The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration, Vol. 2

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

In the former case the slave is treated as one of the family, because the master’s comfort depends upon the man being contented; often also his sister occupies the dignified position of concubine to the head of the house. These slaves vary greatly in conduct. The most tractable are those belonging to the Diwans and the Wasawahili generally, who treat them with the utmost harshness and contempt. The Arabs spoil them by a kinder usage; few employ the stick, the salib, or cross—a forked pole to which the neck and ankles are lashed—and the makantale or stocks, for fear of desertion. Yet the slave if dissatisfied silently leaves the house, lets himself to another master, and returns after perhaps two years’ absence as if nothing had occurred. Thus he combines the advantages of freedom and slavery. Moreover, it is a proverb among the Arabs that a slave must desert once in his life, and he does so the more readily as he betters his condition by so doing. The worst in all points are those belonging to the Banyans, the Indians, and other European subjects; they know their right to emancipation, and consult only their own interests and inclinations. The Muwallid or domestic slave is also used like the Pombeiro of West Africa. From Unyamwezi and Ujiji he is sent to traffic in the more dangerous regions—the master meanwhile dwelling amongst his fellow countrymen in some comfortable Tembe. This proceeding has greatly injured the commerce of the interior, and necessitates yearly lengthening journeys. The slave intrusted with cloth and beads suddenly becomes a great man; he is lavish in supporting the dignity of a fundi or fattore, and consulting nothing but his own convenience, he will loiter for six months at a place where he has been sent for a week. Thus it is that ivory sold in Unyamwezi but a dozen years ago at 10 lbs. for 1 lb. of beads now fetches nearly weight for weight. And this is a continually increasing evil. No caravan, however, can safely traverse the interior without an escort of slave-musketeers. They never part with their weapons, even when passing from house to house, holding that their lives depend upon their arms; they beg, borrow, or steal powder and ball; in fact they are seldom found unready. They will carry nothing but the lightest gear, the master’s writing-case, bed, or praying-mat; to load them heavily would be to ensure desertion. Contrary to the practice of the free porter, they invariably steal when they run away; they are also troublesome about food, and they presume upon their weapons to take liberties with the liquor and the women of the heathen.

The imported slaves again are of two different classes. Children are preferred to adults; they are Islamised and educated so as to resemble the Muwallid, though they are even somewhat less tame. Full-grown serfs are bought for predial purposes; they continue indocile, and alter little by domestication. When not used by the master they are left to plunder or to let themselves out for food and raiment, and when dead they are cast into the sea or into the nearest pit. These men are the scourge of society; no one is safe from their violence; and to preserve a garden or an orchard from the depredations of the half-starved wretches, a guard of musketeers would be required. They are never armed, yet, as has been recounted, they have caused at Zanzibar servile wars, deadly and lasting as those of ancient Rome.

