Author: Megan Vaughan
Source: Past & Present, No. 108 (Aug., 1985), pp. 177-205
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
In 1949 a serious famine occurred in the Southern Province of Nyasaland. In this article I describe the course of that famine in the area in which it struck with greatest severity the Lunzu and Lirangwe sections of Blantyre district. In analysing the description of events I am concerned with two main questions. Firstly, which sections of the community suffered and died during the famine, and is it possible to provide a model which could "predict" the differential impact? Secondly, what were the responses of the community to the onset of famine and how did these responses in themselves condition its course? Bound up with both questions is the issue of how far this was a famine structured by the particular circumstances of the late colonial period in Nyasaland.
The analysis of famine has undergone radical revision in the last few years. The simple and long-standing notion that famine was the result of "food-availability decline" seems not to accord with the facts about contemporary and past famines, and has been largelyr ejected in favour of the theories which stress the role of the market and of government intervention.1 As long ago as 1952 Josue de Castro, in his book The Geopolitics of Hunger, attacked simplistic Malthusian theories of famine causation in favour of a more complicated model:-
". . . essentially world hunger is not a problem of production limited by the coercion of natural forces . . . but of a politics that is based on the premeditated division of the world into ruling and dominated groups". 2
More recent analyses of African famine also stress the global political and economic origins of hunger.3 Along with this recognition of the political and economic origins of hunger has come the increased awareness of the differential impact of famine within any given community. The writer who has highlighted this most and the only
one who has successfully united the analysis of "cause" with that of "effect" is Amartya Sen.4
Sen's "entitlement theory" is primarily concerned with understanding how different sections of the community obtain their entitlement to food in normal times, and how and to what degree these entitlements might be affected by changes in the market economy. His analysis of access to food thus relates directly to the ownership structure of any given society, and the position of each individual within this, and it emphasizes the class basis of suffering in any famine. In passing, Sen also acknowledges that distribution within the family may also be of relevance, and in a recent article in New Society he has given this more emphasis.5 However, the influence of family and kinship relations on the pattern of famine is not part of his entitlement model, but simply a footnote which shows recognition of the attention now being paid to the problem by nutritionists.
What evidence we have for the 1949 famine points to the need for a closer examination of the issue of food distribution within the family; and of how this and marriage relations affect the pattern of suffering in a community struck by famine.
SOUTHERN NYASALAND INDICATING FAMINE AREA
 |
| Southern Nyasaland Indicating Area of The Famine |
In the first section of this essay I describe the course of the famine. There are few written accounts of this, and therefore the description draws heavily on oral sources.6 Where written sources do exist, however,I have incorporated them.
I
Famine was not a new phenomenon to the people of Blantyre district, and food shortage was for some households there an annual event. But when the rains failed in the 1949 season there was a general feeling that this was a calamity beyond most peoples' experience. In retrospect, older people who had lived through the 1922 famine in the same areas aid that they could have predicted the disaster of 1949. 1947 had been the "year of the locusts", when many crops were destroyed, and in consequence there had been very few full granaries in the area in 1948.7 Furthermore, the rain failed in a way which indicated that the drought was not amenable to traditional remedies. In November and December, when it was apparent that the rains had stopped, people gathered in many villages to pray for rain. They sang the songs which they had always sung to call the rain and appease the ancestors.8 But despite the prayers, and the taboos and sanctions which accompanied them, the rain did not come. Christians were meanwhile exhorted by their churches not to join in the heathen prayers in the villages, but to pray for rain in the church instead. Both Catholic and Protestant churches held rain-calling ceremonies, and the Protestants s ervedt ea and biscuitsa ftert hem.9
When prayers of all types failed, some people looked round at their neighbours to see who might be "holding the rain" for their own ends. The usual suspects were old men with grey hair or bald heads, but people who were making bricks were also in line for accusation after all, they would be the first to suffer if the rain fell. 10 One man working in Blantyre at the time heard stories of such accusations being made in his home village. The people accused there were those who had long been labelled as "lazy" and who, even in favourable conditions, never had enough food to feed themselves. The accused were made to drink water and hot pepper, and if they were men (as they generally were) they had chilli powder rubbed into their testicles.11 Some were taken off to see the famous Doctor Bwanali, a soothsayer and healer who lived in Lunzu, but he invariably looked into his glass and found them innocent, saying that the drought was beyond human intervention.12 Others were taken prisoner by their neighbours and brought to the office of the District Commissioner in Blantyre, but he took a similar line on this to Doctor Bwanali and sent them home. 13 Quite quickly the consensus seems to have emerged that this drought, unlike less severe ones, was the work of God and could not be attributed either to human action or to the anger of ancestors:
No black cloud could be seen, and no thunder was heard.A ccording to our belief, when people are "holding the rain" an expanse of dark cloud is seen and thunder heard, but suddenly all the clouds get swept away and the sky clears. This did not happen in '49. The drought was too serious to blame on any human being. Some believed that the territorial spirits were angered and needed a sacrifice to cool them down. Some believed that it was God's work. The two camps used their means to ask for rain but still no rain came.14
Most people did not replant their maize, both because the seed was difficult to obtain and, more crucially, because the rain with which to replant never fell. There were some people in the area, however, who did have maize in their granaries left over from the previous year. These lucky ones generally had large gardens and gardens which stretched down to the river banks. On such land they were usually able to harvest something, as the soil retained moisture from the river or could be irrigated from it.15 There were also those men who had married into the area but who had retained gardens in their own homes. One man had had a garden at his home in Chiradzulu, an area much less severely affected by the drought, and he had fetched food from there.16 One woman recalled that her parents had a full granary when others had nothing because her father had land at his home in Ntcheu (in the central highlands to the north of Blantyre district) and he brought food from there. She said that every day there were at least ten people queuing up outside their house to beg for food, including old people who had been brought by machila (kind of stretcher).17 Other people who, according to oral accounts, were privileged under these circumstances were urban workers and local businessmen. Urban workers were lucky in that their employers invariably either gave them free food, food on credit, or food at a lower price to that of the open market. Tenants living on estates were usually entitled to the same privilege. Of course within this group there were wide variations in wage levels and incomes, but the main advantage of being a regular employee during the famine was that it entitled one to easier access to food. There was a lot of theft and some unrest in the towns of Blantyre and Limbe, and mindful of this, the government had instructed employers to make sure that their workers were fed. Some employers gave out free food, others gave salary advances. One man interviewed worked at an Indian-owned store in Limbe and earned only 10s. 6d. a month. However, in January 1949 his employer started giving him an advance on his salary of 7s. 6d. to enable him to buy maize. In general, this man said, the people of Blantyre and Limbe had little difficulty in getting maize, as long as they had money.18 One young woman was working as a domestic servant for an Indian family and earning the miserly wage of 3s. 6d. a month. However, her job had the advantage of allowing her to eat with her employers, and during the famine this was worth a lot in real terms.19 Another man also earned 3 s. 6d. a month working as a watchman for an African store owner, but on top of this he received a ration of flour and beans which was enough to feed his family throughout the famine.20 Another was a storekeeper in an owned shop in Indian-Limbe, whose wife and children lived at home in Lirangwe and farmed a garden there. His employer gave him a small basket of maize flour every Saturday which he took home to his family, and he also bought maize from a government depot in Chirimba, near Blantyre. The price was high and everyone complained, but they also recognized that they were better off than their relatives at home in Lirangwe and Lunzu, who could not get even if they had maize money.21These four people were members of the lowest paid group of urban employees, with wages far below those published in the official government statistics, and in normal they must have times been living on the margins. During the famine, however, they became members of a relatively privileged their families group, and considered themselves lucky.
