221420128

Anteprima del libro

Index

Maps

Photographs and their source

Prefix

Author’s Introduction

Curiosities…. About Malawi

The Early People

Nyau Masks and their Role in Chewa Society

Chewa Rites of Passage

The Discovery of the Lake

Bishop Charles Fredrick Mackenzie

The Tribe of Doto Livisto

Dr. Robert Laws and Livingstonia

Mua Mission and the Chamare Museum

Mlozi – The Self-Styled Sultan of the Nkonde and the Two Slave Wars

The Little Pro Consul – Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston

The Ngoni Paramount Chief Gomani Chikuse (1891-1896)

History of Blantyre

The Cathedral of St. Michael of All Angels in Blantyre

Setting out the Boundaries in Southern Central Africa

Travelling to British Central Africa in the Early Days

M.V. Chauncy Maples, the Lady of the Lake

St. Peter’s Cathedral on Likoma Island

The Two Companies

European Settlements in Nyasaland

Tea and Tobacco in Nyasaland

The First Naval Battle of World War I

John Chilembwe

The Indians in Nyasaland – A Vital Community

Prisoners of War

1946 – Nyasaland’s Annus Horribilis

The 1949 – 1950 Famine in Nyasaland

The Flying Boats at Cape Maclear

Helen Maclaren Bregger

Federation, a Good Idea That Did Not Work

Times of Trouble – The Emergency

Nyasaland’s Governors

Race Relations in Nyasaland

Dr. Banda – Father of the Nation

Tales of Another Time

An Extravagant British Colonial

The Lore and the Lure of Africa

KuNgoni Art Craft Centre; History, Person, Work

The Chamare Museum Frescos

The People under the Lake

Nyasaland Becomes Malawi, 37th Free African Country

Bibliography

Title | British Central Africa Through Nyasaland to Malawi

Author | Giuseppe Bizzaro

ISBN | 9791221420128

© 2023 – All rights reserved to the Author

This work is published directly by the Author through the Youcanprint self-

publishing platform and the Author holds all rights to it exclusively. No part of this book can therefore be reproduced without the prior consent of the Author.

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Made by human

Dedicated to all Malawians to encourage them to learn about their past and to all visitors whether on a long or short stay to help them understand our beautiful country

Maps

Photographs and their source

The horrors of the slave trade, woman abandoned and tied to a tree been devoured

by vultures.

Drawing by Sir Harry Johnston

Prefix

The Scripture reveals,

You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free

It has been said, and rightfully so, the victor gets to write the history. Even though Africa won the victory for independence it has been, for far too long, a fact the history of Africa is still being written by the Europeans. Their version is read, taught, and beloved by the rest of the world. One knows almost instinctively that what is good and acceptable to the victor is not always seen the same way by those who are the victims of a conflict.

I have read this manuscript by Giuseppe Bizzaro, and I am impressed with desire to focus on Africa from the mind and heart of the African. As an advocate of searching for the truth and bringing it in from the cold, I believe our voices have remained silent too long. We have read the Africa of European experience and remained voiceless. As a result, neither side has been able to enjoy the rich and full history of the people who brought into being the nation of Malawi. It was a problem for both sides and did not reflect the true history of our ancestors.

To move successfully into the future, we need more writers and scholars stepping forward and revealing our rich past as this man is doing, a past to be proud of, a past to treasure, a past to learn from, one that will propel us successfully into a rich and prosperous future. I long for the day when this gap, including that of our cultural heritage, will be pushed aside, the darkness melted away, and our people enjoying the complete history of Malawi.

Mama C. Tamanda Kadzamira

Author’s Introduction

Having escorted visitors through Malawi for a number of years, I realised how little both travellers and residents of the country know about this beautiful country’s past. Therefore, I have decided to put pen to paper and narrate a few historic events and characters that have contributed to forming the present nation of Malawi.

My intention was not to write a history book but simply to narrate events and people, which have fascinated and interested those to whom I described the events. Naturally, it is not an exhausted compilation of events.

I have limited myself to the historic facts of pre-independent Malawi. Events regarding the post-independence period are too recent and likely to open a political debate, into which I do not intend to get involved. The only exceptions I have made to this rule is my description of the anthropological work done at Mua Mission and the KuNgoni Cultural Centre, These, I find, are indispensable to give the reader an understanding of the culture of Malawi’s people.

Each chapter is a story on its own, enabling the reader to pick through the book in no precise order. I do hope that reading it will be an enjoyable and enlightening experience.

