Introduction
The vexed question of Anglican involvement in such matters as colonialism, slavery and reparations ebbs and flows in contemporary analysis of the Anglican communion. On the island of Zanzibar, now part of the United Republic of Tanzania, the Anglican Cathedral stands on the site of the former slave market. Sitting within the UNESCO heritage site of the Stone Town, St Monica’s Hostel now hosts the East African Slave Trade Exhibit (EASTE).Footnote 1 This might be described as one of the better moments: Anglican Christians being part of the dismantling of a long-established industry. Globally, the issues are much more complex, not least in the Caribbean where Anglicans were complicit in human trafficking and defy simplistic descriptions and answers.Footnote 2 However, the question of complicity and colonialism has been held up to scrutiny for longer than might be thought.
If attention is turned to the global area with which this study is concerned, controversy started early. In 1852, David Livingstone could write:
From Commissioners who can play the fool for £600 per annum, with the Bible in one hand and the sjambok in the other, Good Lord deliver us…Footnote 3
Another comment, whose language (admittedly) sits uneasily on modern ears, was refused publication in the British Quarterly:
We are not advocates for war but we would prefer perpetual war to perpetual slavery. No nation ever secured its liberty without fighting for it. And every nation on earth worthy of freedom is ready to shed its blood in its defence. In sympathising with the Caffres we side with the weak against the strong. Savages they are but surely deserving of independence seeing they have fought gallantly for it for upwards of twenty months.Footnote 4
All of which leads Andrew Ross to conclude tersely that ‘His [Livingstone’s] ideas would have been seen as subversive in Nairobi, Johannesburg or London in 1952, let alone 1852’.Footnote 5 Or, as Lamin Sanneh would write:
The classic representative of the modern missionary was busy with a stalwart defence of the virtues of primitive tribes while, according to a school of history, he justified colonial rule on the grounds of native inadequacy.Footnote 6
Livingstone defies a simplistic revisionism. In his wake came the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. One of its missionaries, Bishop Frank Weston would identify the society’s achievements with Livingstone’s approach:
And has not God’s power descended upon us? Has He not been with us? Where is the Africa of Livingstone’s time? In spite of all failure and disappointment and defeat, the power of God has driven Satan from many a stronghold. To-day, in many places where once he ruled, African clergy are ministering to African congregations, African priests are celebrating the Holy Sacraments. In Zanzibar, a Cathedral covers the slave market; on the mainland, churches and schools mark the track of the slave-raiders. Brethren, this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.Footnote 7
But, there is more to Weston than an ecclesial triumphalism, although he is often remembered, sometimes solely, for his powerful plea at the Anglo-Catholic Conference of 1923:
when you come out from before your tabernacles, you must walk with Christ, mystically present in you, through the streets of this country, and find the same Christ in the people of your cities and villages. You cannot claim to worship Christ in the tabernacle if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.… It is folly, it is madness, to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the sacrament and on the throne of glory when you are sweating Him in the bodies and souls of his children…. You have your Mass, you have your altars, you have begun to have your tabernacles. Now go out into the highways and hedges, and look for Jesus in the ragged and the naked, in the oppressed and the sweated, in those who have lost hope and in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus in them; and when you find Him, gird yourselves with His towel of fellowship, and wash His feet in the person of His brethren.Footnote 8
Less well known is the journey which brought him to that point. If it is known, it tends to focus on the Weston of the Kikuyu controversy, or scourge of theological liberalism.Footnote 9 Less well known is his political activism. This is to the fore in two short pamphlets: The Black Slaves of Prussia (hereafter, Prussia) first published in 1918Footnote 10 and The Black Serfs of Britain (1923 – hereafter, Britain).Footnote 11
There is a fascinating paradox in their availability. Prussia has long been readily accessible online. It is a searing indictment of the colonial management of German East Africa or Tanganyika. Britain, on the other hand, is highly elusive: Our searches for it have yielded few copies, no online text, and eventually a copy hiding in plain sight – in the UMCA archives now found at the Bodleian Library. There are some extracts in circulation.Footnote 12 The quest for it has the feel of asking furtively for something from under the counter. A transcribed version of scans of this will constitute the bulk of this piece. However, within its covers, one may readily see, and indeed, Weston himself offers, a reason why the Prussia text has been brought into the bright light of day, and the Britain text being left to languish in the shadows. He could recognize that Prussia’s publication and dissemination suited the politics of the time: a condemnation of German practice and policy in wake of the Great War. A critique of British colonial administration, which was marketing itself as a saviour from German excess, and (as will be seen) possibly itself snidely remarked upon in government dockets, flourished less well. However, such comments may jump the gun. Bishop Weston first needs to be set in his context. Thereafter follows a summary of Prussia, before a transcription of Britain, followed by a commentary and notes.
