Livingstone’s Tribe
A Journey from Zanzibar to the Cape
STEPHEN TAYLOR
William Collins
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This edition 2000
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1999
Copyright © Stephen Taylor 1999
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Maps copyright © Duncan Stewart 1999
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Source ISBN: 9780006550693
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN 9780007394661
Version: 2016-01-12
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To my children, Wilfred and Juliette
Contents
THIS IS AN ACCOUNT of a journey in search of a dying tribe. Even at the time I was travelling, in 1997, it was clear that whites as an ethnic minority were doomed in most parts of Africa. It seemed as though the colonial era had belonged to another century rather than to the previous generation. In Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia the whites had all but disappeared; in Kenya they clung on diffidently. In Southern Africa, however, there remained hope. Although politically redundant, their economic influence appeared to assure them a future.
My interest in the whites who stayed on in what used to be rather quaintly known as ‘Black Africa’ dates back to the imperial retreat. From the bastion of South Africa, I grew up in the 1960s observing what became a familiar process. As each new African state acquired its independence, the old colonial hands would decamp. Some returned to Britain, but most flinched from the prospect of rationed sunlight and costly alcohol. Ultimately, much of this human debris was borne by the winds of change to South Africa.
The fact that the withdrawal coincided with the seemingly unstoppable rise of apartheid helped shape my own response to these events. When self-styled refugees from African rule came among us, bursting with the same racism as the dour, resentful xenophobes in charge of our own society, it seemed only natural to identify with those they had left behind. Even when the promise of uhuru gave way to cupidity, corruption and worse, the whites who continued to identify with African aspirations to the extent of sharing their fate acquired a certain defiantly heroic status.