Arabs declare that the barbarians are improved by captivity—a partial theory open to doubt. The servum pecus retain in thraldom that wildness and obstinacy which distinguish the people and the lower animals of their native lands; they are trapped, but not tamed; they become captives, but not civilised. However trained, they are probably the worst servants in the world; a slave-household is a model of discomfort. The wretches take a trouble and display an ingenuity in opposition and disobedience, in perversity, annoyance, and villany, which rightly directed would make them invaluable. The old definition of a slave still holds good—“an animal that eats as much and does as little as possible.” Clumsy and unhandy, dirty and careless, he will never labour unless ordered to do so, and so futile is his nature that even the inducement of the stick cannot compel him to continue his exertions; a whole gang will barely do the work of a single servant. He “has no end,” to use the Arab phrase: that is to say, however well he may begin, he will presently tire of his task; he does not and apparently he will not learn; his first impulse, like that of an ass, is not to obey; he then thinks of obeying; and if fear preponderate he finally may obey. He must deceive, for fraud and foxship are his force; when detected in some prodigious act of rascality, he pathetically pleads, “Am I not a slave?” So wondrous are his laziness and hate of exertion, that despite a high development of love of life he often appears the most reckless of mortals. He will run away from the semblance of danger; yet on a journey he will tie his pipe to a leaky keg of gunpowder, and smoke it in that position rather than take the trouble to undo it. A slave belonging to Musa, the Indian merchant at Kazeh, unwilling to rise and fetch a pipe, opened the pan of his musket, filled it with tobacco and fire, and beginning to inhale it from the muzzle blew out his brains. Growing confident and impudent from the knowledge of how far he may safely go, the slave presumes to the utmost. He steals instinctively, like a magpie: a case is quoted in which the gold spangles were stripped from an officer’s sword-belt whilst dining with the Prince of Zanzibar. The slave is almost always half-naked; whatever clothes he obtains from the master are pawned or sold in the bazar; hence he must pilfer and plunder almost openly for the means of gratifying his lowest propensities, drinking and intrigue. He seems to acquire from captivity a greater capacity for debauchery than even in his native wilds; he has learned irregularities unknown to his savage state: it is the brutishness of negroid nature brought out by the cheap and readily attainable pleasures of semi-civilisation. Whenever on moonlight nights the tapping of the tomtom responds to the vile squeaking of the fife, it is impossible to keep either a male or female slave within doors. All rendezvous at the place, and, having howled and danced themselves into happiness, conclude with a singularly disorderly scene. In the town of Zanzibar these “Ngoma” or dances were prohibited for moral reasons by the late Sayyid. The attachment of a slave to his master is merely a development of selfishness; it is a greater insult to abuse the Ahbab (patroon), than, according to Eastern fashion, the father and mother, the wife and sister. No slave-owner, however, praises a slave or relies upon his fidelity. The common expression is, “There is no good in the bondsman.”

Like the Somal, a merry and light-hearted race in foreign countries, but rendered gloomy and melancholy by the state of affairs at home, the negroid slaves greatly improve by exportation: they lose much of the surliness and violence which distinguish them at Zanzibar, and are disciplined into a kind of respect for superiors. Thus, “Seedy Mubarak” is a prime favourite on board an Indian steamer; he has also strength and courage enough to make himself respected. But “Seedy Mubarak” has tasted the intoxicating draught of liberty, he is in high good humour with himself and with all around him, he is a slave merely in origin, he has been adopted into the great family of free men, and with it he has identified all his interests. Eastern history preserves instances of the valour and faithfulness of bondsmen, as the annals of the West are fond of recording the virtues of dogs. Yet all the more civilised races have a gird at the negro. In the present day the Persians and other Asiatics are careful, when bound on distant or dangerous journeys, to mix white servants with black slaves; they hold the African to be full of strange childish caprices, and to be ever at heart a treacherous and bloodthirsty barbarian. Like the “bush-negroes” of Surinam, once so dangerous to the Dutch, the runaway slaves from Zanzibar have formed a kind of East African Liberia, between Mount Yombo and the Shimba section of the Eastern Ghauts. They have endangered the direct caravan-road from Mombasah to Usumbara; and though trespassing upon the territory of the Mwasagnombe, a sub-clan of the Wadigo, and claimed as subjects by Abdullah, the son of Sultan Kimwere, they have gallantly held their ground. According to the Arabs there is another servile republic about Gulwen, near Brava. Travellers speak with horror of the rudeness, violence, and cruelty of these self-emancipated slaves; they are said to be more dangerous even than the Somal, who for wanton mischief and malice can be compared with nothing but the naughtiest schoolboys in England.

The serviles at Zanzibar have played their Arab masters some notable tricks. Many a severe lord has perished by the hand of a slave. Several have lost their eyes by the dagger’s point during sleep. Curious tales are told of ingenious servile conspiracy. Mohammed bin Sayf, a Zanzibar Arab, remarkable for household discipline, was brought to grief by Kombo, his slave, who stole a basket of nutmegs from the Prince, and, hiding them in his master’s house, denounced him of theft. Fahl bin Nasr, a travelling merchant, when passing through Ugogo, nearly lost his life in consequence of a slave having privily informed the people that his patroon had been killing crocodiles and preserving their fat for poison. In both these cases the slaves were not punished; they had acted, it was believed, according to the true instincts of servile nature, and chastisement would have caused desertion, not improvement.

As regards the female slaves, the less said about them, from regard to the sex, the better: they are as deficient in honour as in honesty, in modesty and decorum as in grace and beauty. No man, even an Arab, deems the mother of his children chaste, or believes in the legitimacy of his progeny till proved.

