colonists. Forced labour was retained, and would remain a resentment for decades afterwards. While the uprising enjoyed sympathy amongst Yao commoners, none of the Yao chiefs in the Shire Highlands supported it. Most of them embraced Islam instead of Christianity and considered the African planters a threat to their political hegemony. The Commission of Enquiry dismissed the uprising as a localised affair caused by harsh mistreatment of natives by the Magomero estate. However, the grievances expressed by Chilembwe were not unique to his area, and the Africans across the entire Nyasaland identified with his struggle. Africans had no rights as tenants under the thangata system, had to pay rent in labour, and were prohibited from gathering wood or hunting wild animals in the woodlands surrounding the European estates, even though they considered woodland resources to be common property. Harry Kambwiri Matecheta noted that while the British colonial regime did suppress slave trade, the thangata system simply introduced a new form of slavery. The rebels were of diverse social and economic backgrounds, consisting of Yao people, Lomwe immigrants, agricultural farmers and African pretty bourgeoisie. The colonial regime ignored African petitions and failed to translate their laws into local languages, leading to many locals not understanding them at all. Morris notes that Africans of Nyasaland were increasingly hostile to the British rule due to physical abuse and mistreatment they had to endure, and if the rebellion managed to get support from German East Africa and acquire weapon caches during the attack African Lakes Company depot in Blantyre, it could have turned into a "a wider and more protracted struggle". Morris concludes that the rebellion was a response to colonial oppression, particularly towards racial injustice. It was a "struggle for freedom" with elements of Christian utopianism, with Chilembwe expressing two contrasting political traditions - Booth's radical egalitarianism and a "petty capitalist orientation" of the Protestant churches, which stressed the right to private property, wage labour and commercial agriculture. Commission of Enquiry In the aftermath of the revolt, the colonial administration formed a Commission of Enquiry to examine the causes and handling of the rebellion. The Commission, which presented its conclusions in early 1916, found that the revolt was chiefly caused by mismanagement of the Bruce plantation. The Commission also blamed Livingstone himself for "treatment of natives [that was] often unduly harsh" and for poor management of the estate. The Commission found that the