IN SEARCH OF FORGOTTEN HEROES

The Church has consigned to oblivion those who risked all to end the slave trade

Alexander Chula

THE GRAVE WAS BURIED IN DRY SILT AND foliage, and it took an hour of hacking and digging in the stifling midday heat before steel chinked on stone. Slowly, amid the clatter of hoes and machetes, six pillars emerged from the earth. The grave revealed, our excavation party set down their tools to say the Lord’s Prayer in Chichewa, the dust still hanging round them in the windless air. We were in Mozambique, at the confluence of the Ruo and Shire rivers just across the border from Malawi. We had set off before dawn, travelling by dugout canoe along a stretch of water busy with crocodiles and known locally as Mtayamoyo — the place where you lose your life. Here, on 31 January 1862, Charles Mackenzie lost his. The last…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December/January 2025

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