Bishop Frank Weston
Born on 13 September 1871, Frank Weston was educated at Dulwich College and Trinity College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class degree in Theology in 1893. Ordained Deacon in 1894 and Priest in 1895, he served as curate first at St John’s, Stratford East (1894–1896) and then St Matthews, Westminster (1896–1898). He was accepted by the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa in 1898 and would spend the rest of his ministry in its service. His ministry was based in what was then Zanzibar and German East Africa (which included modern mainland Tanzania [Tanganyika], Rwanda and Burundi). He served in Zanzibar as Chaplain, St Andrew’s Training College, Kiungani (1898–1899), St Mark’s Theological College, Mazizini Unguja (1899–1901), Principal, St Andrew’s Training College, Kiungani (1901–1908), and Principal/Rector, St Mark’s Theological College, Mazizini Unguja (1906–1908). He was consecrated Bishop, Zanzibar, serving from 1908–1924. At that point, the Diocese of Zanzibar included Tanga and Masasi regions, the coastal areas and the regions bordering modern Malawi and Zambia.Footnote 13 During the First World War, he served in the British Army’s Carrier Corps, reaching ‘the local rank of Major but never gazetted’:Footnote 14 he had not been interred, as many UMCA and CMS missionaries were, by the German authorities. Weston thus had first-hand experience of colonial labour practices in time of war, and his criticism of British practice was evident from the wartime period:
After returning to Zanzibar, where the wartime campaigns severely disrupted his diocese, he was appalled at the methods used to compel Africans to assist Allied forces. In 1916 he therefore took up the challenge to recruit a Carrier Corps of his own. Remarkably as a major commanding some twenty-five hundred men, he suffered no casualties, and was awarded an OBE.Footnote 15
The war may have been over, but Weston was yet to begin. Such experiences would inform his later writing of both the Prussia and Britain texts. After the war, Weston continued to serve as Bishop of Zanzibar until his death in 1924.
A leading light in the Anglo-Catholic movement of the early twentieth century, Weston stirred controversy by his strong reaction to liberal theology and the Kikuyu conference of 1913. In the former, he frequently crossed swords with Bishop Hensley Henson, of Hereford and then Durham, but was still able to work with him collaboratively: producing together ‘An Appeal to All Christian People’ – a significant document of the Lambeth Conference of 1920.Footnote 16 In the latter, Weston’s objections to what he considered the abandonment of the historic episcopate and the Church’s ‘historic teaching and discipline’Footnote 17 would eventually be sustained by Canterbury.Footnote 18 Many of his writings address themes related to these two concerns.Footnote 19 An earlier publication, The One Christ,Footnote 20 was a highly praised defence of Chalcedonian theology.Footnote 21 Prussia and Britain mark an attack on colonialism driven by his ‘missionary concern and earlier Christian Socialism’,Footnote 22 as well as his high regard for African people, seen in many of his writings, including his critiques of liberal theology which he felt denied the possibility of faith and salvation to non-Europeans.Footnote 23
The Black Slaves of Prussia: A Summary
Prussia was written in late 1917 to General J.C. Smuts, who had commanded the British forces in East Africa from February 1916 to January 1917. Thereafter, he attended the imperial war conference in London, would become a member of the cabinet and be involved in the peace processes at the end of the war.Footnote 24 Weston’s open letter would be aptly written to such a negotiator, starting as it does with an appeal that German territories in East Africa should not be left in their hands, perhaps with the added rider that Smuts might have been perceived as tending to leniency.Footnote 25
Weston juxtaposed liberty for African with competing, but distinct, interests: ‘lust for money’ and ‘a small peace party’.Footnote 26 His appeal to the General draws heavily on his own experience as an officer in the Carrier Corps and on the anecdotal evidence of African ‘friends’ and ‘teachers’. This second category may be those from whom he was accustomed to learn about both language and customs. Kolumba Msigala recorded Weston’s practice when on Zanzibar:
Every month he found opportunity to ask about the homes of these students, their customs and the state of the Christians where they lived, the best way to bring them up, and the state of advance of the Church at that time. There was indeed a period every month for students of each tribe and in this way he got at the heart of Africans, by being taught by his charges, the students who explained to him the act of shepherding the inhabitants of their different parts.Footnote 27
Weston decries the brutality of punishment meted out on Africans by German overseers: descriptions and case studies constitute a significant portion of the whole work. In his remarks, he admits that he himself was a strict disciplinarian (‘I am personally not averse from corporal punishment: it has much in its favour’). Elsewhere, he describes his own practice:
There was I until 11.30pm trying to get this second boy to confess, and then both to repent. […] [T]he repentance of the first boy was beautiful. He told me all I asked without a lie, accepted a flogging which hurt him very much, and prayed with me afterwards for a long time. The tears that he shed when we spoke and prayed were more than he shed over his own whipping, which was severe. That was a compensation.Footnote 28
Nevertheless, he considers the punishments recorded cruel, using the term and its cognates twenty-two times, both to describe temperament and behaviour: there is an unmistakable ukabila (ethnic disdain)Footnote 29 in his description of the Germans. No matter how much we may decry Weston’s own disciplinarian tendencies, there is a marked difference between his punishments and the floggings and tortures described: sjambok (a single-thong whip made of hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide), ‘iron-hat’, chain-gang and dehumanization.
