The Makololo chiefs recognised by the governments of colonial Nyasaland and independent Malawi have their origin in a group of porters that David Livingstone brought from Barotseland in the 1850s to support his first Zambezi expedition that did not return to Barotseland but assisted Livingstone and British missionaries in the area of southern Malawi between 1859 and 1864. After the withdrawal of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa those Makololo remaining in the Shire valley used firearms provided by the Europeans to attract dependants seeking protection, to seize land and to establish a number of chieftainships. At the time that a British protectorate was established in 1891, there were seven Makololo chiefs of which six were recognised by the government. Five survived to be given local governmental powers in 1933, and these powers continued after Malawi became independent. Although called Makololo or Kololo, after the ruling group in Barotseland in the 1850s, the majority came from peoples subject to the Makololo who adopted the more prestigious name. As, regardless of their origin, they took wives from among the inhabitants of the Shire Valley, their modern descendants have little connection with the Kololo people apart from their name.
The missionary activities of David Livingstone in Botswana for the London Missionary Society effectively ended in 1851 when he left Kolobeng Mission after failing to convert more than a few local people. During his last two years at Kolobeng, Livingstone had made three journeys well to the north of the mission which convinced him that the successful evangelisation of the interior of Africa would be achieved through exploring and mapping its navigable rivers as highways for missionaries and traders to enter the continental interior. Between 1852 and 1856, Livingstone mapped most of the course of the Zambezi, and made a transcontinental journey from Luanda on the Atlantic to Quelimane on the Indian Ocean between 1854 and 1856.[1]
This journey was accomplished with the help of 27 Africans provided as porters by Sekeletu, the King of Barotseland and chief of the Makololo or Kololo people, which had conquered Barotseland in the previous decade, for the passage from Luanda to Linyanti, now in Namibia, and later with 114 men from the same source for the journey from Linyanti to Quelimane.[2][3] From Sekeletu's perspective, establishing a secure route to the Atlantic or Indian Ocean, rather than relying on the dangerous and insecure one southward to the Cape Colony was well worth the loan of these men and they contributed significantly to Livingstone's success.[4] Although, following the name Livingstone gave them, these men are conventionally called "Makololo" after the ruling group in Barotseland, most of them probably belonged to the Lozi people or other subject peoples of Sekeletu's kingdom that inhabited the Caprivi Strip around Linyanti,[5] and who were usually described as Makalaka.[6] Around 100 of these men were left at Tete in 1856 when Livingstone made his way to Quelimane and then to Britain. The local governor at Tete oversaw their welfare and they hunted elephant and cultivated land to support themselves there.[7]
Although on one level, the individuals involved were working for both Sekeletu's and Livingstone's goals, those that the Makololo contemptuously dismissed as Makalaka, vassals or serfs, saw the expedition as a way to gain, wealth, authority, and power that their social position denied them in their homeland.[8] The Makololo conquest had been completed barely a decade before Livingstone's arrival and the senior Makololo indunas had gained control of the traditional sources of the country's wealth, making emigration or association with new sources of wealth the Europeans promised and the firearms that they provided the best options for the young men of the subject populations seeking advancement.[9]
After he had completed his first Zambezi expedition, the London Missionary Society told Livingstone it was unable to support him in exploration rather than missionary work, and he resigned from the society in 1857. Livingstone's second Zambezi expedition that started in 1858 was diverted up the Shire River in January 1859 after it was found that the Zambezi was not navigable beyond the Cabora Bassa rapids, which he had bypassed on his first expedition.[10] On reaching Tete, he was reunited with the porters he had left there in 1856 and attempted to repatriate them all to Barotseland. However, by this time Sekeletu was facing increasing opposition from the Lozi majority, and a number of porters decided to remain on the middle Zambezi.[7] These included two Makololo who had a superior status and their servants, the remainder being porters or canoemen from the subject peoples,[11] and there were either 15[7] or 16[6] of them. They were used from 1859 onward, first by Livingstone and then by missionaries of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), as porters and armed guards to support their activities in the Shire valley and Shire Highlands including the freeing of slaves, and were paid in guns, ammunition and cloth.[12] In 1861, after the original UMCA mission site at Magomero in the Shire Highlands was abandoned, the Makololo relocated with the missionaries to the Shire valley, from where the missionaries withdrew in January 1864. The Makololo decided to remain.[13]
Formation of chiefdoms
