Coercion and control in nyasaland: Aspects of the history of a colonial police force

The Journal of African History

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 1986, Pages 127-147

  Mccracken, John ^a  

^a NONE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84974028881     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700029236     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. See, for example, Eric Stokes, ‘Malawi political systems and the introduction of colonial rule, 1891-1896’, in Eric Stokes and Richard Brown (eds.), The Zambesian Past (Manchester, 1966); A. J. Dachs, ‘Politics of collaboration: imperialism in practice’, in Bridglal Pachai (ed.), The Early History of Malawi (London, 1972); Allen and Barbara Isaacman, ‘Resistance and collaboration in southern and central Africa, c. 1850-1920’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, x, 1 (1977).
2. The outstanding example is Charles van Onselen, ‘Collaborators in the Rhodesian mining industry’, African Affairs, Lxxii, no. 289 (1973). For a comparative perspective see David Arnold, ‘The armed police and colonial rule in South India, 1914-1947’, Modern Asian Studies, II, 1 (1977).
3. M. L. Chanock, ‘ Development and change in the history of Malawi ’, in Pachai, Early History, 441.
4. The only previous studies of the police force in Malawi of which I am aware are a commemorative booklet by C. Marlow, A History of the Malawi Police Force (Zomba, 1971), and an autobiography by a former Deputy Commissioner, Geoffrey J. Morton, Just the Job: some Experiences of a Colonial Policeman (London, 1957). For Malawian soldiers see particularly H. Moyse-Bartlett, The King's African Rifles (Aldershot, 1956); Melvin E. Page, ‘Malawians in the Great War and after, 1914-1925’ (Ph.D. thesis, Michigan State University, 1977); George Shepperson, ‘The military history of British Central Africa’, Rhodes-Livingstone Journal, no. 26 (1960), and Francis de Guingand, African Assignment (London, 1953).
5. The confusion was compounded by the fact that the early military campaigns have often been described by historians as ‘police operations’ and that the term ‘askari’ was used of both policemen and soldiers.
6. Diary of Edward Alston, 9 Apr. 1895, MNA; ‘Orders by Major C. A. Edwards for the Zarafi campaign’, 1895, in Wordsworth Poole papers, MNA PO 1/5/1. On Edwards orders, loot was distributed according to the following shares: Major 64; Captain 48; Lieutenant 30; Sergeant-Major 16; Sepoy 2; Sergeant-Major (Native) 4; Private (Native) 1.
7. Major Edwards to Capt. Stewart, 15 Dec. 1895, MNA KAR 2/1/1.
8. Nyasaland Intelligence Report no. 30, to June 30 1914, MNA KAR 3/1/5.
9. Mzimba District Book, vols. 1 and 2.
10. Resident Fort Johnston to Chief Secretary, Zomba, 16 Mar. 1921, MNA S1/850/20.
11. Resident Blantyre to Ass. Resident Chiradzulu, 22 Jan. 1916, MNA NSB 2/1/1.
12. See file on ‘Native deserters’, 1924, MNA POL 2/19/4.
13. Minute by G. Smith, Governor, on ‘The organisation and training of police in Nyasaland’, 18 June 1919; minutes of Resident's Conference, Zomba, 8–9 Dec. 1913, MNA S1/152/19.
14. See particularly Report of the Commission appointed.to inquire into various matters and questions concerned with the Native Rising within the Nyasaland Protectorate, Zomba, 1916, para. 32; evidence of E. Costley-White, Resident Zomba, to Commission of Inquiry, 2 July 1915, Public Record Office CO 525/66. For the rising itself see George Shepperson and Thomas Price, Independent African (Edinburgh, 1958).
15. The argument that professional uniformed police forces were founded in Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century as a means of protecting the propertied classes from the ‘dangerous classes’ emerging in the fast-growing impersonal industrial cities is usefully discussed by Clive Elmslie, Policing and its Context, 1750-1850 (London, 1983).
16. Minute by Hector Duff, 12 May 1919, MNA S1/152/19.
17. George Smith to Secretary of State for Colonies, 18 Aug. 1919, MNA S1/152/19.
18. Major E. Stephens to Chief Secretary, Zomba, 7 Aug. 1920, MNA S1/850/20; Annual Police Reports, 1921 and 1922, MNA POL 5/1/1.
19. W. Wheeler, Acting Chief Secretary to Judge, High Court, Blantyre, 4 Feb. 1919, MNA S1/152/19.
20. Smith to Secretary of State for Colonies, 18 Aug. 1919, MNA Si/i52/19.
21. Annual Report for Lilongwe District, 1938, MNA MCL 4/1/4.
22. See especially, Charles van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1933 (London, 1976); M. H. Y. Kaniki, ‘Wage labour and the political economy of colonial violence’, African Social Research, 31 (1981), 1-24; Phyllis Martin, ‘The violence of empire’, in David Birmingham and Phyllis M. Martin (eds.), History of Central Africa, 11 (London, 1983).
