Donald Malota: a Malawian in Victorian Braco

Just 10 years after David Livingstone's final travels through central Africa, an African youth named Donald Malota travelled to Braco to explore a Scottish way of life. This extraordinary journey included eight months as a pupil at Braco School up to August 1884, when he returned to Blantyre Mission. This was the thriving mission station in what is now Malawi, named after Livingstone's birthplace in Lanarkshire. There Malota took up a post as a teacher, before leaving mission life, becoming, as historian Dr John McCracken puts it, an 'ambivalent representative of Commerce and Christianity in Malawi'.i

At this time, colonial rule was in its infancy and this area of Africa had not yet been formed into nation states by the colonial powers in what is popularly known as the 'Scramble for Africa'. It was only in 1891 that the British established the protectorate of British Central Africa which in 1907 became Nyasaland, then Malawi in 1964. Malota was amongst a group of youths who arrived at Blantyre Mission in 1878. He was appointed as a personal servant to Jonathan Duncan, a gardener who arrived from Scotland in 1878, bringing with him coffee plants from the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh from which Malawi’s plantation economy grew. Even today, coffee is one of Malawi's largest exports.

In 1880 whilst on home leave, or furlough, Duncan married a Braco girl, Christian Cameron who readily undertook the arduous journey, first several weeks by boat to Quelimane in what is now Mozambique, then two weeks up the Zambezi and Shire rivers by canoe and overland to Blantyre Mission. Christian and Jonathan set up an exemplary home, praised by a visiting Church of Scotland Commissioner, Dr James Rankin, who recalls the house's

atmosphere of order, peace, piety and charity. Every evening of the week was put to use – some of them in private lessons in the native language, some in private classes of half-a-dozen of [Mrs Duncan's] husband's garden-boys, some in other classes of half-a-dozen of the older girls. All of these had a devotional element – parts of the Scripture read and explained, prayer offered, and native hymns sung. There seemed a special fervour in the Saturday evening service, ending the week's labours. The course of the months and years only deepened her sympathy with the poor natives, especially the women and girls, who on their part were intensely devoted to her.ii

Below is a photo taken of the mission station some 15 years after Christian Duncan lived there. One can make out that living standards would have been pretty basic. She would have lived in a mud house with a thatched roof, probably smaller than the ones depicted. Temperatures in the cold season could be quite low due to the high altitude of Blantyre (3409 feet), but in October and November, in the run up to the rainy season, the heat and dust would still have been quite searing.

Below is a plan of the mission as mapped out by Muthill-born missionary John Buchanan in the 1880s around the time the Duncans lived there. Note the young coffee plantation as started up from plants brought by Jonathan Duncan:

On 24th June 1883 tragedy struck when Christian Duncan suddenly died. We do not know the cause of her death, but we do know she had given birth some months earlier. Jonathan Duncan's trusted

servant, Malota, was chosen to take care of their baby daughter on the difficult voyage of the bereaved family home. On his arrival in Scotland he stayed with Christian’s parents, Donald and Christian Cameron, at Dunduff, Braco. One wonders of course whether it is coincidence that Malota bears the same christian name as his employer's father-in-law given the missionary convention of giving European christian names to Africans. Indeed, during his Perthshire stay Malota was baptised at Muthill church by Dr Rankin, who would have been a familiar face to Malota as this was the same minister who had inspected Blantyre Mission three years earlier.

Donald Cameron was a sawmiller and carpenter, who worked at Braco sawmill, whose ruins are still visible off the castle track. In 1854 he married Comrie-born Christian Brough, and in 1861 they were living at Braco Lodge with their young family. By 1871 they had nine children and were living at Dunduff and by 1891 Donald was 'overseer' for Braco Castle Estate. iii It was during his stay with the Camerons at Dunduff that Malota attended Braco School.

According to the Braco School logbooks, filled in at this time on a near weekly basis by the headteacher, Malota enrolled on Monday, 10th December 1883, bringing the number of pupils up to 56. There is no further reference to him until he leaves, but during his time Braco School experiences an outbreak of 'pox' , a cold and wet May, and an inspection of the school at which the school is found wanting, giving rise to a number of anxiety-laden entries about the pupils' academic abilities. One wonders what Malota, star pupil of a rigorous missionary education would have made of all this. According to a memorial stone in the Free Church graveyard in Braco, Malota would also have witnessed the death of Christian's younger brother Thomas, who died at Dunduff on 3rd December 1883 aged 13, just 6 months after his older sister's death.

The following entry into the Braco School logbooks on his departure in August 1884 gives us a clue as to the impact he made: 'Donald Malota, a native of Blantyre, S. Africa, left for home this week. His conduct was everything that could be wished' (sic).

