Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and Mthethwe. Shaka, ruler of the latter, revolutionised military warfare by replacing the
throwing spear with a stabbing spear and surrounding his enemy in a tight horseshoe then
closing in on them. Very soon widespread massacre spread like a plague of locusts across
Southern Africa, depopulating countries and killing some two million people.
Among those that fled were the Mdwa- ndwe clan, who headed for Mozambique, coer-
cing the local Tonga people to form a cooperative army with them - the Jere-Ngoni. By
1825, blazing their own trail of carnage, the Jere-Ngoni entered Malawi, terrorising the
Yao people near the lake and the Tumbuka people to the north, raiding villages, butcher-
ing old men and forcibly enlisting young men. The army settled on Lake Malawi and were
to remain there until the Mdwa- ndwe chief's death in 1845. This bloody period is re-
membered as 'The Killing'.
The Dark Days of Slavery
The story of slavery in Malawi begins in the 16th century when Omani Arab traders, with
the aid of Yao tribesmen, sold slaves from non-Yao tribes to the Portuguese, who sent
them to work on plantations in Mozambique or Brazil. Portuguese interests were effect-
ively stemmed in 1824 by the arrival of Sultan Said of Muscat, who captured Mombasa.
The demand for ivory and slaves in markets - Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombasa and Quelimane
- was by then huge, and to meet the demand, the sultan's traders made deeper incursions
into the African interior. While America and Great Britiain were moving to abolish the
slave trade, the sultan accelerated it; by 1839 over 40,000 slaves were being sold through
the Zanzibar slave market.
Malawi's coastal trading centres included Karonga, Nkhotakota, and Salima on Lake
Malawi. Of particular infamy was the slave port of Nkhotakota, where slave trader, Salim-
bin Abdullah (Jumbe) set up his headquarters in the 1840s. From here about 20,000 slaves
were annually transported across the lake where they were forced to walk the three- to
four-month journey to Kilwa to be sold. The journey across the lake might see as few as
20 out of 300 surviving the heinously cramped conditions. And on the march, slackers or
the sick were beheaded to make swift use of their neck brace harnesses.
The Yao people were complicit with the Arab traders, converting to Islam and working
for them to find slaves. The marauding Yao moved north, killing and capturing the local
Chewa and Maganja by the hundreds.