23. R. D. Bell, Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the Financial Position and further Development of Nyasaland (London, 1938).
24. George Smith to Secretary of State for Colonies, 21 Jan. 1921, MNA S1/10/20.
25. Figures calculated from Bell Report. This compares with the situation between June 1891 and March 1896 when 53.8 per cent of government revenues went on the police and the military. See M. A. Vaughan, ‘Social and economic change in southern Malawi: a study of rural communities in the Shire Highlands and Upper Shire Valley from the mid-nineteenth century to 1915’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1981), 110.
26. See file on Isa Lawrence, MNA S2/50/23.
27. See ‘Reports on native controlled missions, 1940-3’, MNA S1 A/1339.
28. Ibid.
29. Colonial Office minute, 1 May 1953, PRO CO 1015/243.
30. Martin Chanock, ‘Law and history in colonial Central Africa: Nyasaland and North-Eastern Rhodesia, 1890-1930’ Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, postgraduate Seminar, n.d. (1979). See also Martin Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: the Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge, 1985).
31. Memo by W. G. Bithrey enclosed in Bithrey to Chief Secretary, Zomba, 16 May 1939, MNA POL 2/17/3.
32. L. S. Norman to Secretary of State for Colonies, 4 Oct. 1920, P.R.O. CO 525/94; G. Smith to Secretary of State for Colonies, 21 Feb. 1921, CO 525/25.
33. See Vaughan, ‘Social and economic change’, 130, where she notes that in 1938 hut tax contributions still accounted for 28.7 per cent of total local revenue in Nyasaland but only 12 per cent in Southern Rhodesia and 8.2 per cent in Northern Rhodesia.
34. Annual Report of Northern Province for year ending 31 March 1926, MNA Si/920/26.
35. K.R.T. to the Governor, 30 Jan. 1934, MNA Si/1379/27. According to this memo, nearly one half of the people sent to prison in 1930 were committed for non-payment of hut tax.
36. Undated memo on ‘Northern Province’, POL 2/17/11
37. See for example Zomba Monthly Police Report, Nov. 1938, MNA POL 5/2/16.
38. Major Stephens to Provincial Commissioner, Southern Province, 18 July 1924, MNA POL 2/19/4.
39. The Blantyre town police dates from 1899 and the Limbe town police from 1911. See minutes of the Blantyre Town Council, 11 May 1899 and Limbe Town Council, 13 June 1911, MNA BL 2/1 /1 /1 and 2/1/2/1.
40. The first clause in the Blantyre bye-laws of 1912 runs as follows: ‘No Asiatic or Native shall acquire property either leasehold or freehold or settle or carry on trade on his own account, either directly or indirectly or jointly or in partnership with a European in the Township except in the Asiatic Ward’: MNA S1/3921/19. Some time before 1920 this was modified to allow Asians to reside in any part of the Township, though in practice strenuous efforts were made to prevent them from doing so.
41. Ibid. and ‘Township Ordinances, Blantyre and Limbe 1938’, MNA S1/392ii/19.
42. Blantyre Town Council minutes, 27 June 1899, 23 Nov. 1900, 25 Oct. 1915.
43. Limbe Town Council minutes, 28 Aug. 1922 and 29 Jan. 1923.
44. Blantyre Town Council minutes, 26 Nov. 1923.
45. For a description of the operation of the curfew in the late 1940s and early 1950s, see Morton, Just the Job, 239.
46. Blantyre Town Council minutes, 24 June 1929. For the emergence of gangs in Johannesburg see Charles van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwaterstand, 1886-1914; 11, New Nineveh (London, 1982), 171–201.
47. Blantyre Monthly Police Report, May 1935, MNA POL 5/2/1.
48. Ibid., July-Aug., Nov.-Dec. 1930.
49. Figures calculated from Blantyre Monthly Police Reports and Annual Reports of Nyasaland Police, 1930–4. In the five months from Sept. 1931 to Jan. 1932 not a single case of robbery or housebreaking was reported from Blantyre, Limbe and Zomba.
50. Evidence of Major F. T. Stephens, 20 June 1938, Rhodesia-Nyasaland Royal Commission, Oral Evidence, Volume iii: Nyasaland, FCO.
51. Zomba Monthly Police Report, Dec. 1938; interview with former Superintendent Brian Burgess, Zomba Plateau, 22 Jan. 1983.
52. Zomba Monthly Police Report, Nov. 1949.
53. Annual Reports of Nyasaland Police, 1924 and 1925, MNA POL 5/1/1; High Court case re Masule alias Time alias Williams, MNA J 5/5/25.