A further note suggests there is an inconsistency in the practice of forced labour. German government ‘publicly and officially forbade all forcing of labour: the rule to that effect bearing the Governor-General’s signature, if not that of the Emperor himself. Privately, and even officially, labour was regularly forced’.Footnote 30
Weston’s criticisms did not go down well, dismissed as the musings of an amateur by Heinrich Schnee who had been governor of German East Africa from 1912 to 1919:Footnote 31
...the irresponsible personal and private view as opposed to the responsible official, the purely humanitarian and democratic view as opposed to the administrative and economic. The difference is explained by the fact that the humanitarian is free to advocate ideal theories, while the administrator has to pay regard to the actual facts and conditions of practical life as he finds them.Footnote 32
The concerns about colonial governance raised in Prussia will re-appear in Britain. Given the difficulties in accessing that work, a transcription comes first.
Transcription: The Serfs of Great Britain:Footnote 33
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The References throughout are to the White Paper-[Cmd. 873] entitled ‘Despatch to the Governor of the East Africa Protectorate relating to Native Labour, and papers connected therewith’. To be purchased through any Bookseller, or directly from Imperial House, Kingsway, W.C. 2. Price 4d.
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THE SERFS OF GREAT BRITAIN
This pamphlet contains an appeal to the conscience of Great Britain.
Africans were promised protection and freedom by the Allies. Like all the weaker peoples, they were to share the glories of the new world. They were to feel the effect of the consecration to God of our imperial life, a consecration solemnly proclaimed by the Prime Ministers of the Empire in a public manifesto.
In August last, Lord Milner, in the name of the Empire, announced to East Africa the joyful fate allotted to it. That fate is Forced Labour. Africans are to Labour under compulsion for the Government; they are to work under official encouragement or pressure for the white members of the Empire.
I do not pause to remark upon the utter callousness of the Government, its broken pledge or its hypocritical invocation of God’s Name; I appeal directly to Great Britain and her Dominions to save the Africans from this new form of slavery.
This I do for three reasons. First, because it is political madness, at this time of day, to try and subject a weaker people to serfdom or to slavery. It cannot be done. To attempt it is to lay up for ourselves trouble of the worst kind. Africans are too wide awake, and have too many friends in America, to allow any one to re-enslave them.
Second, it is moral madness. The Europeans who use these serfs will pay for it in moral deterioration. And the nation that connives at it will not be far behind them.
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Third, it is so definitely an anti-Christian policy that no one who adopts it can any longer justify the Gospel of Christ to the African peoples. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me’.
Will Christian men dare to say that, were the Christ in our midst, we should be morally right in compelling, or in pressing Him against His will, to do our work for us?
I venture, therefore, to appeal to all British men and women to compel our Government to withdraw these labour laws. They are immoral: they constitute a breach of faith: they are dangerous to the Empire’s peace: they are a betrayal of weaker peoples whose guardians we claim to be: and they are an offence against the Lord Christ.
The facts of the case are beyond dispute. They are contained in two decrees of the Zanzibar Government and in Lord Milner’s ‘Despatch to the Governor of the East Africa Protectorate relating to Native Labour’, dated August 1920.
My account of them follows in the form of a memorandum drawn up for the Committee of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa.
It remains to say that I have 22 years’ experience of Africans whom this new policy must affect; and that the Government was pleased to use my experience when it wanted to persuade the world that the Germans must be deprived of their colony in East Africa. This said, let us face the facts.
I. ZANZIBAR.
(a) In Decree 25 of 1917, it is ordered that any Native under 50, in good health and not in regular
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Employment, who is registered under the Adult Male Persons Registration Order, must do any work within the Protectorate the Labour Board may order.
The Labour Board consists of not less than five persons, two of whom are not members of Government.
The Board has power to fix work, the place where the work is to be done (e.g. in Zanzibar or Pemba), and the rate of wages.
(b) In Decree 15 of 1919, the Board is ordered only to use the Natives for work of a public nature for the general good of the community. Also it is required to exempt from forced labour Natives who have done 60 days work for Government or a private person within the year (beginning January 1) in which he is called up.
[Note-(1) If a man is called up before March 1, he cannot have done 60 days. So that any man not in regular work, who does not take a job daily from January 1 until March 1, is liable to forced labour on March 2.
(2) What is work of a public nature for the general good of the community?
In practice, unless things have altered recently, it includes the picking of cloves for private employers, since cloves pay 25 per cent duty to the Government.
It also, quite definitely, means compulsory labour on Government plantations, for the Government sells cloves in Zanzibar and Pemba.
