War and Society in Colonial Zambia, 1939–1953

Alfred Tembo

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780821447482
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Written from a Zambian perspective, this leading study shows how the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (later Zambia) organized and deployed human, military, and natural resources during and after the Second World War.

The Second World War brought unprecedented pressures to bear on Britain's empire, which then included colonial Northern Rhodesia. Through new archival materials and oral histories, War and Society in Colonial Zambia tells—from an African perspective—the story of how the colony organized its human and natural resources on behalf of the imperial government.

Alfred Tembo first examines government propaganda and recruitment of personnel for the Northern Rhodesia Regiment, which served in East Africa, Palestine, Ceylon, Burma, and India. Later, Zambia's economic contribution to the Allied war effort would foreground the central importance of the colony's mining industry as well as its role as supplier of rubber and beeswax following the fall of the Southeast Asian colonies to the Japanese in early 1942. Finally, Tembo presents archival and oral evidence about life on the home front, including the social impact of wartime commodity shortages, difficulties posed by incoming Polish refugees, and the more interventionist forms of colonial governance that these circumstances engendered.

1

Military Labor Recruitment and Mobilization

ON SUNDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 1939, KING GEORGE VI SPOKE TO THE empire from London via radio. Part of his speech, as reported in Mutende on 12 September, read:

In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples[,] both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself. For the second time in the lives of most of us, we are at war. . . . We have been forced into a conflict, for we are called with our allies to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail[,] would be fatal to any civilised order in the world. . . . For the sake of all that we ourselves hold dear and of the world’s order and peace, it is unthinkable that we should refuse to meet the challenge. It is to this high hope [purpose] that I now call upon my people at home and [my peoples] across the seas who will make our cause their own.¹

It was in this context that Northern Rhodesia came to play a significant part in the mobilization and execution of the war effort on behalf of Britain. While Northern Rhodesia’s major contribution to the British war effort was the provision of base metals, human resource mobilization counted second in priority. In this chapter I examine how the colony went about recruiting and mobilizing personnel for the Northern Rhodesia Regiment (NRR), in line with the appeal issued by the British Crown. I argue that while the government used chiefly institutions and propaganda to entice Africans into joining the army, the local people also had their own reasons for enlistment. I also depart from older academic arguments to show that war service was not wholly destructive to African socioeconomic life, because those who remained behind devised coping strategies in the absence of their male relatives. Finally, being concerned with local reactions to the outbreak of the conflict and the ensuing call to arms, the chapter touches upon how subversive elements in the form of the Watch Tower Sect and the settler Afrikaner community resisted and campaigned against the Northern Rhodesian war effort.

GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA ON THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR

Africans in Northern Rhodesia reacted to the news of the war as soon as the British king’s speech was aired in the territory. This speech was not only broadcast in Northern Rhodesia—as in the rest of the British Empire—but also translated into various local languages and published in Mutende, the government newspaper for Africans. Before the outbreak of the war, government propaganda in the colony had presented King George as the symbol of empire, a kind of “super paramount chief” to whom all Africans owed loyalty and the linchpin of a “monarchical ideology” linking rulers and ruled.² It was to this “super chief” that the people of Northern Rhodesia were to pledge their loyalty during the Second World War. Secretary of State for the Colonies Malcolm MacDonald also added his voice in seeking the help of colonial subjects to win the war against the Axis powers. He stated: “The long and happy association of so many peoples of different races and creeds under the British Crown is itself the best proof that the ideal of peaceful and fruitful cooperation between diverse peoples, who are willing to understand and respect each other, is attainable.”³

When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, the government of Northern Rhodesia was interested in reassuring itself that its African charges would back the colonial master in the conflict.⁴ Its attitude toward African participation in the war was disarmingly straightforward. Northern Rhodesia would participate in the war as a loyal member of the British Empire because the mother country had given protection to the territory since the start of colonization in the 1890s. It was thanks to British rule, government officials reasoned, that people enjoyed freedom in the territory. Governor John Maybin’s message to Northern Rhodesia’s Africans was couched in an appealing tone. Thus, in a special edition of Mutende published on 3 September 1939, he stated that “the Government will require recruits for the Regiment and drivers for its transport and I am confident that Africans will prove their desire to serve their King by promptly offering their service.”⁵ This plea was directed at chiefs, the official custodians of the country’s traditional power structure in the context of indirect rule, and was issued through government bureaucrats and the press. The governor informed all chiefs in the country that war had been declared in Europe and requested a guarantee of their loyalty to the British Crown.⁶ The policy of using traditional leaders, rather than government officials, in appealing for support from the African masses was candidly stated by the editor of Mutende in a letter to a provincial commissioner on 14 September. “From experience,” he wrote, “I find that a letter from a chief or comments by a reader (or by the Editor under a Native name!) cut a great deal more ‘ice’ than a dozen ‘leaders’ or messages from Europeans.”⁷ Such requests were routine procedure all over the empire during the war.⁸ In this way, the war contributed to the revival of the powers of chiefs by assigning them significant responsibility for the recruitment of personnel for the army, a role they had already fulfilled during the First World War.

