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HEALTH IMPLICATIONS OF WITCHCRAFT BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES IN UHEHE

A Historical Perspective

Frank Edward

M.A. (History) Dissertation

University of Dar es Salaam
July 2013
HEALTH IMPLICATIONS OF WITCHCRAFT BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES IN UHEHE

A Historical Perspective

By

Frank Edward

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts (History) of the University of Dar Es Salaam.

University of Dar es Salaam

July, 2013
ii
iii
 iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation and my M.A. (History) studies at the University of Dar es Salaam

are a result of efforts and assistance of many individuals and institutions. First and

foremost, I would like to show my deep appreciation to Prof. F.J. Kaijage for his

great motivation in pursuing further studies in history since my undergraduate days.

Secondly, I would like to show my special thanks to my dissertation supervisor, Dr.

Yusufu Q. Lawi. Dr. Lawi has guided and given me great erudition during my

research problem formulation and writing of my dissertation. Despite being

overwhelmed by administrative duties at the University level, teaching

undergraduate and postgraduate students, research and consultancy works; Dr. Lawi

devoted his valuable time to review and comment tirelessly on my several chapter

and dissertation drafts. His academic zeal and passion has really imparted to me very

important skills that I highly treasure.

I would also like to thank the GeSoMo Project for awarding me a fulltime

scholarship for my M.A. studies at the University of Dar es Salaam for the year

2009-2010. Special thanks should go to GeSoMo country project Coordinator, Dr

Y.Q. Lawi, and Prof. B.B. Mapunda and Mrs. Alice Hosea as project administrators

for their sincere and parental assistance they gave me. My other gratitude should go

to the staff members of the Department of History of the University of Dar es Salaam

for the moral and material support. Special thanks should go to Prof. I.N. Kimambo,

Prof. F.J. Kaijage, Prof. K.I.Tambila, Prof. N.N. Luanda, Dr. Y.Q. Lawi and Dr. R.

Nchimbi for mentoring me in different historical perspectives.

 v

Lastly, I would like to thank sincerely my informants in different districts of the

present day Iringa region; the staff of TNA and MZA; my M.A. History classmates,

namely, Victor Mtenga, Reginald E. Kirey, John Mhomela, Elias Jonas, Jema

Khalfani, Juma Khatibu, Yustina Komba, Aminu Ado, Chen Que Yue and Reinfrida;

local authorities in Iringa and Mbeya regions; and the Ulete, Wasa, Tosamaganga,

Itunundu and Kilolo Catholic missions. These individuals and institutions helped me

dearly. I would also like to thank my guardians, Yollanda Mgessi and Selijo Mgessi,

for their investment in my education since my single parent passed away. Their

dedication is highly valued and appreciated.

 vi

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to my late mother, Flora Gregory Mgessi, for her endless zeal

to create in me the passion for reading and education.

 vii

ABSTRACT

The study investigates the implications of witchcraft beliefs and practices on health

in Uhehe from the late 19th century to the end of the 20th century. It integrates

information from oral and written sources to understand witchcraft beliefs and

practices in Uhehe and highlights its health implications. The study found out that

during the late 19th century witchcraft was medicalized in the Hehe health seeking

tradition. This was partly manifested in the common identification of the

consequences of witchcraft beliefs and practices as health misfortunes and ill health.

Witchcraft was also rationalised in the local cosmology and perceptions of health.

During the colonial period, a new health seeking tradition – western medicine – was

introduced in Uhehe by the colonial state and missionaries. The newcomers

perceived witchcraft as one of the remnants of cultural elements depicting lack of

civilisation, which needed to be controlled or removed in modern societies using

political and legal mechanisms. Consequently, the influence of witchcraft on health

was understood from the viewpoint of western medicine. Medical syncretism,

incomplete dosage in biomedical treatment and consolidation of witchcraft beliefs

during times of ill health were some of consequences experienced in the colonial era.

Some of the effects of witchcraft beliefs persisted long after the end of colonialism.

The study concludes that witchcraft and health are historically interwoven in Uhehe

and they bear a social significance that deserves scholarly attention.

 viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certification ................................................................................................................. ii

Declaration and Copyright .......................................................................................... iii

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... iv

Dedication ................................................................................................................... vi

Abstract ...................................................................................................................... vii

Table of Contents ......................................................................................................viii

List of Illustrations ....................................................................................................... x

List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................. xi

Orthography ............................................................................................................... xii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION....................................................................... 1

1.1 Background to the Problem ................................................................................ 1

1.2 Literature Review and Theoretical Frame of the Study ...................................... 8

1.3 Sources, Problems and Organization ................................................................ 20

CHAPTER TWO: WITCHCRAFT IN RELATION TO HEALTH SEEKING

TRADITIONS IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY UHEHE. ................................. 27

2.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 27

2.2. Historical and Geographical Contexts of Uhehe.............................................. 27

2.3. Health Seeking Traditions in the Late 19th Century Uhehe ............................. 32

2.4. The Traditional Healer in the Late 19th Century Uhehe. ................................. 45

2.5. Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Late 19th Century Uhehe ......................... 48

2.6. Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 55

 ix

CHAPTER THREE: WITCHCRAFT BELIEFS AND HEALTH

IMPLICATIONS IN COLONIAL UHEHE. ......................................................... 56

3.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 56

3.2 Early Colonial Rule in Relation to Witchcraft and Health ............................... 56

3.3 Later Colonial Rule and the Health System ...................................................... 63

3.4 Later Colonial Rule and Witchcraft .................................................................. 70

3.5 Implications on Health ...................................................................................... 74

CHAPTER FOUR: CHANGING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

WITCHCRAFT AND HEALTH: 1960s TO 1990s............................................... 80

4.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 80

4.2 Witchcraft Legislation, Beliefs and Practices: Ujamaa Era to 1990s .............. 81

4.3 The Health Sector in Iringa: 1960s to 1990s ................................................... 89

4.4 Health Implications of Witchcraft ................................................................... 93

4.5 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 98

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION ........................................................................ 99

Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 106

A. Published and Unpublished Secondary Sources .............................................. 106

B. Archival Sources .............................................................................................. 113

Appendices .............................................................................................................. 115

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
 xi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

MZA – Mbeya Zonal Archives

RMAs – Rural Medical Aids

RPC – Regional Police Commissioner

TNA – Tanzania National Archives

WWI – First World War, 1914-1918

WWII – Second World War, 1939-1945

 xii

ORTHOGRAPHY

Although this dissertation is written in the English language, it borrows a few words

from the Hehe language. Those words have been italicized and their approximate

English meanings provided. The Hehe words used are all nouns either of states,

positions, things or practices. They occur in plural and singular forms. In the Hehe

language the prefix “m” is used to connote singular noun forms, for example, Mtwa.

In contrast, the prefix “vi-” or “va-” is used to connote plural forms, for example,

vanzagila. The prefix “li-” stands for ‘something big’ beyond the normal size, for

example, lihomelo.
 1

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Problem

Many scholars concede the fact that witchcraft beliefs and practices are well known

universally. Some scholars have advanced general definitions while others have

developed particularistic definitions of witchcraft. Yet witchcraft is widely

understood to mean the use of supernatural powers, inherited or acquired, for ill-will

purposes.1 Many studies on witchcraft have laboured much to elaborate the universal

meanings and practices of witchcraft and the functions it has served in the social,

political and legal aspects. For instance, studies on witchcraft by Boyer and

Nissenbaum in American New England unveiled the interwoven connection between

witchcraft accusations on one hand and social, political and legal issues on the

other.2 In England, studies by Gaskill3 and MacFarlane4 have revealed more or less

the same pattern. In Africa, particularly Tanzania, a study by Mesaki focused on the

same range of issues.5

Although the existing studies on witchcraft are informative, they have

characteristically omitted the issue of implications of witchcraft on human health and

its significance in public health systems. This is to say that these studies have not

1
Simeon Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-Killings in Tanzania: Paradox and Dilemma” (PhD. diss.,
University of Minnesota, 1993), 11; John Iliffe, Africans: A History of the Continent, 2nd Edition
(Cambridge, 2007), 93.
2
Paul Boyer & Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft
(Massachusetts, 1974).
3
Malcolm Gaskill, “The Devil in the Shape of Man: Witchcraft, Conflict and Belief in Jacobean
England”, in Journal of Historical Research 71 (175) (1998):142-171.
4
Alan MacFarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (New York, 1970).
5
Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-Killings in Tanzania”; Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Law in Tanzania.”
International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 1 (8) (2009): 132-138.
 2

elaborated the relationship between witchcraft and health. Consequently, there has

been little effort to understand the changing nature of witchcraft beliefs and practices

and their impacts on health. Such paucity is also notable in the effort to understand

the influence of dynamics such as the introduction of Christianity, colonial

legislation and biomedicine on witchcraft and its health implications in the African

context.

The studies cited above have established that witchcraft legislation and cases were

common in Europe and America in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.6 The legislation

and cases were shaped by the times in which they occurred. It is notable that

witchcraft studies in colonial and post-colonial Tanzania have shown an interesting

linkage with the European and American witchcraft legislation and control practices.

The purpose in both contexts was to control and destroy witchcraft beliefs and

practices. Yet, whereas in Europe and America the endeavor was successful, though

the extent and factors for success are disputed by historians, in the Tanzanian case

the success has been limited. That explains why the impacts of witchcraft beliefs and

practices on health have persisted in the country. The following story may help to

elucidate this fact.

In June 2006, an incident happened in Ndiwili village in Iringa. The incident

involved one family that had a patient suffering from a disease that probably was one

of the sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The family members who were taking

6
See MacFarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, Op.Cit. ; Boyer & Nissenbaum, Salem
Possessed, Op.Cit.
 3

care of the patient testified that they had gone with their patient to several

dispensaries, health centres and to the Iringa Regional Government Hospital. They

had been struggling to seek medical help for about eight months, and their efforts

had ended in vain. This left them virtually bankrupt and at times unable even to buy

pain killers. The family members seized on the idea that their patient was bewitched.

They thought this was true because the medical doctors were unable to cure their

patient and the patient was weakening more and more. They had also consulted

several traditional healers but without any relief. In the end the patient passed away.

In their perception, this death was caused by witchcraft.7

This story underlines the fact that conviction about causal connections between

witchcraft and health is a reality in rural Africa.8 Nonetheless, most of the existing

literature on witchcraft beliefs and practices deny any real connections between such

beliefs and health. Simeon Mesaki, for instance, denies the existence of witchcraft.

He grounds his denial in religious belief and Marxism. Mesaki identifies himself as a

Seventh Day Adventist, noting further that according to that religious creed,

witchcraft is evil and does not exist. On the other hand, he aligned himself with

Marxism which considers witchcraft as a false consciousness.9 In opposition to

Mesaki’s position and in light of persistence of the colonial anti-witchcraft

legislations to the present, this study is built on the understanding that witchcraft

implications have a long thread of history, covering especially the sphere of health.

