This appeared in TA issue 35 (Jan 1990)

The following extracts are from the Tanganyika Standard in the early months of 1940.

KNCU GIVES SHS 20,000 TO WAR FUNDS
The members of the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KNCU) expressing the aim of the Chagga people to help the Government to win the war so that they can live in peace and happiness under King George and the British flag, have given Shs 20,000 to help the war effort. The money has been made over partly to the Red Cross Fund for the benefit of African troops and partly invested in War Loan.

The cordial and grateful appreciation of the Government is being conveyed to the KNCU for their public spirited and munificent action.

ZANZIBAR EXPECTS £10,000 SURPLUS
Despite increased expenditure of £15,000 due to the war and an expected decrease in customs revenue because of wartime restrictions, Zanzibar is budgeting for a surplus of £10,000 in 1940. This is largely due to a sharp increase in the price of cloves, Zanzibar’s 1940 revenue is estimated at £445,000 and expenditure at £435,000.

His Excellency the British Resident said that customs tariff incidence is not satisfactory. Poorer people eat imported food, wear imported clothes, smoke imported tobacco and therefore contribute a quite disproportionate share of total revenue, he said. On the other hand, the richer classes, European and Asiatic alike, whose expenditure on foodstuffs and other necessities represents a negligible fraction of their total expenditure, at present contribute much less than is their just due …. The Government has therefore decided not to increase indirect taxation but to introduce instead a new measure of direct taxation – income tax. (Income tax was also introduced in Tanganyika at the beginning of 1940 – Editor).

TANGANYIKA IS FORTUNATE IN ITS AGRICULTURE
Mr. A. J. Wakefield, Tanganyika’s Director of Agriculture, had some cheerful things to say at a recent meeting in London … Tanganyika was more fortunate than some other colonies because its major industry, sisal, was a ‘priority war need’ he said. Scarce shipping space was always made available for sisal.

Speaking of the official policy to ‘produce to the limit’ he said that there was a risk of unsold surpluses in some crops because of lack of shipping. However, the tea surplus (over local requirements) would be bought by the UK Ministry of Food; coffee would be exported to existing markets in South Africa, Canada and the USA; an expected surplus of groundnuts would be sold to South Africa, a nearby market requiring little demand on shipping. It was also expected that India and Japan would buy most of the cotton out turn and the Middle East offered a market for oilseeds.

Tanganyika had been importing some £60,000 worth of maize from Kenya but the new policy was that Tanganyika must become self-supporting in maize.

THE AFRICANS AND THE WAR
Provincial Commissioners in their annual reports for 1939 were in agreement that most Africans had been little disturbed by the start of the war. But many had unpleasant recollections of the previous war when thousands had been conscripted by the Germans for porterage and road making; many had also had much of their food supplies and livestock commandeered. What appeared to have impressed Africans most had been the rapidity and lack of any kind of trouble attending the internment of enemy aliens. In the Southern Highlands Province 90% of the plantations and farms had been in German hands – they had employed some 8,000 Native labourers (There was considerable debate in the newspapers at this time as to whether the term ‘Native’ should still be used for Africans – Editor). There had therefore been immediate financial loss to Natives due to dislocation caused by the outbreak of war but the early action taken by the Government to assume control of enemy property had saved the economic situation from complete collapse.

But the inhabitants of a remote village in Tunduru district had ‘suffered stage fright’. The villagers had killed off all their chickens ‘so that the invading Germans would find no food’. There had also been a few cattle raids by the Masai against the Wasukuma. The Masai assumed that the authorities would be too busy with the war to deal with them.

A NORTHERN RHODESIAN ASKARI LOOKS AT TANGANYIKA,
A summary of the translation of a letter to his friends at home written by an Askari of the 1st Battalion of the N, Rhodesian Regiment explaining about Tanganyika included the following: Bad roads; good beer (made out of bananas); the men wear long Khanzus, even those who are not houseboys; the women wear lots of brass and beads; the sun is very hot; and, we are having the best food we have ever had; maize meal and rice, groundnuts and salt, sugar and tea and lemons and sometimes onions and always plenty of meat. ‘So we are sending this message to Hitler: It is he who has brought this about, this very good food, better than the food in Germany – so we are laughing at him very much’.

