Weakened by four years of war, incessant work, and insufficient food, the people of Northern Rhodesia were an easy prey for the influenza pandemic when it
struck the territory in late 1918 early 1919.45 Deserting and discharged carriers
and porters carried the disease far and wide across the territory, bringing life to a standstill and appearing to herald the end of time. Spanish influenza struck people irrespective of race or class, and this would have a profound effect on African perceptions vis-à-vis their colonisers. The Mwinilunga District Notebook provides a succinct account of the pandemic that holds true for all the other districts of Northern Rhodesia at the time:
Influenza. This disease was brought to the district by returning war transport carriers, and from December 1918 to May 1919 almost every native went down. The death rate was heavy: in five months nearly 500 natives were reported to have died – in addition to this many died whose names were not registered, owing to their youth, so their deaths were not reported. … The mortality in this corner seems to have been much heavier than in the adjacent districts – due doubtless to the fact that the disease arrived here when the natives were hungrier than usual.46
Native Commissioner Theodore Williams, who had started his career as a probationer in Mwinilunga before the war, came to be stationed at Solwezi at the end of the war and provided a detailed account of the spread of the disease in
43 NAZ, KTJ 3/1, Mumbwa District Note Book, vol. 1, p. 421. 44 NAZ, KTJ 3/1, Mumbwa District Note Book, vol. 1, p. 396. 45
Jan-Bart Gewald, ‘Spanish influenza in Africa: Some comments regarding source material and future research’, ASC Working Paper 77 (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2007). Standard work on the Influenza epidemic in Zambia see, Mwelwa Musambachime, ‘The influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919 in Northern Rhodesia’. In: Zambia Journal of History, 1993/94, nos. 6/7, 59.
letters to his mother. Williams described how, whilst being on tour through the district, ‘an increasing number of my carriers [came to be] complaining of “head & chest” and the possibility that we might have got Spanish flu infection was just
beginning to dawn on me’.47 Messages sent to Williams from the Boma
confirmed that the disease had arrived at Solwezi. The party of men that
accompanied Williams, his cooks, messenger, and carriers became ‘hors de
Combat. So I made up my mind to it that we had got S.F. [Spanish flu] and that
the best thing to do was to [go] into quarantine’.48 However, Williams was well
aware that inadvertently his party had contributed to the spread of the disease, and he agonised about the fact that it was he who had spread the disease with his party of carriers:
It is a terrible thought that I myself may be the vehicle of spreading S.F. through all Nwkinanzofus villages - … all of which I visited after the first few carriers were complaining of what all 25 are complaining of now. For there is no lack of proof of the high mortality that S.F. causes among natives – Mutenge’s village gives an instance close at hand! The people will simply die like flies and be unsettled for years by it…49
Williams believed that his carriers had contracted the disease at Mutenge’s village, ‘owing to careless observance of orders against allowing W.T. [War Transport] repatriates to enter their villages – and a whole lot of them are dead
already’. 50 In a subsequent letter to his mother, Williams described the relatively
light impact of the disease in Solwezi District:
From reports received to date I reckon that the flu will have cost this division (population about 10.000) 200 lives, which is a pretty light total considering its ravages elsewhere. Of course the scanty population and the ease with which people could escape from spheres of infection by simply retiring into the bush, has been their saving, though those who did get it at all badly had small chance of recovery. Mwinilunga is having its turn now, we hear. This is a rotten letter, but so is Solwezi.51
There, where people could escape into the bush and avoid contact with others, the disease petered out, but in those parts of the country where people were clustered together the disease spread like wildfire. Not surprisingly the mining town of Broken Hill, as well as the mines in Katanga, were such sites. As Williams wrote to his mother:
This plague is the devil though … We here have been lucky beyond the dreams of gipsies (sic) … At Mwinilunga they have had it pretty badly. The serum injection seems to be an entire washout – statistics collected at the Congo mines show a higher death rate among those who were treated with it than among those who were not – it seems to kill the strongest
47
RH, MSS. Afr. S. 776-781, vol. 2. Lunga River, December 1st 1918 48 RH, Oxford, MSS. Afr. S. 776-781, vol. 2. Lunga River, December 1st 1918 49 RH, Oxford, MSS. Afr. S. 776-781, vol. 2. Lunga River, December 1st 1918 50 RH, Oxford, MSS. Afr. S. 776-781, vol. 2. Lunga River, December 1st 1918