Research for this book has being done from various old colonial books and publications that are listed in the bibliography, from which I have quoted large passages and extracted much information. I have also recalled stories from people who experienced them first hand.

Over time, the country has had different names. At the height of the Amaravi power, the land occupied was an area much larger than present day Malawi and was known as the Maravi Empire. When Buchanan proclaimed the first temporary Protectorate in 1889, it became the Protectorate of the Shire Highlands. Once its Status was officially recognised in 1891, it assumed the name of Protectorate of Nyasaland. In 1893, Johnston changed it to the Protectorate of British Central Africa. In 1907, it reverted to the name of Nyasaland, and in 1953, it became part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In 1964 it took its final name of Malawi

My bibliography lists the books that I have used that may be of interest to the reader. Most photos are either from the Society of Malawi archives, from my personal collection, or from the archive of Mr. David Stuart Mogg or from Sir Harry Johnston’s book on British Central Africa.

Special thanks goes to Miss Jennifer Roscoe who has helped me with checking the text.

Places of Particular Interest

The Leopard’s resting place: a mountain stream in Central Africa

Painting by Sir Harry H. Johnston

Curiosities… about Malawi.

• Lake Malawi is the third largest lake in Africa. Due to its depths, it is the continent’s second largest water volume.

• Lake Malawi is often called the Year Lake because it is 365 miles long and 52 miles wide.

• Lake Malawi is the southernmost lake in the Great Rift Valley; the northern most is the Sea of Galilee in Israel.

• Lake Malawi was formed during the Great Rift Valley’s creation.

• The effect that the Lake has on the climate and food supply in the region is the reason for Malawi’s high population density.

• The bottom of Lake Malawi is well below sea level while its shores are about 450m above sea level.

• Traces of the first humanoids in Malawi date back to about three million years.

• There are very interesting dinosaur finds in Malawi.

• The level of Lake Malawi’s waters vary in a cycle of years.

• There is only one river, the Shire, exiting from the Lake, while many hundreds flow into it.

• The main water catchment area of the lake is in southern Tanzania.

• There are more fish species in Lake Malawi than in all other fresh watercourses of the world put together.

• Lake Malawi’s Cichlid are mouthbreeders; fertilization, incubation and hatching all take place in the female’s mouth.

• Cichlids have the capacity to evolve very rapidly into new species when adjusting to different living conditions.

• At present, there are over 800-recorded species of fish in the Lake.

• Some species of fish in the lake live only on a specific rock.

• The round dot on a male Cichlid’s anal fin serve to attract the female, she thinks it is an egg and will try to take it into its mouth, thereby stimulating the male to ejaculate and fertilise the eggs it has in its mouth.

• Fish from Lake Malawi are exported to aquarium lovers all over the world.

• About 80% of protein consumption in Malawi comes from the Lake.

• The Mpasa, a species of lake fish, is known as Lake Salmon because of its habit of migrating up rivers and streams to spawn.

• Livingstone first called the lake the ‘Lake of Stars’, but later, after the storms he endured on it he wanted to call it the ‘Lake of a Thousand Storms’. On August 2, 2023 the Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services registered, at Nkhata Bay a wave of 10.75m!

• Catfish in the lake can grow to up to two meters.

• Chambo, a bream like fish, is the most popular eating fish in the lake. Caught in nets, as it is a plankton eater.

• The most common way in Malawi to conserve a catch is by sun drying.

• Most of the lake’s catch is transported throughout the country on bikes.

• Lake Malawi’s Catfish are not mouthbreeders but the adults will protect the young in a rock cavity nest.

• The watershed of Lake Malawi and the Luangwa River was used in colonial times to draw the borders between Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia.

• Tanzania has no international right on the waters of Lake Malawi and its borders are on the beach wave line.

• The first European settlements in Central Southern Africa occurred in present day Malawi in 1861.

• The UMCA mission was created at the instigation of Livingstone in the Shire Highlands in 1861. Sadly, it failed.

• The Anglican cathedral in Zanzibar was built only after the UMCA had retired from present day Malawi.

• Dr. Livingstone was accused of witchcraft, when after bathing with soap in the lake, a few hours later crocodile in the same spot took the wife of a chief.

• Scottish missionaries led by Dr. Laws founded the first successful European settlement in Central Southern Africa at Cape Maclear in 1875.

• Due to their white skins, the first missionaries in Cape Maclear were mistaken for ghosts that had come out of the rocks at Otter’s Point. Villagers would scatter flour on the water surface in sacrifice so that the ghosts would return to their abode in the rocks.