WHAT HAPPENED IN TUKUYU?
The Indian owned ‘Tanganyika Opinion’ on March 1st 1940 asked the question on its front page – What happened in Tukuyu. It wrote: A harmless Indian barber, Barber Jagjivan, plying his humble clippers found himself one fine day recently asked to accompany a Police Inspector, ride on a lorry laden with African peasants and taken to the Boma in Tukuyu. We have asked the authorities more than once what happened. Let us look at the facts as it is commonly believed that Jagjivan was taken to the Boma because of some indiscrete remarks he had dropped about the war. We are prepared to advise our readers that, at the present time, they should exercise great discretion in what they say or do in relation to the war …… We must be taken into confidence. Instead the authorities are stolidly silent. Why?

This appeared in TA issue 34 (Sept 1989)

THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The pages of the Tanganyika Standard (TS) from September 3, 1939, the date of the outbreak of the war, to the end of the year were dominated, as were those of most of the world’s press, by news from Europe. Little was published about what was going on in Tanganyika itself because most of the country was relatively untouched by the war. The following extracts give an idea of the atmosphere at the time.

INTERNMENT OF GERMANS
This was the main headline in the Tanganyika Standard (TS) of September 8, 1939. 80% of the German males in the territory had already been rounded up and were on their way to an internment camp in Dar es Salaam – they eventually totalled about 1,000 – and ‘reports were awaited from certain remote areas.’ A correspondent wrote about what happened in Moshi. ‘Herr Ernst Troop, the ‘Fuehrer ‘ of the Tanganyika Nazi Bund, not believing to the last moment that Britain would go to war, was on his way to Moshi from Lyamungu in his car on Sunday afternoon when he was ‘halted by a picket of administrative officers and special constables at Karanga Bridge outside the township. He was astounded when he was taken into custody. Some of his lieutenants, including Dr. Mergner and Herr Kageler, the latter leader of the Hitler youth, were also arrested. So far, 208 Germans have been temporarily interned in the commodious German-owned premises of the Kilimanjaro Coffee Works pending the erection of a permanent camp. Most Germans gave themselves up in good humour and many are helping to erect barbed wire entanglements around their camp’.

Interestingly, in the same issue of the Standard, in the classified advertisement column, under the heading ‘Where to Stay’ the following appeared: ‘German Boarding House. Daily rate Shs 10/-. First class cuisine. Cleanliness assured. Above Kassum’s stores.’

By December 316 of the enemy aliens had been repatriated. They were sent home on an Italian ship and given their expenses for the journey all the way back to Germany.

THE FIRST EFFECTS OF THE WAR
Vehicles were requisitioned, air raid practices were held in Dar es Salaam, no currency was to be exported (TS Sept 22), the price of foodstuffs was controlled (TS Oct 11) and farmers were exhorted to ‘produce to the limit and export what you can’ (TS Dec 22). It was announced that income tax would be introduced in 1940.

A ‘Tanganyika Naval Force’ had come into existence legally on August 26 but it then consisted of only one officer. Two weeks later there were six officers, 12 petty officer’s and 76 African ratings. Its main function was to sweep Dar es Salaam harbour for mines every day.

Dhows began to return (TS Oct 20). ‘Dhows are again being favoured for coastal transport of goods between Rufiji and Dar es Salaam. The lack of motor lorries during the recent requisition of power trucks for the war has turned the eyes of traders to dhows and dhow ports have not been so busy since 1929. Mr. M. Graui the Kilwa merchant, is said to own a fleet of 100 and Mr. Jaffer Alladin of Mbwera has brought from India a new fast sailing dhow of fine lines and accommodation’.