Government and mission employees got the most privileged treatment of all. Employees of the Blantyre Mission of the Church of Scotland, apart from being given maize flour on credit, were allocated gardens also on which to plant sweet potatoes and cassava (chilingano), and were given time off work to cultivate. employees were 22 Government allowed to buy maize at half the price of that on the open market. Although this supply was supposed to be strictly rationed, people found ways around the rationing system and sometimes could accumulate quite large stocks. Depending on the individual, these stocks were than either distributed to family home or sold to members at villagers in the famine area at a handsome-profit. One man had been employed by the government as a stocks of driver, taking maize from one place to another. As a government employee he could buy maize at the price of 3s. per 4 gallon, in the villages and sell it in for 6s. or more. Further more, as he said, so much maize was exposed to him in his job that he was able to "play with it" 23 monkey tricks
Right from the start of the famine, then, there were those who had privileged access to food supplies and could use this in a number of ways. Traders and businessmen with motorized transport were in a particularly advantageous position, for although the government initially tried to prevent the movement of maize from one district to another, this soon proved to be impossible and against their own interests. One businessman "found himself" with twenty bags of maize (each of 200 lbs.) at the beginning of 1949. People came from all over the area to buy from him. He sold the maize at the price of ld. for a small plate, and the twenty bags were exhausted after a month.24 Another businessman, who owned a truck, had thirty bags of maize at the end of 1948, and sold it at the same price of ld. per plate. Those who had no money did ganyu labour for him moulding bricks and cutting down trees in order to earn the money they needed to buy food.25 Another family, whose business normally consisted of buying and selling fish and vegetables, switched to maize trading
in 1949 because it was so profitable.26 One aspect of the African businessman's trade did not do well in this period, and that was maize-milling. As one woman said, "Before the arrival of the government relief maize,one could scarcely heart he sound of a maize mill". 27 Stories abounded of how hungry people gathered at the mills to sweep up the flour which had fallen from the mill and take it home in handfuls, and of how the maize mill owners soon put a stop to this practice and began selling the sweepings instead.28
By March or April 1949 the famine looked really serious in the Lunzu and Lirangwe areas: "The situation had started as a small joke, but it turned into a bad joke, and a serious issue".29 The main features of this second stage of the famine were firstly the extreme mobility of the population (especially the men) in search of food to
buy, earn, beg or gather; and secondly, the progressive breakdown of whatever community support and family solidarity had existed earlier.30 Some aspects of this stage of the famine are recalled vividly in the pounding songs of women in the area.31 These songs, and other forms of recollection, indicate the uneven distribution both within of food the community and within the family. They also show how long-standing links between different geographical areas could be brought into play at times of crisis. Foremost among these links were marriage ties.
As things got worse and as local supplies of food became completely exhausted, people began looking further afield for places where they could obtain food, either with cash or in return for goods or labour. Men (and sometimes women) went off in groups to search for food in the Ngoni highland areas of Ntcheu and Dedza, in the highlands bordering M ozambique to the west, and in the Mulanje area to south-east. Many the of the men who went on these expeditions were making use of family ties in these areas. There was a long history, for instance, of Ngoni men migrating south for work and marrying in Blantyre district.32 So at a time of crisis these men went back to their own homes expecting, and usually getting, help from their relatives there. It was seen as a husband's duty to find food for wife and family, and his those men who did not do this were chided in the women's songs:
Iwe ndi mwamuna wanji
Wokhala pakhomo ndi azimayi
Amuna ku Mwanza awo
Nanga iwe, watani?
Nchito kugwira munchuni basi.
(What type of husband are you,
Staying at home with the women?
The other men are off to Mwanza now,
Why not you?
You just stay here and your only "work" Is to fondle women.)33
Men were aware of the praises they could earn from their wives' families if they succeeded in finding food for everyone. Women sang the praises of their husbands to their sceptical mothers, and the men replied realistically that they did not expect this new-found popularity to outlive the famine.34 The journey on foot to the highlands or to Mulanje was long and arduous, and some people died on the way. While travelling they lived on wild foods which they gathered in the bush, and of which there seems to have been a general communal knowledge. There were varieties of yam-like tubers, wild cassava, banana roots, edible grass, fungi and fruits,35 but collecting and processing these foods was time-consuming and had to be done with extreme care as many of them were fatally poisonous if not cooked correctly. The women and children left at home also collected these wild foods, and often grandmothers would take their grandchildren off into the bush to collect them. As time wore on, many people developed severely swollen limbs, and this they attributed to the eating of these wild foods. 36
When they got to the Ntcheu-Dedza highlands, the men were usually greeted with generosity from their relatives. They were given a meal to revive them and a place to stay, and then they either bought food if they had cash or worked for it. Sometimes they exchanged beads, plates and clothing for maize flour. In the early months of the famine they also sold their domestic livestock (mostly chickens and goats), but the supply of animals was quickly exhausted. In any case it is said that the people of Mwanza began to refuse to accept the
animals in exchange for grain because of their disturbing tendency of turning into snakes as soon as their owners had departed.37
Men bought food in varying quantities, at a price comparable to that paid by the urban workers of Blantyre and Limbe that is, 3s. for a 4 gallon tin. The demand was high and there was no bargaining. One man who had money remitted from a son working in Southern Rhodesia walked to Ntcheu and bought two bags (of 200 lbs. each) which lasted him and his family for about two months. He returned to Ntcheu several times duringt he year.38 Another man was a tailor whose business was naturally suffering with the famine, but who did have some money saved up. He walked to Ntcheu as well, diverging into the hills on the way to collect wild foods.39 One woman whose husband was insane joineda group of peoplet ravelling west to Neno and Mwanza. She had no money so she worked in peoples' gardens in order to earn a small basket of maize.40 Not everyone met with immediate sympathy in the areas in which they sought food, as one man recalled:
One day I went with my friends to look for food in Ntcheu, but when we got there a certain woman asked us rudely to "produce the serious famine for her to see", and after failing to produce it she told us to go back to Lirangwe and wrap the famine in big leaves and bring it to her!41
At home the women waited for their husbands to return, which they usually did at night so that their neighbours could not see how much food they had with them. But if the oral sources are to be believed, often the men did not return at all, but stayed away in their own homes until the famine was over, or married other wives in the areas to which they had gone for food. 1949 is thus remembered as the year of "many divorces", and this aspect of the famine features in many pounding songs:
Chaka chino tabvutika
Amuna akutileka maukwati
Titani ife njala-imeneyi?
(We have suffered this year,
Our men are divorcing us.
Oh what shall we do with this hunger?)42
Those marriages which survived t he faminew ere said to be "good and strong ones" which could outlive any disaster, but for many women the famine proved the fragile nature of marriage ties with men from a different area, and many of the songs sung by the women during the famine were critical of men and sceptical of marriage.43
For those women whose husbands were labour migrants in Southern Rhodesia or South Africa, the famine was also a test of their marriages. Some of these women were better off than most if their husbands sent regular remittances then they had a steady source of cash with which to buy food. But if their husbands sent nothing they had to rely on the help of relatives, and this tended to dry up as the famine progressed.44A s well as being remembereda s the year of divorces, 1949 is also recalled as a year of few marriages and few conceptions. Women did not conceive in this time, and this they attributed to a lack of desire for sexual intercourse (though a menorrhoea probably played a part).45 In one song a young woman laments the fact that she is without a child:
Mulera dzuwa
Ine ndilera dzuwa
Anzanga alera mwana.
(I am the nurse of the sun,
I am nursing the sun
While my friends are nursing babies.)46
Those babies who were born in 1949-50 were said to be sickly and weak, and nursing mothers were anxious that without enough food to feed themselves they would not have enough milk for their babies. One woman recalls how her milk supply becamei nsufficient to feed her three-month-old baby, and how she had to make her drink a thin porridge instead.47 But it was probably the small children who had already been weaned who suffered more than the babies, and their constant wailings were heard everywhere.48 Stories were told of how some mothers unable to quieten their children or to find food for them secretly murdered them, while others were simply abandoned along with the very old and the disabled:
Kaju kamwana kulira kuliramboe ee
Pakuti kulilira chelicheche
Kwagona mwana, kuswakwagona.
(I can hear the crying of the child,
He is crying continuously,
He is crying like a bird.
He has slept out there in the bush
Because he has nowhere else to sleep.)49
As the custom of ubombo50 progressively broke down, so increasingly each family, and then each individual, paid attention only to its own food supply. Families ate only inside their houses, not outside and in public as was usual. Children had to be kept inside at meal times, otherwise they would go and beg at every house in the village. It was recognized that everyone had to look after their own immediate family's problems, but it seems that this situation was nevertheless regarded with some embarrassment. In general it was the women who had the strongest ties at home and who were more or less obliged to stay there and care for the children.
However, some women decided that the only way to obtain food was through prostitution in the towns. According to male informants, many women from the famine-stricken areas came to Blantyre and Limbe and slept with any man who could assure them of a meal. To some extent this evidence is reinforced by the women's own songs which associate the famine with prostitution.51
For many months, then, people survived on a combination of food earning strategies. In some places a small harvest of sweet potatoes relierred the situation in May and June, and those who had planted the fast-maturing variety of cassava could harvest something of this in August and September. More importantly, however, the government finally opened maize distribution centres in the ares, from September onwards.52 One of these was at the Lunzu Native Tobacco Board market, and another was near the railway station at Lirangwe. Here people could buy a ration of maize at the price of 3d. per pound. This distribution system is well remembered by people in the area. A few of them had experienced something similar but on a smaller scale in 1922, but for most this kind of government intervention was a complete novelty. The food distribution system was organized with military precision and relied heavily on the village headmen to ensure that the supply was fairly distributed. Each village headman was allotted certain days of the week when he should come to the centre with his people. Each family head was allowed to buy maize to the value of 5s. per family, though some people managed to get around this regulation and secured more. People who were completely without cash (usually women) had to work for food by collecting large stones which were then used in the building of a road to the railway line. The really old and distitute were given free food, but these issues were kept to the minimum.53 One regulation strictly adhered to, and well remembered by the women, was that all married people had to pay for the food. This applied equally to women whose husbands had abandoned them or whose husbands were migrants but did not send any money home. Most families if they contained more than one adult member used the government distribution as one arm of their overall food-procuring strategy. Urban workers would continue to get food from their employees while their wives queued for food at the government centres; other men would continue to walk to Ntcheu, Dedza) Neno or Mulanje while their wives worked on the road to earn food.