7
Personal communication with Katarina Lumato, Iringa, June, 2006.
8
See for instance Cosmas Haule, “Bantu ‘Witchcraft’ and Christianity Morality” (PhD. diss., Nouvelle
Revue de Science Missionnaire, 1969); Jens A. Anderson, “Sorcery in the Era of ‘Henry IV’: Kinship,
Mobility in Buhera District, Zimbabwe,” in Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 8 (2002): 425-
449; Ray Abrahams, (ed.), Witchcraft in Contemporary Tanzania (Cambridge, 1994); ibid.
9
Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-Killings in Tanzania”, 43.
 4

To gain an understanding of this, the study focuses on Uhehe, a part of Iringa region

in Tanzania’s southern highlands.10

Uhehe is an area whose dominant inhabitants are the Hehe people. They are a Bantu

speaking ethnic group found in four districts of Iringa region, located in the

southwest highlands of Tanzania. Henceforth, the term Uhehe, in this work, shall be

used to represent the land of the Hehe people covering four districts of current Iringa

region, namely; Iringa Rural, Iringa Urban, Kilolo and Mufindi districts.

According to many Africanist anthropologists and sociologists who have undertaken

research on the field of witchcraft, witchcraft is a social and historical phenomenon

among the linguistic groups found in sub-Saharan Africa. Cosmas Haule, an African

Christian missionary, for instance, did a study in southwest highlands of Tanzania.

His study focus was on the Bantu witchcraft beliefs and practices in the region and

its comparison with the Christian world view. What he revealed was that witchcraft

beliefs and practices manifested themselves among the Bantu in such circumstances

as pregnancy, birth, marriage, daily activities, death, burial and illness.11 Haule’s

study, however, focused largely on ethnic groups found in Ruvuma region. In many

witchcraft studies conducted across sub-Saharan Africa, there are more features that

transcend the ethnic group boundaries. Those features are easily noticeable in times

10
The desire to use Uhehe as a case for this study partly emanated from a personal communication
with a missionary doctor at Nyabula Mission Dispensary in June 2006. The doctor recounted that the
situation was serious in late 1990s and early 2000s due to the spread of HIV-AIDS in Uhehe because
the Hehe people (and the people who have mixed with them) found that scourge incurable in bio-
medical health facilities. Consequently, the Hehe people turned to traditional healing approach, but
their main belief, according to the missionary doctor, capitalized the agency of witchcraft beliefs and
practices as being behind the scourge.
11
Haule, “Bantu ‘Witchcraft’ and Christianity Morality”.
 5

of misfortunes and maladies in normal social life.12 It is clear from Africanist

witchcraft studies that witchcraft beliefs are stronger in rural areas than in urban

settings. This has been explained, for instance, by an anthropologist Maia Green.13

It is known that, historically, health facilities in rural Africa are few; they lack

qualified and skilled personnel; and are underfunded. This means that they have been

operating with poor infrastructure and insufficient medicine and other important

supplies.14 When these shortfalls are coupled with poor transport and low income

levels caused by high poverty levels, it would not be surprising that people suffering

from ill health could resort to the traditional healing. Traditional healing, as will be

revealed in Uhehe, is inextricably intertwined with beliefs and practices related to

witchcraft. And this brings us to the problem of the study. The Witchcraft Ordinance

of 1928 interpreted this phenomenon of witchcraft as having implications on health:

Any person who commits an offense against this Ordinance with intent to cause

death, disease, injury, or misfortune to any community, class of persons, person, or

animal, or to cause injury to any property shall be liable to imprisonment of either

description for a period not exceeding seven years, or to a fine not exceeding four

thousand shillings, or to both such fine or imprisonment.15

12
Ronald Hutton, “Anthropological and Historical Approaches to Witchcraft”, in the Historical
Journal 47 (2) (2004): 413-434.
13
Maia Green, “Witchcraft Suppression Practices and Movements”, in Comparative Studies in Society
and History 39 (2) (1997): 320.
14
For the best historical analysis of the public health system particularly on how it was brought to
Tanzanian rural setting and its trends see Meredith Turshen, “The Political Economy of Health with a
Case Study of Tanzania” (PhD. diss., University of Sussex, 1975); Turshen, The Political Ecology of
Diseases in Tanzania (New Brunswick, 1984).
15
TNA 12379 , Witchcraft Ordinance
 6

The ordinance identified health-related eventuality of witchcraft, such as death,

injury and disease. More importantly, it underscored the fact that witchcraft’s

consequences are broader since they also affect animals and property. Nonetheless,

the Ordinance did not show what existed in pre-colonial Tanganyika. In

correspondence between the British governor and other colonial officials over the

Ordinance, the latter did not recognize the efficacy of witchcraft; neither did they

talk about its function in African societies.

Taking into account the incident recounted earlier, traditional and western medicine

were loosely intertwined in addressing the same disease condition. This feature

probably developed at the beginning of the 20th century since that is when evidence

reveal the co-existence of Western and traditional healing systems. Was such

medical syncretism a product of confluence of cultures or one of the witchcraft

implication or both? Were there witchcraft consequences on health before the

interface of African and western cultures in Uhehe? Did the colonial and

postcolonial anti-witchcraft legislation alter the state of witchcraft? And what could

have been their (probably) changing impacts on health? These are the questions that

can be raised in light of the existing literature.

The general objective of this study was therefore to investigate the implications of

witchcraft beliefs and practices on health in Uhehe and how the relationship has

changed historically. In realizing the study’s general objective, three specific

objectives were developed. The first was to discern witchcraft beliefs and practices

in the context of health seeking traditions in the late 19th century Uhehe before
 7

European colonisation. Another goal was to seek an understanding of changes in the

Hehe health seeking traditions and understanding the relation between witchcraft and

health in the same period.

The second specific objective of the study was to investigate the relationship

between the Hehe health seeking traditions and witchcraft beliefs in the colonial

period and the transformations that occurred in the health seeking tendencies. The

last specific objective was to investigate the state of witchcraft and its health

implications in the post-colonial period. It was expected that this would enable a

comparison of the three periods – the late precolonial, colonial and post-colonial

periods. The ultimate goal was to discern the relationship between witchcraft and

health.

The intellectual significance of the study is that it would provides a new window for

viewing the interface between witchcraft beliefs and practices on one hand, and

health issues on the other. The study contributes to knowledge in the fields of

history, social anthropology and public health on the interconnections between

witchcraft and health. With reference to the specific case of the Uhehe, the study

ultimately enriches our understanding of health problems and their contributive

factors.

The research was limited to the study of witchcraft beliefs and practices in relation to

health and healing among the Hehe people living in Iringa region. In terms of the

scholarly scope, the study was limited to uncovering the relationship between
 8

witchcraft beliefs and practices on one hand and, on the other, health in the case

study society. In this work, the phrase word “health implications” refers to explicit

and implicit consequences of witchcraft on health.

1.2 Literature Review and Theoretical Frame of the Study

Witchcraft has attracted attention of scholars with different theoretical orientations.

The result has been vast and contesting definitions, analyses and explanations of

witchcraft. It is notable that, with respect to witchcraft in Africa, structural

functionalism has overridden other theoretical inclinations in understanding,

interpreting and explaining witchcraft beliefs and practices. The theories that have

featured prominently include political economy, demonological theory, social

constructionism, consensual theory and psychosocial theory. Most studies on

witchcraft have been done by anthropologists, most of whom have employed the

structural functionalist approach with its western ideological construct of opposition

between modernity and traditionalism. This has led to pessimism among some of the

social anthropologists. They saw no other valid theoretical tool that could replace

structural functionalism in analysis and explanation.16

In Europe and North America witchcraft has received more or less balanced

attention from the disciplines of history and anthropology. As a result witchcraft has

been viewed as historical in those regions of the world. In Africa, due to the

dominant use of the ahistorical approach of structural functionalism17, witchcraft has

16
Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-Killings in Tanzania”, 11.
17
Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, 2nd Edn. (London, 1995),
17.
 9

been designated as a static phenomenon. And this has hindered effective unveiling of

its changing implications, particularly on health.

Structural functionalism is a theory that looks at roles and significance of social

systems, structures and values in a given society. The application of structural

functionalist theory in the studies on witchcraft is clear in the work of a twentieth-

century British social anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard, entitled Zande Society

Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Virtually all anthropological

studies on witchcraft beliefs and practices in Africa have made reference to this work

since its publication in 1937. Evans-Pritchard’s work focused on the thought

processes using ethnographic approaches under the assumption that, to understand

Zande witchcraft beliefs and practices and how they used this phenomenon to

explain causality, one should understand that society.18 This work was one of the

anthropological studies whose purpose was to furnish the colonial states with cultural

information of their subjects under the category of ‘tribe’.19 Implicitly intertwined

with that motive is the internalization of dichotomy between traditionalism and

modernity. During the colonial and early post-colonial period, studies on witchcraft

were undertaken on many African societies only to prove that they were ‘primitive’,

still believing in ‘savage’ beliefs and practices. Hence modernization, through

diffusion, was seen as the only way of salvaging African societies from the claws of

‘uncivilized’, ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ beliefs and practices. New beliefs, like

Christianity and Islam and western education, as evidenced by Maia Green – a

British Oxford anthropologist, were thus considered as important tools of creating

18
Alan Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, 2000), 159.
19
Ibid., 158; Daryll Forde ed., Ethnographic Survey of Africa (London, 1952), i.
 10

modernized African societies. Up to the 1990s, the assumption that witchcraft is a

primitive belief was still held as an objective truth since evidence showed that in

some parts of Africa (taking the case of Pogoro people of Tanzania), the church

excommunicated those who were accused of believing and practicing witchcraft and

their accusers.20

Recent studies have also been caught in that web of upholding the dichotomy of

traditionalism and modernity. For instance, Frederick Goloobi-Mutebi, citing Brown

and Hutt, portrayed the Hehe people’s strong hesitation in making and showing

material progress for fear of being bewitched.21 For instance, the Hehe people could

not build modern houses, buy sophisticated farm implements or good clothes and eat

nutritional foodstuffs despite the fact that they had substantial amount of money,

because they feared being bewitched. The social function of witchcraft, from

Goloobi-Mutebi’s perspective, is conservatism. Conservatism in his sense implies

upholding old and traditional social values as a way of discouraging new and modern

social values. He did not see the way it functioned as a social control in other ways

like in political aspects as shown by Brown and Hutt in Uhehe. Brown and Hutt

found out that witchcraft was a means of showing political status among the gender

and power bearers. Women, for instance, could not accuse men of practicing

witchcraft since they were politically powerful. Similarly, the juniors in the pre-

20
Maia Green, “Shaving Witchcraft in Ulanga: Kunyolewa and the Catholic Church,” in Ray
Abrahams (ed.), Witchcraft in Contemporary Tanzania (Cambridge, 1994), 24.
21
Cf. Frederick Goloobi-Mutebi, “Witchcraft, Social Cohesion and Participation in a South African
Village,”in Development and Change 36 (5) (2005), 940.
 11

colonial political system feared to challenge the seniors because the seniors were

thought to be powerful in witchcraft.22

Structural functionalism has weaknesses as noted by several scholars. Anthony

Giddens, one of the contemporary critics of structural functionalism and also one of

the most cited social theorists, affirmed the structural functionalism’s ahistorical

weakness when he contended that:

I object to functionalism that it rests(like structuralism) upon a false division

between statics and dynamics. . . ; that in stressing the system needs,
functionalist authors have been unable to see human beings as reasoning
agents who know a great deal about what they are doing in their social
conduct. . . .It is more important in this context to stress that time (time-
space) is obviously as necessary a component of social stability as it is of
change. A stable social order is one in which there is close similarity
between how things are, and how they used to be. This indicates how
misleading it is to suppose that one can take a ‘timeless snapshot’ of a social
system as one can, say, take a real snapshot of the architecture of a
building.23

In line with Giddens’ critique of structural functionalism, this study uses a historical

approach to understand witchcraft beliefs and practices in Africa. Reasons include

the fact that witchcraft has existed in Africa for more than a century and a half; 24 has

experienced multifaceted waves of change, both externally and internally, and

consequently led to adaptations and continuities.