• Livingstone was not the first European to see Lake Malawi. Portuguese travellers visited its shores from about the seventeenth century.

• Livingstone was the first European to report precise geographical information of the lake. He first saw it in September 1859. He misjudged its size estimating the lake at only two thirds of its actual length.

• Livingstone camped on his first night at the Lake in a place called Nkope.

• Livingstone had great hopes to use the lake as the highway for Christianity and commerce into the heart of Africa.

• Malawi derives its name from the ancient empire of Maravi that dominated Central Southern Africa from the 15th to the 17thcentury AD.

• The word Malawi means ‘shimmering flames reflected off the water’ or ‘the red glow at night from iron smelting furnaces’.

• Islam and Christianity got to the shores of Lake Malawi more or less at the same time. Around the middle of the 19thcentury.

• Until the end of the slave trade, about 22,000 people a year, originating from the area around the lake, were sold on the Zanzibar slave markets.

• By the middle of the 19thcentury there was a prosperous dhow building industry on the lakeshores.

• Livingstone, when he visited the place in the 1860’s, estimated the population of the town of Nkotakota to count 10,000 souls.

• There were viable European settlements along Lake Malawi and in the Shire Highlands before the foundation of Harare, Johannesburg & Nairobi.

• Many African Chiefs were the main suppliers of human merchandise to the slave caravans.

• The slave traders introduced mangoes and sugar cane to the area around the lake.

• The African Lake Company fought two private slave wars against the Swahili Arabs on the northern lakeshore.

• The British Protectorate was extended to Nyasaland thanks to the lobbying of Scottish missionaries and Cecil John Rhodes financial guarantee.

• Nyasaland was the territory that was expected to develop first in Central Africa. The fluctuating level of the rivers made this impossible and the arrival of the railway in Africa ended up bypassing the territory for the richer Rhodesia.

• Cecil John Rhodes’ brother died in an accident when his tent caught fire on the banks of the Shire River. He was buried in what was now the Majete Game Park.

• Large steamboats were sailing on Lake Malawi by 1880. Mostly built in the UK and bought to Africa in pieces, not weighing more than 30kg.They were carried on the heads of porters past the Shire cataracts for reassembly in Fort Johnston or Matope.

• The oldest floating ship in Africa was the Chauncy Maples. She was built in 1903, in Scotland and taken to Fort Johnston in small pieces for reassembly there.

• European settlers along the coast used to consume huge quantities of Gin and Tonic. It was thought to prevent malaria, because quinine was an ingredient in the tonic.

• Livingstone’s travel into the interior opened up routes that helped spread the slave trade.

• Livingstone’s motto for Africa was ‘the Bible in the right hand and commerce in the left’. This bought about the foundation of the Africa Lake Company, the first commercial venture in British Central Africa in 1876.

• Livingstone named Cape Maclear after his friend, the Astronomer Royal based at the Cape of Good Hope.

• The native people of Africa held Livingstone in such esteem and none of the names given by him or in his memory were changed after independence.

• The original Chewa people of Malawi were overcome, in the middle of the 19th century by the Yao, a Muslim people in contact with the Arabs and the Ngoni, a people fleeing from the expansion of the Zulu in Natal.

• The British administration had to use artillery in 1890 to subdue the Yao paramount chief Mponda from slave trading. The cannons used can now be seen outside the Mangochi police station.

• The first steamer to sail on the Lake was the Ilala I. She was built in London and taken by ship to the mouth of the Zambezi. She sailed up to Katunga in the Lower Shire where she was dismantled and taken over the cataracts on porters’ heads and reassembled on the Upper Shire and sailed into Lake Malawi. The year was 1875 and apparently, not even a screw went missing!

• Most tribes in Malawi are matriarchal people. This means hereditary rights pass in the female line, from uncle to eldest son of eldest sister.

• The first naval battle of the First World War was fought on Lake Malawi.

• The King’s African Regiment was founded in Nyasaland. Many thousands of Nyasa men gave their lives for the King Emperor during World War 1.

• Electric light was being produced in present day Malawi from as early as 1900.

• Men from Nyasaland were the most sought after to work in the mines of South Africa, as they were the Africans with the best education.

• Great Britain and Portugal nearly went to war in the 1880’s over what is today Malawi.

• Winter Thorn is the favourite tree to make dugout canoes. They are still very numerous on the lake.

