Taken from: Fluid Networks and Hegemonic Powers in the Western Indian Ocean by Iain Walker and al.

 

Sicard (author for NADA The southern Rhodesian Native Affairs Department Annual) states that, before the Muslim traders, merchants from Asian origin would have used the port of Singo or Nshawa in the Save Delta for gold trading. This port, which Sicard identifies as the island of Wasika reported by Ibn-Madjid, would have been the key point in the Indian Ocean trade routes and also the inland African trade route, since going up the Save River, it was possible to reach Butua where the gold was mined. Based on Blake-Thompson's works (a medical doctor who wrote on precolonial history of Zimbabwe) he also states that the Save was navigable in small boats all the way through Mozambique at least as far as the confluence with the Lundi, where traces of a port with evidence of marine and estuarine fauna have been found.

Note: Singo and Nshawa were ports in the Save Delta founded (in oral history stories) by Austronesian traders on the lower Sabi. They founded Nshawa port by eliminating the Singo port founded earlier by the Aulaya people (also Austronesian). They have so far not been rediscovered.

Note: Singo and Nshawa is other stories are ports upriver from the delta of the sabi river (see further).

Note: here we do not identify Wasika (Vacika) as an island on the Sabi river; we identify it instead as Bazaruto island.

 

Taken from: Les apports austronésiens à Madagascar, dans le canal de Mozambique et en … By Claude Alibert.

 

(The text under is gathered from oral history stories)

The passage from Madagascar to Africa, Mozambique sector took two months to reach the Sabi River delta (at Nshawa). The route from Madagascar to the Zambezi (which they called Duanya) and then to Tete, constituted a total journey of three months.

 

In his Sicard letter, Blake Thompson also indicates a passage through Sri Lanka or southern India of a population of red-skinned traders who set up itineraries on the African coast, in particular on the lower Sabi (Nshawa) where they eliminated the Singo port of the Aulaya (who therefore would have arrived earlier). These two ports (first Singo, then Nshawa, would have been replaced by Sofala when the Sabi would no longer have been navigable).

 

Their legends, as passed down to their descendants, the 'Nyungwe, and as told by Lino Benkudo Piloto, the living descendant of Ming Yung (usually Bantuized as Munyu), their chief who settled at "Nshawa ” on the Sabi (Shawa) River.

 

The Aulaya lived in the kingdom of Milanje, (Note by Blake Thompson: “When after this information I mentioned Idrisi's 'Mihradj Empire', Lino says that was how the Arabs pronounced the words like Milanje. He did not know that Idrisi was Arab”), three months sailing from Madagascar (named by Lino under his old name Malaka). Every year the Aulaya came from Milanje to Africa to bring oxen, metalwork and other articles which they traded with the natives (not the Bantu who had not yet reached South Africa). south).

 

From Malaka (Madagascar), it took two months to reach Nshawa, the Aulaya port above the Sabi River delta. (This port was drained due to the change in the course of the river and it is now further inland). These peoples had other ports to the south, even further than Delgado Bay. A port was known as Ku Drabuja. From Nshawa the boats went north up the coast to one of the mouths of the Zambezi (which they knew as Duanya), stopping after the delta near a mountain (which they called Malangwe )

 

Extract from the letter addressed to Sicard by Blake-Thompson in 1954 and reproduced in “The Ancient Sabi-Zimbabwe Trade Route”, NADA, 1963, XL, p. 8.

 

“An Asian population came from Ceylon (Ulanga, Lanka) and from southern India towards Madagascar (Malaka or Madaga) and” after a naval battle against the Arabs, they were pushed back inland and migrated up to Nshawa (or Singo) on the Rhodesian part of the Sabi River, a port which had been their principal port on the occasion of their commercial voyages in Africa”.