Other studies have shown how witchcraft beliefs and practices relate to aspects of the

contemporary political economy. Isak Niehaus, for instance, depicted witchcraft as

taking historic and modern forms of social relations like using the imagery of white

22
Brown & Hutt, Anthropology in Action, 182-3; J.L. Brain, “More Modern Witchfinding,” in TNR
62 (1964), 44.
23
Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism.
24
Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-killings in Tanzania”.
 12

master and black servant in defining power relations between witches and zombies.

Witches, according to Niehaus, are those persons who have malevolent powers and

skills. Zombies are witches’ victims mystically transformed into instruments or

helping hands in manual activities at home and in the fields. He also showed how

anomalous diseases and deaths had been explained in terms of such relations in

South African Lowveld.25 Similarly, a study of the Akan society in Ghana by

anthropologist Jane Parish showed how witchcraft invoked the imagery of new forms

of modernity through the credit card which depicts relations between Ghana and

foreign countries. In that imagery, young entrepreneurs consulted “witchdoctors”

seeking protective talismans and charms for fear of losing money through the

modern electronic ways of transferring money. 26 Electronic money transfers,

symbolizing modernity in this case, had not achieved success in ousting insecurity

grounded on traditional elements like witchcraft and magic.

Apart from structural functionalism and political economy approaches, there is

demonology theory which treats witchcraft as important in the tradition-modern

dichotomy. This theory presents witchcraft as one of the surviving ancient beliefs

and practices. Ralph W. Emerson, a 19th century demonologist and philosopher,

identified elements of that belief such as dreams, omens, coincidences, luck,

sortilege, magic and other supernatural and mystical experiences. 27 This apparently

explains why most of the state interventions against witchcraft in Europe during the

25
Isak Niehaus, “Witches and Zombies of the South African Lowveld: Discourse, Accusations and
Subjective Reality,” in Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (2005): 191-210.
26
Jane Parish, “From the Body to the Wallet: Conceptualizing Akan Witchcraft at Home and
Abroad,” in Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 6 (2000): 487-500.
27
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Demonology”, in the North American Review 124 (255) (1877), 179.
 13

15th, 16th and 17th centuries were framed around the Christian world view.28 During

that period human action was thought to be “guided by divine (or diabolical)

inspiration, and that disease was frequently caused by black magic or witchcraft,”29

says Richard J. Evans, a Cambridge historian of modern history. The fact that

witchcraft suppression was a religious matter was evidenced by the release of

Malleus Maleficarum (the Witches Hammer), “a complete guide for the discovery,

examination, torture, trial and execution of witches”, by Pope Innocent VIII in

1485.30 Apart from approaching witchcraft as a religious issue, the theory

underscores that health implications of witchcraft could also be addressed through

religious means. “Where disease is attributed to supernatural causes or malicious

human agency, its treatment or suppression is a matter for religious . . . rather than

medical handling”.31 This study does not buy that approach in the African context.

This is because in Africa in general and Tanzania in particular, witchcraft had

existed before coming of Christianity. Moreover, witchcraft was not one of the

African traditional religions. Some of the traditional religious beliefs countered

witchcraft as evil against society and individuals but not against the religions.32

Considering witchcraft beliefs and practices as traditionalism is to ignore the fact

that there are cultural dynamics and cultural specifics. As noted above, structural

functionalism, demonology and political economy approaches had generalized the

development pattern of Western Europe and North America as universal. Those

28
J.H.M. Salmon, “History without Anthropology”, in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19 (3)
(1989), 483.
29
Richard J. Evans, In Defense of History (London, 2000[1997]), 138.
30
Sona Burstein, “Demonology and Medicine”, in Folklore 67 (1) (1956), 22-23.
31
Ibid., 22.
32
Iliffe, Africans, 92.
 14

theories had a conceptual flaw since not every stage in Western societies was passed

by societies in other parts of the world. Also, concepts like witchcraft have different

meanings in different societies. This is because witchcraft awareness and

understanding as form of consciousness is shaped by environments and cultures in

respective societies.33 Apparently, that generalization sought its justification in the

definition of the concept ‘witchcraft’.

Rosen Barbara, a historian of European witchcraft, defined witchcraft with reference

to the characteristics of the accused and dreaded individuals in European context. To

her, witchcraft implied having power to do things above nature and the will to do

harm by that power. That power should, however, be inborn. In the medieval and

early modern Europe, there were two types of witchcraft; ‘black’ or malignant and

‘white’ or benign witchcraft. The latter was less harmful whereas the former was

accredited with ill-will towards others, hence the name maleficium.34 Many scholars

have labeled benign witchcraft as ‘magic’ to avoid confusion in their analyses.

Hence, when they mention ‘witchcraft’ they frequently refer to ‘malignant

witchcraft’. Therefore, in this study the use of the term ‘witchcraft’ conveys the latter

meaning.

Looking at the political and legal interventions on witchcraft in colonial

Tanganyika, Simeon Mesaki revealed how the same definition was used by the

colonial legal apparatus in combating witchcraft beliefs and practices, the campaign

33
Carolyn Merchant, Ecological Revolutions, 2nd Edition (Chapel Hill, 2010), 19.
34
Barbara Rosen, Witchcraft (London, 1965).
 15

which did not bear fruits due to its conceptual flaw.35 Such a generalization flaw is

also found in Cosmas Haule’s work, in which witchcraft is defined in more or less

the same way Rosen and Mesaki did. However, Haule generalized his definition to

the Southern Highlands Bantu taking into account that Bantu people have a lot of

shared cultural traits. Monica Wilson’s study on the Nyakyusa society defined

witchcraft as magic powers that can be inborn or acquired. Wilson’s definition

showed that witchcraft was practiced because of the lust to cattle meat and milk and

not because of evil intentions against people in a given society. It follows then that in

Unyakyusa, human beings were affected accidentally not intentionally as in other

places.36 No other work has challenged Wilson’s definition of Nyakyusa witchcraft.

Virtually no anthropological study on witchcraft has gone to explanatory and

analytical levels. Instead, most of the anthropological works on witchcraft and health

have confined their analyses on ahistorical descriptions. However, some efforts to

decipher relationships between witchcraft and health can be cited. For instance,

Brown and Hutt showed that during the early days of British colonialism, the Hehe

people who suffered from small-pox made confessions of practicing witchcraft

hoping “to save themselves from dying of small-pox.”37 Jens Anderson, an

anthropologist, examined a case of migrant labourers in Zimbabwe who had felt

survival insecurity following increased cases of HIV/AIDS. The increased cases of

HIV/AIDS in urban areas, as argued by Anderson, have frequently been attributed to

35
Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-killings in Tanzania”; Mesaki, “The Colonial State and Witchcraft:
Moral Crusade or Ethnocentric Phobia. The Case of British Colonialism in Tanganyika” Tanzania
Zamani 3 (1) (1997): 50-70.
36
Monica Wilson, Good Company: A Study of Nyakyusa Age-Villages (London, 1951), 91-95.
37
Brown & Hutt, Anthropology in Action, 180.
 16

witchcraft beliefs and practices among the rural dwellers and their kin urban

migrants. This has resulted in the worsening HIV/AIDS patients’ health and relief

services.38 Simeon Mesaki portrayed a case of Lushoto, north eastern Tanzania, in

the years between 1980 and 1991 in which 446 bubonic plague victims died due to

failure to seek biomedical intervention believing that they were bewitched.39

Most of structural functionalist, demonological and political economy studies

elaborate such impact as fear, social exclusion, conservatism, witch-hunting, witch-

killing and legal and political interventions in detailed explanations. On the other

side, they only mention that witchcraft beliefs have implications on health. Aware of

those weaknesses, this study applies socio-cultural construction, consensual theory of

truth and psychosocial theory to discern the historical relation between witchcraft

and health using the Uhehe case.

Socio-cultural construction theory is a modification of the existing social

construction theory. It has been applied by many social historians. Amongst them are

Steven Feierman and John Janzen40, and Lesley Doyal.41 The theory underscores the

significance of social and cultural elements in understanding the linkages between

witchcraft, diseases and healing. It also takes into consideration the roles of political

and economic aspects in shaping the social and cultural structures. Beatrice Halii,

currently a PhD history candidate, made use of this theory in her work “Colonial

Public Health Campaigns and Local Perceptions of Illness”, which used the case of

38
Anderson, “Sorcery in the Era of ‘Henry IV’”.
39
Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-killings in Tanzania,” 178.
40
Steven Feierman & John Janzen (eds), The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Berkeley,
1992).
41
Lesley Doyal, The Political Economy of Health (London, 1981)
 17

the Gogo of Central Tanzania. In emphasizing the greater significance of socio-

economic factors over biological and environmental factors, Halii argues that the

colonial public health campaigns neglected the presence of local perceptions of

diseases.42 The latter involved the understanding of diseases and ill health as being

linked to natural and anthropogenic aspects. Witchcraft, being the most highly

pronounced anthropogenic factor, is clearly an important phenomenon to understand

in order to grasp health-related issues in precolonial and colonial Tanzanian

societies.

However, the social construction theory puts much emphasis on socio-economic

factors, mentioning witchcraft only in passing. In cognizance of such a weakness,

this study sought to modify the social construction theory in order to be able to

analyse and explain relationships between witchcraft and health. The modification

has led to a theory that I conveniently label the socio-cultural construction theory. It

diverges from the parent theory by putting more emphasis on cultural aspects than

the socio-economic aspects. This theory recognizes the role of cultural beliefs such

as witchcraft in influencing health. The theory takes cognisance of cultural change

and continuity in line with German romanticist historian, Johann Herder, who argued

that culture is a particularistic, changing and historical phenomenon.43

42
Beatrice Halii, “Colonial Public Health Campaigns and Local Perceptions of Illness: Case of the
Gogo of Mpwapwa District, Central Tanzania 1920-1950s” (M.A. diss., University of Dar es Salaam,
2007), 5-7.
43
See Johann Herder, “Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind” (unpublished work), cited
in Kate Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology (London, 2002), 40.
 18

Another theory that informs the study is the consensual theory of truth advanced by

Paul Veyne.44 It refers to understanding knowledge as being an outcome of a

negotiated process in a particular community or social group. The theory upholds the

idea that truth is a product of a consensus between members of a particular society or

social group whose members share common interest and values. Michele Wagner, an

historian, applied this theory in her PhD study on Buragane society in Burundi. She

argued that what was considered as ‘history’ by the Baragane people was dismissed

by Western historians since the two types of historians differed fundamentally on

what was and what was not history. The Western historians put emphasis on written

records which Buragane did not possess. Hence, they dismissed the Baragane history

as myths, simply because they were related to witchcraft beliefs and practices.

