Nyasaland and all That

From Great North Road

By: Bob Smith

In 1959,The Nyasaland Police had been sorely stretched during the civil disturbances which preceeded independence and requested the secondment of a dozen NRP Inspectors to help out. Seizing the opportunity to get rid of some of the trash, Officers in charge of Stations throughout the Copperbelt gleefully put forward the names of trouble-makers and general layabouts for this honour.

By some terrible misunderstanding, I found myself in the company of eleven misfits at Ndola airport, in full riot gear, boarding a chartered CAA Viscount for some distant place called Lilongwe and having nothing in common except a total ignorance of what it was all about. Nobody had bothered to make any attempt to enlighten us as to the purpose of our mission although the Officer-in-Charge of my Station, Mufulira, did issue me with a brand new state-of-the-art Sterling sub-machine gun complete with four magazines. I never quite understood this uncharacteristic act of generosity on his part especially as he went to great pains to warn me not to fire the damned thing at anyone. In retrospect I can only come to the conclusion that, knowing my penchant for doing the opposite of what I was supposed to do, he was praying that I would manage to actually shoot someone and he would have the pleasure of seeing me charged with murder. If so, it was a forlorn hope as I never did work out how to undo the safety catch.

Lilongwe was hardly what we had expected and it was at this point that things began to go steadily downhill. The grass airstrip was totally devoid of any sign of life. A solitary tin shack at the end of the runway was deserted. There was no one to welcome us and we were not even sure in which direction Lilongwe lay and disappointingly, no one at all to shoot with my new gun. We held a council of war, sheltering from the sun under a wing of the Viscount and the pilot suggested we might fly on to Blantyre. "You've hired the blessed thing for the day so you might as well use it." was his contribution. The situation was resolved when a PWD lorry appeared on the dirt track running past the airstrip and was promptly commandeered. The driver was heading for Lilongwe and was quite happy to give us a lift into town; his willing compliance thus denying me any excuse to shoot him.

Three dusty, bumpy miles later and twelve sweaty, dust-caked figures, armed to the teeth with riot shields, tin hats, long batons and one Sterling sub-machine gun, trooped into the charge office at Lilongwe Police Station to confront an amazed Officer-in-Charge who knew nothing at all of our arrival or the reason for it. Seeing our NRP shoulder badges he asked, "Are you Nyasaland Railways Police?" There was no such organisation as Nyasaland Railways Police but then he was a Senior Superintendent so couldn't be expected to know much about these things. We assured him we were real policemen underneath our coating of dust and I emphasised the vital importance of our mission by allowing him to examine my Sterling. Convinced at last, he arranged for us to be fed, watered and bedded down in a school for the night before sallying forth to meet whatever lay in store for us next.

After the inauspicious arrival of our party of Police reinforcements in Nyasaland, frantic phone calls to HQ confirmed that we had indeed been expected. That was pleasing to hear. We were sudenly welcomed as brothers in arms instead of aliens and we even looked human again once the all-concealing layers of dust had been removed. It was simply the case that, just like our lot in NR, those who knew forgot to tell those who needed to know. Apparently we should have landed at Dedza, not Lilongwe but then again the chances were that nobody at Dedza would have been briefed about our arrival either. We began to feel at home already; this was the world we knew.

Next day a variety of police vehicles arrived to ferry us off to the various places where our services might be needed. Mine was an ambulance which had been pressed into service under the emergency regulations then in force and thus I was whisked off to Limbe, just outside Blantyre. I settled into comfortable accommodation in the Police Camp and for a week or so we had a jolly time playing cowboy and Indian games with the locals. The rules were unwritten but had been well rehearsed before my arrival and were strictly observed by both sides. A group of them would suddenly pop up somewhere around the town and throw stones through shop windows. This would result in a phone call to us and we would go rushing to the scene knowing it would all be over before we got there. It invariably was, so we were able to get on with what every good policeman does when he's not sure what course of action to take; we took lots and lots of statements. The only people who didn't appear to enjoy it all were the shopkeepers with the broken windows. Whoever invented the game hadn't briefed them on their role. It could only have been a senior Police Officer. There was really very little serious unrest while I was there, nobody got hurt and I began to wonder why our Nyasaland colleagues had requested our assistance.

