§ SIR C. HILLI beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the law relating to the rights and duties of concubines, alluded to in Clause 15 of the Abolition of the Legal Status of Slavery Ordinance, 1907, is the same in the Zanzibar territory comprised within the East Africa Protectorate as in other parts of the protectorate; and if not, what is the difference.
§ MR. CHURCHILLOutside the coast area a concubine has no rights and is under no obligations as such. The law is unaltered in this respect by the recent Ordinance. Within the ten-mile strip concubinage has hitherto been recognised in the same way as other forms of domestic slavery. This recognition of concubinage is maintained for the present under the Ordinance because of the danger that its abolition would result in a large number of women, now in a status which is sanctioned by Mahomedan law and therefore involves no loss of self-respect, being reduced to a life of promiscuous vice in the coast towns. The measure adopted is similar to that which has been found to work satisfactorily in Zanzibar, but its effect 1072 is being carefully watched, and if experience should show the necessity for a change the matter will be reconsidered.