54. Zomba Monthly Police Report July and Oct. 1949, MNA POL 5/2/16; Nyasaland Times, 17 and 20 Oct. 1949. I owe this reference to Dr William Beinart.
55. For comparative information see Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (London, 1959) and Allen Isaacman, ‘Social banditry in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and Mozambique, 1894-1907’, Journal of Southern African Studies, iv, 1, 1977. Most of my information on Mitende's reputation today was gained from participants in the History Seminar
56. The number of motor vehicles in Nyasaland increased from 623 in 1924 to 2,189 in 1929. See Nyasaland Military Handbook, June 1924 and 31 Dec. 1929, MNA S2/6/27. By 1930 nearly 3,000 bicycles a year were being imported.
57. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police for 1930.
58. Blantyre Monthly Police Reports, Sept. 1944, May-June 1946, MNA POL 5/2/2.
59. Report of Social Welfare Officer, Southern Province, 1951, MNA 2/28/7F 2525. I owe this reference to Dr Megan Vaughan.
60. H. D. Ng'Wane, ‘Economics of Kacasu distilling and brewing of African beer in a Blantyre-Limbe village’, in R. J. Apthorpe (ed.), Present Interrelations in Central African Rural and Urban Life, proceedings of the Eleventh Conference of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute for Social Research (Lusaka, 1958).
61. Michael Banton, The Policeman in the Community (London, 1964), 146–147.
62. For a general introduction see T. O. Ranger, ‘Mchape and the study of witchcraft eradication’, Conference on the history of Central African religious systems, Lusaka, 1972.
63. This account is drawn from material in the following two files: MNA Si/522/32 and NS 1 /23/2.
64. G. D. Anderson, Provincial Commissioner Southern Province to Chief Secretary, Zomba, 6 Dec. 1932, MNA S1/522/32.
65. Evidence of N. C. Dulana in District Officer, Liwonde, to Provincial Commissioner Southern Province, 12 Nov. 1932, Si/522/32.
66. Minute by Attorney General, 4 Jan. 1933 in S1/522/32.
67. Provincial Commissioner, Southern Province to all District Commissioners, Southern Province, 9 Feb. 1933, MNA NS 1/23/2.
68. John McCracken, Politics and Christianity in Malawi, 1875–1940 (Cambridge, 1977), 280–281.
69. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police for 1945, 7 and 15.70 Ibid.; Morton, 238.
70. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police for 1948.72 Ibid.
71. Morton, Just the Job, 242.
72. Note of meeting between the Governor and Mr Kaye Nicol, General Manager of the British Central Africa Company, 15 May 1948, MNA 2/8/9F 1476.
73. Annual Reports of the Nyasaland Police Department, 1947-52; Blantyre Monthly Police Reports, June 1948, MNA POL 5/2/2; Morton, 236–42, 257–8 and 284–8.
74. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police for 1952.
75. For two contrasting views of this episode see Morton, 299–312 and Michael Scott, African Episode (London, 1953).
76. For a comprehensive account see Landeg White and Leroy Vail, ‘Variations on the theme of ethnicity: the Malawian experience’, paper delivered at the conference on ‘Malawi: an alternative pattern of development’, Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, 24–25 May 1984.
77. 5
78. Ibid.; Nyasaland Times, 20 Aug-21 Sept. 1953. See also Arthur Westrop, Green Gold (Bulawayo, 1955), 341-53.
79. See Nyasaland Times, 6 Dec. 1953, which provides an account of the 2nd Battalion's activities in September and October.
80. Munro, ‘Riots and disturbances’.
81. Altogether, 220 policemen from outside Nyasaland were recruited to put down the disturbances: 100 from Northern Rhodesia, 50 from Tanganyika and 70 from Southern Rhodesia (including 30 Europeans). See Nyasaland Times, 27 and 31 Aug. 1953.
82. 85Morton, p. 237.
83. ‘Proposal for the unification of the police services of Central Africa, 1952’, PRO CO 1015/370;J. R. T. Wood, The Welensky Papers: a History of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Durban, 1983), 176–7, 257–8, 325–7.
84. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1954; memoir by John M. Le Mesurier, 1 Feb. 1982, Rhodes House, Mss. Afr. S. 1784 (46).
85. C. Z. Chidzero, ‘Thangata in Thyolo District’, History Seminar Paper, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, 1980/81.
86. Unattributable source.
87. Philip Short, Banda (London, 1974), 106–108.
88. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1958 and 1959. C. H. F. Apthorpe, the architect of the last phase of expansion, retired in 1958 along with the Deputy Commissioner and the Officer Commanding Special Branch. There were thus virtually no experienced senior officers to assist the new Commissioner,]. V. Mullin, during the Emergency of 1959.
89. P. L. Brown to C. E. Lambert, Colonial Office, 22 Dec. 1949, PRO CO 537/4413.
90. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1959, 5.