I was soon to find out. I learned that what the Nysaland Police had really expected from the NRP was not General Duties softies like me but experienced Riot Squad Officers from the Mobile Unit. I was summoned to HQ in Dedza, shown a nice new Land Rover, a map and some provisions and ordered to take myself off to Karonga, way up north somewhere on the shore of Lake Nyasa, to take over as second in command of Silver Platoon of the PMF (Police Mobile Force) who were encamped there. Horrified, I tried to explain that I was not from the Mobile Unit; these were the tough guys who could quell a full sized riot without raising a sweat, whereas my forte was taking statements from aggrieved shopkeepers and what's more, I was getting really good at it by now. Somehow I failed to convince them. I suspect it was my warlike appearance, what with my tin hat and shield and so forth. I must admit it impressed me too when I looked in a mirror and practised scowling fiercely at myself. They weren't to know that this was all a facade of course and were convinced I was the genuine article. The fact that I was armed with my new Sterling sub-machine gun was final proof to them and I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn't know how to release the safety catch.

Karonga was easy to find, even for me. There seemed to be only one road in Nyasaland and that ran from north to south; at least that's how it appeared to me. The journey took three days, staying overnight at Government Rest Houses on the way where I was welcomed at each stop by the locals in the little social clubs where they spent their evenings. Their hospitality was overwhelming and I had to fight to be allowed to stand a round of drinks. I am a very poor fighter. A pot-holed, corrugated dirt road is not the best place to be driving along for hours on end with a hangover and Karonga was a welcome sight. There wasn't much to the place. A grass airstrip, two Indian general stores and a resident European population of half a dozen or so, but it was a welcome sight to me after my three days on the road.

Silver Platoon were camped close to the lake shore, a paradise of tall weaving reeds along the sand dunes with clean, golden sand AND MOSQUITOES! Les, the Nyasaland Police Inspector in charge of Silver Platoon was approaching the time when he was due for overseas leave and stayed on long enough to see me settled in. When I mentioned the mosquitoes he informed me cheerfully, "It's not a question of maybe getting malaria, it's when." Our accommodation was a sort of hut whose walls were constructed from reeds with a tarpaulin for a roof and a huge sign proclaiming "KARONGA BY THE SEA." Nights were spent inside mosquito nets on hard camp beds and days were mostly taken up with "Showing the Flag" patrols. I found one big difference between policing here and back in NR. In both Territories it was clear that self-government in time was a certainty and our job was to try to keep the transition as peaceful as possible. In Nyasaland there was only one party, the ANC, whereas in NR we were often struggling to contain the violence between the ANC and UNIP. The area was all very quiet really by the time I arrived although there had been some serious rioting prior to that.

Soon after Les departed to enjoy his leave, the inevitable happened and I went down with malaria. It wasn't as bad as I had expected; rather like a severe dose of flue but enough to keep me in bed for a couple of days. On top of that I developed terrible toothache in not one but two back teeth. The nearest dentist was four hundred miles away so Dr. Mike Doal, who lived in Karonga and whose practice seemed to cover half of the country, yanked them out for me. It was also at this time that I realised I was facing another problem. Les spoke fluent Chinyanja and always addressed his men in the vernacular but I was always used to our NRP Africans speaking perfect English and had assumed the same applied here. Not so. Even the Platoon Sergeants were unable to speak English and I discovered that Constable Moyo, the Platoon Bugler, was the only accomplished English speaker in the whole Platoon.

To no avail, I struggled desperately to recall the smattering of the language they had tried to instill in me while in Training School. I was proud of my "Hello and "Good bye" and could remember a few nouns but the only other thing that came to mind was "Palibe kantu," "It doesn't matter." Now that was going to be a very useful phrase so I hung on to it in the vain belief that I might somehow manage to conceal my ignorance from my merry men. It worked for about twenty four hours despite my getting some bemused expressions but matters came to head when the Platoon cook managed to scald himself badly. A sergeant came rushing into my tent and tried to report the matter only to be told, "Palibe kantu." I guessed from his concerned look that the matter might be serious so I smiled as I said it. However, the poor cook had to be driven two hundred miles to hospital and the incident had two results. One, I had to swallow my pride and accept that in future I would keep Const. Moyo by my side and, two, I earned the reputation of being a real "hard man." Would you like to tangle with a man who regards someone screaming in agony as a matter of no importance?

I wallowed in the new-found respect in the eyes of the Platoon. I had always yearned to be seen as a hard man and at last it had happened. My mind went back some years to when I was in the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Londonderry; a breeding ground for hard men. I recalled a grizzled old sergeant, a renowned hard man, giving me some advice about becoming one of that elite band. "You've got to show them what you're made off," he advised. "Stop some yob in the street and start questioning him in front of his friends. Needle him and aggravate him till he takes a swing at you and, Bingo, you have him for assault." I did and it worked! He took a swing at me and and before I "had him for assault" he took another and another and finished up knocking seven bells out of me.

Back to Karonga and fortunately, a replacement soon arrived to take the Platoon under proper control again and I was able to take a back seat and just bask in my hard man image. It was during this time that the local District Commissioner showed me a file containing an account of events in the area during the First World War but that is another story.