Page 56 - 2020 SoMJ Vol 73 No 2_Neat

Notes on the Death of Anna Marie Hlawaczek 47

at Surukhu (Pangomani). As mentioned, the first Collector (District Officer) was
John Bell. He would have initially been based at the Makuala fort.
There was much military activity in this part of the district at that time.
In October 1893, just a fortnight or so after the death of Anna Marie, as part of the
initiative to stop the slave trade, a detachment of 100 Sikhs led by Bell, was
deployed to contain the road robberies and the kidnapping of women for the slave
trade. Bell visited Chief Makanda with a detachment of Sikhs in the hope of
persuading Makanda to desist. Makanda, a Yao, had sought refuge in the slopes
of the mountain having fled there after being driven by the Ngoni from his home
on Chiradzulu Mountain. Bell burnt some huts while trying to collect tax.
Makanda then, as a reprisal, attacked the party and later the Church of Scotland
Mission in the Likabula Valley at Namondwe on the borders of his territory.
Makanda’s men captured the guns and ammunition of the missionaries and they
also burnt down the mission buildings. Help was summoned from Fort Lister and
after a few days ‘hard fighting’ in the ‘crags and precipices’ of the mountain
Makanda and his men made terms and ‘returned to their country’. The
Missionaries fled south east and sought refuge at the new administrative quarters
at the Mwinga fort.
Mwinga/Cipendo
The upheavals in the western part of the district, as outlined above,
necessitated the relocation of the Administration (Boma) and in the second half of
1893, around when Anna Marie arrived in the district, it was being relocated to
the ‘British fort’ near Portuguese East Africa (PEA) in the south east corner of the
district which had been established in about 1891 to guard the slave route round
the south end of the mountain. The fact that the Boma was now located there
meant that the place was designated Fort Anderson. Edward Laidlaw Thomson
states that Anna Marie fell ill at ‘Bell’s Station’ on the Ruo, so it seems that in
September 1893 the name of Fort Anderson for Mwinga was only just coming
into official use. (Rangeley refers to the location of this fort as Cipendo rather
than Mwinga).
In letters to his mother in mid-1893, Edward Laidlaw Thomson, who had
only just arrived in the country, referred to the ongoing construction of the fort: “I
walked over to the Ruo where Bell is building a new station. It is to be made a fort
afterwards” (23.7.1893). “I went over to the fort on the Ruo and saw Bell. He is
getting on nicely with his new station” (10.9.1893) – this was two weeks before
Anna Marie died.
An undated but detailed map entitled ‘Old Fort Anderson and Ruo River’
in the Society of Malawi archive shows the fort to be on the north bank of the Ruo
River and downstream of the confluence of the Ruo and Mluzi (sic) rivers. It is
west of ‘Manga’ and Morea’s village. The fort is of a hexagonal design. There are
no other buildings of substance within the compound. Two graveyards are marked
in the vicinity: the first, entitled ‘burial place’, is on the banks of the Ruo