Wagner’s study, however, found out that the Baragane remembered what Western

historians called myths; hence they did not understand why it should not be history.

Wagner thus affirmed Baragane’s history using consensual theory, ultimately

attesting that aspects related to witchcraft deserved proper attention and acceptance

by historians. The important argument here is that any form of knowledge is the

product of dialectical relationships among human beings and with their surrounding

geographical contexts over time. She justified this by showing the cultural dynamics

of precolonial and colonial Buragane.45

44
Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination
translated by Paula Wissing (Chicago, 1988) cited in Michele Dianne Wagner, “Whose History is
History? Landscapes and History: Geographies of the Mind in Precolonial Buragane” (PhD. diss.,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991).
45
Michele Dianne Wagner, “Whose History is History? Landscapes and History: Geographies of the
Mind in Precolonial Buragane” (PhD. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991).
 19

The consensual theory of truth takes into account the weaknesses of structural

functionalism theory employed by the anthropological gurus on witchcraft like E. E.

Evans-Pritchard and Simeon Mesaki whose works have been cited earlier in this

chapter. It avoids treating witchcraft as a timeless and ahistorical phenomenon. The

second weakness that can be discerned from structural functionalism is that it treats

witchcraft as a science and not as a belief. It is erroneous to treat witchcraft as a

science since it cannot be learnt scientifically. It is also inappropriate to compare

Western empirical sciences with beliefs like witchcraft. This comparison was made

by Evans-Pritchard when he labeled witchcraft as ‘poor science’. According to Peter

Winch, a critic of Evans-Pritchard on witchcraft as ‘a poor science’, and as

paraphrased in Russell Keat and John Urry in their Social Theory as a Science, “it is

wrong to identify good science with true beliefs, and poor science with the false

ones”.46 Consensual theory of truth treats witchcraft as a belief that has historical and

social significance.

The last theory which has also influenced this study is the psychosocial theory. This

theory was developed in the 1990s by Western medical theorists. The theory holds

that witchcraft has psychological factors that are “important in the precipitation or

exacerbation of most organic illnesses”. According to Edward Beaver, a historian

who established the connection between witchcraft and ill health for the first time by

using the North American and Western European witchcraft cases; there has been a

misconception among many scholars that psychological factors resulting from social

phenomena like witchcraft have superficial relationships to organic illnesses. Beaver

46
See Russell Keat & John Urry, Social Theory as a Science (London, 1972), 212-217.
 20

argued that witchcraft complaints, anxieties, fears and witchcraft-related acts towards

particular persons such as spell, intentional or unintentional, led to health problems

like lameness, severe pain, paralysis, impotence, stress and harm to humans and farm

animals. Those were witchcraft implications on health that have been identified in

the 17th century Salem and English witch trials.47 This theory has thus been

employed in this study to qualify the witchcraft implications on health especially

where archival evidence was available. It also provides an explanation as to why

people resorted to more than one healing tradition since it addresses the role of

beliefs in causation of ill health.

1.3 Sources, Problems and Organization

This study is qualitative in nature. It seeks a detailed knowledge on witchcraft beliefs

and practices in Uhehe and their health implications. In realizing the objectives, three

primary sources were consulted. These included the archival sources located in the

Tanzania National Archives (TNA) in Dar es Salaam. The other locations visited in

search for archival sources were the Mbeya Zonal Archives (MZA) and the Catholic

missionary records in Ulete, Tosamaganga, Wasa, Pawaga and Kilolo missions, all in

Iringa region. Available sources at the TNA covered the colonial period with only a

few of them extending to the post colonial time. Archival sources were generally

helpful in gaining knowledge about the colonial Uhehe from the perspectives of

white colonial administrators, native administrators and colonial subjects. Moreover,

the sources helped to reorient the research strategy, particularly in selection of

47
Edward Beaver, “Witchcraft Fears and Psychological Factors in Disease” in Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 30 (4) (2000):573-590.
 21

church missions and local areas that could be visited during the research. They also

facilitated the construction of interview guides and helped in understanding the

changing geography of Uhehe. This phase of archival research was done between

September and mid October, 2009.

The second phase of archival research was conducted in November and December,

2009 and covered Iringa and Mbeya regions. The missionary records found in Iringa

were largely written in Latin and largely encompassed statistical data of economic

projects and converts being baptized, confirmed and married. The sources in MZA

archives covered the late colonial and post colonial period. They provided an

overview of the general context of the Southern Highlands with regard to health and

witchcraft issues, although they barely had sources pertaining to the study area.

Hence, oral and secondary data had to be relied on heavily in filling this gap.

Oral data in the form of testimonies and narratives were collected through interviews

guided by open-ended questions. The interviews were conducted between November

and December 2009 and in the third week of January 2010 in different parts of

Uhehe. The gathered oral data helped in getting Hehe memories and experiences for

the period under study. The kinds of data found in the oral sources either

supplemented or filled some of the gaps left by written sources. For instance, in the

reconstruction of late 19th century’s perceptions of witchcraft beliefs, their relation to

and implications for health in Uhehe, oral and secondary data supplemented each

other.
 22

The informants who provided me with the oral data were people of varied

experiences, ages, gender, places and nationalities. They were all found in Iringa

Region districts of Kilolo, Iringa Rural, Iringa Rural and Mufindi. With the

exception of one, the interviewed men and women were aged between forties and

early nineties.48 The first criterion used in selecting informants was residence in

Uhehe of not less than five years for doctors, nurses and missionaries. This group of

informants included both retired and working persons in government and missionary

health facilities in rural and urban Uhehe. The other criterion, especially for the local

informants, was whether they were traditional healers or ordinary Hehe aged above

forty years or both; and had spent most of their lives in Uhehe. The reason for this

criterion was to acquire life experiences and information on witchcraft and health

from the Hehe’s point of view.

Some problems were experienced in the interview process. These included coming

across eldest informants with shaky or lost memory. For example, in Rumuli village

we came across an elderly woman who was aged approximately 100 years,

considering her second daughter was born in the 1930s. However, she had

completely lost memory of the past because of age. In other places, some informants

hesitated to agree to be interviewed because they were scared after realizing that we

had a permit from the village authorities. We realized that common villagers feared

any person from ‘the government’ since they thought they wanted to know their

feelings or secrets and then take them for questioning, a disturbance they abhorred.

Others hesitated on the ground that they did not know me despite my self-

48
See the list of interviewed persons in the appendix 1.
 23

introduction and my moderate command of Kihehe. To avoid the problem regarding

fear of government officials we had to ask village authorities not to accompany us.

We requested them to give us directions so that we could reach the informants.

During the interviews, we gave freedom to informants to select the language they

wished to use. This helped to create a required sense of freedom and intimacy

between researcher and informants. Informants’ responses were recorded in field

notebooks either in Kihehe, Kiswahili or English. A micro-tape recorder was used in

combination with field notebooks in recording data, after the informants’ consent

was sought and obtained.

Lastly, official reports and documents were requested from the government and

police officials. The kind of reports requested were those relating to health policies

and witchcraft-related incidents either in health facilities or in police stations.

Unfortunately, the district and regional offices did not possess any relevant reports.

They, however, advised us to visit the district and regional health officials and

consult them on the kinds of data we were looking for. The RPC’s office in Iringa

particularly informed us that they had no reports beyond three years. 49 According to

the explanation given, this was due to the regular disposal and destruction of records

after a period of 3 to 5 years. Therefore, police reports should be sent to the national

archives just like other data from the central government offices since they are

equally significant. Yet, a Three-Year Crimes Report for Iringa region covering the

years 2007, 2008 and 2009 was given to the researcher in raw form. Also, efforts to

access district socio-economic profiles were made. However, only the Kilolo District

49
Personal communication with RCO at RPC office, Iringa on the 8 th December, 2009; interview with
the acting RCO ASP Msani at RPC office, Iringa on the 19 th January, 2010.
 24

Socio-Economic Profile for 200950 was obtained while profiles for Iringa Urban,

Iringa Rural and Mufindi districts were not available. The obtained profiles helped in

understanding the official plans, economic, population and sociological aspects of

this part of Uhehe. It also furnished some information for other districts.

This dissertation, an outcome of the research undertaking, is divided into five

chapters designated in accordance with research objectives. Chapter One presents

background information on the problem. It also encompasses study objectives, study

significance, literature review, theoretical framework, sources and organisation

employed in the study. Some of the problems encountered during research process

are reported in this chapter.

Chapter Two presents an analysis of the late 19th century Uhehe. It begins by

providing the historical and geographical contexts of Uhehe over time. This chapter

then focuses on understanding the health seeking traditions of the Hehe. The chapter

also analyses perceptions of witchcraft beliefs and practices in Uhehe. It is in this

chapter that the relationship between the two central variables – health and

witchcraft – is discussed. In brief, basing largely on oral and written data, it is argued

that witchcraft beliefs and practices cannot be comprehended out of the context of

health seeking traditions of the Hehe. Even traditional healing is strongly associated

with witchcraft beliefs and practices.

50
The soft copy of the 2009 Kilolo District Socio-Economic Profile is in my possession.
 25

Chapter Three weaves together the transformations that happened in health seeking

traditions in Uhehe and in the local witchcraft beliefs and practices during the

colonial period – roughly from the 1900 to 1960. It begins by providing the historical

overview of changes in the political economy of Tanzania and how those changes

happened in Uhehe in the early and later colonial periods. Then an attempt is made

to show the implications of those changes on the health sector. This is achieved by

showing how changes in the political economy affected perceptions and campaigns

against witchcraft, how it affected traditional approaches to health and an analysis of

health-related consequences of such changes.

Chapter Four presents the intricate relationships that existed between witchcraft and

health among the Hehe after the end of colonial rule in 1961 in Tanzania. It begins

with a concise discussion of the nature of the witchcraft legislation that was inherited

from the colonial regime by the independent state of Tanzania. A section is devoted

to the analysis of the general context of the health sector in an African post-colonial

state. The purpose has been to examine the influence of those developments on

people’s health and compare them with the contemporary state of witchcraft. Since

the most transformative period in the post-colonial history of Tanzania is Ujamaa, an

analysis of relationship between witchcraft and health during the period is the core of

the chapter. At this juncture a brief discussion on Christian religious perceptions on

health and witchcraft is inserted. Some informants stated the influence of revival

movement in healing diseases in the 1990s, particularly those that happened to be

incurable.
 26

The fifth and final chapter features a conclusion of the study. The thrust of the

conclusion is that witchcraft and health are historically interwoven in Uhehe and

they bear a social significance that deserves scholarly attention. It is particularly

emphasized that witchcraft has had different implications on the health of the people

in Uhehe, certainly as in many other places in Africa. In closing, the study calls for

further researches of similar approach in other societies so that a broader and

comparative understanding of witchcraft implications on health can be achieved.

