Tanzania: The Land and Its People
Author: John Ndembwike
Paperback: 172 pages
Publisher: New Africa Press (13 November 2006)
ISBN-10: 0980253446
ISBN-13: 978-0980253443
Chapter One:
Historical Background
TANZANIA is the largest country in a region that is generally known as East Africa.
The other countries in the region are Kenya and Uganda and they all were once ruled by Britain.
Tanzania is also known as the origin of mankind following the discovery of human-like fossil remains by British anthropologists, Dr. L.S.B. Leakey and his wife Mary, in the Olduvai Gorge in Ngorongoro Crater in 1959 in what was then northern Tanganyika before the country was renamed Tanzania in 1964.
Dr. Leakey's interest was sparked by earlier findings of some fossils and bones by a German entomologist in 1910 in the Olduvai Gorge which showed evidence of human life in the area. Leakey and his wife Mary, both of whom were Kenyans, started doing research in the Olduvai Gorge in 1931.
But it was not until 1959 that they had their major finding when Mary Leakey found fragments of teeth and a skull which were identified as remains of a male hominid whom they named Zinjanthropus, or Nutcracker Man, because of his extraordinarily large teeth.
About 20 years later, they found footprints at Laetoli, an area south of Olduvai, further validating their findings as proof of the presence of hominids in the region which earned it distinction as the origin of mankind. As Paul Rincon stated on BBC News years later:
"New DNA evidence suggests "African Eve", the 150,000-year-old female ancestor of every person on Earth, may have lived in Tanzania or Ethiopia. A genetic study has shown that the oldest known human DNA lineages are those of East Africans. The most ancient populations include the Sandawe, Burunge, Gorowa and Datoga people who live in Tanzania."
Competing claims have come from other parts of East Africa, especially from Kenya and Ethiopia as the origin of mankind, but they have not dethroned Tanzania from its "eminent" status as the first home of the human species.
They, instead, as East African countries share together the distinction of East Africa as a region which is generally considered by scientists and anthropologists to be the original home of mankind, roughly equivalent to the Biblical Garden of Eden whose original site has never been located but which is probably in what is Iraq today based on the Biblical account of the land of Mesopotamia, the ancient name of Iraq, and of the ancient rivers of Euphrates and Tigris which still flow today.
It all depends on what you believe in, evolution or intelligent design as the origin of life, about which nothing seems to have been resolved in the meeting of the minds from the two opposing camps which remain sharply divided on this highly contentious subject. And Tanzania has figured prominently in this debate since Dr. Leakey and his wife Mary discovered man's "earliest:" ancestor in the Olduvai Gorge in 1959.
But as a country, Tanzania did not exist or come into being until the late 1880s when Germany claimed the territory as its sphere of influence and named it Deutsch Ostafrika, which means German East Africa, an area which included what is now Rwanda and Burundi and what was then known as Ruanda-Urundi.
The area of what is Tanzania today is believed to have been first inhabited by people related to the Khoikhoi of the Kalahari desert. They were later overpowered and overwhelmed by immigrants from West Africa, the ancestors of most of the inhabitants of East Africa today who belong to the Bantu linguistic group and who are simply called Bantu.
The term "Bantu" was coined in the 1850s by W.H.I. Bleek, a librarian of the British government of the Cape colony in South Africa. It has acquired legitimacy ever since, although it is also highly controversial in some circles, for example in South Africa where it was used as a derogatory term during the apartheid era.
Most of the people in Tanzania are Bantu. There is overwhelming evidence from numerous archaeological findings in what is Tanzania today showing that large-scale immigration into the region took place about 2,000 years ago around 100 - 200 AD. The immigrants were mostly agriculturalists who emigrated from what is now Nigeria and Cameroon, especially from the border region between those two countries.
When these tribes or ethnic groups arrived in East Africa, including what is Tanzania today, they virtually expelled the indigenous people who were forced to move south where they eventually settled in the Kalahari desert and other parts of southern Africa.
More than one thousand places have been found in central Tanzania showing that the area was well-inhabited during the Stone Age. The findings include rock paintings especially in what is now Kondoa district and surrounding areas including Irangi.
Some of the original inhabitants still live in the area. They are the Hadzapi and the Sandawi, some of the smallest tribes in Tanzania, and whose languages including the click sound, have a striking resemblance to Khoisan, the language of the Khoikhoi - derisively called Hottentots - which is also related to the language of the San, so-called Bushmen; a linguistic affinity which binds these groups together as one people of common ancestry some of whom originated from an area that became Tanzania.
There were other immigrants who settled centuries ago in what is now Tanzania. In fact, they came long before the immigrants from West Africa arrived in the region.