Extensive inquiries into the subject lead to a conviction that it is impossible to offer any average of the price of slaves. Yet the question is of importance, as only the immense profit causes men thus to overlook all considerations of humanity. A few general rules may be safely given. There is no article, even horse-flesh, that varies so much in market-value as the human commodity: the absolute worth is small compared with the wants of the seller and the requirements and the means of the purchaser. The extremes range from six feet of unbleached domestics or a few pounds of grain in time of famine, to seventy dollars, equal to 15l. The slaves are cheapest in the interior, on account of the frequency of desertion: about Unyamwezi they are dearer, and most expensive in the island of Zanzibar. At the latter place during the last few years they have doubled in price: according to the Arabs, who regard the abolition of slavery with feelings of horror, this increase results from the impediments thrown in the way by the English; a more probable explanation may be found in the greater cheapness of money. At Zanzibar the price of a boy under puberty is from fifteen to thirty dollars. A youth till the age of fifteen is worth a little less. A man in the prime of life, from twenty-five to forty, fetches from thirteen to twenty dollars; after that age he may be bought from ten to thirteen. Educated slaves, fitted for the work of factors, are sold from twenty-five to seventy dollars, and at fancy prices. The price of females is everywhere about one-third higher than that of males. At Zanzibar the ushur or custom-dues vary according to the race of the slave: the Wahiao, Wangindo, and other serviles imported from Kilwa, pay one dollar per head, from the Mrima or maritime regions two dollars, and from Unyamwezi, Ujiji, and the rest of the interior three dollars. At the central depôt, Unyanyembe, where slaves are considered neither cheap nor dear, the value of a boy ranges between eight and ten doti or double cloths; a youth from nine to eleven; a man in prime, from five to ten; and past his prime from four to six. In some parts of the interior men are dearer than children under puberty. In the cheapest places, as in Karagwah and Urori, a boy costs three shukkahs of cloth, and three fundo or thirty strings of coral beads; a youth from ten to fifteen fundo; a man in prime from eight to ten; and no one will purchase an old man. These general notes must not, however, be applied to particular tribes: as with ivory and other valuable commodities, the amount and the description of the circulating medium vary at almost every march.

It was asserted by the late Colonel Hamerton, whose local knowledge was extensive, that the average of yearly import into the island of Zanzibar was 14,000 head of slaves, the extremes being 9000 and 20,000. The loss by mortality and desertion is 30 per cent. per annum; thus, the whole gang must be renewed between the third and fourth year.

By a stretch of power slavery might readily be abolished in the island of Zanzibar, and in due time, after the first confusion, the measure would doubtless be found as profitable as it is now unpalatable to the landed proprietors, and to the commercial body. A “sentimental squadron,” like the West African, would easily, by means of steam, prevent any regular exportation to the Asiatic continent. But these measures would deal only with effects, leaving the causes in full vigour; they would strike at the bole and branches, the root retaining sufficient vitality to resume its functions as soon as relieved of the pressure from without. Neither treaty nor fleet would avail permanently to arrest the course of slavery upon the seaboard, much less would it act in the far realms of the interior. At present the African will not work: the purchase of predial slaves to till and harvest for him is the great aim of his life. When a more extensive intercourse with the maritime regions shall beget wants which compel the barbarian, now contented with doing nothing and having nothing, to that individual exertion and that mutual dependency which render serfdom a moral impossibility in the more advanced stages of human society,—when man, now valueless except to himself, shall become more precious by his labour than by his sale, in fact an article so expensive that strangers cannot afford to buy him,—then we may expect to witness the extinction of the evil. Thus, and thus only can “Rachel, still weeping for her children,” in the evening of her days, be made happy.

Meanwhile, the philanthropist, who after sowing the good seed has sense and patience to consign the gathering of the crop to posterity, will hear with pleasure that the extinction of slavery would be hailed with delight by the great mass throughout the length and breadth of Eastern Africa. This people, “robbed and spoiled” by their oppressors, who are legionary, call themselves “the meat,” and the slave-dealers “the knife:” they hate and fear their own demon Moloch, but they lack unanimity to free their necks from his yoke. Africa still “lies in her blood,” but the progress of human society, and the straiter bonds which unite man with man, shall eventually rescue her from her old pitiable fate.