 27

CHAPTER TWO

WITCHCRAFT IN RELATION TO HEALTH SEEKING TRADITIONS IN

THE LATE 19TH CENTURY UHEHE.

2.1. Introduction

This chapter seeks to explain the relationship between pre-colonial health seeking

traditions and witchcraft among the Hehe people, focusing mainly on the late 19th

century. The phrase ‘health seeking tradition’ refers to a set of long established

health approaches in a given social and historical context. It embodies perceptions of

people over health matters, healing, disease prevention and all practices that fall in

the realm of health. It also carries the sense of ‘local specificity’ especially when

attached to a particular social group as in this study of the Hehe.

The chapter begins with a brief account of the second half of the 19th century

historical and geographical contexts of Uhehe. The next section is on health seeking

traditions of the Hehe. Then the chapter unveils local knowledge on witchcraft and

its known historical beginnings. It shows the historical place of witchcraft in the

health seeking traditions of the late 19th century Uhehe. It concludes by stating that

witchcraft and health seeking were inextricably intertwined in the late 19th century

Uhehe.

2.2. Historical and Geographical Contexts of Uhehe

Uhehe’s geography is generally characterized by a highland plateau occupying an

area between the Great Ruaha and Kilombero river valleys. It has an altitude ranging

between 5000ft and 7000ft above the sea level, which stretches between 7˚S and 9˚S
 28

latitude and between 34˚E and 36˚E longitude. Administratively, it occupies the

present day Iringa Rural, Iringa Urban, Kilolo and Mufindi districts out of the seven

districts of the present day Iringa region.

Uhehe can roughly be divided into three ecological zones.1 The first is the rugged

highland that has a constant cloud cover, heavy rains and forest vegetation, and is

located in east and southeast of Uhehe. The second is the cool transitional

escarpment that has a medium elevation and rainfall with grassland vegetation. This

zone is located in the central parts of Uhehe. The last zone is the hot plain that is

frequently dry with thorny scrub vegetation found in northwest and north of Uhehe.

This ecological diversity did not however result in the Hehe people being remarkably

diverse economically in the 19th century. Evidence attests that they generally

practiced a mixed agricultural economy comprising of livestock keeping and

cultivation of finger millet and squash. This was supplemented by fishing and

hunting. Cultivation was generally undertaken by women and war captives whereas

the men were involved in security activities, cattle keeping, fishing and hunting.2

This reveals a gender-based division of labour in the Hehe precolonial economy.

From about the mid to late 19th century, Uhehe was bordered by Ugogo to the north,

Usagara to the north east, Ukimbu to the northwest, Kilombero Valley to the east,

and Ubena, Usangu and Usafwa to the south and southwest. There had been an

1
Alison Redmayne, “The Wahehe of Tanganyika” (PhD. thes. Oxford University, 1964); Edgar V.
Winans, “The Political Context of Economic Adaptation in the Southern Highlands of Tanganyika,”
American Athropologist 67(2) (1965), 435; Egidio Crema, Wahehe: A Bantu People (Bologna, 1987),
7-10; see also the introduction in Michael Musso, Mukwava na Kabila Lake (Dar es Salaam, 1968).
2
Winans, ibid., 438.
 29

active interaction between Uhehe and her neighbours in the 19th century, and

scholars have explained the nature of that interaction especially in the period from

the second half of 19th century.3 Uhehe and the Hehe ethnic group did not bear these

names before 1855. It was at this point that the first all-Hehe Chief known as Mtwa

Munyigumba unified the Hehe through warfare4 more or less comparable to the

German and Italian wars of unifications that occurred in the European continent in

the mid 19th century. That warfare resulted in further expansion and consolidation of

the Hehe Empire during Munyigumba’s reign and his heir, Mkwawa. However, the

descriptions and explanations of that warfare by ethnographers, anthropologists and

historians have been controversial. To understand the roots of that controversy, it is

important to study the authors’ backgrounds, as Edward H. Carr recommended in his

1961 What is History?,5 so that we do not accept their arguments uncritically.

The earliest ethnographers were the 19th century travelers like Richard Burton6 and

Joseph Thomson.7 These ethnographers wrote their descriptions on the basis of

personal observation on their way to Central Africa through northern Uhehe. The

two travelers described the Hehe people as weak, but increasingly gaining strength

through cattle raiding against the neghbouring ‘tribes’. Burton added that despite the

Hehe’s hearty and good-humoured appearance, they were “determined pilferers”

3
See Alison Redmayne, “The Hehe”, in A. Roberts (ed.),Tanzania before 1900 (Nairobi, 1968)
4
For a detailed historical and anthroplogical analyses on the Hehe origin, expansion and warfare see
G. Gordon Brown & Bruce Hutt, Anthropology in Action: An Experiment in the Iringa District of the
Iringa Province Tanganyika Territory (London, 1935), 23-6; Redmayne, ibid.; Alsion Redmayne,
“Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars” Journal of African History IX (3) (1968), 410-16; Musso, Mukwava;
Crema, Wahehe, 14-20; Winans, “The Political Context of Economic Adaptation”.
5
Edward H. Carr, What is History? Introduced by Richard J. Evans (Cambridge, 2001), 16-7.
6
See Richard F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa (New York, 1961).
7
See Joseph Thomson, To the Central African Lakes and Back, 2nd Edn (Boston, 1881).
 30

because they frequently attacked and robbed the caravans passing through Ugogo

and their country to the Great Lakes region and Central Africa.8

German colonial ethnographers like Otto Dempwolff and E. Nigmann described the

Hehe as war-like and predatory against their neighbours, and that they endangered

peace and security throughout the Southern Highland region of the present day

Tanzania.9 But as Jamie Monson and others have pointed out, these colonial

ethnographers “wanted to discredit their enemy Mkwawa, chief of the Hehe”10

following the Germans’ painful defeat in the 1891 Hehe-German battle. They had to

label the Hehe as predatory over their neighbours because they [the Hehe] threatened

the Germans’ hegemony over the region. The other reason for such labeling was that

the Germans wanted to justify the imperative for the Hehe’s most celebrated defeat

of 1898. It is obvious that colonial historians like Roland Oliver were caught in the

German ethnographers’ web wholesome because they attributed such war-like and

predatory character of the Hehe to the arrival in Southern Tanzania of the better

known Ngoni.11 Such attribution is diffusionist, and historians like Monson have

discredited it.12 It is diffusionist, or rather reductionist, because it assumes that the

Hehe received the elements of war-likeness as a cultural package upon contact with

the Ngoni. In light of the available evidence, the Hehe became militaristic and

expansionist following the previous frequent attacks from the Bena, Ngoni and

8
Burton, Op. Cit., 23.
9
Winans, “The Political Context of Economic Adaptation”, 439; Redmayne, “The Hehe”.
10
Jamie Monson, “Memory, Migration and the Authority if History in Southern Highlands Tanzania,
1860-1960,” in The Journal of African History 41 (3) (2000), 350.
11
See B.A. Ogot (ed.), Zamani: A History of East Africa (Nairobi, 1970).
12
Jamie Monson, “Agricultural Transformations in the Inner Kilombero Valley of Tanzania 1840-
1940” (PhD. diss., University of California, 1991), 111-6.
 31

Sangu, which threatened their security. It was in that course of events that the Hehe

improved their military techniques and learned new ones from their neighbours.13

By the time of the German conquest in the late 1880s, the Hehe were the dominant

ethnic group in the Southern Highland region of Tanzania, and warfare was minimal.

It is reported that maize cultivation was introduced in those times14, and the Hehe

were still practicing their mixed economy with substantial contact with the coastal

traders. Settlements were scattered and population distribution was remarkably

uneven. Such a situation seems to have been so up to the early 20th century as

reflected in eye-witness testimonies such as: “Almost no-one lived here . . . It was

bush and there were lions.”15 This account was given to Elizabeth Daley, a social

change theorist who did her research in Uhehe, by Mzee Tonga’s son who by 1920

was 9 years old. This account reflected the environmental context which remained

largely changed up to the early 1970s in many areas of rural Uhehe. That “people

were very few and even firewood we used to collect just around our houses”16 is

another eye-witness testimony from the Hehe old woman aged around mid 80s. It

shows that people were scattered and few with limited man-induced disturbances on

environment. Generally, the responses from informants aged 60+ years reveal that

the villagization programme of 1974 was the most transformative episode in Uhehe’s

population and environmental history since it changed the nature of environment that

had persisted since the late pre-colonial and colonial periods. It changed by clearing

13
Winans, “The Political Context of Economic Adaptation”, 437-9; Monson, ibid., 116.
14
Winans, ibid., 439.
15
Adopted from Elizabeth Daley, “Land and Social Change in a Tanzanian Village 1: Kinyanambo,
1920s-1990.” Journal of Agrarian Change 5 (3) (2005), 467.
16
Interview with Msigula Luvingo, Ndiwili, 8 th November, 2009.
 32

vast lands for communal agricultural projects as well as creation of nucleated village

settlements.

The sense of the Hehe as a single ethnic group had developed with people

internalizing their boundaries through a common ancestral veneration in times of

hardship and uncertainty; and with a centralized political system under Mtwa

Mkwawa during the second half of the 19th century. More importantly, it was at this

point that a public health system relating to witchcraft developed, which will be the

subject of the next section.

2.3. Health Seeking Traditions in the Late 19th Century Uhehe

According to the existing oral and written information, local knowledge evolves and

develops from the people’s life experiences, activities and interactions between

themselves and their local environments. Yusufu Lawi postulated that those

interactions between people and their local environments involve the convergence

and interplay of many forces. They include, inter alia, economic, political, social and

cultural forces.17 This objective reality is no different from what happened in 19th

century Uhehe. People developed diverse forms of local knowledge persistently and

actively. One of those forms of knowledge concerns health.

Testimonies from informants suggest that people attained knowledge on diseases and

healing through explanations from the experienced people, observing patients being

17
Yusufu Q. Lawi, “May the Spider Web Blind the Witches and Wild Animals: Local Knowledge and
the Political Ecology of Natural Resource Use in the Iraqwland, Tanzania, 1900-1985” (PhD. diss.,
Boston University, 2000), 6.
 33

healed, participating in epidemic disease control, and through mystical and ‘trance’

divining of knowledge on diseases.18 Stefani Chota, an informant who is a traditional

healer at Wasa, for instance, said that he learned knowledge of healing through

mystical dreams of the ancestral spirits and spirit possession.19 Another traditional

healer, Martin Kihwele, said that he learned about herbal medicines and their

prescriptions when he was being healed from witchcraft affliction in Upangwa. He

knew “the herbs by looking at different types of trees they [Wapangwa] grew”.