(3) Thus in Zanzibar, the ordinary able-bodied Native is at the mercy of the Government. There seems to be no decreed limit to his days of labour, probably because no one can say off-hand how long the clove harvest will last.]
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II. BRITISH EAST AFRICA.
(a) COMPULSORY LABOUR.
Any work the Governour (sic) decrees to be ‘of a public nature’, in addition to Government transport, railways, roads, etc., may be done by forced labourers, working 60 days a year each.1
A Native is liable to this who is not in regular work, or who has not done three months’ work for an employer, public or private, within the previous year.
No allowance is made for going to and from the area of work; the 60 days may reach 70 or more.
In addition, he is liable to 24 days of local compulsory labour every year. This makes 84 days at least.2
(b) ENCOURAGED LABOUR
(1) District Officials and Native Headmen are ordered to ‘encourage’ men to work for European planters. Failure on the part of Headmen to do this successfully is to be reported to the Governour, the Headman involved being informed of the report and its character.3
The meaning of ‘encouragement’ is revealed to us in an order that Headmen must not attempt to bring pressure to bear upon men whose labour is needed for the cultivation of their own lands in the reserve. So that in all other cases, ‘encouragement’, ‘spells’ and ‘pressure’.4
(2) Women and children are to be ‘encouraged’ to work on plantations near their own villages.5
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III. THE EVILS INVOLVED IN THIS SCHEME.
(i) FORCED LABOUR IS IMMORAL.
(a) Ethically, forced labour except in war-time is indefensible.
A community may rightly be expected to preserve its local roads, etc., and to supply its officials with carriers for local journeys. In all other respects, hunger is the only natural task-master. The call of service to the human race is always valid, but it does not summon a man to work for the enrichment of a small band of commercial foreigners.
(b) Again, the doctrine that Europeans are justified on commercial grounds in making serfs of the Africans is immoral.
(c) Even were it true that Africans are idle, the remedy must not be one that is in itself immoral.
In fact, the African is not idle. Some tribes use women for work far more than men, especially war-like tribes. But in many tribes, the men work with the women. And the average African has a hard task to get food for himself and his family.
(ii) IT RESULTS IN SOCIAL ILLS.
(a) Africans who are removed from their villages for long periods of time, and acquire the habit of absence from home, rarely keep their households together.
The wives must be left at home to look after the fields and are often unfaithful. The men are responsible for concubinage and prostitution wherever they are made to reside for long periods, with the result that homes are broken, venereal diseases are spread broadcast, the birth rate is lowered, and a new type of African man is created.
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(b) There can be nothing worse for a country than the multiplication of cases of Natives who have cast off all natural ties, and live vicious lives in commercial centres, or on European farms. Such men become a source of danger to the community. The separation of Africans from their village life is fraught with the gravest danger to themselves and to the race. And young men who know they must go away to work every year will give up marriage.
(c) The supply of labour will be largely decreased, through the fall in the birth rate. This is not a matter of speculation; it is a fact of experience.
In East Africa, a wise Government would conserve the already very small number of potential labourers – it would not sacrifice the future to the present.
(iii) IT INVOLVES CRUELTY.
(a) The pressing of the men always involves cruelty.
(b) The herding of the men together, their medical inspections, their feeding, etc., are very rarely carried out in a way that is justifiable. The Government has not a staff adequate to the task; few Europeans really care for the Natives; and the over-seers are almost always callous and selfish. And always the lash is used freely in such circumstances.
(c) Medical Officers are too few to carry out the vague promises made in Lord Milner’s Despatch.
(d) In the war, when we had a large staff and unlimited funds, the treatment of the Government porters was scandalous. How can we trust the Government now, when officials are few and funds cut down to the lowest possible sum?
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Personally, speaking from practical experience, I maintain that the Government cannot carry out these proposals without cruelty to the individuals. The number of subordinate officials who will take proper care of Africans, knowing their language, and sympathizing with their needs, is far too few.
(iv) IT DEPENDS UPON HEADMEN.
(a) Headmen, seeking to stand well with the Governour, will certainly exercise ‘pressure’.
Even the Bishops who support the Government say of this: ‘He must and will, to the limits of His power, compel His people to go out to work; technically, there is no compulsion; practically, compulsion could hardly take a stronger form’.6
(b) An African does not distinguish between the ‘desire’ and the ‘order’ of the Government. If he does not want to go, he will try to hide himself and be taken by force in order to listen to the Headman’s ‘encouragement’.
(c) Bribes by Europeans will be frequent, in spite of the very mild penalty enacted in the case of anyone who, by some miracle, shall be convicted of giving presents to a Headman.7
IV. A NEW POLICY.
This set of proposals marks a new policy. Great Britain is doing with its Africans what Lenin and Trotsky are said to do with Russians. It is ordering a conscription of citizens for labour. Also, it is placing the resources of the Government at the service of a small band of European settlers. The reservations made by Lord Milner in this respect are mere empty phrases, as we who live in Africa well know.
