How 19th century Goans who arrived in Zanzibar became one of East Africa’s wealthiest communities

At half past 11 on the night of October 11, 1886, revolver shots pierced the dark of night, alerting Doctor Edward John Baxter of the Church Mission Society. Baxter, as a missionary doctor, travelled frequently to the interior and was no stranger to violence. In fact, he was about to embark on another trip. As Baxter tells it, the nearby donkey-keeper informed him that “there was a man in the unoccupied house on the side of de Souza,” this being CR Souza’s house. As Baxter approached the scene, he saw a scrum of policemen dotting the dark with lanterns. They made their way upstairs and returned with the “almost lifeless” body of an unnamed African man who died a minute later. Baxter being a medical man examined the body and found a bullet wound. He took it upon himself to go upstairs to examine the scene, only to discover the man had been on the scaffolding preparing to enter De Souza’s house.

Just minutes before, inside CR Souza’s shed in Shangani, two clerks employed by him, 23-year-old Caetano Felicio Souza from Anjuna and Toletino de Sa, were asleep when awakened by a noise. Toletino went to look out the window but saw nothing. Felicio sat quietly on his voltaire and after a while, he saw um homem preto sem roupa, a Black man without clothes, wearing only a small piece of cloth around his waist, standing on the scaffolding across from CR Souza’s house, undoing a rope. As Felicio tells it, Toletino asked the man, what is it? and getting no reply, Toletino got the revolver. They tried to cry for help and seeing none arrive, Felicio fired two shots indiscriminately into the darkness and the man retreated out of sight. Then, they saw Baxter enter the house, and when at last they enquired with Baxter, he confirmed the man was indeed a thief.

In the tense week that followed, Barghash was informed by Brás about the situation, and a consular court was convened by Brás as vice-consul in charge of the consulate. He had been authorised by Portugal to judge the case. He put together a jury comprising DB Pereira and João Pedro Souza to try Felicio for homicide. Felicio readily admitted to killing the unnamed Black man. He had been terrified, he confessed, panicked, fearing for his life. After all, this was a land in which even the police admitted, n’esta terra não haver disciplina, nem ordem, in this land there is neither discipline nor order. Whether the police had actually said this, given that they were responsible for law and order, or if it was an embellishment by Brás in the sentencing report, we will never know. Certainly, the idea of lawlessness in Zanzibar was one Brás repeated elsewhere. DB Pereira and João Pedro were of the opinion that Felicio had been brutally honest about his own culpability, that he had not tried to hide the incident, that certain witnesses – the jamadar Dindial, and two of Barghash’s police guards Datradin and Aryasingh had deliberately perjured themselves, while other witnesses, Dr Baxter, Naique Gopal, the guards Fahrani and Hamsini, and fellow clerk Toletino de Sá had given honest accounts. Felicio, they reasoned, had genuinely feared for his life, considering that CR Souza’s house had been burgled just three months before, and the constant “insecurity of life and property in this land.” Under these mitigating circumstances, Felicio was found not guilty of voluntary homicide and sentenced to ten days in prison, redeemed at the rate of one rupee per day. It is in this case that Brás first proves his mettle in defending jurisdictional rights. Barghash was put out; he found Brás’ verdict “impossible.” After all, one of his subjects was dead and the Goan had killed him. But it is a fight Brás won and Caetano Felicio Souza, an educated man, went on to lead a respectable life with a thriving business of his own in Zanzibar.

By the 1880s, with the Portuguese consulate firmly established in Zanzibar, the character and composition of Goan society begins to emerge, thanks in large part to the lengthy report consul Neves e Melo compiled in 1889. Melo found the Goans to be a community generally respected for their hard work and sincere nature, and not given to disorderly conduct. Five years on from the time the consulate was established, Melo had found just one criminal case recorded, that of Felicio, and that too a justifiable act of self-defence.

To their credit, Goans conducted themselves admirably, despite life in Zanzibar being chaotic and brutal, where men carried revolvers and violence was frequent. It was not unusual for Goan domestic staff to suffer violence at the hands of their European employers or for Goans to be assaulted by Arab-owned slaves on the orders of their owners. Flogging of non-Europeans by Arabs was common. In 1886, two Goans were assaulted by a slave belonging to Ali bin Vazir employed by the American consulate. (Arabs frequently worked for either the American or European consulates in Zanzibar as interpreters.) Even as late as 1895, when policing was more vigilant,…