The Maji Maji Rebellion

The new colonialists continued to encounter serious problems with subduing the southern
tribes, characterised most powerfully by the Maji Maji rebellion that began in 1905, and was
thought to have been most widespread united resistance to colonial rule anywhere in Africa.
The rebellion started west of Kilwa, and spread across the country until nearly all the southern
tribes were allied, but the most remarkable motivation to this show of strength was the
unfounded belief that the tribes had access to magical water that would protect them against
German bullets. On this understanding, the united front confronted the military forces of the
Europeans with impressive bravado, until thousands were machine-gunned to death when
they tried to storm the fort at Mahenge. 75,000 people died in two years, and their resistance
finally broke in 1907, when famine swept their land as a direct result of the Germans resorting
to the same effective ‘scorched earth’ policy of retaliation that they had employed to such
devastating effect previously.

German consolidation

The German colonial grasp had been considerably strengthened in 1890 by a devastating
outbreak of rinderpest that wiped out an estimated 90 per cent of the cattle in this first instance
of this disease in Tanganyika. Other diseases, such as jiggers and smallpox, also entered the
country at this time, and are known to have been a direct result of foreign intervention/
influence. This severely weakened the population of rural communities dependent on cattle,
especially the pastoral communities in the north, such as the Maasai, who suffered a severe
blow to their military strength and standing, and diminished any possibility of resistance to the
incoming powers. Like the Maasai, the WaArusha resisted and were defeated, but the new
forces were even strategically welcomed by Chagga chiefs, who used the newcomers to settle
scores among themselves. As a result, when German and British settlers came to the grazing
lands around the Rift Valley and slopes of Kilimanjaro at this time, they claimed that they found
them uninhabited. British colonialists became increasingly nervous about the encroaching
power of their European neighbours, and in 1890 they persuaded the Sultan of Zanzibar to
sign a treaty that made the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba a British Protectorate.

By 1896 the Germans had constructed forts in most key areas, and enforced a number of
taxes, such as taxes on huts, which had never gained great popularity. They preferred the
cooler mountain climate of the north, around Kilimanjaro and the Usambara Mountains, where
the land was better suited to growing crops, and where divisions among the chiefdoms meant
that they even found some allies on arrival. Rindi of Moshi actually welcomed them, in return
for their support in putting down nearby chiefs Sina and Marealle of Marangu.

The Europeans made Tanga their main HQ on the coast, with cool and pleasant settlement in
the foothills of the nearby Usambaras. They set their sights on developing potentially
rewarding coffee and sisal plantations, and encouraged all well-to-do chiefs and akidas to
follow. The first 62 sisal plants were illegally imported from Brazil in 1892, yet by 1910 there
were fifty four plantations, exporting thousands of tons a year.

The first railway was built inland from Tanga after 1891, which extended to Mombo,
Kilimanjaro and Meru before the great rebellion of 1905. Lines were extended to Tabora in
1912, and Kigoma by 1914, just before the outbreak of World War One.

The Germans devised their own system of power and authority, although this was originally
based on the one already employed by the Sultan. They retained the system of officials which
included a Liwali as governor of each major town, and administrators, called akidas were
placed in a subordinate but supporting role to them. Jumbes, or headmen, were responsible
for collecting tax. Gradually the original Liwalis were replaced by German officials, and the
other posts were given to students of the German schools. They created a number of schools,
aiming mainly for literacy and the creation of African administrators, and these had a reputation
for forced attendance and a tendency for corporal punishment.

Run up to Independence

Following international turmoil of World War One, and Germany’s defeat, the colony of
German East Africa was renamed Tanganyika, governed by British from 1916 –17, until,
ostensibly, 1961. The name Tanganyika is thought to have derived from one of two sources,
either the combination of the Swahili words ‘Tanga’ – Swahili for sail – and ‘nyika’ – meaning
the dry expanse of the interior, or alternatively it may come from the Swahili word
‘Mchanganyiko’, meaning a grouping of 120 linguistic peoples.