What is now southern Malawi was relatively peaceful, prosperous and densely populated by the Mang'anja people at the time of Livingstone's first visit in early 1859, but was about to become the focus of disruption caused by the large-scale migration of Yao people. The early Yao migrations from the 1830s involved few people and were relatively peaceful but, whether forced out of their earlier territory in Mozambique by the Makua people, by famine, by slave traders, by internal Yao conflicts or some combination of these, larger numbers of Yao moved, firstly, into the Niassa Province of Mozambique east of Lake Nyasa and then into the Shire Highlands in the 1850s. These incursions disrupted agriculture and caused widespread famine in the Shire Highland in the early 1860s as the local people abandoned their farms.[14][15]
The Mang'anja were one of the Maravi cluster of peoples who moved into the Lower Zambezi and Lower Shire river valleys before the end of 16th century and coalesced into a number of loosely connected chieftainships which, under pressure from the Portuguese in the Lower Zambezi valley, recognised paramount chiefs with the titles of Lundu, Kalonga and Kaphwiti.[16] These paramount chiefs derived some of their prestige through guardianship of the main shrines of the M'Bona Cult, and the Lundu kingdom, which included most of the Mang'anja people, controlled the main M'Bona shrine until the early 19th century. At that time, pressure from supposedly subordinate chiefs controlling other shrines and attacks from Afro-Portuguese chikunda raiding for slaves left the Lundu state with little real power over what had become a loose confederation of local chiefdoms.[17]
In the early 1860s, members of Livingstone's expedition or UCMA missionaries described the Mang'anja as being ruled by a hierarchy of chiefs and headmen of varying power and influence. In theory, the Lundu was still the paramount ruler with the power to appoint local chiefs, but his influence was limited. Several major chiefs within the Lundu sphere had more real power than the Lundu himself, although their inability to defend their people against attacks by the Yao and chikunda was beginning to reduce their prestige.[18] As a result of those attacks, some of the Mang'anja in the Shire Highlands were killed or exported as slaves to the Indian Ocean coast, others died of famine or famine-related disease and yet others fled to the Shire valley or the uplands beyond.[19][20] The loss of population in the Shire Highlands was very great, and much land went out of cultivation and reverted to forest.[21][22] Even thirty years later at the start of the colonial period, large areas of the Shire Highlands were underpopulated and remained so until the large-scale immigration of Lomwe people fleeing famine and forced labour in Mozambique at the end of the 19th century.[23][24] Those Mang'anja remaining in the Shire Highlands were either slave wives or domestic slaves in Yao households or occupied defensible hilltops and inaccessible lakeshores.[25][26]
Once the Makololo had relocated to the Shire valley, they maintained themselves through hunting elephants for ivory and attracted Mang'anja dependents seeking protection, many of whom were slaves liberated from slave caravans who had lost contact with their original homes. The freed women became polygamous wives of the Makololo and the men cultivated farmland seized from its original inhabitants.[27] After the 1864 departure of the UMCA mission, which left behind supplies of arms, munitions and trade goods, the Makololo and their armed dependents attacked local Mang'anja chiefs and established chieftaincies in the present-day Chikwawa District.[28] Graham-Jolly records the names of 16 original Makololo, but nothing is known of six of them beyond their names, and they were probably absorbed into the local population, losing their Makololo identity. The other ten became chiefs or headmen: two of these, Kasisi and Mloka, were said to be true Makololo rather than coming from subject peoples, and these were the first leaders of the group.[29][7] The chiefs or headmen that were not originally Makololo soon also adopted what they considered the more prestigious, if fictitious, name of Makololo.[30]
The Mang'anja put up little resistance to Kasisi, Mloka and their men and, apart from the deaths of the Lundu and Kaphwiti paramounts and a few followers, the takeover was relatively bloodless. Some Mang'anja chiefs were willing to cooperate with the Makololo against other Mang'anja who were their enemies, whereas the Makololo remained united among themselves and determined to build up their power.[31] At first, Kasisi and Mloka divided the land they had occupied between them, with Kasisi as senior ruler. Kasisi enjoyed reasonably good relations with the Yao which, together with his guns, kept him and his dependents safe from Yao attacks. The Makololo were also some distance away from two other potential enemies. The more powerful and active were the Maseko Ngoni in present-day Ntcheu District, and Kasisi set up fortified villages at fords along the Shire River as protection against Ngoni raids. Several Makololo and some of their Mang'anja dependents were installed as headmen in these villages and, on the death of Mloka, Kasisi divided his former territory between three of the original Makololo.[32] Until the death of their leader, Paul Marianno II in 1863, the Afro-Portuguese chikunda had considerable power and influence in the Lower Shire valley. However, as Marianno's son was then only 8 years old, he required a long minority, during which there were power struggles between the child's mother, his aunt and a prominent chikunda leader, which made it difficult to resist growing power of the Makololo, and the chikunda retreated further down the Shire.[33]
Later history