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V. OVERCROWDED COLONIES
The fact is that labour was short in British East Africa before the Government decided, under pressure from local business men, to ‘develop’ the country. Many new plantations have been granted to ex-officers and to rich English people. Now the natives must pay the penalty of their rulers’ bad policy.
VI. TANGANYIKA TERRITORY.
When I left Africa for England, British East African settlers were angry with the Administrator of the Tanganyika Territory for his refusal to allow recruiting of labour within his colony for British East. I see that Lord Milner has ordered that such recruiting shall be allowed. It will be made for Government work only; men from our colony will be sent to British East as ‘volunteers’.8
It remains to be seen how they will be obtained!
Volunteers for British war service were obtained as the Germans secured their volunteers, namely, by the press-gang. We were then promised that once the war was over such methods would never be seen again under the British Flag. And now?
VII. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER.
It is evident that the Africans are not safe from forced labour or from ‘official encouragement’ to do what they do not want to do, as long as the Government of Great Britain regards East Africa as a commercial asset, to be developed in the interests of a small number of settlers, and exploited for the relief of the British tax-payer.
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When I wrote my Open Letter to General Smuts I called it ‘Great Britain’s Scrap of Paper: Will she honour it?’ I was alluding to her promise of justice to the weaker peoples. The Imperial Government took my letter, cut out some inconvenient passages and published it under the title ‘The Black Slaves of Prussia’. I suggest that East Africans have now become ‘The Black Serfs of Great Britain’.
VIII. THE NEW SLAVERY.
An African will now be liable to do at least 84 days of forced labour every year. As a slave, in the days when I first knew Africa, and even in recent times under the German flag, a man gave two days a week, or 104 in the year, to his master.
The free British subject has, therefore, only 20 days less forced work than the slave. On the other hand, the slave was at home, with his wife and family. Under this new system, the Africans will be separated from their homes, and their households will be in danger of disruption, for the man will not submit his wife to the dangers of camp life, nor can they both leave their fields, unless they and their children are to starve.
I ask, Is this England’s notion of ‘protecting the weaker races?’
IX. MISSIONARY POLICY.
Lord Milner has quoted in his Despatch the Memorandum signed by the Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda, and by Dr. Arthur of the Church of Scotland, which admits that pressure must be used to obtain labour in not labour.
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East Africa, much as they regret the need.10 This they allow both for Government work and for private employers. They take exception from the ‘encouragement’ of women and children to work on plantations. They object to headmen being ordered to ‘encourage‘ natives to go to work – in fact, they prefer legalized forced labour both for Government work and private employers, but they desire to see a Native left free to decide for himself with what employer he will fulfil his period of compulsory labour. And, ideally, they think all labour should be voluntary. They very rightly plead that if there is to be such a law, it must apply to all tribes and to all men alike within the tribes.
It is not for me to criticize this Memorandum; how far I disagree with it is plain from what I have written above. I will only say that, while Lord Milner has no right to claim its support unless he modifies his rules to meet its requirements in all particulars, he is clearly justified in saying that his principle of compulsion is accepted by the signatories of the Memorandum.
It is necessary to allude to this Memorandum because many people have taken Lord Milner’s line of quoting the words of these leaders of the Kikuyu Alliance of East African Missionary Societies as a sufficient justification of Forced Labour. I wish to make it clear that some of us who are missionaries will not agree to any such policy. We regard forced labour, apart from war, as in itself immoral; and we hold that forcing Africans to work in the interests of European civilization is a betrayal of the weaker to the financial interests of the stronger race.
Sept. 13th, 1920. + FRANK ZANZIBAR.Footnote 34
Commentary and Notes
Labour & Slavery: Problematic Categories
Whilst this paper stresses Weston’s rejection of forced labour, it must be noted that UMCA mission policy had embraced the practices of unpaid, voluntary labour:
These missions, the UMCA included, also tended to rely on ‘voluntary’ labour. For example, missionaries demanded that churches should be built without paying the builders’ wages, and that teachers’ wages should be paid from church alms that were collected from congregants. This, the logic went, was to ensure that the work of developing the mission was not done out of financial gain but, rather, religious feeling. As already mentioned, there was much resistance to the missionaries’ imposed culture of unpaid labour, but African employees of the mission still had to struggle to secure remuneration for this work.Footnote 35
Such practices still risked being exploitative. One may legitimately ask whether expectations by government to participate in forced labour, or from the mission to participate in voluntary labour, were distinguishable, not least because money and remuneration revealed discrepancies in understanding between missionaries and the native populace: paying children to go to school could be seen as tantamount to slavery, as could unpaid work on All Saints’ Cathedral, Zanzibar.Footnote 36 Matters are further complicated by hire slavery: a modality in which slaves were hired out (Kiswahili – vibarua), paid a wage and remit part to their owners.Footnote 37 What remains hidden from view in the critique of forced labour is Weston’s own view on voluntary labour within the mission, and whether that might be in tension with his comments on the harsh economic realities of African life.
