i 5 8 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
Company ; and the abolition of slavery at Zanzibar will shortly be decreed as 
a final triumph to Livingstone’s appeal. 
The attitude of our Administration in British Central Africa towards the 
status of slavery has been this : we have never recognised 
it, but where slavery existed without its being forced on 
our notice through an attempt to carry on the slave trade, 
or through unkindness to the slaves, we have not actually 
interfered to abolish the status. But if ever a slave has 
run away from a district not administered by us to a more 
settled portion of the Protectorate, we have always refused 
to surrender him. If the slave was a female and it could 
be shown that she was a wife or concubine of the man who 
owned her or that he had inflicted no unkindness she was 
usually given back upon a promise of immunity from 
punishment. When a district from various causes has 
come under our our immediate administration we have 
always informed the slaves that they were not slaves and 
that they were free to go and do what they pleased as long 
as they did not break the law. But it has rarely happened 
that the slaves of a chief who were well treated have chosen 
to quit their masters ; therefore, being free to do as they 
liked, if they chose to remain and work as slaves nobody 
interfered to prevent their doing so. The slave trade —still 
more slave-raiding—has always been punished, and it may 
be safely stated that such a thing does not now exist in the 
Protectorate, though it is still carried on in such districts as 
are not wholly under the control of the British South 
Africa Company ; while Mpezeni alone among the uncon¬ 
quered Angoni chiefs raids the countries round his settle¬ 
ments and apparently adds his slaves to the population of 
his kingdom, or sells them to the Arabs on the Luangwa. 
The hardships of the slave trade were these:—Homes 
were broken up, a large number of men, women and little 
children were collected together and dispatched on a many- 
hundred-mile journey overland to the coast, on which they 
often had to carry heavy burdens Their slave-sticks 1 were 
no light weight, and they were ill-fed and provided with no 
clothing to shield them from the cold or wet in mountainous 
regions. If they lagged by the way or lay down, worn 
out with exhaustion, their throats were cut or they were shot. Otten before 
reaching the coast the Arabs would stop at some settlement and roughly 
castrate a number of the young boys so that they might be sold as eunuchs. 
Some died straightway from the operation, others lingered a little longer and 
1 The slave-stick in most of the languages of East-Central Africa is called gori, goli, or li-goli. It 
consists usually of a young tree lopped off near the ground and again cut where it divides into two 
branches. The ends of these two branches are left sufficiently long to enclose the neck of the slave. 
Their ends are then united by an iron pin which is driven through a hole drilled in the wood and 
hammered over on either side. 
The thick end of the gori-stick is usually fastened to a tree at night time when the caravan is resting, 
though sometimes it is merely left on the ground as the weight of the stick would make escape nearly 
impossible, especially as stubborn slaves have their hands tied behind the back. When the slaves are 
engaged in any work the end of the gori-stick is sufficiently supported to enable them to bear its weight 
and yet perform the task allotted to them. Except in the case of children, on whom no stick is placed, 
A •• RUGA-RUGA 
(mnyamwezi) 
Slave-raider employed by Arabs 
