Unlike other British colonial possessions in Africa, notably South Africa and Northern Rhodesia, the mineral wealth of Tanganyika was relatively modest. Under the Germans, who had been in possession of the country until 1919, a small amount of alluvial gold mining had taken place at Sekenke and Musoma; during the war a gold currency had been minted, but no major effort at extraction had been attempted. In the immediate post-war period, with Tanganyika having passed to Britain as a mandated territory, a little gold was mined at Musoma, but no prospecting was permitted to take place. However, an Ordinance passed in 1921 allowed mineral prospecting throughout the territory, and a subsequent 1923 Order-in-Council (issued after gold had been discovered in Lupa) made all open land publicly owned. This effectively reinstated a German Imperial Decree of 1895 that had bluntly declared ‘all land in German East Africa shall be regarded as unowned’ (Lange, 2008, 9; Gold In East Africa, 1935, 4; Roberts, 1986, 555-6).

Alluvial gold was found in the Lupa district, near Lake Rukwa, in 1922. It seems, from a newspaper clipping shown in ‘Life on the Lupa Goldfield’, to have been discovered by a prospector called William Cummins. The discovery prompted a minor gold rush to the area, and by the late 1920s this and other discoveries meant Tanganyika was beginning to attract the interest of mining companies and investors. A long article on the country by the director of the official Geological Survey, detailing aspects of the history, geography and geology of the country, appeared in The Mining Magazine in 1928 (this was later reprinted as a single volume; Teale 1928). The rush prompted further legislation in 1929 stating that any prospecting by companies was to be done in partnership with Government; Lange suggests this was to curtail the formation of ‘a class of poor whites’, as ‘hundreds of Europeans from neighbouring countries had flocked to the gold rich areas’ (Lange)

Despite the slowdown caused by the depression and by several dry years that hampered the extraction of alluvial gold, many hundreds of whites nevertheless continued to flood into the gold-producing areas during the early 1930s. The pickings were in fact rather slim, but new immigrants were not dissuaded. Roberts quotes a Government mine inspector recalling the early 1930s influx to the Lupa goldfield – ‘They came by bicycle, on foot, riding on donkeys, or anything on four wheels which could be induced to move. I was stationed there and saw them come… In most cases the Lupa meant little, if anything, more than bare subsistence, but it kept the wolf from the door until better times came’ (Roberts).

Accordingly, the 1930s saw the intensification of Tanganyikan gold production. Approximately 10,000 Africans were employed at the Lupa goldmines in 1933, and the numbers increased, peaking in the mid-1930s at around 17,000. Though the last five years of the decade saw gold account for 14% of Tanganyika’s exports, the actual amounts were fairly small, and are put in sharp perspective when set against the quantities being produced in South Africa at the same time – between 1930-39, 3,129 tons of gold were produced on the Rand, while in Tanganyika the decade only yielded just over 16 tons; the figure for the entire 1920s was a mere 1.2 tons (Roberts, 548).

Alluvial gold extraction at Lupa was labour-intensive, and poorly supervised by the Government. The Department of Labour had been dissolved in 1931, and there was not a district officer in the area until 1933; no medical officer was posted until 1935. The gold rush had taken place in ‘a remote, arid and sparsely populated area, and it was not easily susceptible to regulation,’ and by the mid-1930s conditions for African labourers, many of them migrants from neighbouring countries and many of them teenagers, had become very poor: ‘Wages were often unpaid, diet was inadequate, housing and water supplies were unsanitary, and venereal disease was on the increase’ (Roberts, 558). Tanganyika was a mandated territory, and the British had been charged with a duty of care for the native people; as a result, the situation in Lupa eventually attracted the notice of the Permanent Mandates Commission, and the Government was pressed to make improvements. However, despite an increase in the official presence toward the latter half of the decade, Roberts reports that cases of malnutrition and scurvy among African mineworkers were still being reported in 1939 (Roberts).

‘Life on the Lupa Goldfield’ is an extraordinary document. Clearly made with a viewing audience in mind – and presumably one familiar with much of the story, given the obscurity of some episodes – it is essentially a piece of amateur dramatics, though one with a very porous border which allows in footage which functions as documentary evidence (e.g. scenes of actual contemporary gold panning, which are intended to function as representations of historical gold panning, and a visit of the Governor to the area). Most importantly, it seems to be that rare thing, a piece of genuine folk-history, manufactured and devised for the purpose of community-based recollections of local historical events. Sequences are shot in black and white, but most of the film is in colour. A ‘script’ held in the archive indicates that many if not all the characters play themselves, and identifies them by name.