Frank Weston: An Africanist Attitude
Modern scholars sometimes adopt the term ‘Africanist’ to describe scholars who, although not African in terms of origin or location, cherish the insights and values which are brought by African thinkers, writers and culture.Footnote 38 Weston merits such a description, although his language may on occasion seem to indicate the contrary.
The description of the colonized as ‘weaker peoples’ (Britain, p. 3; recurs on pp. 4, 11, 12) sits uneasily with modern ears. However, any implication of ukabila should be resisted. Weston describes a political reality in which colonial powers have strength, not the relative merits of different ethnicities. Weston’s attitude and interest in his African colleagues have already been noted in Msigala’s remarks. Like Livingstone, whose example prompted the founding of UMCA, Weston recognized a value in African culture and tradition. This meshed with his strong reaction to liberal theology and prompted some of his most famous comments. Two affirm a fundamental value for African experience in Christian discipleship as long as they are read with an appropriate twist of sarcasm or irony:
You will bear me out that Gethsemane and Calvary are most real in Africa; that Christ is brutally crucified here, crucified in the persons of Africans, by his professing followers… God in manhood, God on the Cross, God of the empty tomb. Now into the glory of our Calvary breaks the voice of prelatical and priestly liberalism. And its message, what is it? It is that Africans cannot possibly understand the Gospels, Church or sacraments until they reinterpret them in the light of modern European thought! Poor Africans: not yet among the wise of European thought.Footnote 39
and
We appear to forget that our essential relation with eternal love is through the Response of Love incarnate, Jesus, the coloured-man of Nazareth. Moreover, we ignore our relation with the poor Man of Galilee, the naked Christ of Calvary. And we allow ourselves to be, almost entirely, dominated by standards of wealth and caste the world about us approves … Eternal love, when He takes flesh, comes as a poor, coloured Man, whereas we dislike poverty and despise colour! How then can we preach love incarnate?Footnote 40
The latter is written in the same year as Britain: Weston’s politics and theology go hand in glove.
Weston’s ethical stance on compulsory labour shows a marked departure from earlier arguments about the continuation of slavery which feared that moral collapse would occur, notably, in regard to concubinage. Weston’s views are completely contrary: forced labour is a major cause of moral degeneration, not least because of the disruptions made to family and community life. He also rejects claims made in support of forced labour about countering laziness,Footnote 41 stressing the hardships of African life (Britain, p. 7).
Frank Weston in Context: Zanzibar, Tanganyika and British East Africa
The history of British involvement and interests in Zanzibar is complex. It begins with the defeat of the French in the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent British naval dominance of the Indian Ocean. This leads to engagement with the Omani Sultanate and also to a complex trading context in which slavery and the slave trade were significant components.Footnote 42
A part of the Omani sultanate from the late seventeenth century, the death of Said bin Sultan in 1856 saw a split into two realms: Majid bin Said became the Sultan of Zanzibar. After 1890, Zanzibar became a British Protectorate. The Heligoland–Zanzibar treaty 1890 was the culmination of a process in which Zanzibari interests had been divided between Germany and Britain.Footnote 43 From 1890 until 1913, the Sultan’s government and the British Consulate exercised a ‘dual colonialism’.Footnote 44
Through the nineteenth century, the British increasingly exerted influence, pushing for an end to the slave trade.Footnote 45 In 1873, the slave market in Zanzibar was closed, but the trade continued illegally until 1890. The reality is murky, Britain nominally working towards the end of such business, but still effectively relying on it for the economic advantages gained by such exploitation .Footnote 46 Although signatories to the Brussels Act of 1890, ‘the first far-reaching agreement against the African slave trade on land and sea’,Footnote 47 they may have been ambivalent to is aspirations:
Their experiences in the Caribbean and elsewhere had made even the British aware of the dangers of wholesale emancipation and wary of a definite commitment to end African slavery.Footnote 48
In 1890, the Revd Horace Waller could still write:
We are hand and glove with slave dealers themselves…I confidently affirm that the ferocious Arab half-caste who haunts Central Africa is Perfectly justified in stating to all who will listen to him that the English are only too glad to use slaves when they can; and, I repeat, that it is but necessary for him to bid his hearers examine the next European caravan that passes through the country to establish the truth of his accusation.Footnote 49
The economic situation is complex: participation in a slave-dependent economy might well entail the use of slave labour whilst seeking its abolition. Waller, again, was splenetic:
The truth is this: we don’t eat the slaves, we work the life out of them instead. We are hand in glove with the slave-dealers themselves.Footnote 50
In 1897, slavery on Zanzibar was outlawed but persisted, partly because it did was not adequately advertised, and also because it did not end concubinage. That would only be included in 1909,Footnote 51 and there is evidence that the trading of slaves to Arabia effectively continued until the eve of the revolution in 1964.Footnote 52