One can only guess and imagine the impressions the climate, environment and Victorian Braco way of life might have had on this young man. McCracken argues that his later innovative investment in livestock may well have had its origins in his immersion in a Perthshire farming community. iv Staying with Christian's father up at Dunduff, he would have walked down the castle track to school every day, through fields that may well have contained livestock then as they do now.

After a year in Perthshire Malota returned with Jonathan Duncan to Blantyre where he became one of the most prominent of the ‘group of assistants whose ready help, wisdom and integrity left a lasting mark … on the success of the mission’.v He became one of nine 'native' teachers at the mission and on the 31st December 1885, Malota, the model missionary teacher, was married and soon after became a father. He and his family lived in a cottage behind the school at Blantyre Mission. In 1886 he is described as one of the two best teachers at the mission and was regarded as a candidate for the ministry. At a historic service on Easter Sunday 1887 ‘along with two other teachers … he was admitted as a communicant member of the Church, the first Blantyre convert to receive full communion.’vi We see him in this photo standing on the left, a small dapper figure in tailored western clothing, which distinguishes him from the calico fabrics draped around the bodies of his students, vestiges of the newly-imported standards of 'decency'. A number of his students hold books, thus visually demonstrating their literacy. Interestingly Malota is barefoot, possibly because of his station as a 'native', but possibly out of choice. One hopes that he was bequeathed footwear during his experience of a Braco winter and that cold, wet spring!

Ideally the story would finish here, but unfortunately it takes a turn for the worse when the great rival force of commerce tempts Malota from his missionary career in 1888. In short, Malota's education and language skills made him an ideal candidate as a mediator and interpreter for exponents of the vigorous ivory trade. At the same time, a plantation economy was developing and again here we find a Perthshire link. One of the shrewdest early missionaries and settlers was John Buchanan, who sketched the map above, a gardener from Drummond Estate in Muthill, who bought up large areas of the land around Blantyre Mission. By 1900 a thousand tons of coffee was being exported, a far more lucrative commodity than ivory. Malota saw the way the tide was turning and also bought up land at a time when Africans were still able to do so. By 1900 he had 80 acres of coffee plants and, maybe influenced by his experience of livestock in Braco as McCracken suggests, he owned 21 cattle, a bull and 31 goats and sheep. He lived in a large house of burned bricks with 10 rooms and good furniture, signs that he was one of the most prosperous Malawian farmers of his day.vii

However, it was difficult to find labour to work such large tracts of plantation land so unfortunately Malota and the likes of him who were hardened by the sinister methods of the ivory trade, started to use grim tactics of force and coersion to gain their labourers through raids on villages. Three of his guards were hanged for the murder of labourers and Malota was found to have abused his position as mediator between Africans and European settlers even further when it emerged that 'he carried on traffic in Angoni women for the planters and white people in Blantyre.'viii His land and property were seized and he and his overseer were condemned to death. However, in yet another twist which demonstrates his resilient character, he escaped en route to his execution in March 1901, disappearing into the landscape near Chiradzulu to live as an outlaw. It emerged years later that Malota was eventually found and pardoned, before his trail disappears again. ix

McCracken provides an insightful conclusion on Malota's life when he writes as follows:

The point about Donald Malota is not that he 'went to the bad' as contemporary Europeans suggested. It is that at each stage of his career he responded with notable success to the demands made by Europeans upon him. x

His interaction with the Scots at Blantyre Mission and his immersion in daily Perthshire life will have put him at ease with different Europeans, their values and behaviours. Malota's career thus encapsulates, in the life of one extraordinary man, the ambivalence of early European intervention in Africa, where philanthropic missionary impulses occur alongside the shameful violence of early colonial economies.

Postscript - the Cameron family losses

Sadly, it seems that the little girl who was Malota's charge on the journey from Blantyre to Braco may only have lived a few more years. The memorial headstone in the Free Church graveyard erected by Christian Duncan's parents details the death of their 8 year old granddaughter Marjory in 1890, whose age corresponds with that of Christian and Jonathan's daughter. Three further siblings of Christian's die young, as the memorial stone details:

ERECTED BY

DONALD AND CHRISTIAN CAMERONIN LOVING MEMORY OF THEIR CHILDREN

CHRISTIAN, THEIR ELDEST DAUGHTERWIFE OF JONATHAN DUNCAN

OF BLANTYRE MISSION, AFRICAWHO DIED THERE 24TH JUNE 1883

AGED 28 YEARS

THOMAS, THEIR YOUNGEST SONDIED AT DUNDUFF 3RD DECEMBER 1883 AGED 13

CATHERINE, THEIR THIRD DAUGHTERWIFE OF JOHN MCILWAIN, MISSIONARY

WHO DIED 29TH MAY 1887, AGED 21 YEARSBURIED AT SHAPUNGAH, ZAMBESIE, AFRICA

MARJORY, THIER GRANDDAUGHTERDIED AT DUNDUFF 2ND DECEMBER 1890, AGED 8 YEARS

JAMES PETER, THEIR FOURTH SONWHO DIED AT DOMASI, BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA

24TH JULY 1893, AGED 20 YEARSxi

THE ABOVE

CHRISTIAN BROUGH, DIED AT DUNDUFF BRACO ON THE4TH JULY 1898 AGED 72 YEARS

DONALD CAMERON, LATE OF DUNDUFF BRACO WHODIED AT DUNBLANE ON THE 4TH JULY 1899

AGED 72 YEARS

The death of 13 year old Thomas Cameron less than 6 months after Christian's death is mentioned above. Another brother, James Peter Cameron, died in 1893 in the newly established British Central Africa, at Domasi, where former Drummond Estate gardener John Buchanan established a mission, built up a botanical garden in nearby Zomba and became prominent in the emerging colonial administration. James' age at the time of his death would have been 30, not 20, according to census records.

More information is available about Christian's younger sister Catherine who, four years after the death of her older sister, set out with what must have been great courage, to follow in her sister's footsteps. She married missionary John McIlwain from Govan who was on home leave from Blantyre Mission where he had been working since 1884. As Mr and Mrs McIlwain Catherine and John undertook the voyage to Blantyre Mission but tragically Catherine died on her 21st birthday in 1887 on the journey up the Zambezi river from the Mozambican coast inland towards Blantyre. Although the cause of death is not detailed for any of the Cameron offspring, malaria was the most common killer of the time. Catherine is buried within 200 miles of her destination in the same graveyard in which David Livingstone's wife Mary was buried 25 years earlier. In a personal communication,

McCracken indicates that her widower John McIlwain must have been heartbroken as he never remarried and remained at Blantyre Mission in charge of the carpentry department until his death in 1927, 40 years after Catherine's death. He would have been instrumental in the building of the imposing church at Blantyre Mission which is packed every Sunday to this day. Indications are that he was a kind man, as contemporaries wrote of how the children all loved him, and how he loved and bred cats!

Christian snr dies first in 1898 and her husband Donald on the first anniversary of her death, in 1899, both aged 72. This poignant memorial stone therefore tells us how the Cameron parents of Dunduff, Braco, outlived four children and a grandchild, and that three of their children died in service to mission work in Malawi.

Acknowledgements

I have been keen to share this story both in Braco and Malawi to demonstrate the interconnections between the two places. The trail between both places is already well worn due to this corner of Perthshire having an outward-looking internationalist legacy. As someone who has made their home in Braco, and who grew up in Zomba and used to visit nearby Blantyre most weeks, this story has been utterly absorbing. My gratitude to all those who contributed is thus particularly heartfelt. Most of the detail of this story was researched by Dr John McCracken, formerly of the Universities of Stirling and Malawi, who kindly provided me with a copy of his article, information from his field notes and the photograph of Malota. This enabled me to fill out details around the entries in the Braco School logbooks and the memorial stone in the Free Church graveyard which I both chanced upon when the schoolchildren were researching local history for the Braco 200 celebrations. Thanks therefore also go to Braco Primary School for giving me access to the logbooks and to the P6/7 class for rediscovering the memorial stone. The census information on the Cameron family was generously provided by Mari Ballegooijen.

Dr Fiona Johnson ChalamandaBraco, April 2015

Bibliography

1871 Census Record

Braco School logbooks, unpublished

Buchanan, John (1885) The Shire Highlands (Blantyre Print and Publishing) 1982 edition

McCracken, John 'Marginal Men: The Colonial Experience in Malawi' in The Journal of Southern African Studies 15(4)1989 pp.537-64

i McCracken (1989) p.545

ii Buchanan (1885) p.206

iii 1871 Census records

iv McCracken (1989) p.548

v Andrew Ross, cited in McCracken p.545

vi McCracken 1989, p.546

vii McCracken 1989 p.548

viii Central African Times, 22 November 1902, cited in McCracken (1989) p.550

ix Personal communication with McCracken, March 2015

x McCracken 1989, p.563

xi There seems to be an error in the age or date here, as the combination would make James Peter younger than Thomas, who is described as the youngest son. The 1871 census confirms Thomas as an infant in 1871.