ZANZIBARI – MAKUA IN SOUTH AFRICA

In the 1830’s, the British, who were enthusiastic slave traders for centuries, had a rethink and decided to put an end to the practice.

On the east coast of Africa, British consul-general in Zanzibar John Kirk urged the ruling sultans to take action against Arab and Portuguese slave traders. The sultans were not too eager as they profited from it.

British navy frigates began intercepting slave ships ostensibly with the view to resettling their occupants out of reach of the slavers. The hidden agenda became apparent in the correspondence of the colonial administrators whose interest was to feed their hunger for the cheapest possible labour.

Economic prosperity in the 1860’s and early 1870’s led to increase in wealth and slave ownership in Imerina and an enormous explosion of the slave trade in the Mozambique Channel. It was estimated that Madagascar was importing six to ten thousand slaves a year by the early 1870s.
As the number of slave dhows captured by the British increased, space to settle the freed slaves depleted.

The primary and nearest source of slaves for Madagascar was the coast of Mozambique across the channel where dhows were able to make multiple crossings almost all the year round, taking three to nine days to cross it. From the mid-century, ports on the northern coast of Mozambique were the chief centres of slave exports, and some 2, 000 to 4,000 slaves were exported. Madagascar was absorbing more than two thirds of this number and transhipping the balance to the French island. While hunting for slaves in the Mozambique Channel for Madagascar was in full swing, there was an acute demand for labour at the southern end of the region in Natal where a plantation economy had been established. A solution to the labour problem had been found there through the importation of thousands of indentured labour from Britain’s imperial labour reservoir in India. British colonists in Natal numbered about 18, 000 by the 1870s and they were already a powerful political force in the colony’s affairs, demanding the importation of cheap labour, since local African peasants were unwilling to abandon their land and sell their labour power on a regular basis. The first batch of Indian indentured labourers landed in Natal in 1860. However, conditions of employment on the plantations were so oppressive that many refused to renew their contracts. Some chose to remain in the colony as free citizens, while those who took the free return passage to India related grim tales of hardship. These are so serious that the Indian government, ever sensitive to local opinion after the Indian Mutiny of 1858, temporarily stopped further emigration to Natal in 1870. By then, Natal was producing ten thousand tons of sugar, and the cut-off in the supply of labour created a huge commotion in planter circles

Probably, aware of the dire need for cheap labour in Natal and faced with the prospect of captures by British warships of many slaves dhows, the British Consul at Zanzibar, John Kirk, came up with a solution to kill two birds with one stone. Earlier, Frere had recommended to Kirk to dispose of freed slaves among Christian missionaries.

Between 1873 and 1880, a number of Africans liberated from slave dhows were sent to Natal; and they constituted the nucleus of the “Zanzibari” community in Durban. From the records seen so far, the first contingent of 113 freed Africans was taken directly after the capture of a slave dhow in the Mozambique Channel in 1873.

On 4th August 1873, HMS Briton arrived at the port of Durban in Natal having on board 113 freed slaves captured from a dhow in the Mozambique Channel. This was probably the 75-ton dhow captured at Majambo Port in Madagascar on 23rd July, 1873 with 121 slaves on board, but the others might have died en route. Kirk wrote to the Foreign Office that he had been informed about their arrival by his assistant, Frederic Elton, who happened to be in Durban when they were landed. These individuals, therefore, never passed through Zanzibar, although they did arrive in Durban when discussion about them was already in the air. They, were therefore, described in Natal Government Notices as “Liberated Africans from Zanzibar” and might have contributed to their identity as “Zanzibaris.”

On April 24, 1874, HS Kaffir landed with 81 freed slaves believed to be Makua from northern Mozambique. They were a part of a larger group destined for Madagascar on an Arab slave dhow.

On the 21st April 1877 the Natal Government registered 502 slaves.

Children, babies ages ranging from 1 years to 8 years, pregnant women, some gave birth en-route others on arrival. There were many deaths on arrival. (Adults from 13 years - 367; Children under 12 years – 135; Died in depot – 65; Born on arrival – 34)

Conclusion
We are still to achieve our goals and establish legacies for our descendants just as our forebears did for us.