The territories of the two largest Makololo chiefdoms were each about 1,300 square kilometres (500sqmi) in extent, the others being smaller. Between the 1870s and 1910s, the original ten Makololo that became chiefs or headmen died and several of their lines of descent died out or merged with others, so that there were seven Makololo chiefs in 1891.[34] Since 1888, the most powerful of these was Mlauri, who tried to use the position of his village on a hill above the Shire River to dominate traffic on the river in the 1880s and impose tolls on European steamers using it. He became increasingly hostile to both British and Portuguese influences and, in 1889, he attacked a Portuguese military force under Major Alexandre de Serpa Pinto and was severely defeated, later fleeing from his village. As he had previously shown hostility to British as well as Portuguese forces, the British government did nothing to restore him and declined to recognise him as a chief. Mlauri was never restored although he lived until 1913.[35][36] The other six Makololo chiefs were recognised, and five of their chiefdoms survived to be recognised as a Native Authority by the Nyasaland government in 1933 under the policy of Indirect rule,[37] their titles were Kasisi, Makwira, Katunga, Masea and Mwita.[38]
Apart from Mlauri, most of the Makololo chiefs valued their former connection with Livingstone and were favourably disposed to British missionaries and traders entering their area. They traded ivory in exchange for guns, ammunition and trade goods from the 1870s until a protectorate was established by John Buchanan in 1889 and extended into the British Central Africa Protectorate in 1891.[39] The Makololo had a virtual monopoly over the collection of ivory in the lower Shire valley, which they sold to the African Lakes Company as they were unable to use the Shire-Zambezi route to the coast through Portuguese territory. There was a certain amount of friction between the Makololo and the African Lakes Company by the mid-1880s, because the company was unwilling to supply them with firearms and ammunition, which it did supply to independent African hunters competing with the Makololo. The Makololo in turn tried to bypass the company by trading with independent European traders, until one of these killed a Makololo chief in a dispute over trade goods and was in turn killed by the chief's men.[40][41][39]
Relations with the Portuguese were difficult because they controlled the main access route to the coast and also laid claim to the Shire valley and Shire Highlands. The guardians of the young Paul Marianno III had been forced to withdraw south of the Ruo River on the eastern bank of the Shire, and their power on the western bank of the Shire virtually ended. In an attempt to regain these lost territories, an alliance of the prazeros of the middle Zambezi attacked the Makololo and were heavily defeated in 1877. In the same year and until 1881, the Makololo chiefs attacked the prazos of Marianno III and his allies, which were in areas of Portuguese jurisdiction. Fears that the Makololo were part of a British attempt, also including the Scottish missions and African Lakes Corporation, to claim the areas attacked persuaded the Portuguese government to reinforce its claims to the area by sending a number of expeditions there.[42] As a result, the Scottish missionaries in Blantyre protested to the British government, asking it to oppose any Portuguese claim to the Shire Highlands.[43] After Serpa Pinto's battles with Mlauri, Serpa Pinto's second-in-command took two armed steamboats up the Shire River to overawe the Makololo and some of their chiefs fled to the European settlement of Blantyre for safety, provoking the declaration of a British protectorate over the disputed area.[44]
The first two colonial administrators of the British Central Africa Protectorate, Harry Johnstone and Alfred Sharpe, did not wish to involve African chiefs in the governance of the protectorate or to acknowledge their authority, but the small number of colonial officials in the protectorate and its poverty meant that many chiefs continued to exercise their traditional powers unofficially.[45] As the administration did not recognise chiefs, it only removed those that had opposed them and made no attempt to replace Yao, Ngoni or Makololo chiefs that ruled people of different ethnicity.[46] A government Ordinance of 1912 sanctioned the governmental appointment of Principal Headmen, with limited authority as government agents in their areas. Most were prominent local chiefs, including six Makololo chiefs.[47] In 1933, a form of Indirect rule was introduced by the governor of Nyasaland, Sir Hubert Young, who appointed chiefs as local government officials with wider powers than in 1912, but with no jurisdiction over European-owned estates and no financial responsibilities.[48] The Provincial Commissioner in the south of Nyasaland wished to deal with the anomaly that the five Makololo chiefs in Chikwawa District ruled over predominantly Mang'anja populations, whereas seven Mang'anja chiefs in the neighbouring Nsanje District had a majority of Sena immigrants as their subjects, but no changes were made.[49]
The Native Authority scheme generally worked well until the mid-1940s, but in the post-Second World War period, most chiefs lost legitimacy by enforcing unpopular government policies. By the early 1950s, Indirect rule was barely operating in many areas and the political initiative had passed to the Nyasaland African Congress.[50] However, after the country gained independence as Malawi in 1964, the Malawian government halted the decline of Indirect rule and, under the presidency of Hastings Banda, the chiefs, including the five Makololo chiefs, regained their lost status and became an essential part of the state apparatus.[51]
Related Research Articles
Nyasaland was a British protectorate located in Africa that was established in 1907 when the former British Central Africa Protectorate changed its name. Between 1953 and 1963, Nyasaland was part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. After the Federation was dissolved, Nyasaland became independent from Britain on 6 July 1964 and was renamed Malawi.