According to official reports, it was around December 1949 and January1950 that people in the Lirangwe-Lunzu area began to show signs of severe malnutrition. People had been suffering from famine oedema for some time, but now there seemed to be a sudden and severe d terioration in their condition. Both oral and writtens ources confirm that it was the very old and the very young who suffered most notably, and oral accounts also mention pregnant women as being vulnerable Many old people were abandoned and either died in their homes or collapsed on the way to the distribution centres.54 The oral accounts of both men and women indicated that it was men who lost most body weight and who died most often of starvation
(though there is no confirmation of this in the written sources).55 Male informants say that men died most often because of the burden of anxiety placed upon them by the responsibility they had to feed their families but some women say that it was those men who had remained sexually active who died.56 Men were also thought vulnerable to dying at the mere thought of food. Several accounts exist of how men would put stones in a pan and pretend that they were frying dried maize, and then would die at the sight of the stones in the pan.57
In January, feeding camps were set up to deal with the worst cases of malnutrition. One of these was on the tobacco estate of a European named Binson, near Lirangwe. Here the old and destitute were kept behind barbed wire and fed twice a day on thin porridge. Their faces were haggard and their eyes protruding, and they all suffered from matenda a njala ("the famine disease"). They wore labels around their necks ("like dogs that have been vaccinated against rabies"), and the woman in charge of feeding them made them dance when they had eaten "so that the food would reach all parts of their bodies".58 The really bad cases were taken to the Blantyre mission hospital for further" food treatment"(. "The disease was hunger and the medicine was porridge so the one who gave out the porridge was known as 'doctor"'.)59
In the meantime the more able-bodied were working hard to weed their gardens. Some people had obtained maize seeds and cassava cuttings free from the government, but most preferred to find their own "local" seeds, and travelled distances to obtain these. Some people got around the suspension on beer-brewing and held work parties to ensure that a maximum area was cultivated. Women complained that they were too weak to both cultivate their gardens and to pound the relief maize (by now no one had money for maize milling).
In some distribution centrest he government began to issue ready-milled maize in the form of ngaiwa when they realized that some women were simply unable to pound.60
At the same time the government was attempting to enforce more strictly the conservation measures which it had introduced into the area in the 1940s. The assumption was made that people would be more willing to follow these now that they had experienced the famine. This link was not so clear in the minds of those who had endured the famine, but the famine and the more strictly enforced measures are directly linked in many peoples' memories.Some people viewed the fines and arrests of people who infringed the laws as being direct punishments for having caused the government so much trouble with the famine. The fact that a 2s. 6d. "famine tax" was levied on all adult males reinforced this impression that the government was punishing them.61
The 1950 harvest was a good one despite the physical weakness of many people at the critical times and despite the difficulties of obtaining seeds. But many people died when they began eating "real" food again. As one person put it: "this was because their bodies had got used to 'bad food' so that when they started eating good food againt his caused reactions in their bodies, with fatal results".62 The situation was complicated by a smallpox epidemic which had started in the highlands of Ntcheu, where many people from the south had gone to get food. The medical authorities found it difficult to control the outbreak because of the extreme mobility of the population during the famine. However, according to oral reports, people from the south were well acquainted with smallpox and of their own accord many went to be vaccinated, so that when the disease reached the famine area its results were not severe.63
By the next planting season (1950-1) people were in a better position to respond to the lessons of the famine, though in many cases their responses were conditioned by government policies and regulations, as well as by the communal memory of this famine and previous ones. Most people apparently planted more cassava and sought out varieties which they had sometimes not grown before. The Lomwe people, whose history was marked by famine, were experts on cassava, and some of them returned to Mozambique to collect cuttings of the varieties which were particularly useful in times of drought.
How the societya daptedi tself back to "normality" after the famine we do not know. There are stories (told by women) of how husbands who had fled during the famine returned afterwards to attempt reconciliation with their wives, but were uniformly turned away. There are songs too which indicate that even during the breakdown of social norms at the height of the famine people were half-conscious of how their behaviour might be judged afterwards. One song warns girls to behave with propriety during the time of hunger, or afterwards they might face harsh judgment:
Zinyankhulani bwino asungwana
Nsalayi idzapita dede
Tiwone kunyada kwanu
(Be careful girls when speaking.
This famine will one day end,
And then we will see [recall] your pride.)64
II
In this second section I analyse the available background written evidence in an attempt to construct a "Sen-type" model of the famine. I then consider how far this model accords with the evidence from oral sources.
The immediate post-war period in Nyasaland was one of rapid economic change and the marked growth of African capitalist activity. In the area affected by the famine, long-term changes such as the growth of population combined in the post-war period with the increase in wage employment (both at home and abroad), the enforcement of governmenct onservation measures, and the increased circulation of money in the villages. We certainly need to look beyond purely agricultural factors if we are to understand the nature of the
famine in Blantyre district, because by the late 1940s a majority of households there relied for their income on a combination of wage earning and agricultural production, and sometimes on what would now be termed "informal sector" activity.
About half of Blantyre district was occupied by privately owned estates, and this had been the case since the massive land alienation of the late nineteenth century. Although by the 1940s there were about seventy estates in all in the Blantyre district, the greater part of this land was owned by two companies the British Central Africa Company and the Blantyre and East Africa Company. Both companies had histories of inertia and non-exploitation of their vast land reserves.65 However, by the mid-1930s they were beginning to attempt greater control of the African residents on their land, and in particular they were enforcing more strictly the rental obligations of their tenants. An agreement dating from 1943 between one estate and its tenants indicates that these obligations, when enforced, could be very demanding.66 When they were not complied with, the estate owners could apply to the District Commissioner to evict tenants. In 1937, for instance, the British Central Africa Company made application to evict 1,200 tenants for failure to fulfil obligations. Of this number, only 150 finally received eviction orders,67 but the threat of eviction was enough to discourage further settlement on privately owned land. Successive District Commissioners reported that this insecurity led to congestion on Native Trust Land (the unalienated, customary land), where holding sizes were becoming progressively smaller in the 1940s.68
Another feature of the 1940s was the growth of the twin towns of Blantyre and Limbe, and the increase in the number of public works in the area. This growth was allied to the post-war "tobacco boom", which resulted not only in the expansion of estate tobacco production, but also in generally higher levels of investment in urban property. For the people of Blantyre district this meant that there was an increased demand for labour in the area both skilled and unskilled and wage-levels rose. To some extent, then, the increasing congestion on Native Trust Land around Blantyre was compensated for by an increase in employment opportunities. According to the Labour Report for 1949, in March of that year there was a total of 67,630 people employed by European and Indian-run enterprises in the Southern Province, the vast majority of which were male labourers working in the tea and tobacco industries. The wages for unskilled labour had risen to an average of ?1. 2s. 6d. a month (inclusive of a food allowance), compared with the average wage in 1939 of 6s. to 10s.69 Hand in hand with this growth in wage employment went the growth of craft and service industries-this group included butchers, dairymen, traders in fish and vegetables, knife-makers, charcoal burners, lime burners (supplying the building industry), carpenters, canteen owners, shoe-repairers and, most importantly, women beer brewers.70 Beer-brewing became a major industry around Blantyre in the 1940s, and an important means by which families residing on congested Native Trust Land could make up some of their budget deficit. For although wages had risen fast in the 1940s, so had the urban cost of living. Calculations made in 1947 estimated that in the years between 1939 and 1947 the cost of living for an African urban resident had risen by 100 per cent, unless he was in a position to provide most of his food supplies, in which case the estimate was of a 50-60 per cent rise.71 This fact would help explain why in the course of the 1940s labour emigration from Blantyre district to South Africa and Southern Rhodesia increased very markedly.72 As estate owners effectively prevented their male tenants from emigrating (the penalty was family eviction), we must assume that most of the emigrating men came from Native Trust Land. This leaves us with a picture of Native Trust Land around Blantyre which can be summed up as one of increasing land congestion, increasing low-paid wage employment of men, and increasing long-term male absence.