A relevant chapter of World War I was played out on East African soil, over the subdued plains
of Dutch East Africa. (William Boyd makes informed reference to a number of these key events
in his ‘fictional’ novel ‘The Ice-Cream War’. Finally German East Africa became Tanganyika,
and fell under British administration from 1920 – 1946, under a mandate from the League of
Nations. The British confiscated German property, and auctioned all their estates and
plantations in 1922, when many of smaller properties were bought by Greeks and Asians. As
sisal export recovered these new settlers made good money for a while, but many farms were
also neglected.

British Occupation

The British set out to implement a policy of ‘indirect rule’; Governor Sir Donald Cameron
strongly encouraged at least an appearance of rule through individual chiefs with their own
courts and tax collection systems, although in reality these were firmly under the jurisdiction of
British district commissioners. But the war had sapped both energy and finances, which were
further dented by the Great Depression of the 1930s, and never regained right up to the
outbreak of World War II in 1940. Real investment in the new colonial protectorate of
Tanganyika only really occurred during last 15 years of British occupation.

In the post-war years there was a serious shortage of edible fats and oils, and the Tanganyika
Director of Agriculture and the British Labour Government devised an ambitious ‘ground nut
project’, aiming to cultivate three million acres of ground nuts. The project required building
new harbors and railway lines, and was estimated to cost around £24 million, but ten years
later £35 million had been spent, and only a few areas of bush had been cleared. The project
had been dramatically rushed, with little pre-planning and soil testing, so that it soon became
clear that the ground cleared was entirely unsuitable for ground nut crops.

This was just one of a series of agricultural crises. In 1955, the British tried to enforce terrace
farming in the Uluguru, Usambara and Pare mountains and were met with considerable
resistance. One farmer was shot for insubordination, until finally, in 1956, the laws were
relaxed and the peasants pulled down all the existing terraces. It was later found that
production of rice improved. It finally became clear that forced productivity, started by German
colonial system, was counter-productive.

The British Protectorate

The Prince of Wales made a popular tour of Tanganyika in 1928, and by the following year Sir
Percival Phillips wrote in The Daily Mail that Dodoma was ‘Clapham Junction-in-the-Bush’. The
city streets were increasingly filled with shiny motor cars, and the population in Dar-es-Salaam
was estimated in the British papers to be about 1,200 Europeans (120 Germans, a few Greek,
a handful of Syrians and the rest British), 5000 Indians and 25,000 African. By
1945, Tanzania and Zanzibar were once again part of the world economy as exporters of raw
materials and importers of manufactured goods. But gradually the balance of power began to
shift to the USA, where nearly all goods were grown and raw materials were also
manufactured, and it became impossible for the African countries to keep up. The colonies
were less and less economically viable, and the time came for them to begin to earn their
Independence.

The first president of a new republic: Julius Kambarage Nyerere

Julius Kambarage Nyerere headed the political republic of Tanzania for nearly a quarter of a
century. He reigned as autocratic President of the country’s one-party state from Tanganiyikan
Independence in May 1961 until the elections of 1985, when he took an almost unprecedented
step for an African president, and left office voluntarily.

Ideology versus reality

His people remember him as ‘Mwalimu’, meaning ‘Teacher’, which may reflect his attitude
towards governance of people whom he considered too ill educated to know what was best for
them. His leadership earned him accolades such as ‘Baba wa Taifa’ – ‘Father of the Nation’-
‘The Father of Authentic African Socialism’, and ‘The Conscience of Africa’, and did great
things to the new republic in terms of creating a strong national identity, but also resulted in
devastating economic decline.

[and while his ambition to develop a model for African Socialism succeeded in uniting the more
than 130 disparate tribes and numerous religions of the country, the same people were
devastated by absolute economic decline when he stood down from power in the mid-eighties.