Here it must be noted that legislated abolition need not mean complete abolition. The social configurations of slavery in African and Western modalities indicate different modes of dependency. Whilst the latter may consider slavery a ‘discrete institution’ which may thus be amputated, the former embeds it within social networks and considers its removal would lead to a ‘profound disintegration’ of their societies.Footnote 53 Moreover, behaviours in African societies which had long managed change were flexible enough to adapt and preserve the functions of slavery by other means and in other guises.Footnote 54 Given such a context, it is not surprising that models of enforced labour analogous to slavery which did not respect African rights could persist, and not just because they appear hard-wired into the environment on the grounds of economic necessity.Footnote 55 The system persisted, even if names changed:
The slave trade had consequently given rise to a stratum in African society whose main activity became slaveing (sic) and the slave-trade. They were, in a genuine sense, the predecessors of the strata and classes which were to serve German, British and Belgian colonialism, and, in the present period, with very limited relative independence, imperialism. For what is the difference between facilitating, as part of transmission line, the export of human beings as commodities and that of copper or coffee, when both activities are carried out in the service of capitalism?Footnote 56
Share-cropping and forced labour could pick up the slack lost by the abolition of slavery.Footnote 57 In fact the ease with which a slave economy could be superceded by a forced labour economy was anticipated in a comment by a British diplomat:
John Kirk, the British Consul-General for Zanzibar (1870–86), believed the cure for slavery should be just as severe as its malady because ‘the freed slave will certainly not work unless compelled’.Footnote 58
For Weston, the British government was complicit. The nub of the matter is seen in his mention of the clove trade: the ‘economic base’ of the Zanzibari economy, which had to be protected ‘at all costs’.Footnote 59 It is not surprising that conscripted labour was considered part of a colonial economic strategy which would make ‘the plantation owners dependent on it for their continued survival as a class’Footnote 60 and secure its own income. His comments make it clear that the pressing issue being used to justify forced labour is monetary gain. In Weston’s view, only the necessities of war justified any such practice. Here, as in Prussia, he has no truck with arguments based on economics.
British East Africa has a complex history. From 1888, British influence was exerted in what is now Kenya by the British East Africa Company, becoming the East Africa protectorate managed by the British government in 1895 (the Kenya colony from 1920). In 1894, a protectorate existed with the kingdom of the Buganda (modern Uganda): a system similar to the arrangements in Zanzibar. In 1919, Tanganyika would become a British protectorate under UN mandate. The protocols set up for forced labour within Kenyan area would become the blueprint for the measures being unrolled in Zanzibar and Tanganyika. It is these measures, already endorsed by church leaders in that area (Britain, p. 11), which Weston is resisting.
Frank Weston: Faith and Experience as Critical and Ethical Tools
Weston’s opposition was profoundly moral, detailing immoral economics, social ills and corruption. His critique is grounded in a proof text from the New Testament (Matthew 25:40; Britain, p. 4), in which a Kingdom parable is being extended to apply to this-worldly political contexts. Whilst then viewing forced labour as contrary to a dominical principle, he had prefaced those comments with two remarks about the political reality of his day, aware perhaps of a global dimension in which Africans were, amongst other things, aware of a changing world in America. It is unlikely that events such as the Panafrican Conference (London, 1900), aimed at raising public awareness and attaining wide coverage, would have escaped his attention.Footnote 61 His comments need little further explanation but are grounded in his own experiences.
Weston also makes specific mention of abuses within the Carrier Corps, drawing attention to statistics from the Corp in Kenya. Accounts of practice within the Carrier Corps of that territory reveal that ‘Carrier duty was backbreaking and rife with abuses’, with poor diet, atrocious medical conditions and a simple disregard for African welfareFootnote 62 – all points mentioned by Weston. The casualty rates were horrifying:
Monthly casualty figures for Carrier Corps ranged from 10,000 to 15,000 per month. Overall, mortality among frontline Carrier Corps was about 20 percent.Footnote 63
Lobbying from groups like the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society (ASAPS) would eventually lead to questions in the UK Parliament:
By 1917, however, the ASAPS had been receiving steady reports of mistreatment of Africans in the Carrier Corps pertaining to flogging, malnourishment, and improper medical care. In keeping with its traditional role, the society wrote numerous letters of inquiry to the CO, even requesting a meeting with the secretary of state over concerns about Carrier Corps treatment. From July to August 1917, several MPs with close ties to the ASAPS took up the mantle in Parliament peppering the undersecretary of state for war with many questions concerning the treatment of Africans in the Carrier Corps. However, as with many ASAPS queries, nothing really came of it. The war was over.Footnote 64
Kikuyu Redivivus?: Taking on the Establishment
The beginning of this section reveals a tone of disappointment. Weston indicates that Prussia has not been treated as a cry for justice, but rather used as opportunistic propaganda. This gives further insight into the blistering criticism found in the introductory section.
