African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 352: Chapter 31 Democratic Elections

The Heixinggen Consortium increased its investments in North America and the Far East, while reducing investments in East Africa correspondingly. The actual reason is that East Africa is currently digesting previous achievements, with investments mainly concentrated in the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone and the Northern Industrial Zone.

Among them, the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone is independently invested in by the Heixinggen Consortium, and the heavy industry in the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone still requires some time before it can commence production.

Even just constructing factory buildings has taken considerable time, not to mention the even more significant bulk of infrastructure construction. The shores of Lake Malawi, unfortunately, lie in areas where East Africa’s geographical conditions are relatively poor and mountainous, so road construction is comparatively difficult, requiring detours around rugged terrain, greatly increasing construction costs.

After all this is completed, the Lake Malawi Industrial Zone will still need new immigrants to fill in. Industry needs workers, but unfortunately, at this stage, the overall number of immigrants to East Africa is showing a downward trend.

It is especially true that the number of German immigrants has drastically reduced; without a sufficient number of German immigrants, the introduction of immigrants from other ethnicities must be approached with caution.

In this respect, East Africa is stepping up its efforts to explore the potential of Hungary, given that Magyars account for only five percent of Hungary’s population.

This originates from the unique ideology of the Magyar nobles. Since there is an abundance of nobles in Hungary, numbering over 600,000 (including newly ennobled Lombardy nobles), the Magyar nobles easily classify themselves as a group. They exclude the peasants in rural Hungary from their ethnic group, declaring, ”Only landowners are the true Magyars!”

In the 19th century, nationalism was rampant, but Hungarian nationalism was not pure. Hungary can be said to wear the cloak of nationalism while resolutely defending the interests of conservatives, effectively using nationalism as a guise to protect its own interests.

If so, can Austria assimilate these rural peasants? The answer is no, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire actively promoted compulsory education to strengthen national identification.

The impact is minimal because schools in Hungary teach in Magyar, which means compulsory education cannot change the current situation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is likely to accelerate Hungarian national identification. Therefore, East Africa is now racing against the spread of compulsory education in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to send those Hungarian civilians to East Africa.

Although Hungarian immigrants cognitively lean more towards Hungary, at least geographically, once they arrive in East Africa, everything becomes no longer problematic, and changing ethnicity is a straightforward and blunt matter.

However, most Hungarian immigrants only speak Magyar, which is indeed a problem, so they cannot be grouped together in isolation.

These Hungarian immigrants cannot be used to fill the sparsely populated areas of Zambia and Zimbabwe but are feasible for supplementing the population in the eastern parts of East Africa.

After such a long period, the development of East Africa’s eastern region has seen a significant dissemination of the German language. The German-speaking environment inevitably pressures other ethnicities to learn German; this is certain, as life becomes difficult if one doesn’t understand German.

Generally speaking, it takes only two to three months for everyone to learn German through a German-speaking environment; even the slowest can force themselves to learn within six months to a year.

With Hungarian immigrants used to fill the eastern region, East Africa can then deploy German immigrants to consolidate the construction work in Zimbabwe and other areas.

Having been tricked by the Ndebele, the angered Kingdom of East Africa orders the Shona Tribe to capture all the Ndebele who once enslaved them and then dispatch them to the Central Province for canal excavation.

Though the Ndebele were punished, the Kingdom of East Africa also put local development on the agenda, marking the end of joint rule with the natives.

But how should the much larger Shona Tribe be resolved? The Kingdom of East Africa decides to employ some unscrupulous tactics, consuming the local natives bit by bit while avoiding provoking fierce resistance.

First, the Shona Tribe is forcibly divided into over 150 large tribes according to geographical regions, more or less ten thousand people per large tribe, as their maximum unit, preventing them from forming a new core.

Then, East Africa deploys over a hundred soldiers to each large tribe, equivalent to a company responsible for the stability of the large tribe within the jurisdiction. Thus, in every area where there is a local large tribe, East Africa has a fully organized combat unit capable of attacking or defending, unlike before when they could be suddenly annihilated by the natives. Even if they fall into a disadvantageous position, they can wait for reinforcements.

Next, the Shona Tribe is placed under direct rule just like the Ndebele, acting as local rulers and not sharing power.

As for how to ensure stability and acceptance of governance among these natives while also decreasing their numbers orderly, East Africa devised a cunning plan that involves elections.

In the name of the spirits, East Africa requires each large Shona Tribe to tribute one hundred slaves. As for who becomes a slave, a conversation is needed. If the Kingdom of East Africa directly appointed the slaves, it would certainly unite the Shona Tribe against a common enemy, ultimately pointing the conflicts towards East Africa.

Therefore, East Africa does not forcibly designate who becomes a slave but allows the Shona Tribe to choose the slaves themselves. These natives, temporarily united by East Africa through force, already have deep-rooted conflicts, so voting those with whom they have disputes as slaves is highly appealing.

”Procedural democracy!” ”Mob politics!”

The ”lucky ones” chosen through ”elections” will make contributions to the development of East Africa. As for the remaining natives, they need not worry; there’s a focus on ”everyone has a chance,” and everyone has the opportunity.

This extremely malicious tactic forcibly shifts conflicts onto different groups within the Shona Tribe, causing them to fall into internal strife.

Simultaneously, East Africa takes only a small number of slaves each time, about one percent, creating a sense of false hope in most natives, similar to pedestrians crossing the street thinking, so many people doing it, impossible that a traffic accident will happen to me.

Eventually, East Africa selects 15,000 slaves from Zimbabwe every three months, and the Shona Tribe population in Zimbabwe is currently nearly two million (modern Zimbabwe has approximately 16 million people). Before long, Zimbabwe can be ”whitened,” with these 15,000 slaves supporting construction projects throughout East Africa.

Such a ”strategy” shouldn’t be exclusive to Zimbabwe but implemented in all regions densely populated by natives in East Africa.

While continuously extracting Zimbabwean Blacks, new immigrants to East Africa are continuously introduced into Zimbabwe, consolidating East Africa’s rule.

Zimbabwe’s Shona Tribe amounts to only two million, which seems relatively few, but in fact, ranks above average in Africa. Zimbabwe spans only over 300,000 square kilometers, approaching over 400,000 square kilometers, and with low precipitation, such a ”narrow” region contains over two million natives (including the Ndebele), with a population density vastly surpassing that of East Africa’s plains initially.