Living in the same areas, however, were the families of a different economic group consisting of skilled employees (artisans, teachers, clerks and the like), and the wealthier of the African self-employed craftsmen and businessmen. This was a relatively small group. We have no figures for the self-employed, but in 1949 of the total of 83,054 people employed by European and Indian enterprises in the whole of the Protectorate, some 4,694 were classified as clerks and artisans. Though a small group, it was an important one and becoming more significant both economically and politically in the 1940s.What little evidence we have points to the fact that members of this group had larger than average landholdings, as well as higher than average earnings from their employment or trade.73 These were the employers of ganyu labour, who do not show up in the official statistics. There are a number of reasons for thinking that the fortunes of this group rose during the immediate post-war period. Firstly, the rise in tobacco prices meant that the earnings of some Africans had increased (as well as their own earnings if they were themselves involved in tobacco production). This money in African hands from cash-crop production was combined with the earnings of disbanded soldiers who had fought in the war, creating what many Europeans saw as a glut of money in African hands. As imports were restricted and expensive, in the post war period a much smaller proportion of this wealth than normal was spent on imported cloth and other goods. The government concluded that money was actually being hoarded in mattresses and under floorboards. When Phyllis Deane investigated this question, however,she came to the conclusion that the money was being circulated, but in the African sector where there was an increased velocity of trade.74 Unable to buy imported items, people instead spent what cash they had on building better houses and eating a more varsed diet hence the growth in the African building industry and the growth in the service sector in Blantyre. European officials also remarked on the increasing number of African traders who owned motorized transport and maize mills, and who thus capitalized on the increasing demand for food from the growing urban or peri-urban population in the south.
The picture that seems to emerge when one looks at the changes of the 1940s is one of increasing differentiation among the African population of Blantyre district. If we now return to the famine, we should be able to see how these different groups fared.
The first group were the upper ranks of the skilled workers and businessmen. These personally suffered very little during the famine. Not only did they have cash and other assets at their disposal, but they also had privileged access to food supplies, either because they were themselves food traders, or because they received food from their employers at very favourable rates. Some members of this group undoubtedly profited from the famine.
The second group to emerge consisted of the smaller self-employed traders and artisans. Most members of this group must have experienced a drastic fall in income-as the famine took hold fewer and fewer people had money to spend on luxury foods and on services such as launderings, hoe-repairing, tailoring and so on. Furthermore, as these people were self-employed they did not have the easy access to food supplies enjoyed by urban employees of government, missions and European and Indian-owned businesses. Whether or not they suffered personally in the famine would depend on whether they had cash savings to spend on food.
The third group were the families of men in low-paid wage employment in the European and Indian sectors of the economy-such people as agricultural labourers, tobacco-graders, road labourers, and so on. These people were drawn from the Native Trust Land around Blantyre. In general they would not have had large holdings of land or significant savings. Many of their wives will have been part employed as beer-brewers, but this aspect of the family income came to a halt during the famine. Some of this group will have been laid off work when the famine struck and thus left to fend for themselves, but the evidence indicates that many of them, along with the resident tenants on estates, were either fed free or given privileged access to food supplies by their employers. Thus although this was generally a group of disadvantaged people, during the famine the fact of their employment in the "formal" sector of the economy carried a definite advantage.
The fourth group, and the one which is least visible in the sources, consisted of those households whose members were involved both in cultivating their own plots of land and in doing ganyu labour for more fortunate peasant households or craftsmen in the area. These people suffered during the famine from not being employed in the formal sector of the economy, and thus not eligible for the help which those employed there received. What is more, their employment by other African households must have ended fairly early on in the famine. One suspects that many members of this group ended up as recipients of free government issues, but only after many of them had died or suffered greatly.
This, then, would be the classification of the population emerging from the written sources, and to some extent it accords with information from oral testimony. The first group the wealthier traders and businessmen and skilled employees emerge as the avaricious mill owners and self-confessed hoarders of the oral testimonies. The second group the self-employed craftsmen and smaller traders are also represented in the testimonies as in the case of the tailor who shut up his business and used his savings to buy food in Ntcheu. The third group-those families of men in low-paid employment in the European and Indian sectors of the economy - also emerge clearly in the oral sources as having benefited from a "legitimate" foothold in the privileged urban sector, with easier access to food supplies. The fourth group, and probably the largest of all, is the least well-defined in oral sources they are simply "the poor" of every village, and as such have little to distinguish them.
But a further consideration of the oral sources shows that there are drawbacks to the model constructed above. To begin with, women are virtually invisible in a classification based on written sources. These sources assume that all women can be classified and identified with their husbands. The oral evidence, however, shows clearly that many women were abandoned during the famine and that others were already living in households without resident husbands. Some but not all of these female-headed households constituted a group which was very susceptible to starvation during the famine. Most women who earned cash did so in normal times through their involvement in beer-brewing or ganyu labour, and both of these activities came to an end with the famine. If they had young children then their mobility was severely restricted, making it less possible for them to travel in search of food. The oral testimonies emphasize that whether or not women and their families suffered often depended on unquantifiable factors of marital breakdown, affection, reliability and so on. For instance, some of the women whose husbands were labour migrants were relatively privileged in having cash remittances at their disposal. Those women whose husbands sent nothing, however, were among the more vulnerable groups in the community when the famine struck. Also emerging from the oral sources is the fact that for biological and social reasons the elderly and the very young weremore likely to suffer than other age-groups. Of course the degree of hardship faced by these groups would depend to some extent on the economic classification of the households to which they belonged so that, for instance, the young children of a businessman were less likely to die than those of a low-paid labourer but it is also the case that social attitudes and family relations had a part to play here. The oral evidence shows conclusively that divisions within the family could be just as significant as divisions within the community as a whole. The evidence on marriage patterns highlights this issue most vividly. Any classification of the population which attempted to predict which groups would suffer during a famine would certainly have to take these factors into account. In other words, if Sen's "entitlement theory" is going to be used practically to define the target groups for famine relief in a given society, then "entitlements" based on marriage, on age and sex need to be fed into the model along with those based on production or exchange. The politics of the family may emerge as being an important factor in defining who suffers in any food shortage.
Also emerging from the oral sources is the fact that both long-and short-term adaptations to food shortage could actually affect the course of a famine. The evidence indicates that the twentieth-century pattern of marriage ties betwen the Ngoni of the central highlands and the Nyanja, Yao and Lomwe communities of Blantyre district provided some kind of "insurance policy" for those communities. Presumably the validity of these ties was strengthened by the experience of the 1949 famine. But the women's recollections also show that there were conflicts inherent in such marriages which could come to the fore during a crisis. While on the whole the people of Blantyre district benefited during the famine from the policy of "out-marriage", for some women the famine simply proved the fragility of marriage with men of a different ethnic group.75 These particular marriage ties were a product of patterns of employment which had their origins in the early colonial period, although the practice of "out-marrriage in" general was also a feature of societies in this area in the nineteenth century.A more recent modification to the nature of marriage ties, however, had come about with the growth of labour emigration from the Southern Province in the 1940s. This quite sudden growth in the absence of men for long periods may well have caused a disequilibrium in family and social relations which came to light during the famine. Clearly further research needs to be done on the nature of labour migration in the 1940s and its impact on these societies, but it is probably fair to say from the evidence that the famine struck at women more severely because of this recent change in the economic orientations of the area.
Some "responses" to the famine were conditioned by the actions and expectations of the colonial state. Several accounts show that people actively petitioned the government for famine relief via their headmen and chiefs. Although generally the famine reinforced the structures of order and authority, it did occasionally and briefly place colonial authority in a hazardous position. Rumours of cannibalism by Europeans were common, and there was a wave of petty theft in 1949 and 1950 which remained largely untouched by the small police force of Nyasaland. The police had no food with which to feed prisoners, so even when a culprit was caught he was usually released.
Adjustments after the 1949 famine were severely affected by government action. For instance, some of the "traditional" agricultural responses were inhibited by current policy. The one crop which survived the drought well was the perennial ratooned sorghum, and one would have expected the cultivation of this crop to have spread after the famine as a result of this. However, there was a prohibition placed on its cultivation by the Department of Agriculture, which was worried about its role in spreading crop disease. Likewise, during the drought those people who had wet dimba land and gardens along the river banks had been able to harvest something but river-bank cultivation was also being actively prevented by the Department of Agriculture, so that further expansion of cultivation into wet areas was severely restricted. In 1950 the government doubled the producer price for maize, thus encouraging people to grow a surplus if they had the land available. However, this action also meant that the urban employees who had been protected against the greatest hardships of the famine now had to pay a higher price for their maize. The already existent pattern of spreading one's risks between a rural and an urban livelihood must have been reinforced by the experience of the famine and the price changes afterwards.