quite as readily as the weeds and judging by the Doctors and dukes and princes that have died of it one would gather that expert attention is of very little value.52
Broken Hill, lying as it did at the centre of the transport network that had developed during the course of the War, was particularly hard hit by the epidemic. In addition, the concentration of mineworkers, railway workers, and transport carriers added to the increase and spread of the disease. The influence of the transport network on the spread of the disease can clearly be seen in the distribution of the epidemic; as such the District Notebook for Broken Hill noted that the ‘heavy mortality grew lighter as [the] disease spread back from Railway
line’.53 About 200 people died in the mining and railway complex of Broken
Hill. In addition a further 447 deaths were reported in the Mwamboshi sub-
district exclusive of ‘Broken Hill town and Mine’.54 Reports from the Mkushi
sub-district explicitly mention the significance of Broken Hill as a centre from which influenza spread:
Influenza appeared at Mkushi early in November. … Natives fleeing from the scourge when it first came to Broken Hill died by the roadside … eight strangers who died on the road were buried. The disease was brought straight from the railway by the mailman…55
Interestingly Broken Hill remained a hotbed for Influenza, presumably on account of the railway, mining town, and its compounds. Subsequently the territories annual report stated that the ‘continued persistence of this disease [influenza] amongst natives at Broken Hill since 1918 and its peculiar
manifestations there are noteworthy.’56
The only check on the inexorable growth of the African population of South Africa, and presumably thus also for the whole of Southern Africa, in the course of the twentieth century was the population crash caused by the influenza
pandemic.57 Given the enormity of the event, it is hardly surprising that its
effects were to be felt in more than population statistics alone. In South Africa, the epidemic led to ‘renewed ‘sanitation syndrome’ fears by white residents that infection was spread by black inhabitants’, and gave further weight to calls for
legally enforced racial segregation.58 In outlining the development of
segregationist legislation in South Africa, and the Natives Urban Areas Act in particular, the great historian of South Africa, De Kiewiet, noted: ‘the influenza
52 RH, MSS. Afr. S. 776-781, vol. 3, Mining Commissioner’s Office, Solwezi, Jan 13th 1919, My dear Mother.
53
NAZ, KDA2/1, Kabwe District Note Book, p. 110. 54 NAZ, KDA2/1, Kabwe District Note Book, p. 110.
55 LMA, F6/1, Annual Report, Mkushi Sub-District, 1918-1919. 56
NA, CO 795/21/10, Annual Report: Year ended 31 March 1926.
57 Robert Ross, A Concise History of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 144.
58 Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation and Apartheid (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 43.
epidemic horribly revealed the disease and misery which was bred and sheltered
in windowless shacks and congested unsanitary backyards’.59 Similarly, Howard
Phillips, who wrote extensively on the impact of influenza in South Africa, described how the threat of the disease came to be used as an instrument for the
enforcement of racist legislation.60
The pandemic directly affected those who survived: ‘orphans sad and
suffering, with no one to help them out’.61 Describing events in Bechuanaland,
John Spears noted that epidemics pose ‘the most serious challenges to human society’ in that they ‘divide and alienate as well as kill’:
Against the fear of an unknown, invisible assailant, there is no heroic combat. When fear drives friends and even relatives to abandon each other, to flee the infectious breath of loved ones then society can simply disintegrate.62
In a world in which survivors sought to give meaning to their continued existence, many came to the same conclusions that the Zulu composer, Reuben Caluza, had reached; ‘They forgot their maker, only those who worshipped him
constantly pulled through’.63
The experiences of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a young woman from the Eastern Cape of South Africa who was overcome by Spanish flu and received divine messages, were mirrored in varying forms across the continent. Upon recovery, Nontetha Nkwenkwe began preaching and prophesising: ‘the influenza was just a taste of what God was bringing. A judgement day in which everyone would be
flying in the sky was imminent’.64 Once Nontetha came to the attention of the
colonial authorities, she and her followers were incarcerated. In jail, Nontetha’s prophecies continued and came to be conflated with the message of liberation proclaimed by the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Industrial
and Commercial Workers Union,65 organisations that were seen as heralding the
arrival of African-American liberators. As a jailed follower of Nontetha stated,
59 C.W. De Kiewiet, A History of South Africa: Social and Economic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 231.