The first Donkey Company of the East African Pack Transport Corps was raised in Tanganyika (TS Dec 15), ‘The unit comprises two Europeans and 100 Africans with 500 donkeys. Personnel have been drawn from Mbugwe, Arusha and Meru areas. Thanks to the patriotism of the Africans, requisitioning of donkeys proved unnecessary. Although donkeys are not normally sold the owners took the view that if they were needed for the war then they (the owners) were prepared to sell them. Each carries a load of 100 lbs and the donkeys can cover a good 15 miles a day. It is the desire of the military authorities to avoid the use of porter transport and to make as much use as possible of mechanical and animal transport.’

Constructive effects of the war were the start of publication of a newspaper in Swahili – Baraza – and the first Swahili news broadcasts, in both cases emanating from Nairobi. All householders were requested to allow their staff to listen to the broadcasts which came out every Tuesday and Thursday from 5 pm to 5.15 pm. (TS Sept 15).

African participation in the war effort received little attention in the press. But on September 29th the Standard referred to a message sent by King George VI to the Sultan of Zanzibar thanking him for the assurances he had sent of the full support of the Sultanate ‘during the struggle in which the empire is engaged’. And on December 1st the Standard wrote ‘The fighting days of the Chagga tribe have been recalled in Moshi where Chief and people have offered a proportion of their harvest as their contribution to the war effort. It was customary in olden days when the tribe went to war for those remaining at home to contribute foodstuffs. The foodstuffs were to be used for feeding troops of the King’s African Rifles stationed at Moshi’ .

FRUSTRATION AND GLOOM
Reference was made often in the press of the time to the fact that the Allies and Germany seemed to be fighting a war only of words and propaganda.

As early as September 29 a reader’s letter in the Standard said: ‘Many of us with past war experience who feel that we ought to volunteer to serve in a military capacity …. feel justified in taking no step which might mean abandoning our families and being sent off into the blue on some relatively unimportant job while no actual hostilities are in progress in East Africa. If such hostilities should break out there would be no lack of volunteers’.

In a column by ‘Exile’ headed ‘Random Talk of the Day’, the following appeared on September 22. ‘The British take their war news (like their pleasures) sadly. At a time when there is so much to do and so great an example to be set the sight of a number of Britons listening to a radio news bulletin is about one of the worst pieces of propaganda that can be imagined. For studied gloom and pessimist ie resignation there is nothing to beat their expression and attitude. I should think that bar waiters who attend with eyes that miss nothing will be able to spread to the Native population the very worst interpretation of mass gloom.’

THE REALITY OF WAR
The first indication of the kind of news which was going to dominate the media for the next five years came in the Standard on October 29th. ‘Among those lost in the sinking of H. M. S. Royal Oak in Scapa Flow in Scotland was 18 year old Travis Hanch, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Hanch of the PWD, Tanga. He is thought to be the first man from Tanganyika to be lost in the war. A memorial service was held in Tanga Church.’

Then, on November 24th Tanganyikans felt the war again. A British ship, the 700 ton Africa Shell, was sunk by a German cruiser just south of Tanganyika, off the Mozambique coast. The crew managed to reach land and were found by Portuguese officials.

LIGHT RELIEF
Towards the end of the year the Standard was prepared to write about the lighter side of the war.

It described how army manoeuvres in Namanga district had included a full scale ‘invasion’ of Kenya by Tanganyika. The Standard’s correspondent observed however that he was ‘killed’ before the campaign really began as an enemy aeroplane dive-bombed his car. He was impressed most by the skill with which the two KAR armies camouflaged themselves. It was hard to see how the dual purpose of the manoeuvres – to give the well-trained and enthusiastic African troops practice in modern warfare and to obtain practice in the operation and control of mechanical units was being achieved – as he could rarely see them! And, just after the main battle, with Kenyan troops retiring to Kajiado, the correspondent was ‘killed’ again by an enemy scouting aeroplane!