In conclusion, a background knowledge of the economic divisions existing in Blantyre district in the 1940s allows us to make a Sen-type classification of "entitlements" which would in part predict which sections of the population suffered most in 1949. The group which emerges as most disadvantaged in this model is that consisting of households which even in a normal year are not self-sufficient in food, who are short of land, and who make up their food deficit by performing casual labour for other peasant farmers. These households would be the first to suffer in a situation in which the local demand for labour fell drastically and when the price of foodstuffs was high. Unlike those households with employees in the "formal" sector, these casual labouring households were not cushioned by privileged access to food supplies or the paternalism of employers. The oral evidence, however, shows that there are added dimensions to the pattern of suffering. Firstly, it draws attention to the fact that in all groups some family members may have suffered disproportionately, and the poorer the group, the greater the disproportion likely. Both young children and the old suffered more than other age groups. In part this can be seen as a biological rather than social factor, but it is clear from the testimonies that not only were they less able physically to withstand food shortage, but they were also the first groups to be abandoned by their kin. Secondly, the oral evidence draws attention to the plight of women in the famine-to the fact that there were large numbers of women who were without the economic support of a husband even before the famine, and many more who found themselves in this position in the course of the famine. Again, the poorer the household, the more likely a husband was to abandon it, but this phenomenon cannot be fully understood without an understanding of marriage and kin ties in the area.
It is clear that the society's immediate and long-term responses to food shortage did affect the course of the famine, and in ways not predicted by the colonial authorities. In particular, the activation of long-distance kin ties and the communal knowledge of famine foods delayed the necessity for famine relief by about six months. On the other hand, the action of government in feeding the urban population and in eventually providing relief for rural families must have been fed into the community's own "model" of famine and would have conditioned many families into expecting the government to take on this role in the future.
There is no doubt that the 1949 famine was an event structured by the conditions of the post-war period in this area. By placing emphasis on the role of family relations and social structure I am not aiming to deny the role of economic analysis, but rather to indicate that these social aspects of famine are an integral part of the economic analysis.
Family and kin relations were also affected by the conditions of the 1940s by land shortage, labour patterns, government agricultural policies, wage levels and commodity prices as well as by older and less tangible factors such as marital relations and obligations, and attitudes to children.
The story of 1949 in Nyasaland shows that if we are going to understand the impact of famine we must see it in the context of the whole web of economic and social relations, from the level of the household to that of the state.
University of Cambridge Megan Vaughan
Footnotes
* I wish to acknowledge in particular the contribution made to fieldwork by John Yesaya and Humphrey Chindenga and gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Research and Publications Committee of the University of Malawi. This article was first presented as a paper to the American African Studies Association Conference in Boston, December 1983. I am indebted to the following people for their detailed comments and suggestions: William Beinart, Andrew Butcher, John Iliffe, Terence Ranger, Amartya Sen and Lan White.
1. John Seaman and Julius Holt, "Markets and Famines in the Third World", Disasters iv (1980); Pierre Spitz, Drought and Self-Provision in (working paper, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Geneva,1980). For an analysis of these and other reappraisals of famine, see Peter Cutler," Some Current Arguments on the Causes of Famine" (paper presented by the Nutrition Policy Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, to the UNICEF/FAO/NPU/ICAR Workshop on Nutrition in Agriculture Hassar, India, Apr. 1982).
3 Michael F. Lofchie, "Political and Economic Origins of African Hunger", 1.Mod.African Studies, xiii (1975), p p. 551-67; Nicole Ball, "Understanding the Causes of African Famine", Zl. Mod. African Studies, xiv (1976), pp. 517-23; Lionel Cliffe, "Feudalism, Capitalism and Famine in Ethiopia" Rev. African Polit. Econ., i no. 1 (1974); Deborah Fahy Bryceson," Changes in Peasant Food Production and Food Supply in Relation to the Historical Development of Commodity Production in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Tanganyika" 1, . Peasant Studies, vii (1980).
4 A. K. Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford, 1981). Sen's analysis of famine has been applied by other writers on Indian history. For example, Ajit Kumar Ghose," Food Supply and Starvation: A Study of Famines with Reference to the lndian Subcontinent "Oxford Econ. Papers, s YXXiV (1982); Elizabeth Oughton," The Maharashtra Droughts of 1970-73: An Analysis of Scarcity", Oxford Bull. Econ. and Statistics, xliv (1980).
5. A. K. Sen, "The Battle to Get Food", New Society (13 Oct. 1983). Sen has paid further attention to this issue in his "Economics and the Family"( public lecture in the Distinguished Speaker Series of the Asian Development Bank, Manila, 15 Sept. 1983).
6. The oral evidence used in this article comprises nearly two hundred interviews conducted in March-June1983 in the Blantyre, Chiradzulu and Zomba districts of southern Malawi. These interviews were conducted by the author and aided by students of Chancellor College, University of Malawi. Interviews were concentrated in areas known to have been severely affected by the 1949 famine, but within these areas selection of interviewees was random. Unless otherwise stated, all interviews cited for the purposes of the present article were conducted in the Blantyre district.
7. Interviews with J. Manyazi, Gulani village, Traditional Authority (hereafter T.A.) Chigaru; Village Headman Nyani, Nyani village, T.A. Malemia, Zomba district; Christine Somba, Somba village, T.A. Lundu.
8 Koke, kolole,
Koke, kolole,
Kamtambo mvula pano sibwera
Koke.
(Pull, pull hard, pull the clouds,
Why does the rain not come?
Pull, pull.)
Makolo anapita kale
Tatani ife wanu wanu
Tikhululukireni chonde! chonde!
Tivereni ife chifundo
Kodi mukufuna tife
Tumizani mvula.
(Our dead fathers
What have we done?
Forgive us, please, please!
(n. 8 con2.)
Have mercy on us.
Do you want us to die?
Please, please!
Send us rain.)
Sung by Bekana Saimon and friends, Masulani village, T.A. Chigaru. Throughout this essay I use the texts of songs as historical evidence. There are a number of problems with the use of this kind of information.The men and women who sang the songs claimed that they had been composed in 1949 and referred specifically to that famine, but of course there is no other evidence to prove this, and it is probable that many of these songs originated either before or after that date. It became apparent in the course of fieldwork that the survival of these songs was very uneven within the areas covered. One woman explained that the songs survive in areas where famine is a "live" issue, as in her home village where severe food shortages had been experienced in the three years preceding the interview. It is likely, then, that where these songs have survived they have done so in modified form, changing over the years to reflect current conditions. In other places they seem to have fallen out of usage. In part this might reflect a real increase in food security in these areas, but it also reflects the political rhetoric of Dr. Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Congress Party, which holds that famine is an issue confined to the colonial past. Some new songs about the 1949 famine are sung by women at political meetings and their content is rather different to that of the other songs. The following one, for example, is often sung by women of the Malawi Congress Party:
Timagona nenjo
Musanabwele Ngwazi
' Forty-nine, ' forty-nine, ' forty-nine,
Anzathu anatisiya.
(We slept without food
Before your arrival, Ngwazi [Dr. Banda].
'Forty-nine, 'forty-nine, 'forty-nine,
Our relatives and friends left us.)
Many of the songs collected are women's pounding songs, sung by two or more women while they pound maize in mortars. As will become apparent, many of these songs are critical of men and concerned with strains in the family system. In these cases it is sometimesv ery difficult to decide whether the issue of famine is the major concern or whether it is being used as a vehicle through which to express women's feelings on these other aspects of their lives. Despite all these problems, I have decided to make cautious use of the songs as they appear to reveal peoples' own perceptions of famine in a very direct way. Such evidence is completely lacking in the limited written reports which exist for the 1949 famine.
Many of the songs collected are women's pounding songs, sung by two or more women while they pound maize in mortars. As will become apparent, many of these songs are critical of men and concerned with strains in the family system. In these cases it is sometimesv ery difficult to decide whether the issue of famine is the major concern or whether it is being used as a vehicle through which to express women's feelings on these other aspects of their lives. Despite all these problems, I have decided to make cautious use of the songs as they appear to reveal peoples' own perceptions of famine in a very direct way. Such evidence is completely lacking in the limited written reports which exist for the 1949 famine.
9 Interviews with Wilfred Kampazaza, Mananan viillage, T .A. Machinjiri; Village Headman Somba, Somba village, T.A. Lundu; Ida Jemusi, Mtendera village,T .A. Kapeni. Some people felt that the famine was related to the war, which had recently ended: "Famine came only a shortwhile after countless people had died in the Second World War, and some said that the drought had come because God was angry about the War". Interview with Rabson Frank, Gulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
10 Grey hair, bald heads, bent backs and brickmakers feature in many of the testimonies, including interviews with Herbert Peter, John Kwadya village, T.A. Kapeni; Jameson Chisala, Kamlenga village, T.A. Machinjiri; Mai Nambewe Joni, Chitima village,T .A. Kapeni;Village Headman Gulani, Gulani village,T .A. Chigaru.