Julius Kambarage was son of Nyerere Burito, an aristocratic but illiterate chief of the small
Wazanaki tribe. The future president led a rural, traditional tribal life until he was twelve years
old. He was originally educated at the Native Authority school in Musoma, but then moved on
the British-run Roman Catholic secondary school, where he came top of the class and
converted to the Roman Catholic faith. Missionaries sent him to Edinburgh University in 1949,
where he was received with a scholarship and studied a degree in history, politics, and law,
and thus became the first black graduate in British Administered Tanganyika. During this time
Nyerere was greatly influenced by a close association with Fabian socialists, and later said
that he formed the whole of his political philosophy while he was there. Also during this time
Nyerere undertook the impressive task of translating choosing two very different Shakespeare
plays into KiSwahili, reinterpreting both Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice.
In 1953 he married Maria Magige, and the couple subsequently had a family of five sons and 2
daughters. The following year he headed the transformation of the African Association, turning
it from the non-political organisation created by the British Colonial Civil Service into a powerful
political force, supported by the growing group of educated Africans who now realised that the
colonial state was holding them back. The group was renamed the Tanganyikan African
National Union (TANU) and was committed to achieving independence.

The success and power of Nyerere’s political drive was rewarded by his election to the
legislative council of the former British colony of Tanganyika under Sir Edward Twining in
1958, and he became Prime Minister when the country achieved Independence in 1961.
Nineteen months later, when the constitution was amended to make Tanganyika a republic,
Julius Nyerere was elected as president and TANU was declared the only legal political party.
The slogan ‘Uhuru na Umoja’, ‘Freedom and Unity’ adopted in 1954, became the motto of the
country.

Development of the constitution, and merger with Zanzibar

The British Parliament had also approved a new constitution for Zanzibar in 1960, but the first
elections in January 1961 had ended in a deadlock result, and further elections in June,
although accompanied by rioting resulting in numerous casualties, resulted in a coalition of the
Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP), and Zanzibar and Pemba People’s Party (ZNPP), each
mainly representing the population of Zanzibari Arabs. Internal self-government followed in
June 1963, and finally Independence was achieved in December. But many people of Zanzibar
were incensed that power had been delivered straight back into the hands of the old Arab
families, and the following month an internal revolution, led by ‘Field Marshal’ John Okello and
his Revolutionary Council, effectively overthrew the government. Many Arabs were killed in the
ensuing riots and many fled for their lives before Sayyid Jamshid ibn Abdullah, who had
succeeded to the sultanate following his father’s death in 1963, was deposed, and Zanzibar
was proclaimed a republic.

Okello was later refused re-entry back in Zanzibar, and Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume, was
installed as president of the People’s Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba, at the helm of the Afro-
Shirazi Party and ostensibly representing the majority African Population.

The Revolution was followed by an army mutiny on the mainland in 1964, which badly shook
Nyerere’s confidence, forced him to turn (reluctantly) to the British Marines for assistance to
suppress the dissenters. As a consequence the army was restructured, with many
Tanganyikans replacing old British officers, and shortly afterwards Nyerere flew to sign the
‘articles of Union’ with Zanzibar, which led to the merger of the previously independent
countries of Tanzania and Zanzibar, established as the United Republic of Tanzania and
Zanzibar by an Interim Constitution of 1965. A permanent constitution for the United Republic
was approved in 1977, when TANU joined with the Afro-Shirazi Party of Zanzibar, and they
were amalgamated into the Revolutionary Party Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Nyerere, as
president of the United Republic, reigned as supreme head of state and commander in chief of
the armed forces, with President Karume of Zanzibar as Vice President.

Military security became a huge concern after the mutiny, and large numbers of Eastern
Germans and Russians were shipped in to train two thirds of the army, near a camp just a few
miles from one run by Chinese for the final third.

Nevertheless, Zanzibar retained a separate constitution, approved in 1979 and amended (with
the mainland constitution) in 1985. The islands keep an elected president and a cabinet, the
Supreme Revolutionary Council, and a parliament made up of elected and appointed members
called the House of Representatives. Both of these deal with matters of law and justice internal
to Zanzibar. The merger has not been wholly smooth running since its conception; in the early
days of Karume the right to detain anyone apparently opposing the state without trial was
being blatantly abused, and the mainland government was powerless to intervene (although
there were also numerous political prisoners on the mainland). The outcome was that Karume
paid the ultimate price for apparently abusing his position when he was assassinated by the
military in 1972, and his successor, Aboud Jumbe, firmly steered Zanzibar policy a little closer
in line with that of the mainland. There remain factions of Zanzibari society who continue to
lobby for greater autonomy from the mainland, although the islands remain increasingly
dependent on the mainland for utilities such as electricity and water supplies.