• German and British army troupes fought several bloody battles on Malawi territory during World War 1.

• Most of present-day northeastern Zambia was governed from Zomba for its first twenty years.

• Zomba was chosen as a colonial capital because it was two days march from the more established Blantyre. The reason for this was that the then governor Sir Harry Johnston did not want to get involved in the constant trouble the missionaries were causing with the settlers.

• Lake Malawi National Park was the first sweet water park in the world.

• UNESCO has declared the Lake Malawi National Park a World Heritage Site.

• Lake Malawi used to serve as a stopover point for the BOAC Flying boat service between South Africa and the UK.

• Laurence van der Post visited Malawi in 1948 and wrote a book on his travel in this land.

• Malawi was once known as the Switzerland of Africa.

• The rich bird life of Malawi is because the region overlaps the bird distribution of both East and South Africa.

• Fish Eagles and Cormorant are very common birds at the Lake.

• Malawian crafts are amongst the best and most prolific in southern Africa.

• Malawi has one of the most varied scenery of Africa. This is because the country lies along the edge of the Rift Valley.

• Lake Malawi is free from industrial pollution.

• Lake Malawi once hosted the longest small sailing boat race in the world it was an annual event. The Lake Malawi Marathon.

• The temperature of the waters of the lake never drop below 22°C.

• Lake Fly eggs hatch on the surface of the lake rising into the sky like a cloud of black smoke.

• Lake Fly on arriving on the land are gathered by the people and made into cakes, which are eaten. They are very rich in protein.

• The lake occupies a fifth of Malawian territory.

• In Malawian traditional society it was the woman’s role to look after the physical needs of the family, while the men would look after the spiritual needs of the community.

• The traditional masked dances were a means through which the ancestors spoke to the living.

• Men, in Chewa society, learn the secrets of the Nyau sect through various rites throughout their lives.

• Each mask conveyed a message to the people watching its performance. The message usually explained some aspect of the tribe’s social morality.

• Often the masked caricature died with its creator.

• In Chewa culture and mythology, Mwali was the rain priestess. It was through her ritualised intercourse with the God in the form of a serpent in the sacred pool that bought about good rains.

• The Chewa believe that God created all living things in the Dzalanyama mountain range near Lilongwe.

• In Malawi, there are some very ancient rock paints.

• Words of Portuguese origin were already in use in the local languages in Malawi before the arrival of the British.

• Mapmakers knew of the existence of a Lake called Maravi, more or less in the position of Lake Malawi as far back as the sixteenth century.

• The Chewa were born by the fusion of two Bantu tribes, the Phiri and the Bands.

• The original people of Malawi, before the arrival of the Bantu, were a Bushman like people known as Akafula or Batua.

One of the Paddle Steamers piling the Zambezi and Shire Rivers

The Early People

Humanoid presences along the lake shore date to the origin of a time. Stone Age men lived and hunted in the area, making tools and arms from flakes of quarts gathered along the beaches.

Traces of the first form of basic civilisation, present in what is today Malawi, date to about 1,500 BC. These people were a pygmy race with a reddish skin colouring that they would polish with ochre to make it shine like burnished copper. Their heads were grotesquely large in proportion to their bodies and men sported long beards. The faces were flat with broad noses and their eyes had an almost oriental slant. Long arms hang down their sides and their torsos were perched on short legs giving them the look of achondroplasic dwarfs. They were the Akafula people.

They descended from a migratory tribe of small people dispossessed from their homes in North Africa and Spain. On their southward migration, they had met and mingled with the first few Negros emerging from the equatorial forests of West Central Africa.

Routes of Bantu, Hamite and Bushmen Migrations

The Akafula inherited telescopic vision and a fleetness that enabled them to outstrip many antelopes. Their genes gave them a mysterious dwarfness from their North African pygmy ancestors. From their Negro ancestors they inherited resilience, initiative, and skill in iron working.

They did not cultivate land or keep livestock. The abundance of game ensured a plentiful supply of meat and the lake guaranteed a constant supply of fish. The

Akafula had discovered the art of making and using nets and building rudimentary canoes which they manoeuvred standing upright. They were expert iron smelters and made basic tools from the minerals they mined and worked.

The men hunted using bows and arrows dipped in a poison they brewed from wild plants. The women and children spent their days foraging for eggs from nests, collecting honey and wild fruits or digging for edible roots.

They transmitted their knowledge to the new generations through song and dance, as theirs was an illiterate society. Their existence remained unknown to European society until in the second century A.D. when their presence was