In the second and first centuries BC, immigrants from the highlands of southern Ethiopia arrived and settled in Tanzania. They were Cushites and they settled mainly in the central part of what is now Tanzania.
Their descendants still live in Tanzania and constitute distinct groups, with their distinctive physical features and languages. These ethnic groups are the Iraqw, the Mbugu, the Burungi, and the Gorowa. They are also some of the smallest tribes in Tanzania.
Through the centuries, other immigration movements took place. More people immigrated into the region from West Africa.
Like the earlier immigrants, they were also agriculturalists and fashioned iron into implements for various activities including farming, cooking, and storage among others.
They also made weapons - spears and arrows - from iron and they were, like the earlier immigrants from West Africa, of Bantu stock; a term used to describe members of ethnic groups who speak related languages even if some of these groups are not genetically related or there are major genetic differences between them.
Evidence of these iron-working Bantu immigrants from West Africa has been found in different parts of Tanzania including one important settlement at Engaruka north of Lake Manyara which has significant archaeological remains including more than 5,000 acres of cultivated and irrigated land.
Also various tools including axes from the Iron Age were found at Katuruka west of Bukoba in Kagera Region in northwestern Tanzania and at Isimila near Iringa in the Southern Highlands; critical evidence showing that Africans had for centuries used iron in their lives, skills that were handed down through the generations.
Iron-smiths are common throughout Africa and have been an integral part of traditional African societies for centuries.
Besides vast immigration movements from West Africa, there were other migratory waves into the region from 300 - 400 AD. These were pastoral Nilotic tribes from the north who constitute a significant part of the population of Tanzania today. They are mostly found in northern parts of this vast East African country.
Other parts of Tanzania have also produced evidence of well-established communities and highly developed skills which existed centuries ago. For example, in the area of Uvinza in western Tanzania, there is evidence showing that salt mining dates from the early Stone Age.
Pottery was also found in the same area dating from the 600s AD.
Salt traders established contacts beyond Lake Tanganyika in what became the Congo and carried on extensive trade for centuries until the 1800s.
The decline in this commercial activity coincided with an increase in the slave trade by the Arabs which disrupted centuries-old patterns of African traditional life, and with the penetration of the African interior by Europeans which eventually led to the partition and colonisation of Africa after the Berlin Conference of 1885.
External contacts have also been an integral part of Tanzanian history for centuries.
Before Tanzania was colonized by the Germans and by the British, the people along the coast already had commercial ties with Arab countries, especially Oman, and parts of Asia including India and China as well as Indonesia. A wave of immigrants reached the Tanzanian coast from Indonesia via Madagascar centuries ago. Others came straight from Indonesia.
Arabs settled in significant numbers along the coast in the 700s AD and through the years engaged in the slave trade many of whose victims were shipped to Mesopotamia, now Iraq, Arabia and other parts of the Arab world. African slaves were also sold to merchants in Persia, as Iran was known until 1935, India and even China as well as other parts of Asia including Indonesia.
And traders from India and southwest Asia had settled in the coastal areas of Tanzania by 900 AD. Commercial activities with Africans involved exchange of cloth, beads, porcelain and metal products for ivory and other items.
Shirazi immigrants from Persia also established settlements along the coast of what is now Tanzania from the 1100s - 1400s AD until they were supplanted and destroyed by the Portuguese in the 1500s AD.
The Arabs again gained prominence and reigned supreme along the coast from their stronghold in Zanzibar, replacing the Portuguese until they were finally conquered by the Germans. Resistance to brutal German rule which included land expropriation, forced labour, high taxation and corporal punishment, led to massive repression by the German colonial rulers.
Some of the most sustained resistance to German oppression and exploitation took place in the southern half of the country where Chief Mkwawa routed German forces more than once in his territory in Iringa in the Southern Highlands before he was finally defeated.
It was also in this part of the country - what is southern Tanzania today - where a number of tribes united to fight the Germans in the famous war that came to be known as Maji Maji.
The Germans almost lost the colony in this war and were rescued when they got reinforcements from Germany. About 200,000 people died during this campaign, mostly from disease and starvation.
The Germans pursued a scorched-earth policy, confiscating food, inflicting brutal punishment on the indigenous people including the destruction of villages. The result was massive famine and depopulation of vast expanses of territory and forced emigration of large numbers of people to other parts, many of which were inhospitable, hence unfit for human habitation.
The Maji Maji war of resistance was the bloodiest in the country's colonial history and one of the deadliest in the entire history of colonial Africa. The war was fought from 1905 to 1907. And between March and September 1906, all the leaders who spearheaded the Maji Maji war were hanged by the German authorities.