60 Howard Phillips, ‘The Local State and Public Health Reform in South Africa: Bloemfontein and the Consequences of the Spanish ‘Flu Epidemic of 1918’. In: Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 13, January 1987, pp. 210-233 & Howard Phillips, ‘Black October’: the impact of the Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918 on South Africa (Pretoria: Government printer, 1990).
61 Caluza, Influenza, cited in David Coplan. In: Township Tonight! South Africa's Black City Music and
Theater (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985), p. 252. 62
John V. Spears, ‘An Epidemic among the Bakgatla: the Influenza of 1918’. In: Botswana Notes & Records, volume 11, pp. 69-76.
63 Caluza, Influenza, cited in Coplan. In: Township Tonight, p. 252. 64
Robert R. Edgar & Hilary Sapire, African Apocalypse: The Story of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a Twentieth-Century South African Prophet (Athens, Ohio and Johannesburg: Ohio University Press, 1999), p. 10.
65 Helen Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924 – 1930 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988).
‘we used to dream in the hope that the Americans were coming to release us…
As oppressed people, we always had hope that we would be released’.66
Throughout the African continent, the destruction wrought by the epidemic forced people to reconsider much that had hitherto seemed hard and fast and immutable. In the context of colonial Ghana, gender roles changed as a consequence of the epidemic. David Patterson, in describing the epidemic in the northern districts of what is today Ghana, cited a colonial official who wrote:
Lorha is like a deserted village, one sees no one, […] I hear that some Lobis are wondering if this is the end of the world.67
So many women were sick that, contrary to custom, men had to grind grain and prepare meals. Foods prepared and chosen by people also changed in the aftermath of the epidemic. Ohadike describes how cassava, which had hitherto been rejected as a staple food crop, spread and became an accepted staple in
southern Nigeria following the epidemic.68 The attractiveness of cassava to so
many people is the fact that it requires comparatively less agricultural labour to produce. In periods of stress, where labour may be short, it becomes the crop of
choice.69
As noted earlier, the pandemic brought economic life to a standstill, but it did more than that alone; it literally ended the productive life of many economic
activities.70 One such activity was industrial mining, an activity, which by its
very nature has bequeathed us with substantial archival material. One case that
has been described in detail is the mining industry in Southern Rhodesia.71
Previously successful mining operations, such as the Globe and Phoenix gold mine in Umvuma, closed down on account of the disease, and were unable to
reopen in the aftermath of the disease.72 In and of itself, the Globe and Phoenix is
particularly interesting in the context of colonial racism, economic practice, and the transformative effects of the epidemic. Anxious to ensure a healthy work
66 Edgar & Sapire, African Apocalypse, p. 31. 67
K. David Patterson, ‘The Influenza Epidemic in the Gold Coast’. In: Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, Vol. XVI (ii), 1995, p. 209, citing: Lorha Diary, 2 December 1918.
68 D.C. Ohadike, ‘The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 and the Spread of Cassava Cultivation on the Lower Niger: A Study in Historical Linkages’, The Journal of African History, 22 1981, pp. 379- 391.
69
Cassava can be planted at virtually any stage in the rainy season, and can be left in the ground for up to 18 months after it has matured. For a standard work on cassava, see W.O. Jones, Manioc in Africa
(Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959).
70 Although they concentrate on the United States of America, Elizabeth Brainerd and Mark Siegler, provide a fine overview of the far-reaching economic effects brought about by the Epidemic. Elizabeth Brainerd and Mark Siegler, ‘The Economic Effects of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic’, Discussion Paper No. 3791, February 2003, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London.