11 Interview with Lapken Moses Kanyenga, Padoko village, T .A. Machinjiri.
12 Interviews with Jameson Chisala, Kamlenga village, T.A. Machinjiri; Mai Mambewe Joni, Chitima village, T.A. Kapeni.
13 Interview with Virginia Yotana Nansato, Kaludzi village, T.A. Machinjiri.
14 Interview with Victor Misonje, Malanga village, T.A. Kapeni.
15 The advantages of these dimba gardens were mentioned in several interviews. For example, Dawa Somba, Somba village,T.A. Lundu:" Sweet potatoes and maize grown along the Lirangwe river survived, but nothing survived in ordinary gardens"; Mai Malita G lani, Gungulu village, T A. Chigaru: "None of my crops survived, but some peoplew ho had dimbas along the Lirangwe river were better off".
16 Interview with Michael Pote, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
17 Interview with Dorothy Kabichi, Mpira village, T.A. Kapeni.
18 Government concern about the possible disruptive effects of food shortages in urban areas is a theme in the history of famine and food riots in Europe. See John Walter and Keith Wrightson, "Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England", Past and Present, no. 71 (May 1976), pp. 22-42
19 Interview with Mai Nambewe Joni, Chitima village, T.A. Kapeni.
20 Interview with Mayani Ngolo, Chitima village, T.A. Kapeni.
21 Interview with Beyadi Misomali, Malunga village,T .A. Kapeni.
22 Interview with Thomson Chapimpha, Gulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
23 Interview with Layiti Rabson, Malunga village, T.A. Kapeni.
20 Interview with Mayani Ngolo, Chitima village, T.A. Kapeni.
21 Interview with Beyadi Misomali, Malunga village,T .A. Kapeni.
22 Interview with Thomson Chapimpha, Gulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
23 Interview with Layiti Rabson, Malunga village, T.A. Kapeni.
24 Interview with W. Kumpanda Lunzu Trading Centre.
25 Interview with Adam Diliza, Machinjiri village,T .A. Machinjiri. Ganyu is casual labour performed for other peasant households, usually in the form of piece-work.
26 Interview with K. Kalemba, Lunzu Trading Centre.
27 Interview with Mai Malita Gulani, Gungulu village, T.A. Chigaru.
28 Interviews with John Njoka, Machinjiri village,T .A. Machinjiri, Mrs. Nkupumula, Chimpira village, T.A. Machinjiri; Village Headman Somba, Somba village, T.A. Lundu; Beyadi Misomali, Malunga village, T.A. Kapeni.
29 Interview with J. Manyazi, Gulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
30 Both are apparently features of famine in widely different areas and circumstances:
Richard Pankhurst, "The Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888-1892: A New Assessment", 71. ffist. Medicine, xxi (1966); Derrick B. Jelliffe and Patrice Jelliffe, "The Effects of Starvation on the Function of the Family and of Society", in G. Blix, Y. Hofvander and Bo Valquist (eds.), Famine: A Symposium Dealing with Nutrition and Relief Operations Times of Disaster (Swedish Nutrition Foundation, David J. Campbell and David D . Stockholm, 1971); Trechter", Strategies for Coping with Food Consumption Shortage in the Mandara Mountains Region of North and Medicine, xvi (1982), pp. Cameroon."Social Science 2117-27.
31. See n. 8 above for a description of these.
32. Most societies in southern Malawi are organized around a system and matrilocal marriage. matrilineal inheritance The basic unit of society among the Nyanja, Yao and Lomwe people who inhabit Blantyre district is the sorority which usually comprises group, or mbumba group, a group of sisters, their husbands and children," guarded" by male relative, commonly an elder brother or who married into maternal uncle. The Ngoni men families in Blantyre district from the 1890s onwards came from a society which observed patrilineal rules and where patrilocal Evidence for the prevalence of marriage was the norm. these marriage links, and for the tensions which arose in such marriages, can be found in the records of the thtue rn of the Blantyre District Court, from century onwards: Malawi National Archives ( hereafter Blantyre District Court, BA 1, 1909-36. M.N.A.),
32. Most societies in southern Malawi are organized around a system and matrilocal marriage. matrilineal inheritance The basic unit of society among the Nyanja, Yao and Lomwe people who inhabit Blantyre district is the sorority which usually comprises group, or mbumba group, a group of sisters, their husbands and children," guarded" by male relative, commonly an elder brother or who married into maternal uncle. The Ngoni men families in Blantyre district from the 1890s onwards came from a society which observed patrilineal rules and where patrilocal Evidence for the prevalence of marriage was the norm. these marriage links, and for the tensions which arose in such marriages, can be found in the records of the thtue rn of the Blantyre District Court, from century onwards: Malawi National Archives ( hereafter Blantyre District Court, BA 1, 1909-36. M.N.A.),
33 Sung by Mrs. F. Michael and friends, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
34 Paja mumamuda mkamwini
Sung by Mrs. F. Michael and friends, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
Pamudzi pano mundikonda
35 The following is a list of the most frequently mentioned of these famine foods: nthudza, matondo and mapoza wild fruits; mapeta and chilazi varieties of wild yam which had to be cooked and washed several times if they were to be safe to eat; gugu a kind of grass, similar to sorghum; matomolo-fruits which look a little like mangoes; dzikolekole-roots, a bit like potatoes; mphandula and kalongonda wild beans; bamboo roots and banana roots pounded and left to dry into flour; green mangoes cooked into a liquid.
36 "Famineo edema" is a common feature of food shortage and was almost certainly not due to the eating of these foods. See A . Keys et al., The Biology of Human Starvation, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, 1950), ii, The Edema Problem.
37 Interview with Bekana Saimon, Masulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
38 Nyasaland migrants in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa heard quickly about the famine taking place at home. An article on the subject was published in the Communist-backed publication, the Guardian, in South Africa.The article accused the Nyasaland government of negligence. Henceforth the Nyasaland Public Relations Officer attempted to censor all reports of the famine leaving the country: M.N.A., MP 12324," Famine Precautions, 1949". Some men interviewed had themselves been migrants at the time of the famine: Donald M pira of Mpira village, T.A. Kapeni, was working in Southern Rhodesia at the end of 1948 and received many letters from relatives asking for money to buy maize; Michael Phiyo of Chitima village, T.A. Kapeni, was working in the mines in South Africa and also heard stories of the famine at home; Flackson Madyera of Somba village, T.A. Lundu, was working as a cook in Southern Rhodesia at the time: "I used to receive insistent letters, especially from my mother, asking me to send money because they had no food. At first I thought this was a lie and did nothing, then a friend who had come back from holiday in Nyasaland said that there was terrible suffering at home and advised me to send money without delay".
39 Interview with Dawa Somba, Somba village, T.A. Lundu.
43 For example:
Wakwatiwa ndi kamnyamata
44 Interviews with Mrs. Chomboko, Mpira village, T.A. Lunzu, whose husband was in South Africa at the time and sent her money regularly; Mrs. Nabanda, Gomu village,T .A. Machinjiri, whose three sons sent her money from South Africa; Mrs. Nandauka, Somba village, T.A. Lundu.
45 The role of amenorrhoeian bringing about a fall in the rate of conception during famines is now well documented for Europe in the twentieth century, and there is evidence to show that it was also a factor in seventeenth-century famines: E . Le Roy Ladurie," Amenorrheain Time of Famine, Seventeenth to Twentieth Century", in E. Le Roy Ladurie (ed.), The Tetntoty of the Historian, trans. Ben and Sian Reynolds (Hassocks, 1979),p p. 255-73. A decline in libido and a higher incidence of miscarriage are other factors which commonly lower the birth rate during famine: Jelliffe, "Effects of Starvation"p, . 57.
46 Sung by Mrs. F. Michael, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
47 Interview with Elizabeth Gomani, Malunga village, T.A. Kapeni. In the early stages of starvation human lactation appears to be little affected, but because of the relationship between lactation and psychological conditions, maternal anxiety can sometimes bring about the termination of lactation. Furthermore, on ee severe chronic malnutrition sets in, lactation declines and ceases: Jelliffe," Effects of Starvation" p, .56.
48 What written evidence we have confirms that young children suffered badly, as well as old people and nursing mothers. At Lirangwe in January 1950 the crowd awaiting famine relief included three or four hundred children, all in an advanced state of malnutrition, and some of whom were moribund. M.N.A., AFC 3/211, District Commissioner, Blantyre, to Provincial Commissioner, Southern Province, andProvincial Commissioner, Southern Province, to Chief Secretary, 17 Jan. 1950.
