Chapter 341

Chapter 341: Democratic Election

The Hechingen Consortium shifted its focus away from East Africa and increased investments in North America and the Far East, specifically in the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone and the North Industrial Zone. The Lake Malawi Industrial Zone was independently invested in by the consortium, but its heavy industry was still in the process of construction, which required significant time and resources.

Infrastructure development in the region was challenging, given the mountainous terrain and rough terrain near Lake Malawi. The construction of roads and other necessary infrastructure increased costs. Moreover, the consortium needed to attract new immigrants to fill the industrial zone and provide the required workforce. However, immigration to East Africa had shown a decline.

German immigration, in particular, had decreased significantly. To compensate for this, East Africa focused on tapping into the potential of Hungarian immigrants. The Magyar population in Hungary was relatively small, accounting for only 5% of the total population. Magyar nobles had a unique perspective, and they tended to consider only landowners as true Magyars.

This outlook didn't align well with the Austro-Hungarian Empire's efforts to promote compulsory education and strengthen national identity. To safeguard their interests, East Africa sought to bring Hungarian civilians to the region before the effects of compulsory education took hold. While Hungarian immigrants had strong ties to Hungary, the geographical shift to East Africa could help change their nationality if necessary.

One challenge was the language barrier, as most Hungarian immigrants primarily spoke Magyar. They couldn't be concentrated in sparsely populated areas like Zambia and Zimbabwe, but they could be integrated into the broader population of East Africa, where German had become widely spoken.

East Africa's kingdom had previously experienced tensions between the Ndebele and Shona people. The kingdom decided to take punitive measures by having the Shona people capture those Ndebele individuals who had previously enslaved them. These captured individuals were then sent to the Central Province to work on canal construction.

East Africa adopted a new approach, abandoning the previous co-governance model with indigenous peoples and instead exerting direct rule over them. It divided the Shona people into more than 150 large tribes, each with over 10,000 people. East Africa stationed over 100 soldiers in each large tribe to maintain stability and prevent sudden uprisings.

To maintain control and reduce the indigenous population, East Africa implemented an electoral system under the guise of religious mandates. Each large Shona tribe was required to tribute one hundred slaves, but rather than appointing these slaves directly, East Africa allowed the Shona people to choose their own slaves from among their own ranks. This cleverly forced the Shona people to create conflicts among themselves by electing individuals with whom they had disputes.

The "elected" individuals became slaves who would contribute to East Africa's development, while the remaining indigenous population was left to contend with ongoing conflicts. East Africa selected only about 1% of the population as slaves each time, so most indigenous people believed they were safe from being chosen.

East Africa continued to transfer 15,000 slaves from Zimbabwe every three months to support construction projects across the kingdom. Meanwhile, new immigrants from East Africa were continuously brought into Zimbabwe to consolidate East African rule.

In the end, this strategy forced the Shona people into internal friction and allowed East Africa to maintain control over the region while reducing the indigenous population.

(end of this chapter)