71
I. R. Phimister, ‘The “Spanish” Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and its Impact on the Southern Rhodesian Mining Industry’. In: The Central African Journal of Medicine, vol. 19, no. 7, July 1973, pp. 143-148.
72 Pers. Comm. October 2006, Dr. H. Gewald, former AngloGold exploration geologist who had been stationed in Umvuma in the early 1960s.
force, the management of Globe and Phoenix went to the extent of ‘employ[ing]
white nurses to take care of black patients’.73 Not surprisingly, Terence Ranger
has noted that in Southern Rhodesia the influenza epidemic led to a crisis of
comprehension.74
Throughout the continent people literally scattered as they sought to evade the disease. In doing so, they inadvertently spread the disease ever further. Yoshikuni, in dealing with migrant workers in colonial Zimbabwe, cited an annual report for 1918, which described ‘the pell-mell flight from many labour centres and the natural reluctance to return to what were regarded as centres of
infection’.75 The rapid, unstoppable, and seemingly haphazard progress of the
disease led to the most fantastic theories and stories that sought to explain the
pandemic.76 All over the continent people sought to explain what had happened
and, in so doing, named the pandemic according to its perceived character.77
In the northeastern districts of what is today Zambia, the pandemic arrived in
the context of war and famine.78 German forces under Von Lettow-Vorbeck had
routed British colonial forces, sacked Kasama, and seemed set to continue
onwards.79 Mwelwa Musambachime described how, in seeking to comprehend
events, people in the Mporokoso district attributed the epidemic to the death of
soldiers and porters in the war.80 Melvin Page writing on Malawians and the First
World War noted that:
In the minds of Malawians, the connection between the war and the pandemic of influenza was not only immediate, but also causal. A common expression was that the ‘war air’ had brought the new and devastating disease, blown in by winds from the front.81
73
Van Onselen, Chibaro, p. 58. 74
Terence Ranger, ‘The influenza epidemic in Southern Rhodesia: a crisis of comprehension’, pp. 172- 188. In: David Arnold, ed., Imperial Medicine and Indigenous societies (Machester: Manchester University Press, 1988).
75
Tsuneo Yoshikuni, ‘Strike Action and Self-Help Associations: Zimbabwean Worker Protest and Culture After World War 1’. In: Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, April 1989, p. 442.
76 For a closely detailed example of the rapid spread within a specific territory in Africa see, K. David Patterson, ‘The Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19 in the Gold Coast’. In: Journal of African History, 24 (1983), pp. 485-502.
77 Juergen D. Mueller, ‘What’s in a name. Spanish Influenza in sub-Saharan Africa and what local names say about the perception of this pandemic’, paper presented to The Spanish Flu 1918-1998: Reflections on the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 after 80 years, held in Cape Town, South Africa, 12-15 September 1998.
78 The work of Giacomo Macola is particularly illuminating in detailing the impact of the war in North- eastern Zambia. Macola, The Kingdom of Kazembe, pp. 206-209. Gregory Maddox has documented similar developments in Tanzania, Maddox, ‘Mtunya: Famine’.
79 Hoyt, Guerilla, Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck; Von Lettow-Vorbeck, Meine Erinnerungen; Paice, Tip
& Run, pp. 383-386.
80 Musambachime, ‘The influenza Epidemic’, p. 59. 81 Page, The Chiwaya War, p. 171.
Spanish influenza struck people irrespective of race or class, and this had a profound effect on European and African perceptions. In the disbelieving and shocked words of a British Governor elsewhere in Africa:
The disease spread with devastating rapidity, disorganizing everything. Everybody was attacked almost at once. Of my own household of twenty servants not one escaped; and on one day I had to attend to their work myself. It can be easily understood what such a state of affairs would mean to others less fortunately situated.82
Similarly the combination of war, famine, and influenza in Northern Rhodesia appeared to put the world on its head, particularly as it served to bring about a religiously inspired movement which shook the very foundations of British
colonial rule in the northeastern districts.83