History lessons for today’s peace
We stand before the tombstones of the war cemetery in Karonga feeling a sense of sad bewilderment and disorientation. The inscriptions reveal that those buried beneath were still young men with their whole lives in front of them. It was taken so suddenly from them in a war that brought a European conflict to Africa. The cemetery is maintained with devotion and care, even one hundred years after the soldiers perished in the single battle that took place during the First World War on Malawi – then Nyasaland – soil.
Elsewhere, in Zomba, a memorial to the King’s African Rifles commemorates the Nyasaland war casualties. Many hundreds of Askaris fought at the side of British and German troops, and many fell.
There is no one alive today able to narrate first-hand what it was like to fight in the battle of Karonga. The concept of the Great War playing itself out in this rural region seems incongruous. One hundred years ago, very few people lived on the territory of Nyasaland – fewer even than the population of Lilongwe today. There were hardly any roads, merely dirt paths, to the border of German East Africa (comprising today’s Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania), which was on the adjacent side of the lake.
Yet, far away, on the 28th of July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and thereby began a terrible domino effect of conflict that reached Karonga.
Germany declared war on France and Russia on August 1st. On August 4th, Britain entered the war, the British district commissioner in Karonga receiving formal notification by telegram a few days later. Thus, the war arrived in Nyasaland too.
In Nyasaland, two events of the First World War left their mark. The first is often recounted with some wry amusement. The “naval battle” on Lake Malawi began and ended with a couple of shots fired from the British patrol vessel “Gwendolene” at the German “Hermann von Wissmann”.
Originally, both ships were stationed on the lake to fight the slave trade. Both captains were reputedly friends with one another, their whiskey revelry notorious. When his ship was shot at, the German captain was unaware of the war declarations in Europe. His boat was laid up on-shore under repair.
Allegedly, his British friend afterwards served him a strong drink while he complained about the lack of information from Berlin.
This behaviour might have fit the traditional “gentlemen’s war”. But the new brutality brought about by the First World War over the proceeding four years, especially in Europe, soon changed all that.
This became apparent within the next couple of weeks in Nyasaland. On the 9th of September 1914, a hundred years ago today, the realities of First World War battle came to Karonga, claiming many lives.
War in Africa, 100 years ago, usually consisted of only a small number of colonial officers, but with many locally recruited Askaris and hundreds of African porters. They carried the main burden of the losses, not just in the Karonga conflict, but also elsewhere in Africa. Taking the British numbers alone, three battalions of the King’s African Rifles came from Nyasaland, with 19 000 in total serving throughout the First World War. They were supported by a huge force of well over 600 000 porters from the region – of who around 1 in 15 died of disease or accident.
On the 7th of September, the German troops crossed the Songwe, planning to attack Karonga on the 9th. Twenty-two German officers and 800 Askaris had been stationed 100 km to the northeast of Karonga, in today’s town of Tukuyu, Tanzania.
While German troops marched along the lake shoreline towards the south, a section of British troops from Karonga were moving towards the north.
Somewhat fortuitously, the British became aware German troops were encamped just before Karonga. The British turned around and encircled the Germans. They clashed in bitter warfare and hand-to hand fighting, with bayonets leaving terrible wounds.
Over 100 Askaris are estimated to have fallen on the German side, along with 19 of the 22 German officers. The British side also recorded losses, although not quite as high. The soldiers fled, badly injured through the bush or in dugouts on the lake. Thus ended, on the night of September 9th 1914, the only combat action of the First World War on Malawian soil.
How is this relevant today?
In the quiet, small cemetery in Karonga rests a few of the fallen from both sides. While this cemetery, together with the names of the Nyasaland fallen in Zomba, often gets overlooked, it perhaps represents the cruel and sometimes senseless nature of war that drives today’s search for a conflict-free world through diplomacy and adherence to internationally agreed norms of behaviour and law.
Following Malawi’s independence 50 years ago, shaped partly by a growing desire for self-determination from the experiences of the world wars, the country on 1 December 1964 become a member of the United Nations. The First and Second World Wars had reinforced the need for a global institution dedicated to managing international relations in ways that would reduce conflict and promote human cooperation and development.
The League of Nations that arose out of the ashes of the First World War failed to prevent the Second World War. But it prepared the institutional ground for the establishment of the United Nations. Other regional organisations emerged to also help better manage international affairs, including the African Union, SADC and the EU, the latter awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for its contribution to peace within Europe.
They have arguably contributed to a gradual reduction in the frequency of state-on-state conflict. There is also greater emphasis on preventative action to protect civilians, whatever the nature of the conflict.
Malawi, as a member of the international community, has its responsibility, along with the UK and Germany, to contribute to these goals.
It does so diplomatically and by engaging within international organisations, but also through its welcome willingness to contribute to peacekeeping operations, such as the Malawi Defence Force’s support to UN operations in Cote D’Ivoire and the DRC or policing support in Darfur.
There is still a long way to go to achieve the objective set out in the preamble of the UN Charter: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”. But the battle of Karonga represents one milestone – no matter how small–in the journey that established the United Nations towards that goal.
Only by adherence to the obligations set out in the Charter, abiding by international rule of law and agreed standards of state behaviour, will we prevent war and conflict. In that, modern day, independent Malawi, the UK and Germany are firm and equal advocates and partners.