The British Central Africa Protectorate (BCA) was a British protectorate proclaimed in 1889 and ratified in 1891 that occupied the same area as present-day Malawi: it was renamed Nyasaland in 1907. British interest in the area arose from visits made by David Livingstone from 1858 onward during his exploration of the Zambezi area. This encouraged missionary activity that started in the 1860s, undertaken by the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland, and which was followed by a small number of settlers. The Portuguese government attempted to claim much of the area in which the missionaries and settlers operated, but this was disputed by the British government. To forestall a Portuguese expedition claiming effective occupation, a protectorate was proclaimed, first over the south of this area, then over the whole of it in 1889. After negotiations with the Portuguese and German governments on its boundaries, the protectorate was formally ratified by the British government in May 1891.
Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston was a British explorer, botanist, artist, colonial administrator, and linguist who travelled widely across Africa to speak some of the languages spoken by people on that continent. He published 40 books on subjects related to the continent of Africa and was one of the key players in the Scramble for Africa that occurred at the end of the 19th century.
John Nkologo Chilembwe was a Baptist pastor, educator and revolutionary who trained as a minister in the United States, returning to Nyasaland in 1901. He was an early figure in the resistance to colonialism in Nyasaland (Malawi), opposing both the treatment of Africans working in agriculture on European-owned plantations and the colonial government's failure to promote the social and political advancement of Africans. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Chilembwe organised an unsuccessful armed uprising against colonial rule. Today, Chilembwe is celebrated as a hero of independence in some African countries, and John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on 15 January in Malawi.
The Shire Highlands are a plateau in southern Malawi, located east of the Shire River. It is a major agricultural area and the most densely populated part of the country.
Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto, Viscount of Serpa Pinto was a Portuguese explorer of southern Africa and a colonial administrator.
Lozi people, or Barotse, are a southern African ethnic group who speak Lozi and Silozi, a Sotho–Tswana language| Khelobedu. The Lozi people consist of more than 46 different ethnic groups and are primarily situated between Namibia, Angola. Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa including half of the north-Western and western provinces of Zambia inhabiting the region of Barotseland.
Barotseland is a region between Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe including half of north-western province, southern province, and parts of Lusaka, Central, and Copperbelt provinces of Zambia and the whole of Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province. It is the homeland of the Lozi people or Barotse, or Malozi, who are a unified group of over 46 individual formerly diverse tribes related through kinship, whose original branch are the Luyi (Maluyi), and also assimilated Southern Sotho tribe of South Africa known as the Makololo.
The Kololo or Makololo are a subgroup of the Sotho-Tswana people native to Southern Africa. In the early 19th century, they were displaced by the Zulu, migrating north to Barotseland, Zambia. They conquered the territory of the Luyana people and imposed their own language. The combination of Luyana and Kololo languages gave rise to the current Lozi language spoken by the Lozi people, descendants of the Luyana and nearby tribes. In 1864, the Kololo kingdom was overthrown and some chiefs moved to Chikwawa District, Malawi, with David Livingstone.
The 1890 British Ultimatum was an ultimatum by the British government delivered on 11 January 1890 to the Kingdom of Portugal. Portugal had attempted to claim a large area of land between its colonies of Mozambique and Angola including most of present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia and a large part of Malawi, which had been included in Portugal's "Rose-coloured Map". The ultimatum led to the withdrawal of Portuguese forces from areas which had been claimed by Portugal on the basis of Portuguese exploration in the era, but which Britain claimed on the basis of uti possidetis.