91. Wood, Welensky Papers, 635–643.
92. Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Enquiry, 1959, Cmd. 814; Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1959; Author's interview with Sir Glyn Jones, July 1980.
93. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1959.
94. According to the Bell Report, the total European establishment in 1938 was 238, including not just the staff of the Secretariat, Treasury, Provincial Administration and Development Departments, but also the P.W.D. (28), Posts and Telegraph (14), Police, Military and Customs.
95. For a comprehensive analysis see Vail and White, ‘Variations on the theme of ethnicity’
96. Wordsworth Poole to his mother, 21 August 1895, MNA POL/i. The full quotation is worth providing as illustration of the simplistic stereotypes to which European officials resorted: ‘There are certain recognised ideas about the different races which are repeated by everyone. They are passed from one whiteman to another originating I fancy from the Commissioner. For instance, the Yao is the essence of cowardice and laziness and never will be any good. The Atonga are the faithful servants of the white man or Azungu as they call us, plucky and reliable. The Mang’anja timid and fearful. The Angoni Zulu raiders. Whether this is all gospel I don‘t know.’
97. Violet Jhala, ‘The Yao in the Shire Highlands, 1861-1915: the establishment of their authority and adjustment to changing socio-economic conditions ’, B.A. Honours research paper, University of Malawi, 1980; Vaughan, ‘Social and economic change’.
98. ‘Information for military handbook of Nyasaland, 1922’, MNA S2/6/27. See also Intelligence Report for half year ending June 30 1937: ‘The Yaos have a magnificent war record, and it is safe to say that they could be employed satisfactorily for warfare in any tropical or semi-tropical country. They were found during the Great War to be more satisfactory in conditions in East Africa than white South African Troops’: S2/6iii/27. For a comparative study of the ‘ethnic security maps’ created by imperial regimes and of their efforts to locate and utilise ‘martial races’ in their defence, see Cynthia H. Enloe, Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in a Divided Society (Penguin Books, 1980).
99. Memo on ‘Nyasaland Police. Organisation, conditions of service, pay, etc.’, 1926. MNA S1/645/26.
100. Ibid.; Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1930.
101. Percentages calculated from Annual Reports of the Nyasaland Police. Clearly there are dangers involved in attempting to define individuals in ethnic terms in an area like colonial Malawi where tribal identity was very fluid. The ‘Lomwe’ for example, as at present defined, are essentially a creation of the 1940s. However, it is important to note (a) that the recruitment policies of the colonialists were considerably influenced by these tribal categories and (b) that many soldiers and policemen accepted and utilized them for their own purposes.
102. 106Memo by W. B. Bithrey, 16 May 1939. MNA POL 2/17/3.
103. See particularly Nyasaland Times, 7 Sept. 1953.
104. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1970, 7.
105. Sir D. Mackenzie-Kennedy to Secretary of State for Colonies, 12 May 1941, PRO CO 525/188/44006/4 1941–3.
106. Van Onselen, ‘Collaborators on the Rhodesian mining industry’, 408–412.
107. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1921, MNA POL 5/1/1.
108. Blantyre Monthly Police Report, Feb. 1938, MNA POL 5/2/1.
109. See ‘Grievances of educated natives of Blantyre to the Magistrate Blantyre’, 1923, MNA NC 1/3/2.
110. Morton, Just the Job, 258.
111. Interview with Mr Brian Burgess, 22 Jan. 1983.
112. Annual Report of the Nyasaland Police, 1959.
113. Evidenceof Major Stephens, 20 June 1938, Rhodesia-Nyasaland Royal Commission; Colby to Secretary of State for Colonies, 11 Sept. 1953, PRO CO 1015/378.
114. Annual Report for Chiradzulu District, 1939, MNA NSD 2/1/4. Career details of policemen serving under district officers are contained in the Nyasaland district books.
115. Lilongwe District Books, 1918–23 and 1923–38.
116. Morton, 279–281.
117. Van Onselen, ‘Collaborators in the Rhodesian mining industry’, 403.
118. Quoted in Leroy Vail, Ethnicity, languages and national unity: the case of Malawi, in P. Bonner (ed.), Working Papers in Southern African Studies, II (Johannesburg, 1981), 127–128.
119. Frederick Cooper, ‘Africa and the world economy’, in African Studies Review, xxiv, 2/3 (1981), 31.
120. For a striking example of the latter view see Lewis H. Gann, Central Africa: the Former British States (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971), 102–3.
121. Bithrey, Memo on police reorganization, 16 May 1939, MNA POL 2/17/3.
122. ‘Grievances of educated natives of Blantyre’, 1923, MNA 1/3/2.
123. Geo. S. Mwase for Central Province Universal Native Association, 19 Nov. 1927, MNA NC 1/3/2.