49 Sung by a group of women, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
50 Ubombo is a word expressing the custom of people helping each other at times of trouble, such as dearth.
51 Ndigopita Limbe
54 M.N.A., AFC 312/1, District Commissioner, Blantyre, to Provincial Commissioner, Southern Province,30 Jan. 1950:; ;The physical condition of the people buying at Lirangwe Food Distribution Centre continues to deteriorate. The old people, children and some nursing mothers are generally extremely emaciated and incapable of even light work. On 12th January, sixty people suffering from malnutrition or starvation are in hospitali n Blantyre. Of these, forty-three are from the areas of T.A. Lundu and Chigaru, and were admitted to hospital after having been seen at the Lirangwe Food Distribution Centre.There are three 'unknown' children who were found by the police wandering in the Blantyre area begging, and who were in a starving condition". See also n. 48 above.
55 Of the sixty people in hospital in Blantyre suffering from malnutrition in January 1950, only eleven were men: M.N.A., AFC 3/211.
56 Interviews with Walter Chotha, Nkama Xikvai llage, T.A. Machinjiri; Michael Pote, Kandiov illage,T .A. Kapeni; Ballon Kachere, Masulani village,T .A. Chigaru; Mrs. F. Kamowa, Mbera village,T .A. Kapeni. This evidence is difficult to interpret though research into psychological changes during starvation shows that "anxiety' may be related to infection and to the suppression of the body's own pain-relieving n energy-conserving substances (endorphins) J:. P. Carter," The Physiology of Fasting, Famine, Starvation and Stress", in J. P. Carter( ed.), Famine in Africa: Proceedings of the Conference of a Working Group on Famine in Africa, Kinshasa3, 'anuaty 1980 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 19-20.
57 Interview with Salima, Masulani village, T.A. Kapeni.
58 It is difficult to know how literally to interpret this widespread story. Certainly there was a young European woman( probably a Red Cross volunteer) who is well remembered for her harshness in maintaining order in the food queues. Interviews with Dorothy Kabichi, Mpira village, T.A. Kapeni (who worked in the relief camp); Mrs. Dorofe Jemusi, T .A. Machinjiri also a relief camp assistant; Christine Somba, Somba village, T.A. Lundu; Mrs. N. Mandauka, Somba village, T .A. Lundu( who remembers being slapped by the white lady at the distribution centre); Village Headman Gulani, Gulani village, T .A. Chigaru ( "On my way to Lunzu every morning I saw hundreds of people going to the centre. My mother used to tell me that they were whipped in the queue by adona").
59 Interview with Anderson Fred, Malunga village, T.A. Kapeni.
60 M.N.A., AFC 3/2/1, Provincial , Southern Province, to Chief Secretary, 17 Jan. 1950.
61 Interview with Nabanda Gomu, T.A. Machinjiri. "This was the time when agricultural officials enforced new systems of farming box ridges and bunds were to be made by force. People took it as a sort of punishment.Those who failed to follow the system were arrested, beaten and charged in the traditional courts. Those who were imprisoned were released aftera short time because they could not feed them".
62 Interview with Agnes Siwetala, Nkawajika village,T .A. Machinjiri.
63 Interview with Salome Alfred Solomon, Mthini village, T.A. Machinjiri. Famine and disease are closely linked in history. Many more people die from epidemic disease during or aftera famine than from actual starvation. To some extent the spread of disease is related to a decline in resistance among severely malnourished people, though some e xperts argue that it is more principally related to the increase in mobility
64 Sung by Bekana Saimon, Masulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
65 Official histories of both these companies were written by the Government Lands Officer in the 1940s.These histories stressed the fact that both companies' vast land reserves had remained largely unexploited until the mid-1930s.
67 M.N.A., NSB 7/1/4, "Annual Reports for the Blantyre and Central Shire Districts, 1937 and 1938".
68 M.N.A., NSB 7/1/5. See also the results of the Blantyre district village survey conducted in 1944. The village surveyed was close to the town boundary and therefore not representative of the district as a whole, but in this village the mean acreage cultivated was 127 per household. M .N.A., AGR 3/7, "Village Surveys, 1944".
69 Nyasaland Government, Annual Report of the Labour Department for 1939 ( Zomba, 1940), and Annual Report of the Labour Department for 1949 (Zomba, 1950).
70 An exhaustive list of these occupations, a long with average earnings for each, was included in the Report of the Census of 1931 (Zomba, 1932).
71 M.N.A., NSB 3/12/1, "Cost of Living, 1947-9".
72 In 1924 the number of passes issued to men from Blantyre district who wished to work outside the Protectorate was 235. By 1944 this figure had risen to 2,116. It should be noted that this figure grossly underestimates the number of men who actually left, as most went informally as independent migrants. It is, however, indicative of an increasing tendency to migrate on the part of men from the more congested areas of
73 M.N.A., AGR 3/7, "Village Surveys: Survey of Matope Village, T.A. Kapeni, Blantyre District". This contains details of the holding sizes and employment patterns of twenty households.
74 M.N.A., LB 5/4/1, "Fiscal Survey,1945-6: P reliminary Notes by Phyllis Deane on the Taxable Capacity of Nyasaland, 1945".
34 Paja mumamuda mkamwini
Kati ndiwoyipa
Nanga suyu wandipulumutsa ku njalayi
Nanga suyu wandisunga ine
Kundipedzeza chakudya.
([A young womana ddressingh er mother:]
You were saying that your son-in-law
Was a bad man.
But he is the one who has saved
Me from hunger.
He is the one who has kept me,
Finding me food.)
Sung by Mrs. F. Michael and friends, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
Pamudzi pano mundikonda
Chifukwa cha njalayi
Koma ikatha
Mudzizena zambiri.
([A man addressingh is wife's relations:]
You in this village, you love me now
Because of the famine,
Because I brought food here.
But when it ends,
You will start saying many things.)
Sung by Mr. Mubulala, Chikande village, T.A. Kuntaja.
35 The following is a list of the most frequently mentioned of these famine foods: nthudza, matondo and mapoza wild fruits; mapeta and chilazi varieties of wild yam which had to be cooked and washed several times if they were to be safe to eat; gugu a kind of grass, similar to sorghum; matomolo-fruits which look a little like mangoes; dzikolekole-roots, a bit like potatoes; mphandula and kalongonda wild beans; bamboo roots and banana roots pounded and left to dry into flour; green mangoes cooked into a liquid.
36 "Famineo edema" is a common feature of food shortage and was almost certainly not due to the eating of these foods. See A . Keys et al., The Biology of Human Starvation, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, 1950), ii, The Edema Problem.
37 Interview with Bekana Saimon, Masulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
38 Nyasaland migrants in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa heard quickly about the famine taking place at home. An article on the subject was published in the Communist-backed publication, the Guardian, in South Africa.The article accused the Nyasaland government of negligence. Henceforth the Nyasaland Public Relations Officer attempted to censor all reports of the famine leaving the country: M.N.A., MP 12324," Famine Precautions, 1949". Some men interviewed had themselves been migrants at the time of the famine: Donald M pira of Mpira village, T.A. Kapeni, was working in Southern Rhodesia at the end of 1948 and received many letters from relatives asking for money to buy maize; Michael Phiyo of Chitima village, T.A. Kapeni, was working in the mines in South Africa and also heard stories of the famine at home; Flackson Madyera of Somba village, T.A. Lundu, was working as a cook in Southern Rhodesia at the time: "I used to receive insistent letters, especially from my mother, asking me to send money because they had no food. At first I thought this was a lie and did nothing, then a friend who had come back from holiday in Nyasaland said that there was terrible suffering at home and advised me to send money without delay".
39 Interview with Dawa Somba, Somba village, T.A. Lundu.
40 Interview with Mai Malita Gulani, Gungulu village, T.A. Chigaru.
41 Interview with Rabson Frank, Gulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
42 Sung by Mrs. F. Kamowa, Mbera village, T.A. Kapeni. See also many interviews with women, including: S. Ganet, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni; Agnes Siwetela, Nkawajika village, T.A. Machinjiri (whose husband left her during the famine and never returned).
43 For example:
Wakwatiwa ndi kamnyamata
Kodya nkasiya
Chiri kwathu chingupiti
Ngati aphika achimana.
(You are married to a young man
Who eats and leaves some food on the plate.
But my husband is different. He eats up the whole plate of food
Like a dog
As if he won't eat tomorrow.)
Chikado cha amunanga, chikado eee
EEE ijeremani
Mwamuna chiwiri sindimfuna
Ndifuna wandekha
Nkati kasinja nandiyamika
Mzungu ayi
Ndifuna mwana mngeleli
Wogona mmatilesi, chitseko panulosi
Eeee, eee, ijeremani.
(I don't need a man with two wives.
I want mine only
So that when I pound
He must thank me.
Neither do I need any European.