When he returned to Uhehe he went to the natural forest areas and searched for those

trees. He then began the work of healing from the 1940s. 20 Another informant,

Venanzia Myovela, a wife of a former Mlolo subchief, said that they grew up seeing

their parents “picking oily seeds growing in the wild then boiling and giving them to

patients so that they would get better” and that they saw their “parents administering

treatment by sponging hot water or steaming water using leaves of those herbs”.21

The above testimonies reveal that knowledge on diseases and healing was acquired

in different ways and at varied levels. The first narrative is about the healer who

could diagnose illnesses through divination and prescribe herbal medicines for

healing. In this case the submission is that the departed ancestors had passed the

knowledge to him through dreams. This implicitly means that in Uhehe, just as in

other Bantu societies in eastern and central Africa as unveiled by John M. Janzen22

18
Interviews with Stefani M. Chota, Wasa, 17th January, 2010; Yusta Semduba Mbuta, Igula, 5th
December, 2009; Alberto Kilovele, Isoliwaya, 11 th December, 2009.
19
Interview with Stefani Chota, ibid.
20
Interview with Martin Kihwele, Usengelindete, 16th January, 2010.
21
Interview with Venanzia Myovela, Mlolo, 11th November, 2009.
22
John M. Janzen, “Drums of Affliction: Real Phenomenon or Scholarly Chimaera?” in Thomas D.
Blakely et al. eds. Religion in Africa (London, 1995)
 34

and Gloria Waite23, the dead members of the family continued to have impact on the

living. In this particular case, their impact was in passing knowledge of healing, the

dreams being the medium for that knowledge transmission. In one case, a traditional

healer testified ancestral spirits appearing to him in dreams. “Spirits appeared in

dreams and started showing me different types of herbal medicine and taught me

other things in healing”.24

The second narrative is about a healer who could not diagnose but could heal. A

person seeing what healers in Upangwa used in healing people was an important way

in acquiring healing knowledge. The inquisitive attitude of that patient was also

influential in transforming him into a healer. The third narrative is about how the

common Hehe people came to know herbal medicines and some healing practices.

The medium, with respect to that narrative, was their parents’ practices when they

were administering healing to a family member suffering from a particular ailment.

This kind of knowledge, unlike the two above, was learnt and practiced by common

Hehe in their everyday lives, and probably has existed among the Hehe even before

Uhehe was unified. However, the knowledge learnt through this popular method was

about the common ailments which did not require expertise of specialists, the

traditional healers.

Looking at the above narratives from the informants, it is obvious that they present

the experience of pre-colonial and colonial Hehe people on health knowledge. It is

23
Gloria Waite, A History of Traditional Medicine and Health Care in Pre-Colonial East-Central
Africa (Lewiston, 1992):104-6.
24
Interview with Alberto Kilovele, Isoliwaya, 11 th December, 2009.
 35

argued here that understanding of knowledge on health particularly diseases, their

healing and prevention measures in late 19th century Uhehe was within the web of

local knowledge on health and disease. Diseases and ill health were obviously

understood through the prism of causation and the main causes mentioned by

informants are imikalile (natural occurrences), misoka (ancestral powers) and,

uwuhavi (witchcraft). Similarly, health care provision was in accordance with the

local established and changing knowledge on health.

Accrording the Hehe, imikalile has two meanings. First, imikalile refers to all things

that exist in the environment without man’s involvement. The second meaning of

imikalile is superhuman body, yimagava, literally meaning god the giver. Imikalile

was viewed as one of disease causing agents when people suffered ailments of

common complaints. They included such ailments as headache, mild stomach ache,

ordinary wounds, scabies and tape worms. The Hehe considered such ailments as

ones that ‘just begin’. “Some ailments just began while others were caused by

bewitching”.25

According to Alison Redmayne, an anthropologist, in Uhehe those ailments were

treated with herbal remedies.26 She does not, however, tell her readers which kind of

herbal remedies were used, where they were found and what amount was taken.

Informants’ narratives affirm Redmayne’s statement. They mentioned particular

herbs which are predominantly found nearby their home settings and in natural

25
Interviews with Temilingeresa Nywagi, Lumuli, 15 th November, 2009; Martin Kindole, Lumuli,15th
November, 2009.
26
Alison Redmayne, “Chikanga: An African Diviner with an International Reputation,” in Mary
Douglas (ed), Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations (London, 1970), 113.
 36

forests in the vicinity. They included roots, stems, leaves and barks of certain trees,

leaves of particular small plants and kernels of a local fruit, known as mono.27 One

informant, Venanzia Myovela, testified that her “parents told me to take nyongole

leaves from the nearby forest and boil them so I could drink whenever I had malaria

fever”. This account is about her childhood parental instructions around 1940s.

Venanzia Myovela stated that her parents were told by their respective parents who

had been in Uhehe when “Mkwawa was ruling”,28 which is in the late 19th century.

Unfortunately, due to the recent environmental change, those tree species have

declined enormously in numbers, partly because they are much depended as a source

of heat energy and partly due to the increased acreage for growing food crops.

Another reason is the population growth which exerts pressure for clearing the land

for settlement.

Powers of the departed family members known as misoka were also viewed as

another disease causing agent. Certain conditions, misfortunes and ailments were

considered as caused by the ‘wind’ of misoka. One of these conditions was the

persistent crying of a child day and night; or a child falling ill persistently despite

several attempts to cure the illness. When this happened, the parents contacted the

diviner (mulagusi), who invariably confirmed that the only cure for the child would

be to give it the name of a departed ancestor.29 This belief implies that in the 19th

century Hehe cosmology the departed family members were considered to be still

27
This is my italicization to show the obvious connotation that it is not an English word, but more
important connotation is to show that I have been unable to translate it in English using the available
sources and informants.
28
Interview with Venanzia Myovela, Mlolo, 11th November, 2009.
29
Interviews with Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8th November, 2009; Magdalena Myovela, Mlolo, 11 th
November, 2009; Amina Mnyihanga Nyenza, Kiponzero, 12 th November, 2009.
 37

living and powerful. According to informants, this belief is held even at present but

with diminishing significance. Similarly, when an adult person from a line of

traditional healers fell ill, powers of the departed ancestors of the line were believed

to be behind his or her illness. Such circumstances happened when the existing

healer was ill or nearing death because of old age, or had died. As observed in the

case of child crying or illness, mulagusi was also instrumental here in identifying the

meaning and cure of that illness. The only cure had been to accept ‘the call’ to carry

on the lineage’s healing tradition.30

Historical narratives also reveal that there were cases in which individuals fell ill for

offending the departed ancestors.31 The Hehe of the time believed that ancestors

became offended when a discendant in their line failed to venerate them for a long

period. In their treatise, Anthropology in Action, Gordon Brown and Bruce Hutt

treated this ancestral veneration as the Hehe religion whose “basis” was “ceremonial

sacrifice and supplication to the souls of ancestors”.32 Another circumstance was

when an individual had broken a taboo related to dietary prohibitions or other clan

taboos. According to one informant Amina Nyenza, each Hehe clan had dietary

prohibitions which, if broken, could invoke ancestors’ wrath to be experienced

through an illness.33 There were also certain acts by the Hehe which could indirectly

cause ancestral spirits to intervene by causing misfortunes like death or illnesses. The

healing of such illnesses involved seeking individual and/or public forgiveness and

30
Interview with Alberto Kilovele, Isoliwaya, 11 th December, 2009.
31
Redmayne, “Chikanga,” 114; Musso, Mukwava ; interview with Amina Mnyihanga Nyenza,
Kiponzero, 12th November, 2009
32
Brown & Hutt, Anthropology in Action, 166-8.
33
Interview with Amina Mnyihanga Nyenza, Op.Cit.
 38

reconciliation. Those acts were marrying a second wife without seeking the consent

of the first one; extramarital sexual relations; forcing a boy or girl into marriage; a

man touching an elder sister disrespectfully or entering in her room; not inviting

relatives during sacrificial ceremonies and many other acts which are related to

family and social relations.34

Witchcraft, uwuhavi, was the last category of illness causing agents. Uwuhavi as a

belief pervaded day-to-day life activities in the late 19th century Uhehe. Oral and

written narratives, or in Monson’s phrasing, “the collective memories”,35 have

revealed that witchcraft beliefs and practices were present in Uhehe, although none

would reveal its empirical or observable existence. During the second half of the 19th

century, the Hehe invariably subjected alleged witches to a poison ordeal under the

supervision of the chief, and this is clear evidence of the prevalence of beliefs.36

According to the historian Gloria Waite, such chiefly control of witchcraft was one

of the areas of the precolonial public health systems in Eastern and Central Africa.

Waite argued that “witchcraft intervention was medicalized; and the medicines used

to counter the sorcery were also used in strictly medical contexts”.37 Similarly, one

informant Amina Nyenza, recounted that her parents and grandparents “believed that

34
Crema, Wahehe, 87-8.
35
This is a coining done by Jamie Monson in her substantive article on how to revisit and re-write
history, not only of the Southern Highlands of Tanzania but also of Africa, for that history involves
the dialectical interplay of several sources. The sources include oral and written ones. To call their
reconstruction as ‘history’, for Monson, is to be simplistic or rather reductionist for it underestimates
the role played by variety of actors and their memories. See Monson, “Memory, Migration and the
Authority of History in Southern Tanzania”.
36
Redmayne, “Chikanga,” 116; Brown & Hutt, Anthropology in Action, 179.
37
Waite, A History of Traditional Medicine, 215-231; Gloria Waite, “Public Health in Precolonial
East-Central Africa,” in Steven Feierman & John M. Janzen (eds) The Social Basis of Health and
Healing in Africa (Berkeley, 1992), 215-6.
 39

there was witchcraft. Witchcraft caused deaths or ill health”.38 It follows then that

since the late precolonial period, people’s health in Uhehe was profoundly impacted

on by witchcraft beliefs and practices. But what was health according to the late 19th

century Hehe people? How were illnesses handled? Were there issues of power

relations and hierarchies in the handling of illnesses?

Collective memories on the early to mid 19th century Uhehe are faint and obscure

than those of the late 19th century on aspects of health. The existing historical

literature on Uhehe has scanty details on health issues. It predominantly focuses on

political history and ethnography. Alison Redmayne, an anthropologist who has also

written several historical articles on Uhehe, once suggested that the emphasis on

political history and ethnography should be linked to the German and British

romanticism over the Hehe following the Hehe triumph over German conquerors in

the 1891 Hehe-German War. The 19th century ethnographic works provide us with

scanty although important information. Richard Burton considered physical

attributes and described the mid-19th century Hehe as healthy. In his eyes, they were

“a plain race, but stout and well grown”.39 There was neither a mention of epidemic

diseases nor issues concerning individual or public health system. The paucity of

written information makes it difficult to reconstruct the history of health approaches

on the 19th century period by relying only on existing literature. Oral narratives,

despite their limitations, such as the temporal problem, are consequently the only

sources for recounting that history. But that does not mean that one can capture the

38
Interview with Amina Mnyihanga Nyenza, Kiponzero, 12 th November, 2009
39
Burton, The Lake Regions, 323.
 40

truth in its original and entire form using oral or written sources or both; rather they

enable us to come closer to recounting the whole.