The Standard also found it possible to give considerable prominence on its main page to an important news item. (October 6): ‘There have been many cases of chicken stealing in Dar es Salaam recently. The Police have now arrested an African who is alleged to have been concerned in at least one of the thefts. He was found by an Askari on patrol with seven fowls in his possession. Mr. Henin, who claims that he disturbed someone attempting to steal fowls from his compound, was unable however to identify some of the fowls found in the possession of the accused African’

And, finally, there was the inevitable ‘The day war broke out’ anecdote (November 17): Special constables from Dar es Salaam had been immediately mobilised and sent on duty to various key posts up country. One such key area was the fictitious place called ‘Asante’;

The specials both sat at Asante
Waiting for things to begin
From dawn to sunset, hard at it,
Drinking the D.O’s gin.

The D.O. kept calm in the crisis
He said there was nothing to fear;
His greatest trouble at this time
Was that the specials would finish his beer.

As last light appeared on the sky-line
When the office looked just like a bar
And the booze was very near finished
The specials were called back to Dar.

Editor

This appeared in TA issue 33 May 1989

SETTLER FARMING
Tanganyika Opinion (January 7, 1939) discussed non- native agriculture in the light of the annual report of the Department of Lands and Mines. More land was in the hands of other Europeans than in the hands of British settlers. Germans held some 455,000 acres and Greeks 177,000 but the total non-British European settlement totalled 1,014,000 acres. Indians held 278,000 acres and South African ‘Dutch’ 55,000.

But it was the quality of the farming which was exercising the newspaper. According to the then Director of Agriculture (a Mr. Harrison) settlers had an overweening tendency to speculation, there were too many bad coffee estates, many ill-tended and worthless cotton fields and a waste of valuable labour. There was, he said, “a poverty of knowledge, aptitude and money”.

The indictment of Mr. Harrison, the paper wrote, must be wiped out by the creation of better conditions. “This cannot be done by reading lectures …. it can be done by sympathetic guidance, co-operation and the creation of opportunities for self-training”

TANGA TOWNSHIP AUTHORITY TURNS NAZI
Under this heading Tanganyika Opinion (January 27, 1939) outlined new town planning regulations laid down by the Tanga Township Authority. One condition required that in any new building plans flats must not be occupied by more than one family and the family must consist of not more than six adults or, alternatively, two adults and eight children all of whom must be under the age of ten years. Great indignation was said to prevail in Asian circles in Tanga and the Indian Association had brought the matter to the attention of His Excellency the Governor of Tanganyika. The Governor had indicated however that he could not intervene as the conditions were due to the requirements of hygiene and sanitation.

This appeared in TA 32 (Jan 1989)

Fifty years ago Tanganyikans knew that a major war was threatening Europe. The Tanganyika Herald of 1939 included the following news items.

January 21. The East African Indian Congress passed the following resolution yesterday; ‘This conference is of the opinion that H.M. Government should not bargain with Germany on the fate of Tanganyika; that the future of that territory should be decided on the principle of self-determination by the peoples residing in the territory and that, in the meanwhile, the administration should remain on the basis of British mandate under the League of Nations as at present.’

February 3. In a report from a correspondent in Britain: ‘The activities of the Tanganyika League have been well received here. At any rate most intelligent people here now know where Tanganyika is on the map – which in my experience is quite a new thing. The ordinary man is, I think, opposed to giving the Territory away to Germany. But the Tanganyika League should not relax its activities; rather should it increase and intensify them. Absolute security is far from being won.’

February 25. Quoting from the News Review of London: ‘On orders received from the Chancellery, the Berlin Colonial League has started classifying Germany’s colonial claims. The details are to be included in a report which will form the basis for Germany’s first demand. It will probably be for the return of Tanganyika which is needed for its sisal, cotton, timber, rubber, coffee, ivory, wax, leather and skins. The draft report also states that the number of German farmers in Tanganyika has grown from 400 in 1931 to 4,000 in 1939. All were said to be members of the German Colonial League.’

February 25. At a meeting of the Executive Council of the Joint East African Board in London it was revealed that the Council of German Jewry had stated that it was disinclined to organise Jewish settlement in Tanganyika.

April 1. Under the heading Town Gossip: ‘I have heard it said that Tanganyika is the safest place in East Africa because the Germans will not throw bombs here when they have it in their minds that they would be destroying a country of which they hope to be the owners.’