But I would like an Englishman
Who sleeps on a mattress
In a house with a nice door
But not a German.)
Sung by Mrs. F. Kamowa, Mbera village, T.A. Kapeni.
44 Interviews with Mrs. Chomboko, Mpira village, T.A. Lunzu, whose husband was in South Africa at the time and sent her money regularly; Mrs. Nabanda, Gomu village,T .A. Machinjiri, whose three sons sent her money from South Africa; Mrs. Nandauka, Somba village, T.A. Lundu.
45 The role of amenorrhoeian bringing about a fall in the rate of conception during famines is now well documented for Europe in the twentieth century, and there is evidence to show that it was also a factor in seventeenth-century famines: E . Le Roy Ladurie," Amenorrheain Time of Famine, Seventeenth to Twentieth Century", in E. Le Roy Ladurie (ed.), The Tetntoty of the Historian, trans. Ben and Sian Reynolds (Hassocks, 1979),p p. 255-73. A decline in libido and a higher incidence of miscarriage are other factors which commonly lower the birth rate during famine: Jelliffe, "Effects of Starvation"p, . 57.
46 Sung by Mrs. F. Michael, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
47 Interview with Elizabeth Gomani, Malunga village, T.A. Kapeni. In the early stages of starvation human lactation appears to be little affected, but because of the relationship between lactation and psychological conditions, maternal anxiety can sometimes bring about the termination of lactation. Furthermore, on ee severe chronic malnutrition sets in, lactation declines and ceases: Jelliffe," Effects of Starvation" p, .56.
48 What written evidence we have confirms that young children suffered badly, as well as old people and nursing mothers. At Lirangwe in January 1950 the crowd awaiting famine relief included three or four hundred children, all in an advanced state of malnutrition, and some of whom were moribund. M.N.A., AFC 3/211, District Commissioner, Blantyre, to Provincial Commissioner, Southern Province, andProvincial Commissioner, Southern Province, to Chief Secretary, 17 Jan. 1950.
49 Sung by a group of women, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
50 Ubombo is a word expressing the custom of people helping each other at times of trouble, such as dearth.
51 Ndigopita Limbe
Ndikakwere bus
Makwacha ndine ndemwe
Makonyora, aye makonyora
Lilongwe makonyora
Limbe makonyora
Blantyre makonyora
Salisbury makonyora.
(I must go to Limbe
And board a bus.
My body will pay the fare.
It will do, it will do.
In Lilongwe, my body will do,
In Limbe it will do,
In Blantyre it will do
And in Salisbury, it will produce money.)
Sung by a group of women, Kandio village, T.A. Kapeni.
52 M.N.A., AFC 7/2/1, "Memo on Famine Relief, May 1950".
53 M.N.A., AFC 3/1/l) "Feeding of Aged and Infirmed who are Destitute".
54 M.N.A., AFC 312/1, District Commissioner, Blantyre, to Provincial Commissioner, Southern Province,30 Jan. 1950:; ;The physical condition of the people buying at Lirangwe Food Distribution Centre continues to deteriorate. The old people, children and some nursing mothers are generally extremely emaciated and incapable of even light work. On 12th January, sixty people suffering from malnutrition or starvation are in hospitali n Blantyre. Of these, forty-three are from the areas of T.A. Lundu and Chigaru, and were admitted to hospital after having been seen at the Lirangwe Food Distribution Centre.There are three 'unknown' children who were found by the police wandering in the Blantyre area begging, and who were in a starving condition". See also n. 48 above.
55 Of the sixty people in hospital in Blantyre suffering from malnutrition in January 1950, only eleven were men: M.N.A., AFC 3/211.
56 Interviews with Walter Chotha, Nkama Xikvai llage, T.A. Machinjiri; Michael Pote, Kandiov illage,T .A. Kapeni; Ballon Kachere, Masulani village,T .A. Chigaru; Mrs. F. Kamowa, Mbera village,T .A. Kapeni. This evidence is difficult to interpret though research into psychological changes during starvation shows that "anxiety' may be related to infection and to the suppression of the body's own pain-relieving n energy-conserving substances (endorphins) J:. P. Carter," The Physiology of Fasting, Famine, Starvation and Stress", in J. P. Carter( ed.), Famine in Africa: Proceedings of the Conference of a Working Group on Famine in Africa, Kinshasa3, 'anuaty 1980 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 19-20.
57 Interview with Salima, Masulani village, T.A. Kapeni.
58 It is difficult to know how literally to interpret this widespread story. Certainly there was a young European woman( probably a Red Cross volunteer) who is well remembered for her harshness in maintaining order in the food queues. Interviews with Dorothy Kabichi, Mpira village, T.A. Kapeni (who worked in the relief camp); Mrs. Dorofe Jemusi, T .A. Machinjiri also a relief camp assistant; Christine Somba, Somba village, T.A. Lundu; Mrs. N. Mandauka, Somba village, T .A. Lundu( who remembers being slapped by the white lady at the distribution centre); Village Headman Gulani, Gulani village, T .A. Chigaru ( "On my way to Lunzu every morning I saw hundreds of people going to the centre. My mother used to tell me that they were whipped in the queue by adona").
59 Interview with Anderson Fred, Malunga village, T.A. Kapeni.
60 M.N.A., AFC 3/2/1, Provincial , Southern Province, to Chief Secretary, 17 Jan. 1950.
61 Interview with Nabanda Gomu, T.A. Machinjiri. "This was the time when agricultural officials enforced new systems of farming box ridges and bunds were to be made by force. People took it as a sort of punishment.Those who failed to follow the system were arrested, beaten and charged in the traditional courts. Those who were imprisoned were released aftera short time because they could not feed them".
62 Interview with Agnes Siwetala, Nkawajika village,T .A. Machinjiri.
63 Interview with Salome Alfred Solomon, Mthini village, T.A. Machinjiri. Famine and disease are closely linked in history. Many more people die from epidemic disease during or aftera famine than from actual starvation. To some extent the spread of disease is related to a decline in resistance among severely malnourished people, though some e xperts argue that it is more principally related to the increase in mobility
which usually accompanies famines: J elliffe," Effects of Starvation" p, . 58.
64 Sung by Bekana Saimon, Masulani village, T.A. Chigaru.
66 M.N.A., LB 4/2/1, "Conditions on Estates,1941-51: Agreement between A . L. Bruce, Magomero, and Tenants". Under this agreement a tenant( who might be a man or a married woman) had to pay an annual rent of 12s. in respect of the first hut, and an additional half-rent for any other huts built. Unmarried women were liable to a rent of 6s. If a tenant worked for five or six months for his landlord at a wage of 6s. a month, then he would not be liable for this rent. Alternatively the tenant could pay off his rental obligations by growing a cash crop which he would sell to his landlord. For instance, for every 12 5 lbs. of tobacco which a tenant sold to his landlord, his rent would be reduced by 1s . (but only by 6d. if the tenant was an unmarried woman).
67 M.N.A., NSB 7/1/4, "Annual Reports for the Blantyre and Central Shire Districts, 1937 and 1938".
68 M.N.A., NSB 7/1/5. See also the results of the Blantyre district village survey conducted in 1944. The village surveyed was close to the town boundary and therefore not representative of the district as a whole, but in this village the mean acreage cultivated was 127 per household. M .N.A., AGR 3/7, "Village Surveys, 1944".
69 Nyasaland Government, Annual Report of the Labour Department for 1939 ( Zomba, 1940), and Annual Report of the Labour Department for 1949 (Zomba, 1950).
70 An exhaustive list of these occupations, a long with average earnings for each, was included in the Report of the Census of 1931 (Zomba, 1932).
71 M.N.A., NSB 3/12/1, "Cost of Living, 1947-9".
72 In 1924 the number of passes issued to men from Blantyre district who wished to work outside the Protectorate was 235. By 1944 this figure had risen to 2,116. It should be noted that this figure grossly underestimates the number of men who actually left, as most went informally as independent migrants. It is, however, indicative of an increasing tendency to migrate on the part of men from the more congested areas of
the Southern Province. Earlier in the Protectorate history labour migration had been largely a phenomenon of the "underdeveloped" central and northern areas.
73 M.N.A., AGR 3/7, "Village Surveys: Survey of Matope Village, T.A. Kapeni, Blantyre District". This contains details of the holding sizes and employment patterns of twenty households.
74 M.N.A., LB 5/4/1, "Fiscal Survey,1945-6: P reliminary Notes by Phyllis Deane on the Taxable Capacity of Nyasaland, 1945".
75 See n. 32 above. For the long-term returns to kin obligations, see Maurice Bloch, "The Long Term and the Short Term: The Economic and Political Significance of the Morality of Kinship", in Jack Goody ( ed.), The Character of Kinship (Cambridge, 1973).
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