The conception of health in the late 19th century Uhehe, perhaps up to the early

colonial period, was different from the present one in important ways. Health was

understood as a state of being fine or free from illness, in both physical and mental

terms.40 Health meant also proper moral conduct among the living Hehe and towards

their departed ancestors. It also covered misfortunes to property, crops and animals.

In other words, health was understood also in relation to the wider social and

cosmological order.41 When compared with its contemporary European biomedical

health understanding, it is clear that there was a sharp contrast between the two

health systems. The biomedical tradition had focused only on the physical body of

the patient and depended on the germ theory of disease in understanding disease

causation.42 Some of the aspects of the Hehe health understanding, like witchcraft

and misfortunes to people, were explained by the biomedical tradition as part of

demonological theory of diseases that linked diseases and ill health to supernatural

powers. The demonological theory is believed to have predated biomedicine and by

the 19th century was said to be dominant in ‘primitive’ societies.43

40
Interviews with Yosefa Kihwele, Usengelindete, 16th January, 2010; Stefani Chota, Wasa, 17th
January, 2010; Magdalena Myovela, Mlolo, 11th November, 2009.
41
Interview with Fr. Egidio Crema, Itunundu, 20 th January, 2010. The cosmological order will be
analysed in the following section on witchcraft beliefs and practices.
42
Pamela I. Erickson, Ethnomedicine (Illinois, 2008), 2-3.
43
Ronald Hutton, “Anthropological and Historical Approaches to Witchcraft”, The Historical
Journal, Vol. 47 (2) (2004), 413-434; Sona R. Burstein, “Demonology and Medicine”, Folklore, Vol.
67 (1) (1956), 16-33.
 41

According to testimonies by elderly informants, the Hehe responded differently to

the threat of ill health before and after its occurrence. To forestall the danger of ill

health they worked to maintain the moral conduct equilibrium so as not to offend

people and ancestors. This can be interpreted as the preventive technique of the late

19th and early 20th century Uhehe. It focused on preventing ill health and misfortunes

resulting from uwuhavi and the wrath of misoka.44 In response to health problems

that had already occurred, the Hehe took recourse to herbal medicine and divination.

The Hehe knew herbs that would heal the common disease complaints and ailments

at home. The knowledge of those herbs and their administration was either

transmitted from one generation to another by the word of mouth or through

observation of current activities. The following testimony from an elderly woman,

who is also a traditional healer, illustrates such knowledge acquisition and trans-

generational inheritance.

Avakukwe va hwehwe na va baaba na Our grandparents and our fathers and

maama va hwehwe vanywesige hela
imigoda ja mwihala, vakovige vavene na
vevagisele. Vabitige kuvalagusi pe vawene
sivipona nda. Nayihwehwe tuvinilige
mumigoda gijyo . . . . Twagikagwe kwa
kulongelwa na kulava pe vinywa
apamwinga vatupelige tunywe yihwehwe.
mothers took the herbs from the forest by
themselves and they knew them. They went
to the diviners once they discovered that they
were not recovering. We, too, have grown up
taking the same herbs. . . . We knew them by
being told and witnessing parents collecting
them. Sometimes they prepared the herbs for
us to drink.45

From the above testimony it is also clear that in the 19th century the Hehe did not

seek healers help immediately. Healing intervention began at home. The healer was

the penultimate referral point who could tell, through divination, what disease the

44
Interview with Fr. Egidio Crema, Itunundu, l 20th January, 2010.
45
Interview with Yusta Semduba Mbuta, Igula, 5th December. This impression was also obtained in
the testimonies of several other Hehe elders especially those aged 70+.
 42

patient was suffering from, what was its cause, the treatment – if he could administer

treatment, or pass it on to ancestral propitiation or healing by another healer.46

Healing intervention at home had two levels, namely family and clan level,

depending on the nature of the health problem. Family members or the patient took

measures to handle an illness. When the situation got worse, they consulted a diviner

either by going with the patient, or leaving the patient at home. The purpose of

consultation was to know the type and cause of the ailment.47 A decision on whether

to send the patient for treatment or not, was done after the clan or family had

received divination report.48 The latter report helped the family or clan members to

organize themselves on how to administer treatment. Important aspects were: who

and how to provide health care; what objects should be used for treatment; how to

pay for the treatment costs; and who should prepare and conduct the ancestral

propitiation ceremony if the disease was caused by the wrath of misoka.

Treatment at family level used leaves, seeds and roots of certain herbaceous plants

that were known almost by every Hehe. Venanzia Myovela, an informant, recounted

boiling mono to heal stomach aches. She also recounted preparing a blend of mono

flowers with nyongole to treat malaria which the Hehe informants mentioned as one

of the diseases which their grandparents had experienced.49 This suggests that

malaria was already an endemic disease in Uhehe probably since the late 19th

46
Interviews with Yusta Semduba, ibid.; Venanzia Myovela, Mlolo, 11th November, 2009.
47
Interview with Amina Mnyihanga Nyenza, Kiponzero, 12 th November, 2009.
48
Interview with Mtende Wamola, Lumuli, 15th November, 2009.
49
Interviews with Venanzia Myovela, Mlolo, 11th November, 2009; Stefani Chota, Wasa, 17th
January, 2010; Alberto Kilovele, Isoliwaya, 11 th December, 2009; Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8 th
November, 2009.
 43

century, and was known as lichasi or machasi. In cases where treatment involved

propitiating the ancestral spirits, misoka, the offered sacrifices ranged from chicken

to sheep with little maize or millet liquor, uwugimbi. Offerings were administered in

the clan cemeteries especially at the tomb of the most elderly and respected clan

ancestor.50 Treatment by traditional healers used herbs and some animals like

chicken, sheep or cow depending on the nature of illness.

However, treatment by the traditional healers was not free. Payment for the

treatment, ilifungu, was made by the patient or relations, but after the patient had

recovered. Moreover, ilifungu was paid in kind and differed depending on the type

and cause disease.51 Diseases relating to uwuhavi wulovela, literary ‘old witchcraft’,

required more ilifungu than uwuhavi wupya, new witchcraft, and other diseases with

simple causation. Healing of uwuhavi wulovela disease, a type of witchcraft believed

to be made using substances and 19th century knowledge, for instance, required

ilifungu of cow or piece of cloth. The ‘old’ ailments required such specific treatment

since they were considered to be more complicated than ‘new’ ailments, thus

requiring more healing expertise. Uwuhavi wupya which was believed to be made

from substances and knowledge during the colonial and post colonial period, on the

other hand, required ilifungu of goat or sheep. In that sense, witchcraft was

understood as powers made from combination of objects. The common diseases

required payment of small items like chicken and grain. 52 However, the

50
Interview with Martin Kihwele, Usengelindete, 16 th January, 2010.
51
Interview with Martin Kindole, Lumuli, 15th November, 2009.
52
Interview with Stefani Chota, Wasa, 17th January, 2010.
 44

discrimination of old and new witchcraft is under the esoteric monopoly of

traditional healers, so is its healing.

Several lessons can be discerned from the late 19th century ilifungu system in Uhehe.

First and foremost, the ilifungu payment put priority on the health and well-being of

the patients than the payment. One informant who is a traditional healer argued that,

“it is good when your patient recovers since he gets hope that he recovered and his

relatives can contribute something to show gratitude to you the healer”. “The best

payment”, said another informant comparing this system with the colonial health

system, “was that of paying after recovering”.53 This constitutes a qualitative

difference between the late 19th century health care system in Uhehe, the colonial

and postcolonial health care systems. Secondly, recovery of the patient was the only

yardstick for testing the efficacy of herbs, expertise and knowledge of the healer. If

the patient did not recover nothing was paid, instead healing was sought from

another healer. This late 19th century payment system probably remained the same

till the turn of the century when colonial authorities began establishing the

biomedical health care system.54

The last interesting feature of the Hehe health seeking tradition was the place of

gender. Gender manifested itself in two ways: in the healing substances and in the

health care roles. In healing, some substances were used exclusively for treating

53
Interview with Amina Mnyihanga Nyenza, Kiponzero, 12 th November, 2009.
54
TNA, 450/53, Iringa Hospital 1944-1958. According to this file the history of biomedical health
care services began in Uhehe in 1902. Initially it was set up to provide services to the German military
and civil servants who were administering Iringa Military District. In such a context, the Hehe
probably continued with their own healing system longer than anticipated by the agents of
modernization – the colonizers.
 45

male patients whereas others were used only for treating female patients. Such

gender sensitivity was probably confined to the use of animals in treatment. For

instance, a cock was used for treating male patients; and the use of hens was

confined to female patients.55 Those animals, as recounted by Wamola Mtende, were

cooked with other medicinal herbs before administering them to the patients.56 With

regard to health care roles, women accompanied patients to the healer in case they

would stay longer and their duties included cooking for the patients, fetching water,

chopping firewood and sometimes helping the healer’s family in manual works like

cultivation.57 Women would stay at healer’s place till the patient recovered, whereas

men stayed only if the patient was in critical condition. The men’s role was in

carrying patients to healers, seeking divination service, transmission of reports to the

family or clan on divination and prescription, and settling payments for the healing

services.

2.4. The Traditional Healer in the Late 19th Century Uhehe.

In the Uhehe precolonial health system, the healer occupied an important place, for

as indicated above he identified the disease, identified its cause, offered healing

prescriptions and had power to heal. This was common in almost all precolonial sub-

Saharan African societies.58 Several names have been given to traditional healers by

the anthropologists who have studied Uhehe. Egidio Crema, a Catholic priest and

55
Interviews with Martin Kindole, Lumuli, 15 th November, 2009; Wamola Mtende, Lumuli, 15 th
November, 2009.
56
Interview with Wamola Mtende, ibid.
57
Interview with Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8 th November, 2009.
58
See the introduction in Steven Feierman & John M. Janzen (eds.), Social Basis of Health and
Healing in Africa (Berkeley, 1992); Waite, A History of Traditional Medicine, 106-109.
 46

anthropologist, identified them as ‘fortune tellers’.59 For him, there were an herbalist,

mukofi, and diviner, mulagusi, variants of fortune tellers. Gordon Brown who was

the colonial administrator and Bruce Hutt who was an anthropologist in the colonial

Iringa district in the mid 1930s, saw the herbalist and diviner as variants of medicine

specialist. But they categorized diviners to be of two types; those who used ngelo,

instruments of divination, and those who communicated directly with misoka,

ancestral spirits, in divination.60 Redmayne, unlike the rest, explicitly saw no

remarkable distinction since for her there is only a diviner.61 This is because the two

types of diviners fundamentally play the same role of divination, differing only in

ways of divining.