The Pink Map, also known in English as the Rose-Coloured Map, was a map prepared in 1885 to represent Portugal's claim of sovereignty over a land corridor connecting their colonies of Angola and Mozambique during the Scramble for Africa. The area claimed included most of what is currently Zimbabwe and large parts of modern Zambia and Malawi. In the first half of the 19th century, Portugal fully controlled only a few coastal towns in Angola and Mozambique. It also claimed suzerainty over other almost independent towns and nominally Portuguese subjects in the Zambezi valley, but could rarely enforce its claims; most of the territory now within Angola and Mozambique was entirely independent of Portuguese control. Between 1840 and 1869, Portugal expanded the area it controlled but felt threatened by the activities of other powers.
Sir Alfred Sharpe was Commissioner and Consul-General for the British Central Africa Protectorate and first Governor of Nyasaland.
Maganja da Costa District is a district of Zambezia Province in Mozambique.
Mbololo was a Litunga (chief) of Makololo tribe, a successor of Liswaniso. He ruled from 1863 to 1864. He was the last king of the Makololo dynasty.
The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891 was an agreement between the United Kingdom and Portugal which fixed the boundaries between the British Central Africa Protectorate, and the territories administered by the British South Africa Company in Mashonaland and Matabeleland and North-Western Rhodesia and Portuguese Mozambique, and also between the British South Africa Company administered territories of North-Eastern Rhodesia, and Portuguese Angola.
John Buchanan (1855–1896), was a Scottish horticulturist who went to Central Africa, now Malawi, in 1876 as a lay member of the missionary party that established Blantyre Mission. Buchanan came to Central Africa as an ambitious artisan: his character was described as dour and devout but also as restlessly ambitious, and he saw in Central Africa a gateway to personal achievement. He started a mission farm on the site of Zomba, Malawi but was dismissed from the mission in 1881 for brutality. From being a disgraced missionary, Buchanan first became a very influential planter owning, with his brothers, extensive estates in Zomba District. He then achieved the highest position he could in the British administration as Acting British Consul to Central Africa from 1887 to 1891. In that capacity declared a protectorate over the Shire Highlands in 1889 to pre-empt a Portuguese expedition that intended to claim sovereignty over that region. In 1891, the Shire Highlands became part of the British Central Africa Protectorate. John Buchanan died at Chinde in Mozambique in March 1896 on his way to visit Scotland, and his estates were later acquired by the Blantyre and East Africa Ltd.
The M'Bona Cult is a system of religious beliefs and rituals which is currently restricted to the most southerly parts of Malawi, but which probably extended more widely, both in other parts of Malawi and adjacent parts of Mozambique. The cult is found mainly among the local Mang'anja people and its former extent reflected that people's wider past distribution. It aims to secure abundant rains at the appropriate season through the making of propitiatory gifts at cult shrines, and includes rainmaking rituals in the event of drought. It has been related to a number of other territorial cults among the Maravi cluster of related African peoples which aim to secure the well-being of the people of a particular area secure from drought, floods or food shortages. The cult is believed to be a long established one, although estimates of how long it has existed are speculative, as the earliest definite record of its existence dates from 1862.
Since 1933, various traditional chiefs in Nyasaland have been designated as Native Authorities, initially by the colonial administration, and they numbered 105 in 1949.. They represented a form of the Indirect rule which had become popular in British African dependencies in the second quarter of the 20th century, although Nyasaland's Native Authorities had fewer powers and smaller incomes than similar institutions in other African colonies. The Native Authority system worked reasonably effectively until after the Second World War, when they were obliged to enforce unpopular government agricultural policies and, in some cases, their support for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland made Native Authorities unpopular with many of their people. After 1953, many of the powers of individual chiefs were transferred to councils which became the Native Authorities, although the chiefs sat on these councils. After independence, the authorities were renamed Traditional Authorities and continued to operate, and the status and influence of many of the chiefs revived through their cooperation with the Malawi government of Hastings Banda.
Chikunda, sometimes rendered as Achicunda, was the name given from the 18th century onwards to the slave-warriors of the Afro-Portuguese estates known as Prazos in Zambezia, Mozambique. They were used to defend the prazos and police their inhabitants. Many of the chikunda were originally chattel slaves, raised to the status of soldiers, traders or administrators of parts of the prazo as a client or unfree dependent.
Jan Mathijs Schoffeleers (1928–2011), who published many of his works in English as Jan Matthew Schoffeleers or Matthew Schoffeleers was a Dutch missionary and member of the Montfort Fathers order who became an important figure in African research as an anthropologist of African religion, particularly that in Malawi, where he spent around 16 years, first as a missionary and then as a lecturer. He continued his academic career later as reader and professor in religious anthropology in the Netherlands, continuing to concentrate on African themes.
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