THE UNCLE TOMS OF ETHIOPIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 282, 2 December 1935, Page 10

THE UNCLE TOMS OF ETHIOPIA

THE SLAVE SYSTEM STILL EXISTING THERE HAS RECEIVED NO SYMPATHY FROM GREAT BRITAIN, AND FUGITIVES TO BRITISH TERRITORY BECOME FREE MEN

VO SOONER had Haili Sellussie 1. proclaimed the imminence of a defensive war than his 2.000,000 chattel slaves (Lady Simon thinks he may have 1,000,000 more!) began to stampede into British territory. What happens to them when they gain the shelter of the Union Jack, and can defy the red, green and gold of the Conquering Lion of Ethiopia? Hereby hangs the strangest of Britain’s humane activities. Look at the map and you see Ethiopia hemmed in by British colonies: Kenya and Uganda to the south, Somaliland on the north, 1,000,000 square miles of the AngloEgyptian Sudan to the west. This last is being wholly changed by water works on an inrmense and costly scale. Both the White and Blue Niles now spread their fruitful floods in thirsty spaces. Here are cotton plantations that bid fair to make Lancashire independent of America’s supplies. Ten million British workers depend on this trade for their daily bread. Imports of raw cotton have reached £70.690,000 a year, and exports of the fabric came to £127.200,000. All told, the British capital involved in this mightly industry exceeds £500,000,000. India’s 5.000,000 bales have been found too short in staple; but the “Sakel” cotton of the Sudan is of first-rate quality. Therefore government loans, new railways, roads and canals, as well as giant schemes like the Mak war Dam and Gebel Aulia on the Blue (or Abyssinian) Nile—here are tokens of Britain’s new bid for “Empire” cotton and economic self-sufficiency. Above all comes the impending conservation of water at Lake Tana in the Gojam highlands of Ethiopia proper. There the Blue Nile—which is the true life blood of Egypt and the Sudan —pours out of an old volcanic crater at 600 feet. And control of this source in a semi-barbarous land has for the past 40 years been a grave anxiety to Downing Street and the subject of many treaties —notably with the Emperor Menelik. Then the slave system in his loose realm has long been an added problem. Ethiopia’s feudal lords have always dealt in slaves. Their local troops had special hunting grounds which were rounded up for hapless men, women and children. Federal taxes were paid in these slaves instead of cash. Some of the provincial rases owned 10.000 serfs on their lands, in their fortress palaces and Jocal armies. The native church also favoured the slave trade. Acceptable gifts to the great—even to the present Emperor—might be made in this “currency “I

On the coast a girl may be worth £5O; she will fetch twice as much in Mecca or Medina. But iu the Red Sea, Britain Admiralty blocks “the trade.” It maintains there small war sloops like .he Penzance and Hastings, of 1000 tuns with four-inch guns. These vessels carry secret “slave-trade instructions. “ They lie in wait for the Arab sailing dhows full of captives; and, once on board the warships, these helpless creature become free and pass into the Sudan. When Ethiopia’s own hot lowland “coverts” have grown thin, the slave chasers cross over into British territory in quest of prey—with camels, cattle and ivory also seized.as useful side lines of a sudden swoop. It costs Kenya alone £40,000 a year to keep these raiders at hay, and many a fierce battle have the King’s African Rifles had with them. On tire whole, Ethiopia’s domestic serfs are fairly well treated; housed, fed and clothed and not overworked. But in remoter parts, 40 or 50 days* travel from Addis Ababa, slaves employed on the land or as castle retainers are often flogged, branded or chained for misconduct at a despotic master’s will. In all cases they are held as “property” so long as they live; an owner would no sooner think of paying a sbve for his or her labour than he would pay a mule for ploughing or a cow for giving her milk. As a result, the “bondsman” mentality is a blunk where “mine-or-thine” is concerned. Slaves freed by the present Emperor’s edicts and courts have taken to robbery in an “innocent” way! Said His Majesty to Lord Noel Buxton in 1932: 44 1 f I liberated them all with a stroke of my pen—as President Lincoln did in America—what could these feeblefolk do, bereft of the masters who feed them? They would take to the caravan trails as shiftas (highway robbers). So we must go slowly with this reform.” But the tumult of preparation against invasive war his quickened the pace, and that in unlooked for ways. These slaves now decamp wholesale! No love of country can inspire such human “chattels.” Then out of the West, where their own Nile bonds in a 300-mile gorge to the Sudan, comes news of an alluring Utopia. There (it is whispered), under Britain’s flag, they will be free mon and women! It is not easy for them to grasp the full meaning of this. But they do hear of money being given, for . w orl: iu the Sudan’s cotton fields. Over there they

-may come and go as they please without fear of chains or the lash, of neck yokes and hot branding irons. British Foreign Office officials in Ethiopia —notably Major Darley, of the Boundary Cuniinission —tell lurid tales of the man hunts that replenish the slave marts: “Today one may march for days in this deserted region. The terraces are still there, but the people who sow and reap are either dead or else slaves in the capital.” It is no wonder, then, that the cottongrowing Sudan has become what Lady Simon calls “the Land of Refuge.” The westward flight grew in volume while Sir Austen Chamberlain was Foreign Minister. “Refugees from Abyssinia,” he says in an unofficial letter, “sometimes appear in the Rosieres and Kurmuk districts of the Fung Province. As a rule, they come in twos and threes, or else singly. But there have been recent cases when large groups of 100, or even 150, have crossed over into this province out of Abyssinia.” Sir Austen goes on to tell of another slave stampede into the Kassala region. Here new transport facilities with plant breeding and culture on the largest scale have resulted in bumper cotton crops of the “sakel” type, which Lancashire’s spindles can use without changing machinery. So the Foreign Minister could report that: “173 slaves have escaped to Gedaref, a district headquarters 75 miles from the frontier. These arc ‘registered’ cases only; it is probable that other slaves have reached the Sudan of whom no record exists.” Needless to say, no “delivery” is made under Britain’s flag. “In no case,” says the British Foreign Minister, “has any escaped slave been sent back to Abyssinia.” To-day they are well provided for. “These people” as Sir Austen remarks in an unofficial letter which 1 have seen—“are given the option of settling in various localities in the Rosieres district. Some are at least sixty miles from the frontier, and refugee colonies have been formed. Or they can move to the north of the Fung Province, a still greater distance away. Most of the ex-slaves prefer the former region, and there they are given land for their houses and cultivation. In certain cases, where large bodies of slaves have entered the Sudan in a state of destitution, government loans have been granted to them: these are repayable after their harvest is got in. And in addition the past year’s taxes have been remitted. ’ *