The People

Tanzania: Profile Of A Nation

Author: John Ndembwike

Paperback: 168 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (27 October 2009)

ISBN-10: 9987930816

ISBN-13: 9789987930814

The People

THE demographic composition of Tanzania provides a unique perspective on the complexity of the ethnic diversity on the African continent, the second largest after Asia and with more than 1,000 ethnic and linguistic groups.

The linguistic diversity of Tanzania is unique in Africa. The majority of the people speak more than 100 Bantu languages in a country of about 130 ethnic groups indigenous to Africa.

There are also some people who speak the rare Khoisan click language characterized by implosive consonants. It is spoken only by the Hadzapi and the Sandawi of central Tanzania in a country that is predominantly Bantu. But it is common among the so-called Bushmen and Hottentots of South Africa and the Kalahari desert in Botswana.

There are also speakers of Cushitic and Nilotic languages in central and north-east central Tanzania. These are Iraqw who speak a Cushitic language and who originally came from the southern highlands of Ethiopia about 2,000 years ago; and the Maasai who migrated from southern Sudan about 300 years and who speak a Nilotic language. There is another group, the Datoga, also called Mang'ati, who also speak a Nilotic language and are fierce fighters like the Maasai.

Then there are the Somali, originally from Somalia, who live in the coastal regions and other parts of Tanzania including a significant number of them in Arusha Region in the northeast and the north-central parts of the country.

There are also Tutsis and Hutus especially in the western and northwestern regions of Tanzania and in other parts of the country. Some were born in Tanzania.

Others are refugees or descendants of refugees from the war-torn neighbouring countries of Rwanda and Burundi. In the early 1980s, tens of thousands of them were accorded citizenship by President Julius Nyerere. In 1980 alone, more than 80,000 Hutu and Tutsi refugees became citizens; beneficiaries of Nyerere's benevolent policies.

All these groups are indigenous to Africa.

Then there are the Arabs who constitute a significant part of the Tanzanian population especially in Zanzibar, Pemba, and along the coast.

They originally came from the Arabian peninsula including the Gulf states more than 1,300 years ago and have lived in Tanzania longer than some ethnic groups indigenous to Africa have; for example, longer than the Ngoni who migrated to Tanzania from South Africa only in the 1830s, and the Maasai who came from Sudan about 300 years ago. Other groups from Mozambique also migrated to Tanzania a few hundred years ago.

By some criterion, Arabs may be considered to be native to Africa because they have lived on the continent for so long, depending, of course, on how one defines the term "native."

How long do people have to live in an area to be considered native to the region? What makes Bantu groups native to Tanzania and other parts of East and Southern Africa when there is historical, cultural, linguistic and archaelogical evidence showing that they migrated from West Africa, especially from what is now eastern Nigeria and Cameroon, about 2,000 years ago? They were native to that region.

Whatever the case, Arabs are an integral part of the Tanzanian population and society and have contributed to the cultural vitality of the country and the East African region in a way other groups originally from outside Africa have not.

It was from the interaction and intermingling between the Arabs and Africans along the coast for centuries since 700 A.D, and even before then, that East Africa saw the birth of a new society and

culture along the coast of what is now Kenya and Tanzania and the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar.

It led to the birth and evolution of the Swahili language and the emergence of a virtually distinct ethnic group called Waswahili; a product of intermarriage between Arabs and Africans through the centuries. Arabs also have had a profound influence on Tanzania in another way through the introduction of Islam which became one of the major religions not only in Tanzania but in other parts of Africa as well.

The name Swahili itself is derived from the Arabic word sahil which means "coast." And Swahili is the main language of the coastal people, Waswahili.

It is also the national language of Tanzania and Kenya and one of the major African and world languages.

And it's the only indigenous African language that is used as one of the official languages in the African Union (AU) together with English, French, Portuguese, and Arabic.

In spite of the Arab influence on the language, Swahili, which is usually known as Kiswahili among the native speakers, is considered to be an African language because its structure, syntax and grammar is African, and most of its vocabulary is African, derived from Bantu languages.

Only about 25 percent of the Swahili vocabulary is of Arab origin.