Alfred Sharpe

Sir Alfred Sharpe KCMG CB (19 May 1853 – 10 December 1935) was Commissioner and Consul-General for the British Central Africa Protectorate and first Governor of Nyasaland.

[2] Both Johnston and his vice-consul, John Buchanan, exceeded their instructions and declared British protectorates, firstly over the Shire Highlands and then over the area west of Lake Nyasa, both in 1889.

[3] In 1890 Sharpe was employed jointly by imperialist Cecil Rhodes and the British Consul in Nyasaland, Harry Johnston, on a mission to Msiri, King of Garanganza (mineral- and game-rich Katanga), which Europeans considered very remote.

Sharpe was in competition with Belgian King Leopold II's Congo Free State (CFS) which had already tried sending expeditions to Msiri.

[5] Without his retinue, and low on cash and supplies such as cloth and gunpowder traditionally used to open negotiations, Sharpe, with just a couple of servants, eventually arrived at Msiri's court at Bunkeya with the draft treaty,[4] and would not have cut an imposing figure.

The explorer Joseph Thomson, also working for BSAC, was supposed to come up from the south and meet him at Msiri's with supplies and goods, but he did not arrive because of a smallpox epidemic in the country in between; Sharpe had to do his best on his own.

Later that year a large, well-equipped and well-armed Congo Free State 'pacification' force arrived led by a Canadian mercenary, Captain W. E. Stairs, with orders to take Katanga under its control.

Although he was had reasonable relations with the European settlers, he fought against the development of business monopolies and encouraged planters to give better wages and conditions to African workers.

[13] In the third quarter of the 19th century, southern Malawi suffered from warfare and slave raiding, which led to the abandonment of fertile land.

Local chiefs sought protection from Europeans who had entered the area from the 1860s onwards by granting them the right to cultivate this vacant land.

Its local agents claimed to have made treaties or agreements with several chiefs granting the company large amounts of land.

[14] Three individuals, Eugene Sharrer, John Buchanan and Alexander Low Bruce, the son-in-law of David Livingstone and a director of the African Lakes Company also claimed to have purchased large areas of land, often for trivial quantities of goods, under agreements signed by chiefs who had no understanding of English concepts of land tenure.

To solve this dilemma, he put forward the legal fiction that each chief's people had tacitly accepted that he could assume the right to sell vacant land not currently being used by the community.

His review of land claims begun in late 1892, and as Johnston had no legal training, he relied heavily on Sharpe, as the protectorate did not have any law officers until 1896.

Most Certificates of Claim included a non-disturbance clause providing that existing African villages and farms were not to be removed or disturbed without consent from the protectorate government.

[19] When Sharpe succeeded Johnston as the British Commissioner in Nyasaland, he also had responsibility for enforcing security in the neighbouring BSAC charter territory, North-Eastern Rhodesia, which he had helped establish with the Kazembe and Nsama treaties, among others.

Mwata Kazembe escaped across the Luapula and after missionaries interceded on his behalf, he was allowed to return to a chieftainship recognised by the BSAC which became reasonably successful.

To force Africans to work for wages on European plantations, Johnston had instituted an annual Hut tax at the rate of three shillings (15 pence).

This, together with a severe famine in the far south of the protectorate and the continued failure of the planters to find a suitable export crop, led Sharpe, who had once strongly supported estate agriculture, to give consent for the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) to recruit 1,000 workers for the Transvaal mines in Nyasaland.

However, in 1910, following the opening of a railway which offered better prospects for exporters and protests from settlers about labour shortages, Sharpe ended the agreements with WNLA and RNLB.

[22] In 1910, Sharpe also introduced measures to regulate the employment of Africans working for European settlers and limit abuses, but these were largely ignored.

[24] Gomani had attempted to prevent his people taking up work with settlers in the Shire Highlands, but his defeat laid them open to labour recruiters.

[25] One of Sharpe's most notable administrative achievements was bringing the Northern Ngoni under governmental control without resorting to excessive force.

Robert Laws first met the Ngoni Chief Mbelwa (referred to as Mombera in early writings) in 1879, and in 1881 he established Livingstonia Mission at Bandawe in the northwestern of Lake Nyasa.

Over a period of years, Laws persuaded the Ngoni leader to cease raiding and the missionaries established themselves in his kingdom as educators and arbitrators in disputes.

At a ceremony at Ekwendeni in October 1904, the Ngoni leaders agreed to submit themselves to British rule, to accept a resident administrator and to pay taxes from 1906.

He died on 10 December 1935, in London Alfred Sharpe had a son Edmund born in Fiji in his early years and moved with him to Nyasaland.

While on tour collecting taxes, Edmund Sharpe witnessed the initiation ceremony for Chief Jumbe's eldest daughter, Veronica Chulu.

Philip married Katie Thornicroft and had sons Frank, Alfred, George and Stanley, and daughters Rosemary and Muriel.