April 22. It has been decided to carry out an experimental blackout in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday evening when all lights must be switched off between 9.30 and 10.30 p.m. Sirens will sound at nine p.m. An observer will cruise over the town in an aeroplane to report on the experiment.

May 5. The well known Indian advocate, Mr. D. M. Anjaria addressed a meeting of nearly 1,000 people in Dar es Salaam and explained about air raids, bombs, gas, precautions for the safety of buildings and measures already taken by the government.

May 5. With a view to accelerating the raising of the additional company of the Kings African Rifles which was announced on Friday. Certain officers of the KAR Reserve of Officers have volunteered for service pending the arrival of regular staff from England.

May 12. The people of Zanzibar have been warned that in the event of an air raid it will be necessary to evacuate the town. Zanzibar possesses 800 vehicles and all of them will be used under Government supervision. The population should start constructing shelters at Shamba.

May 20. Under the title ‘German Land in Africa’ the first of a series of films is being shown in Germany. In the film German settlers at work in Tanganyika are described as model colonisers and the natives are depicted as awaiting with impatience the return of a German administration. It is remarked that ‘the German has a hard hand but a soft heart – the Englishman a soft hand but a hard heart’.

May 27. Nazi attitudes to Indian settlers in East Africa have been made the object of a special article in the Deutscher Kolonialdienst. It states that Indian settlers are a serious danger to the vital interests of Europeans. They are accused of acquiring properties from Germans after the Great War at a fraction of their true value.

June 3. H.E. the Governor has stated that ‘the conviction is now, I believe, widespread, that whatever may be the terms of any settlement between H.M’s Government and another power, it is not within the bounds of possibility that the handing over of Tanganyika Territory will be included in those terms.’

This appeared in TA 30 (May 1988)

Too much old school tie
“Tanganyika is no fairy land. It is suffering from too much old school tie”. So wrote the Tanganyika Herald in its issue of 5th February 1938. It quoted extensively and prominently from some writing it had discovered in an Oxford newspaper by a Mr. John Balfour who had recently returned from a 10,000 mile African tour.

Hr. Balfour wrote: “The Administrative Officer’s life is to sit in an office from 8.30 to 12.30 and 2 to 4 doing sums, writing memoranda and reports just as he did for examinations at school. At 4 o’clock sharp he puts down his pen, has tea and then plays golf, tennis or football. The British magistrate adjourns his court even though in the middle of delivering a judgement. At sundown the officer sips whiskies and sodas and plays bridge.

From the lowest officer to the Governor, from the Governor to the Colonial Office, the administration is a machine in which no single cog can budge until a group of others has been started. Individual action brings frowns. An academic system of rules is pinned on the board like the rules of a public school.

An official with 15 years experience complained to me that he had less power, responsibility and money and more interference than when he started.

The Administration is grossly overstaffed. In a certain specialised department 66% of the expenditure goes to pay the official’s salary; another hefty slice goes to the native subordinates.
But if staffs or salaries were cut down public school boys would not consent to be colonial administrators. The job would not allow them to lead the lives of leisured sportsmen from four o’clock onwards ……

Inciting Zanzibar Arabs
The ‘Tanganyika Opinion’ in its leading article of February 25th 1938 wrote that: “The British Resident in Zanzibar has fully maintained the honoured traditions of British diplomacy (fithina) in his recent speech at the Arab Idd Baraza. As all the world and its wife knows, the whole trouble about the clove trade in Zanzibar originated with the formation of what is called the ‘Clove Growers Association’ (CGA). To judge from its nomenclature, one would suppose that it is an association of the actual clove growers. But it is nothing of the sort and the leading lights of the CGA have as little to do with the growing of cloves as we have with the growing of potatoes. It is a body bossed by the representatives of British commercial interests in Zanzibar for the express purpose of ousting the Indian traders from the clove market. It has created an unjust monopoly so that the growers of cloves will have to content themselves with selling their produce to the CGA willy-nilly at prices much lower than they would have realised in a free and competitive market.

