The land in East Africa is everywhere allodial; it does not belong to the ruler, nor has the dawn of the feudal system yet arisen there. A migratory tribe gives up its rights to the soil, contrary to the mortmain system of the Arab Bedouins, and, if it would return, it must return by force. The Sultan, however, exacts a fee from all immigrants settling in his territory.
The sources of revenue in East Africa are uncertain, desultory, and complicated. The agricultural tribes pay yearly a small per centage of grain; this, however, is the office of the women, who are expert in fraud. Neither sowing nor harvest can take place without the chief’s permission, and the issue of his order is regulated by his own interests. Amongst the hunting tribes, slain elephants become the hunter’s property, but the Sultan claims as treasure-trove a tusk of any animal found wounded or dead in his dominions, and in all cases the spoils of dead lions are crown property. The flesh of game is distributed amongst the elders and the ruling family, who also assert a claim to the cloth or beads purchased by means of the ivory from caravans. Some have abditaria and considerable stores of the articles most valued by barbarians. Throughout the slave-paths the chiefs have learned to raise revenue from the slaves, who thus bribe them to forbear from robbery. But whilst the stronger require large gifts without return, the weaker make trifling presents, generally of cattle or provisions, and expect many times the value in brass wire, cloth, and beads. The stranger may refuse these offerings; it is, however, contrary to custom, and as long as he can afford it he should submit to the imposition. Fiscs and fines are alarmingly frequent. If the monsoon-rains delay, the chief summons a Mganga to fix upon the obstructor; he is at once slain, and his property is duly escheated. The Sultan claims the goods and chattels of all felons and executed criminals, even in the case of a servant put to death by his master. In the more republican tribes the chief lives by the sweat of his slaves. Briefly, East Africa presents an instructive study of human society in its first stage after birth.
I will conclude this uninteresting chapter—attribute its dulness, gentle reader, to the effects of the climate and society of Konduchi—with a subject which strikes home to the heart of every Englishman, slavery.
The origin of slavery in East Africa is veiled in the glooms of the past. It is mentioned in the Periplus (chap. iii.), as an institution of the land, and probably it was the result of the ancient trade with southern Arabia. At present it is almost universal: with the exceptions of the Wahinda, the Watosi, and the Wagogo, all the tribes from the eastern equatorial coast to Ujiji and the regions lying westward of the Tanganyika Lake may be called slave-races. An Arab, Msawahili, and even a bondsman from Zanzibar, is everywhere called Murungwana or freeman. Yet in many parts of the country the tribes are rather slave-importers than exporters. Although they kidnap others, they will not sell their fellows, except when convicted of crime—theft, magic, murder, or cutting the upper teeth before the lower. In times of necessity, however, a man will part with his parents, wives, and children, and when they fail he will sell himself without shame. As has been observed, amongst many tribes the uncle has a right to dispose of his nephews and nieces.
Justice requires the confession that the horrors of slave-driving rarely meet the eye in East Africa. Some merchants chain or cord together their gangs for safer transport through regions where desertion is at a premium. Usually, however, they trust rather to soft words and kind treatment; the fat lazy slave is often seen stretched at ease in the shade, whilst the master toils in the sun and wind. The “property” is well fed and little worked, whereas the porter, belonging to none but himself, is left without hesitation to starve upon the road-side. The relationship is rather that of patron and client than of lord and bondsman; the slave is addressed as Ndugu-yango, “my brother,” and he is seldom provoked by hard words or stripes. In fact, the essence of slavery, compulsory unpaid labour, is perhaps more prevalent in independent India than in East Africa; moreover, there is no adscriptus glebæ, as in the horrid thraldom of Malabar. To this general rule there are terrible exceptions, as might be expected amongst a people with scant regard for human life. The Kirangozi, or guide, attached to the Expedition on return from Ujiji, had loitered behind for some days because his slave girl was too footsore to walk. When tired of waiting he cut off her head, for fear lest she should become gratis another man’s property.
In East Africa there are two forms of this traffic, the export and the internal trade. For the former slaves are collected like ivories throughout the length and breadth of the land. They are driven down from the principal depôts, the island of Kasenge, Ujiji, Unyanyembe, and Zungomero to the coast by the Arab and Wasawahili merchants, who afterwards sell them in retail at the great mart, Zanzibar. The internal trade is carried on between tribe and tribe, and therefore will long endure.
The practice of slavery in East Africa, besides demoralising and brutalising the race, leads to the results which effectually bar increase of population and progress towards civilisation. These are commandos, or border wars, and intestine confusion.
All African wars, it has been remarked, are for one of two objects, cattle-lifting or kidnapping. Some of the pastoral tribes—as the Wamasai, the Wakwafi, the Watuta, and the Warori—assert the theory that none but themselves have a right to possess herds, and that they received the gift directly from their ancestor who created cattle; in practice they covet the animals for the purpose of a general gorge. Slaves, however, are much more frequently the end and aim of feud and foray. The process of kidnapping, an inveterate custom in these lands, is in every way agreeable to the mind of the man-hunter. A “multis utile bellum,” it combines the pleasing hazards of the chase with the exercise of cunning and courage; the battue brings martial glory and solid profit, and preserves the barbarian from the listlessness of life without purpose. Thus men date from foray to foray, and pass their days in an interminable blood-feud and border war. A poor and powerful chief will not allow his neighbours to rest wealthier than himself; a quarrel is soon found, the stronger attacks the weaker, hunts and harries his cattle, burns his villages, carries off his subjects and sells them to the first passing caravan. The inhabitants of the land have thus become wolves to one another; their only ambition is to dispeople and destroy, and the blow thus dealt to a thinly populated country strikes at the very root of progress and prosperity.
As detrimental to the public interests as the border wars is the intestine confusion caused by the slave trade. It perpetuates the vile belief in Uchawi or black magic: when captives are in demand, the criminal’s relations are sold into slavery. It affords a scope for the tyranny of a chief, who, if powerful enough, will enrich himself by vending his subjects in wholesale and retail. By weakening the tie of family, it acts with deadly effect in preventing the increase of the race.
On the coast and in the island of Zanzibar the slaves are of two kinds—the Muwallid or domestic, born in captivity, and the wild slave imported from the interior.