In August, at the Mbeya mining district, natives had their feet bound in wooden shackles and carried hoes as they cleared weeds and loose stones from the ground.
Because their movements were inconvenient, their efficiency was low. Yet the East African overseers watching from the side were not the least bit worried that low efficiency would spoil matters.
East Africa had never expected these natives to become efficient in the first place. It was enough to set them a fixed daily quota.
As for those who failed to meet it, they naturally could not escape bamboo-whip stir-fried meat and reduced rations.
In any case, the natives only did rough labor. East Africa did not expect them to do it perfectly; as long as the quantity was sufficient, that was enough.
Turning soil, hauling bricks, digging ditches, felling trees... these were all skills one could pick up at a glance. The natives only needed to make a rough job of it, and East African immigrants could tidy it up afterward.
This was especially true in the Mbeya mining district. With the population so scarce, East Africa could not ensure coal production without making extensive use of natives.
More than three thousand native laborers currently worked in the Mbeya coal mine. Though they were laborers in name, in essence they were slaves.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, two forms of civilization existed: one was primitive society, existing in tribal form; the other was slave society, taking the form of slave kingdoms.
East Africa undoubtedly belonged to slave society, because it truly possessed large numbers of black slaves, who formed an important part of the East African colonial economy.
Before the East African colony was opened up, East Africa had also possessed many slaves, but its civilizational form had still been primarily that of primitive