Volume I: Wildlife Conservation in Zambia
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VOLUME I: WILDLIFE CONSERVATION IN ZAMBIA 25 CHAPTER ONE: ZAMBIA BEFORE SELF-GOVERNMENT IN 1964 27 ACRONYMS BSA Company British South Africa Chartered Company CAZEC Central African and Zoutpansberg Exploration Company CHA Controlled Hunting Area DC District Commissioner DO District Officer GMA Game Management Area GDP Gross Domestic Product HQ Headquarters KNP Kafue National Park mtDNA Mitochondrial DNA NA Native Authority NCE Company North Charterland Exploration Company NGO Non-Governmental Organisation NW North-Western Rhodesia PA Provincial Administration PC Provincial Commissioner UN United Nations WWI World War I WWII World War II 28 1 WILD COUNTRY The territory encompassing the watersheds of the Congo and Zambezi is geologically ancient, noted for its Great Tanganyika Plateau of deciduous miombo forest, its lakes and wetlands, and the fertile valley troughs and vistas of undulating Kalahari sands. It is one of the best-watered parts of Africa with sixteen ecosystems contained within four biomes and with a wealth of minerals and natural resources, though its soils are generally leached and infertile. It lies at an altitude of between 2,164 and 3,500 metres, presenting a generally equitable climate of the ‘savannah’ type with three seasons: cool-dry (April-August), hot-dry (August-November) and warm-wet (November-April) - its ecology being determined by the long dry season and the single wet season.. The rainfall is highest in the northern parts of the territory, which reveal, in the presence of remnants of mushitu tropical moist- forest, evidence that the present Congo moist-forest had at one time extended much further east. Such a rich ecological environment - particularly associated with the hippo, crocodile and fish-filled perennial rivers and wetlands - produced the Elysian Fields in which vast herds of lechwe, buffalo, eland, wildebeest and tsessebe, together with other species of antelope, were coursed by the great African predators. And elephant and black rhino were ubiquitous. 2 PRE-COLONIAL HISTORY Excavations at the Mumbwa and Natchikufa caves revealed the existence of two types of aborigines: bushmanoid, of the Wilton culture; and pygmoid, of the Natchikufan culture. The latter emanated from the Equatorial region to the west, people of considerable cultural divergence (Clarke 1950, pp. 42-52). Bushmanoid remnants - probably resembling the black and physically robust bushmen, the Hukwe, who still live in the region between the Mashi and Zambezi Rivers in Western Province (Barotseland) - bear some resemblance in appearance and survival strategy to the Hadzabe bushmen of present day Tanzania, another aboriginal remnant (Brelsford 1956, p.18). The pygmoid group is represented by the Twa people, whose genetic inheritance is still found to a marked degree in the peoples of the Lukanga, Kafue and Bangweulu wetlands – in the latter centred on the island of Mboyolubambe - though in that area, by the time of the First World War (WWI), they were not universally short, having already fused with the Unga and other tribes (Hughes 1933). What singles them out is the Twa geometric tradition of rock art and the now defunct Butwa secret society (Smith 2000, p.87). In the Luangwa Valley, the aborigines were known as the Akafula, being skilled iron workers and fearsome fighters. The Nsenga knew them as baKatanga, a largely solitary people who hunted elephant with spears and who were without bow and arrow (Lane Poole 1938, p.37). They were slowly assimilated, killed, or driven off elsewhere by the Bantu colonists. Recent genetic evidence making use of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) – as well fossil evidence - has allowed us to trace the movement of humans around the earth, suggesting that a group of modern humans migrated successfully out of Africa some 80,000 years ago (Oppenheimer 2003, p.31). In addition, the fact that Africans have a much larger mtDNA sequence divergence than non-Africans, suggests that they accumulated the most mtDNA mutations, and therefore the greatest diversity, supporting the argument for a human African origin (Stoneking 2006, p.21). Thus it would appear that modern Africans, Europeans, Asians and Australians i.e. Homo sapiens, evolved from a Hukwe/Twa type, who had in turn possibly evolved from Homo erectus. 