The Germans themselves lost the territory to the Allied forces in World War I, paving the way for the establishment of British rule with the blessings of the League of Nations in 1920. The country, formerly known as Deutsch Ostafrika or German East Africa, was renamed Tanganyika when the British took over. It was named after Lake Tanganyika.
It was such a tragedy that the country suffered so much in so short a time.
Not long after half of the country had virtually been destroyed during the Maji Maji war of resistance, came World War I only seven years later.
Vast areas of the country were devastated, turned into wasteland; economic life was disrupted; the social fabric of different tribes or ethnic groups was torn apart; rampant disease and extreme poverty further destroyed life; and thousands of African soldiers who had fought in the war succumbed to famine, malaria and other diseases.
The establishment of British colonial rule soon after the war ended did not alleviate the plight.
Compounding the problem was the fact that the British had no interest in investing in Tanganyika or in attracting large numbers of British settlers because it was not a colony like neighbouring Kenya which was a "White Man's Country," as Lord Delamere put it. By remarkable contrast, Tanganyika was supposed to be under British tutelage only for a period of time, although not specified, before it became independent.
But it was not until more than 40 years later that Tanganyika attained sovereign status after the British took over as the rulers of this vast East African country under the supervision of the League of Nations. In 1946, it became a UN trusteeship territory - simply known as Tanganyika Trust Territory - under British mandate, with the stipulation that Britain would eventually guide the country to independence.
Although the British had a "special responsibility" to Tanganyika to prepare the country for independence, they did not proceed at a pace that satisfied African nationalists. As Julius Nyerere said years later in the 1950s when he became the leader of the nationalist movement - Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) - fighting for independence, the colonial government and TANU were headed in the same direction but not at the same pace.
The colonial rulers did, however, encourage limited local government under the policy of indirect rule using traditional rulers to help administer vast expanses of territory, a policy first introduced by Sir Frederick Lugard, later Lord Lugard, in Northern Nigeria when he served there as British high commissioner from 1901 to 1906.
Under this system, the British colonial rulers delegated authority to the emirs and other traditional rulers in Northern Nigeria making them responsible for labour recruitment, tax collection and limited law enforcement in areas under their jurisdiction.
But the policy of indirect rule also led to conflict with African traditional values and ways of life and favoured the chiefs and other Africans who were loyal to the British rulers. It was, however, adopted throughout British colonial Africa and other parts of the continent under colonial rule as a way to minimize administrative cost and other expenses. Tanganyika was no exception.
In Tanganyika, as well as in some other parts of Africa, some of the African chiefs or traditional rulers were appointed by the colonial authorities, further alienating the people.
In 1922 the British authorities in Tanganyika authorized the formation of African organizations in pursuit of their "liberal" policy of allowing Africans to express their views and promote their well-being. But in reality, Africans did not enjoy much freedom since they were still colonial subjects and therefore not entitled to the same rights and privileges enjoyed by their rulers and other whites.
The most prominent of these organizations was the Tanganyika Territory African Civil Service Association which became the incubator of nationalist aspirations which culminated in the establishment of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) on 7 July 1954 under the leadership of Julius Nyerere.
African representation in the government was minimal, at best, but in 1926 some Africans were unofficially admitted into the Legislative Council (LEGCO) which was the colonial legislature or parliament.
In 1929, the Tanganyika Territory African Civil Service Association became the Tanganyika African Association which was eventually transformed into TANU in 1954. About 10 years earlier before TANU was formed, the first Africans were officially appointed by the governor of Tanganyika as members of the Legislative Council in 1945.
The transition from colonial rule to independence was a peaceful one under the leadership of TANU. Less than seven years after TANU was founded, Tanganyika became independent on 9 December 1961.
It was the first East African country to emerge from colonial rule under the leadership of Julius Nyerere who became prime minister. He was 39 and the youngest leader in the world during that time.
On 26 April 1964, Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form Tanzania. It was the first union of independent states ever formed in Africa. And it is the only union of its kind that has ever been formed and which still exists today.
During his tenure as president of Tanzania, Nyerere became one of the most influential leaders in the history of post-colonial Africa. He was also one of the most prominent world leaders in the twentieth century despite the fact that his socialist policies failed to develop Tanzania.
But he had notable achievements in a number of areas in the domestic arena, especially in the provision of health services and education to the point where Tanzania had the highest literacy rate in Africa, over 91 percent; besides his highly commendable success as a champion of African liberation, especially in southern Africa when the countries in that region were under white minority rule. During his tenure as president, Tanzania was the headquarters of all the African liberation movements.
Tanzania: The Land and Its People
Author: John Ndembwike
Paperback: 172 pages
Publisher: New Africa Press (13 November 2006)
ISBN-10: 0980253446
ISBN-13: 978-0980253443