Weston’s description of the comments made by two Anglican Bishops, John Willis (Uganda) and R. S. Heywood (Mombasa), and the Church of Scotland’s Reverend J. W. Arthur merit a closer examination. On 8 November 1919, they issued a statement which criticized the circular issued by Sir Edward Northey. Olopot Okia notes that they seem to endorse government policy but regretted the need to do. They further warned that it had the appearance of slavery, risked abuses of power by African chiefs and encouraged both ‘female and child labour’.Footnote 65 They supported ‘a more legalized form of compulsion that was practiced uniformly and defined and limited the term of employment for able-bodied men only’.Footnote 66 Their ‘half-hearted criticism’ becomes less surprising once it is realized that this Bishops’ Memorandum was written ‘in consultation with the Chief Native Commissioner, John Ainsworth.Footnote 67 Their comments that:
We recognize that much in this memorandum is good and indeed necessary. Compulsory labor is not in itself an evil and we would favour some form of compulsion.Footnote 68
are patently at odds with Weston’s repeated comments that forced labour is immoral, un-Christian and produces social ills.
Followers of Weston may find a sense of deja vu here. His disagreement with the pronouncements of church leaders in British East Africa is analogous to his resistance to the Kikuyu conference. There, Weston resisted what he considered to be a denial of Anglican orthodoxy, inasmuch as the proposals for intercommunion between different denominations would effectively undermine the foundational role of the historic episcopate in defining church order. Weston then had appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the verdict eventually fell in his favour.Footnote 69 It is tempting to say that history here repeats itself.
Although there is no specified addressee, the pamphlet is obviously written as if it will be seen by the political overlords in London. James Tengatenga notes that Weston’s broadside, along with other protests, would effectively change government policy, citing a 1921 dispatch written by Winston Churchill, the recently appointed Minister of Colonial Affairs.Footnote 70 Yet, Churchill’s Dispatch is more ambiguous than the citation suggests. Tengatenga is right to note that forced labour appears to be banned:
But beyond taking steps to place at the disposal of natives any information which administrative officers and native chiefs possess, as to where labour is required, and to inform employers of available sources of labour, Government officials in future will take no part in recruiting labour for private employers.Footnote 71
However, what this effectively means is immediately open to question on the following page of the Dispatch:
While, therefore, in order to leave no room for misconception, I wish it to be placed on public record that it is the declared policy of the Government of Kenya to avoid recourse to compulsory labour for Government purposes, except when this is absolutely necessary for essential services, I have decided that the legislation which empowers the Government to obtain compulsory labour shall remain on the statute book.Footnote 72
So, there is a basic intention to end compulsory labour but not the political will to alter the relevant legislation. Such a conclusion should come as no surprise, given that the first section of the document views ‘misgivings’ about government practice as ‘ill-informed allegations’ and ‘vague complaints’ of exploitation, whilst offering assurances about the integrity of appointed officials.Footnote 73 There are analogies here with the criticisms made of Prussia (above, fn. 32). If Weston’s remarks were among the ill-informed and vague criticisms mentioned by Churchill they had a profoundly prophetic character, perhaps because based on ‘twenty two years’ experience’ (Britain, p. 4). Okia is much more pessimistic, suggesting that undesirable practices were able to continue, despite the apparent bans on compulsory labour:
It did not end all coercive labor practices. The state continued to extract communal forced labor from African peasants. This type of forced labor was defined and justified as a continuation of traditional duties that Africans would normally owe to their chiefs. The effect of Churchill’s dispatch legitimized force under the ark of customary law.Footnote 74
Ironically, such abuses by headmen, that is, associated with customary law, were among the negative consequences of which Weston had warned when writing about ‘encouraged labour’ (Britain, pp. 6–7). Nor did they manage to halt compulsory labour by women and children.Footnote 75 So, even malpractices condemned by the Bishops’ Memorandum could not be curtailed completely.Footnote 76 Weston’s critique is grounded in knowing the evils already committed and their place within the political and economic environment. He demands wholesale institutional and structural change, which is not to be tempered by claims for political realism rather than idealism or expediency. He reveals an alternative to Christian compliance with colonial practice.
Concluding Remarks
Weston’s two political texts, Prussia and Britain, reveal the same feistiness as his better-known theological controversies. They also shed light on the personal experiences and political passions which informed his 1923 address, possibly even being known to some of his audience there. He is an equal opportunities critic, taking aim at both colonial regimes and begrudging the appropriation of his views for political aims which he considered immoral. He was uncompromising in his view that Christian morality should trump political expediency, and that Christian discipleship should result in positive actions on behalf of those lacking privilege. Tempered with his abiding appreciation for African values, and friendships with his African neighbours, even if some aspects of his behaviour sit uneasily, it can be seen that these two slim pamphlets contribute to his being given the soubriquet: ‘Apostle to Africans’.Footnote 77
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