29 3 BANTU COLONIALISM 3.1 Early Bantu invaders, the Portuguese and Arabs It is likely that the immigration into the territory by Africans belonging to the Bantu linguistic group began in a trickle, greatly expanding in the mid eighteenth-century, a process that continues to this day. By A.D. 500 a group distinguished by their use of ‘stamped ware’ pots had moved from the north of Lake Nyasa and down the Shire River and up the Zambezi Valley - a matriarchal people, these were the likely ancestors of the Tonga. During the fourteenth and fifteenth-centuries a group known as the Maravi settled the Luangwa Valley and Eastern Plateau, while the Kaonde moved into the north-west of the country, displacing the Lenje. In the early sixteenth-century the Portuguese gained an ascendancy over Islam in the Indian Ocean, having already in the early fifteenth-century captured the ports of Mombasa, Kilwa and Sofala. From here they made forays into the interior in search of gold and ivory. In the process they introduced a wide array of new agricultural plants: pepper, wheat, tobacco sweet potatoes, manioc (cassava), haricot beans, lentils, onions, guavas, paw-paws, small bananas, and later, maize. Their first invasion - one leading to a settlement - was in the Zambezi Valley at Zumbo (the confluence of the Luangwa and Zambezi Rivers), established by the Goan, Perreira. In 1570, a horde of cannibal invaders known as the Zimba arrived at Tete on the Zambezi, laying waste the country. In 1585, they retreated towards Kilwa, which they sacked, eating most of their prisoners; finally being defeated by an alliance of Arabs, Africans and Portuguese. In the same century, more invaders arrived, the present people known as the Lozi entering along the Zambezi from the north and spreading out onto the plains allied with the upper Zambezi, usurping the land settled by the Subiya, Mashi and Shanjo aboriginals. Sometime in the seventeenth-century, the Luba Kingdom, fuelled by commerce from the west and the possession of many firearms, sought new lands to settle by moving into the present day Northern Province. These migrations culminated with the arrival of the Bemba in about 1740, who then forced the Bisa, Lungu and Mambwe nations to give way, the latter two in particular spending the next 170 years escaping their depredations. While all these movements were taking place, the Portuguese, Lacerda, led an expedition in 1798 from Tete to Chief Kazembe’s country near the Luapula River. The first crossing of Africa in these parts was completed by two Portuguese speaking Africans, Baptista and Jose, a journey which took them nine years for they had been long detained by Chief Kazembe on the Luapula River. In 1827, the Portuguese established a small garrison to protect their Kazembe slave and ivory route in the Lundazi district of the Luangwa Valley, but by 1831, the last Portuguese expedition into the territory left Tete for the north under Monteiro and Gamitto (Gann 1964, pp.13-18). 3.2 Nineteenth century invaders The nineteenth-century saw a reversal of the generally southward migration of Bantu Africans. In 1835, the patriarchal cattle-owning Ngoni crossed the Zambezi from present day Swaziland, then split up into various groups, some of them settling under Chief Mpeseni in the eastern part of the territory, displacing the Nyanja people and soon laying waste the area far and wide in their search for tribal converts and grain (Baxter 1954, pp.46-52). A further remarkable movement north took place when a nation known as the Kololo, under their chief, Sebitwane, moved north with large herds of cattle, crossing the Zambezi in about 1840. They dallied briefly in the Tonga country, until they were forced westward by the Matabele into the Barotse country. On the death of Sebitwane in 1851, the Kololo fortunes declined and in 1864 they were defeated by the Barotse chief, Sepopa, and the Barotse Kingdom, now firmly established, expanded its area of influence by raids for cattle and slaves, much as the Ngoni had done (Gann 1964, p.21). 30 3.3 Bantu culture and custom The Bantu invaders of the territory were predominantly hoe agriculturists of a late iron-age culture, with a few tribes - notably in the tsetse fly free areas - such as the Tonga, Ila, Bisa, Lozi and Ngoni, being pastoralists, depending on hunter-gathering and fishing in the generally well watered territory. Canoes were dugouts, loin coverings were made from bark cloth and antelope skin – with some spinning and weaving of kidney cloth - and hoe, spear and axe heads being smelted by themselves (Gluckman 1956, pp.1-27). The Ila men, however, went completely naked up until WWI (Holub & Johns 1975, p.116). Paradoxically, this external view concealed the existence of a reasonably well developed native African model of community self-government, and the existence of well developed political institutions among the Bemba, Ngoni and the Barotse, the latter characterised by an elaborate central political authority that is still intact today. It was simply assumed by Europeans, as in the rest of Africa, that there were no nations or nation-states in Africa’s pre-colonial history (Davidson 1996, p.51). Yet there is evidence that by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century the Batoka Plateau supported populations of considerable density and prosperity, suggesting the existence of a ‘nation’ that was relatively advanced (Vickery 1986, p.13). Although Bantu societies all have a rich set of kinships and clans, they vary considerably according to custom. The Tonga, when first studied at the time of their disintegration at the hands of the raiding Matabele, had no system of chieftainship, living in small hamlets of kinsmen related in many lines.