Page 47 - SoMJ Vol 74 - No 1, 2021

The Mwasi Expedition 1895 37

The Mwasi [Mwase] Expedition:
The subjugation of Chief Mwasi of Kasungu and the capture of the
slaver Saidi Mwuzungu by British Central African Forces under
Lieutenant Edward Alston.

nd
th
26 December 1895 – 2 January 1896.

David Stuart-Mogg

Flushed with euphoria at the defeat and the execution of the Swahili Arab
th
slaver Mlozi bin Kazbadema of Mpata on the 5 December 1895, H.M.
Commissioner and Consul-General Harry Johnston resolved to prosecute his
determined war against the few remaining Swahili Arab enclaves in British
Central Africa (BCA) with a renewed vigour.
The first on his list was not in fact a Swahili Arab at all, but the
Achewa Chief Mwasi [Mwase], a close ally of Swahili Arab slavers, whose town
was situated near Kasungu Mountain and controlled the main slaving route from
the north-west (today’s Zambia) to Kota Kota [Nkotakota] on the lake. From
there, slaves would be ferried in dhows across Lake Nyasa [Lake Malawi] and
pitilessly driven onwards to the barracoons and ports of the Indian Ocean littoral.
Some survived as far as Zanzibar for eventual re-sale in the slave markets of
Arabia and Baluchistan.
There appear to have been several compelling reasons that Harry
Johnston selected Mwasi as his first post-Mlozi objective. Firstly, there were
battle-seasoned troops immediately available awaiting lake steamer transport
from Karonga at the north end of the lake, close to Mlozi’s former Mpata boma,
to their bases in the south of the country. Stopping off at Kota Kota on their way
south, from where an expedition could be effectively launched against Mwasi at
Kasungu some 60 miles to the west, made eminent sense. Secondly, Mwasi was
proving a sharp thorn in the side of Johnston’s representative at Kota Kota, Alfred
Swann, in that over a wide area Mwasi aggressively discouraged any cooperation
with Johnston’s nascent administration, caused widespread disruption and openly
threatened violence. Thirdly and perhaps most important to Johnston in that it
provided him with justification for violent confrontation, was that Mwasi was
harbouring Saidi Mwuzungu, a mixed-race slaver originally from Kilwa.
Mwuzungu was held principally responsible for the treacherous murder,
in December 1891 under a flag of truce, of Dr Sorbji Boyce the Parsee medical
doctor responsible for Indian military contingent in BCA and of McEwan, the first
officer of the lake steamer Domira. At the time Boyce and McEwan had been at
Makanjira’s [Makanjila’s] negotiating the return of the bodies of Captain Cecil
Montgomery Maguire, seconded from the Haiderabad Contingent Lancers, and