My African Journey

by Winston Churchill

The Sir William Mackinnon, a venerable vessel of the Uganda Marine, awaited our party, and we steamed off on the smooth waters of the lake, through an archipelago of beautiful islands—each one more inviting than the other—and all depopulated by sleeping sickness. All day long we voyaged in these sheltered waters, and in the evening the lights of Jinja guided us to our destination. One cannot help admiring the luck which led Speke to his thrilling discovery of the source of the Nile. There are five hundred gulfs and inlets on the northern shore of Lake Victoria, and nothing distinguishes this one from the rest. No current is perceptible to the ordinary mariner until within a few miles of the rapids, and although the presumption that so vast a body of fresh water would have an overflow somewhere had behind it a backing of strong probability, the explorer might have searched for a year without finding the spot. Instead of which he drifted and paddled gently along until all of a sudden the murmur of a distant cataract and the slight acceleration in the pace of his canoe drew him to the long-sought birthplace of the most wonderful river in the world.

It was dark when we landed at Jinja, and I could not properly see the preparations made for our reception by the local chiefs and the Indian traders, of whom there was a considerable crowd. The darkness, otherwise a cause of disappointment, afforded the opportunity for just the sort of brave act one so often finds a British officer ready to do. As the baggage was being landed from the steamer on to the jetty, a poor coolie slipped under his load, and in an instant was engulfed in the deep black waters below. Whereupon, as a matter of course, a young civilian in the Political Department jumped in after him in the darkness and among the crocodiles, and fished him out safe and sound, an act of admirable behaviour which has since received the recognition of the Royal Humane Society. I am not quite sure that in all parts of Africa so high a standard of honour and respect for the life of the humble native would prevail.

Jinja is destined to become a very important place in the future economy of Central Africa. Situated at the point where the Nile flows out of the Great Lake, it is at once on the easiest line of water communication with Lake Albert and the Soudan, and also where great water-power is available. In years to come the shores of this splendid bay may be crowned with long rows of comfortable tropical villas and imposing offices, and the gorge of the Nile crowded with factories and warehouses. There is power enough to gin all the cotton and saw all the wood in Uganda, and it is here that one of the principal emporia of tropical produce will certainly be created. In these circumstances it is a pity to handicap the town with an outlandish name. It would be much better to call it Ripon Falls, after the beautiful cascades which lie beneath it, and from whose force its future prosperity will be derived.

The Ripon Falls are, for their own sake, well worth a visit. The Nile springs out of the Victoria Nyanza, a vast body of water nearly as wide as the Thames at Westminster Bridge, and this imposing river rushes down a stairway of rock from fifteen to twenty feet deep, in smooth, swirling slopes of green water. It would be perfectly easy to harness the whole river and let the Nile begin its long and beneficent journey to the sea by leaping through a turbine. It is possible that nowhere else in the world could so enormous a mass of water be held up by so little masonry. Two or three short dams from island to island across the falls would enable, at an inconceivably small cost, the whole level of the Victoria Nyanza—over an expanse of a hundred and fifty thousand square miles—to be gradually raised six or seven feet; would greatly increase the available water-power; would deepen the water in Kavirondo Bay, so as to admit steamers of much larger draught; and, finally, would enable the lake to be maintained at a uniform level, so that immense areas of swampy foreshore, now submerged, now again exposed, according to the rainfalls, would be converted either into clear water or dry land, to the benefit of man and the incalculable destruction of mosquitoes.

The Ripon Falls (Source of the Nile).

As one watches the surging waters of the Ripon Falls and endeavours to compute the mighty energies now running to waste, but all within the reach of modern science, the problem of Uganda rises in a new form on the mind. All this water-power belongs to the State. Ought it ever to be surrendered to private persons? How long, on the other hand, is a Government, if not prepared to act itself, entitled to bar the way to others? This question is raised in a multitude of diverse forms in almost all the great dependencies of the Crown. But in Uganda the arguments for the State ownership and employment of the natural resources of the country seem to present themselves in their strongest and most formidable array. Uganda is a native State. It must not be compared with any of those colonies where there is a white population already established, nor again with those inhabited by tribes of nomadic barbarians. It finds its counterparts among the great native States of India, where Imperial authority is exercised in the name and often through the agency of a native prince and his own officers.

This combination of the external brain and the native hand results in a form of government often highly acceptable to the general body of the inhabitants, who are confronted with no sudden or arbitrary changes in the long-accustomed appearances of things. But it involves all the administration of affairs in a degree of complexity and delicacy which is absent from simpler and cruder systems. In such circumstances there cannot be much opening for the push and drive of ordinary commercial enterprise. The hustling business man—admirably suited to the rough and tumble of competitive production in Europe or America—becomes an incongruous and even a dangerous figure when introduced into the smooth and leisurely development of a native State. The Baganda will not be benefited either morally or materially by contact with modern money-making or modern money-makers. When a man is working only for the profits of his company and is judged by the financial results alone, he does not often under the sun of Central Africa acquire the best method of dealing with natives; and all sorts of difficulties and troubles will follow any sudden incursion of business enterprise into the forests and gardens of Uganda. And even if the country is more rapidly developed by these agencies, the profits will not go to the Government and people of Uganda, to be used in fostering new industries, but to divers persons across the sea, who have no concern, other than purely commercial, in its fortunes. This is not to advocate the arbitrary exclusion of private capital and enterprise from Uganda. Carefully directed and narrowly controlled opportunities for their activities will no doubt occur. But the natural resources of the country should, as far as possible, be developed by the Government itself, even though that may involve the assumption of many new functions.

Indeed, it would be hard to find a country where the conditions were more favourable than in Uganda to a practical experiment in State Socialism. The land is rich; the people pacific and industrious. There are no great differences between class and class. One staple article of food meets the needs of the whole population, and produces itself almost without the aid of man. There are no European vested interests to block the way. Nowhere are the powers of the Government to regulate and direct the activities of the people more overwhelming or more comprehensive. The superiority of knowledge in the rulers is commanding. Their control upon the natives is exerted through almost every channel; and besides the secular authorities—native and Imperial—there is the spiritual and educative influence of the missionaries to infuse human sympathy and moral earnestness into the regular machinery of State.