Each of the four principal chiefs responded with positive statements pledging loyalty to the “mother country” and to help “their king.” Chiefs and their senior officials drafted these messages. For example, Paramount Chief Mpezeni of the Ngoni people was one of the first to pledge his loyalty to the imperial government’s war effort. Mpezeni, whose ancestors had fought the British at the end of the previous century, referred to his people’s physical fighting qualities and assured the colonial government that the Ngoni stood loyally by the British king. Mpezeni informed the governor that he was “sorry to hear that war has broken out in Europe. . . . We have derived such blessings and benefits from British rule that we Angoni all stand loyally by our Governor and our King in this hour of need.”⁹ There were many such pledges of loyalty from other chiefs throughout the country.¹⁰ As in much of colonial Africa, however, these avid chiefly expressions of allegiance to Britain were made without the knowledge of their subjects.¹¹

Not all chiefs, of course, proved similarly amenable to the wishes of the British Crown and the colonial administration. A notable example was provided by the Tonga chief, Mwanachingwala, of Mazabuka district. When asked to help with the recruitment of servicemen, his reply, described by the district commissioner as “typical of his undistinguishable career,” was: “Bwana, we are all . . . women; and we are afraid [of going to war].”¹² By voicing his reservations in these terms, Mwanachingwala indicated that gender and the military recruitment process were deeply interwoven. It is fascinating that the chief was essentially emasculating the men in his community by calling them “women.” This was a clever tactic, but one that also suggested that women were weak, cowardly, and not valued. Here, Mwanachingwala was echoing the values in the military which equated masculine virility with violence and martial valor¹³—values stay-at-home women could not be expected to embody. By attempting to resist the recruitment of his male subjects on the basis that they were “women,” the Tonga leader was actually playing up gender role stereotypes for subversive ends. He was undermining the men for strategic purposes! This is not surprising, since, as Alicia Decker ably demonstrates for Uganda, ideologies of masculinity and those of femininity are culturally and historically constructed, their meanings continually contested and always in the process of being renegotiated in the context of existing power relations.¹⁴ The chief’s powerful claim, however, did not work as expected, because some of his subjects registered for military service precisely to prove their masculinity.

To mobilize public opinion in support of the war, the colonial government began to pay more attention to African views than it had done before the outbreak of hostilities. It tried to influence public opinion by means of a thorough propaganda campaign involving newspapers, leaflets, talks by district commissioners, radio broadcasts, and cinema shows—all designed to explain the war, account for the economic strains brought about by the hostilities, and encourage men to join the army. Government policy was aimed at keeping educated and urbanized Africans as fully and accurately informed about the war as possible; conversely, it sought to avoid giving excessive detail to rural Africans, who were commonly regarded as too unsophisticated and isolated fully to understand the war’s technicalities.¹⁵ Published by the Information Office, and written in simple English and four other widely spoken local languages (Bemba, Nyfa, Tonga, and Lozi), the aforementioned Mutende was a key tool in the hands of policy makers. At the outbreak of the war, the newspaper’s circulation was about 5,600; by 1944, this figure was estimated to be 18,000. Its message, moreover, reached a much greater audience, as it was believed that each copy was seen by an average of ten people.¹⁶ Fortnightly issues replaced monthly ones from September 1939 until the end of the war. Also, as a war measure, a free issue of Mutende was supplied to every chief in each district until the end of December 1939. In cases where a chief already subscribed to the newspaper, the extra copy was made available to other members of his council, thus disseminating Allied war propaganda news as far and wide as possible.¹⁷ In January 1940, Native Authority Funds took over the responsibility of buying copies at three pence each. Also circulating among Northern Rhodesia’s African intelligentsia were the two liberal European-owned commercial newspapers published for Africans in Southern Rhodesia, the Bantu Mirror and the African Weekly; both were published in English and selected African languages.¹⁸

Broadcasting targeted at African audiences was inaugurated in October 1939 from Nkana, on the Copperbelt, with the assistance of members of the Radio Society. The radio broadcasts, in the four major local languages, consisted of war news bulletins (broadcast on Mondays and Fridays) and a war news discussion program every week.¹⁹ The broadcasts proved so successful with listeners throughout the southern African region that another broadcasting station was opened in Lusaka in September of the following year. Traditional leaders, of course, featured among the prominent people enticed to speak to African audiences. Chief Mwase Kasungu of Nyasaland, for instance, was flown into Northern Rhodesia at government expense in August 1940 specifically for propaganda purposes, following his trip to Britain early that year. He was especially chosen because he was regarded as an extremely intelligent chief who exerted significant influence over his people. Most importantly, he was perceived to have a great deal of sympathy for the Allied cause.²⁰ During his three broadcasts in Cinyanja, he urged his African listeners to remain loyal to the Allied war effort.

The main source of descriptive war news was the newly established British Ministry of Information (MoI). The ministry provided news articles about the war and related photographs to the local Information Office for distribution to media houses in Northern Rhodesia. By 1 December 1939, 435 articles and 500 photographs had been received from London and made available to Mutende.²¹ Copies were also supplied to schools and mission stations. The European settler community was serviced by the Northern Rhodesia Advertiser, Livingstone Mail, Northern Rhodesia Newslette...