When this CGA was first brought into being the clove growers of Zanzibar (both Arabs and natives) strongly resented it but, being mostly an inarticulate and unorganised people, their protest could not take any tangible form.

The Indian traders were made of sterner stuff. Being an intelligent and self-respecting people they had no alternative but to resist the Government’s Clove Decrees and, as they knew that India was a large importer of Zanzibar cloves they naturally sought the assistance of their motherland. India accepted the challenge and has decided to maintain a boycott of Zanzibar cloves until the Government abolishes the CGA and recognises the principles of free trade”.

The article went on to quote the speech of the Resident [President ? post editor] in which he indicated that the Government was considering a change of policy. He did not believe that (although he admitted that they had a grievance) the Indians would want to be in permanent antagonism with the Government and with their Arab and Swahili fellow citizens as all were suffering from the effects of the boycott.

This appeared in TA issue 29 (January 1988)

German propaganda in Tanganyika
The Tanganyika Standard (March 5, 1938) reported on a question that had been asked in the House of Commons in London. “Has the Minister’s attention been drawn to the intensification of German propaganda in Tanganyika which was of an anti-British character and urged the transfer of the territory to Germany”. The Minister replied acknowledging the existence of some propaganda of the nature specified but added that the Government of Tanganyika had the matter under constant observation and would take any measures to deal with it which appeared requisite.

Seeing the country again after twenty years
The London representative of the Kenya and Uganda Railways and Harbours, a Mr. W.M. Hardy, was reported in the Tanganyika Standard of February 12th 1938 to have been visiting Tanganyika after an interval of 20 years. He noticed a few changes.

“The development of the gold mining industry has taken place since my day” he said, “as have the immense strides in aviation with the regular internal and trans-Africa services. Dar es Salaam has grown out of all knowledge and the number of buildings and fresh enterprises seems to be legion. As you know however, it is trifling things that strike one on returning to a place. One that surprised me (especially in the towns) is the tendency for people nowadays to dispense with sun helmets and even with hats altogether. In my day, no one would have dreamed of going on the street without a helmet or other cover.

The Wachagga Unrest
The Indian owned ‘Tanganyika Opinion’ in its leading article on February 4th 1938 attacked it’s contemporary – the Tanganyika Standard which it considered to be a Government mouthpiece.

“Our local European contemporary has at last been constrained to admit what we have been saying all along that, contrary to the statement by the Government that the recent riots in the Kilimanjaro area were the outcome of the mischievous activities of a handful of irresponsible agitators, there was widespread unrest among the native coffee growers …. and that the riots were the acts of a people who were driven to desperation owing to their inability of having a legitimate grievance redressed.

It is unthinkable that the omniscient Government with its costly ramifications throughout the length and breadth of the country can be unaware of the reports of victimisation etc which reach the much humbler organisations represented by the Fourth Estate. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the Government are fully aware of the malpractices of certain Chiefs but to be under the necessity of condoning them. And Why? We can only refer to the second part of King Henry IV in which William Shakespeare records the following dialogue:

Davy: I beseech you Sir, to countenance William Visor of Wincot against Clement Perkes of the Hill.
Sha1 (Mr. Justice Shallow); There are many complaints Davy against that Visor; that Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.
Davy: I grant your worship that he is a knave Sir, but yet, God forgive Sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his friend’s request. An honest man, Sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not. I have served your worship truly, Sir, this eight years; and if I cannot once or twice in a quarter, bear out a knave against an honest man, I have very little credit with your worship. The knave is mine honest friend, Sir; therefore I beseech your worship, let him be countenanced.
Shal: Go to; I say; he shall have no wrong.

The point of comparison is obvious. Granting that the Chiefs are in the habit of harassing the population, they nevertheless squeeze out the taxes from them and fill the coffers of the Government … therefore the Government must needs overlook their misdemeanours and countenance them. A Government that has mainly got to depend on Native taxation for its costly and extravagant top-heavy administration cannot afford to be over nice in such matters.