In light of the collected oral testimonies it is obvious that the categorization made by

Brown and Hutt is plausible. Testimonies have it that the mulagusi was consulted

more often compared to the mukofi.62 Whereas the former could conduct illness

diagnosis, the latter could not. Inability to diagnose means that one cannot uncover

the cause of illness nor tell why it developed, nor can s/he tell the proper therapeutic

prescription because the three are interconnected. The mukofi had knowledge of

herbs, and this makes him or her comparable to the pharmacist in the modern

biomedical practice. For the mukofi to prescribe herbs to the patient properly, one

should be certain of the nature of disease that patient is suffering from or whether he

59
Crema, Wahehe, 161-6.
60
Brown & Hutt, Anthropology in Action, 169-70. Oral testimonies have not helped in identifying
explicitly the predominant dimension of divination. But using the comparative approach on the oral
and written narratives, it is just to assert that divination involving misoka was paramount over the one
that used instruments in divination.
61
See Redmayne, “Chikanga”.
62
Interviews with Stefani Chota, Wasa, 17th January, 2010; Yusta Semduba, Igula, 5th Deecmber,
2009; cf. Crema. Wahehe; Brown & Hutt, Op. Cit., 169.
 47

consulted the mulagusi and has been given the therapeutic prescription. The

mulagusi knew the healing herbs. He could prescribe but used his assistant,

ndundami63, to process the herbs and provide them to patients. Ndundami can be

compared to mukofi in that he knew all herbs. He differed with mukofi in that he was

not free since he always operated under the mulagusi. Mulagusi was consulted first

and more often than the mukofi. Mulagusi and mukofi shared a fundamental

significance in the late 19th century Uhehe society in that they all had the healing

knowledge.

According to oral testimonies the mulagusi had significant knowledge of healing of

many diseases and other health-related misfortunes. The mukofi, on the other hand,

had a great command that covered particular health problems such as infertility.

Martin Kindole, an informant, accounted that infertility was one of the big health

problems in the late 19th century Uhehe.64 That testimony was qualified by another

informant, Martin Kihwele, who said that “Mtwa Mkwawa”, the last chief before

colonization of Uhehe, “once sought fertility medicine for one of his wives, who was

beautiful and beloved but could not bear children, from the vakofi that belonged to

the Mwamfilinge and Mwanyenza clans”. Those clans resided around the Luvinda

Escarpment which borders on the present day Kiponzero, Magunga and Wasa. 65 The

vakofi (plural for mukofi) seem to have been influential on health problems that did

63
According to Sr. Jane Mfwalamagoha (interviewed at Ulete, 12 th November, 2009), the ndundami is
normally a man who has been castrated in order to make him uncritical and unconscious of his own
self so that he can be carrying heavy luggage of the healer and can be sent to the heavy forest with
dangerous creatures without being scared. He becomes comparable to the robot. Raising this question
to the practicing traditional Hehe diviners, the response has been the denial of castration. It might
need further research to get the truth. It might also be a symbolic statement, might be related to
slavery, or might be connected to “zombies” mentioned earlier.
64
Interview with Martin Kindole, Lumuli, 15 th November, 2009.
65
Interview with Martin Kihwele, Usengelindete, 16 th January, 2010.
 48

not affect health of the physical body, but dealt with problems that jeopardized

harmony in marriage such as reproductive health issues.66

It is important to emphasise the fact that the late 19th century Uhehe traditional healer

went beyond the realm of ill health by creating new social relations between the

patients and their relatives, on one hand, and the healer on the other. 67 This was

implied in the fact that payment for the treatment was considered more as a symbol

of gratefulness than material compensation of the healer. Contact was thus

maintained even after the patient had recovered. To justify this, Katalina Lumato, an

informant, said that:

When I was a young girl my mother and I used to visit a family of a healer
at Lyasa. The healer had treated me in my early childhood years. We used to
go with some presents like maize and chicken. That situation was old since
my mother grew up seeing the patients and healers having good relations
68
even when they were not ill.

2.5. Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Late 19th Century Uhehe

Witchcraft beliefs and practices were one of the cultural problems in most of the pre-

modern world societies. Evidence attests that witchcraft was not uncommon up to the

late enlightenment England, and that models developed for the study of witchcraft

among “English villagers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” were applied in

the 20th century African witchcraft studies.69 Regardless of conceptual and

explanatory differences, witchcraft probably existed in almost every society. The late

66
The medicines that heal infertility were known as migoda ja wusuke, that is, herbs that one submits
to ancestors in request for child bearing.
67
Interview with Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8th November, 2009.
68
Ibid.
69
M.G. Marwick, “Anthropologists’ Declining Productivity in the Sociology of Witchcraft.”
American Anthropologist 74 (3) (1972), 380.
 49

19th century Uhehe was certainly not an exception.70 There is no historical

monograph on witchcraft among the Hehe, but available ethnographical works can

furnish us with some important information.

According to Edward Evans-Pritchard, witchcraft belongs to the realm of invisible

and imaginary. This definition was developed from the study of the Zande society

and culture. It emphasized that witchcraft beliefs and practices were of great value in

that society. The existence of magic, witch-doctors and oracles was a function of

witchcraft beliefs and practices among the Zande.71 This conclusion gives an

indication that the theory employed in that study was structural functionalism. This is

because it describes some phenomenon within cultures and societies as developing in

societies to serve a particular function. In the Zande society, witchcraft is thus

deduced as imaginary phenomenon that consciously was developed to explain

misfortunes. The Zande society thus created a cult of witch-doctors and oracles to

interpret those misfortunes. Many anthropologists have aligned with Evans-

Pritchard’s perspective, which tried to look at the sociology of knowledge in pre-

modern societies. Haule, for instance, asserts that witchcraft beliefs and practices

among the Bantu is ‘generally and typically similar’, and that they are imaginary

relics of the pre-scientific world.72

70
See Brown&Hutt, Anthropology in Action, 175-83; Crema, Wahehe, 168-74; Redmayne,
“Chikanga”, 113-20.
71
Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, “Witchcraft.” Africa 8 (4) (1935): 417-422.
72
Cosmas Haule, “Bantu ‘Witchcraft’ and Christian Morality” (PhD. diss, Nouvelle Revue de Science
Missionnaire, 1969), xv,12.
 50

With regard to the Hehe, written and oral evidence reveal that such thinking is no

longer plausible. Redmayne, Brown and Hutt, and Crema have separately

demonstrated that in Hehe cosmology, witchcraft is considered a real phenomenon.

And it has had remarkable influence in day-to-day life since the late 19th century to

the present.73 When they say witchcraft was ‘real’ they are not advancing such ‘real’

from their opinions rather from the perceptions of the Hehe. In their opinions they do

not consider witchcraft as real; instead they consider witchcraft as imaginary. Hence,

the attempt to state that witchcraft is real is part of giving voice to local perception.

Brown and Hutt, and Crema have thus tried to define witchcraft in the Uhehe

context. The former defined witchcraft as essentially the misuse of mugoda,

medicinal herbs, in accomplishing specific evil ends like loss, injury, disease or

death. In other words, medicinal herbs whose sole utility is healing may become

harmful when its original utility is changed. When such utility is changed to achieve

certain evil ends as mentioned above it becomes witchcraft. 74 Crema, on the other

hand, cultivates an idea of innate witchcraft since he defines witchcraft, wuhavi, as

an inborn evil power. However, he adds that witchcraft is hereditary since it is found

in particular clans, among the select persons and areas.75 In other words, if a

particular clan had a history of witchcraft then it was highly likely that some of its

members would become witches.

Pertinent questions of when and how witchcraft beliefs and practices began in Uhehe

can be raised at this point for the purpose of elaborating the ‘local’ definition of

73
See Brown & Hutt, Anthropology in Action; Crema, Wahehe; Redmayne, “Chikanga”.
74
Brown & Hutt, ibid., 178-9.
75
Crema, Op.Cit., 173-4.
 51

witchcraft as well as examining dichotomy of ‘real’ versus ‘imaginary’. In raising

such a dichotomy one is also raising issues of relationship between theory and

practice. The existing literature on witchcraft as cited earlier strongly champions the

‘imaginary status’ of witchcraft.

Contrary to the literature, oral accounts suggest that witchcraft was ‘real’ and

prevalent in Uhehe. Its presence dates back to the late precolonial period. According

to an informant Stefani Chota, in the late pre-colonial Uhehe witchcraft was very

prevalent and was called lihomelo, literally meaning ‘something to throw with.’76 In

that regard, Uhehe witchcraft seems to have been primarily used in battlegrounds as

a means of winning war. The Hehe did not go to war without having medicine to

empower their weapons and their fight. In this sense medicine sanctified the art of

war. In times of peace, such medicine use probably came to be used in day-to-day

social relations, ending up in attempts to “misuse” that medicine in realizing evil

ends. Most of the accusations were directed against women, probably because of

their greater role in the biological reproduction of life, their closer involvement in the

care of infant life and the intensity of their involvement in neighbourhood social

interactions.77

Avoiding marriage to families alleged of practicing witchcraft; avoiding eating food

prepare by alleged witches; avoiding passing at the centre of path junctions or where

76
Interview with Stefani Chota,Wasa, 17th January, 2010; cf. ‘mahomelo’ in Redmayne, “The Hehe”,
45.
77
See Winans, “The Political Context of Economic Adaptation”, 440. In this article, Winans portrays
the division of labour in 19th century Uhehe. Important here is how war as opposed to social structure
influenced such division of labour.
 52

several pathways meet; belief in misfortunes associated with owl appearances as

night; general fear towards alleged warlocks; and persistent accusations were some

of signifiers of the existence of witchcraft belief in the late 19th century Uhehe.

Those signifiers reveal that the belief in witchcraft was so strong and impacted

significantly on everyday lives of the Hehe people. There were empirical

circumstances that strengthened witchcraft belief in people’s minds. They included

neck throttling during sleep in night hours supposedly by witches; being used in

manual labour during night hours; incisions in body parts and hair cut without

consciousness of the victim; and experiencing an owl hoot on top of somebody’s

house. A song below will illustrate this.

Ngalonga nene I will reveal

Kwa baba nene To my father
Pakutigila That
Vituma matuyi There are people who send owls
Gigona gituya That hoot all night
Pamulyango gwangu At my door
Nene ndonzile sinde I have spoken
Simbwila lungi And that is all78

Other actions alleged to be done by witches were hard to empirically observe. They

include night flying; killing the loved ones and committing incest to consolidate

witchcraft; eating of human flesh; bewitching; and witches testing strength of their

witchcraft against other witches signified by one of them sweating in public places

like in local liquor clubs while weather is cooler. These practices seem to have been

established firmly in Uhehe by the late 19th century. However, most of those

78
Michael Ng’umbi, “Magic Beliefs in Hehe Lamentation Songs,” (mimeo, 2001)
 53

practices were not observable due to the secrecy of the witchcraft practices.79 Ronald

Hutton, a historian, elaborates why witchcraft practices were conducted in secrecy;

The . . . abiding characteristic of the witch figure is that she or he earns a

general social disapproval, usually of a very strong kind, which is associated
with two particular traits of the way in which he or she is supposed to
operate. One is that the witch works in secrecy, normally giving the
intended victim no warning or consciousness of what is happening until the
harm has been done. The other is that she or he does not cause harm as a
purely practical means of gaining greater wealth or prestige, but from
motive of malice.80

One can discern more reasons as to why the Hehe practiced witchcraft secretly.

Some of these can be discerned from the cosmological foundation of witchcraft

beliefs and practices. Before Uhehe Empire was founded, people expressed religious

belief by venerating kinship ancestral spirits. In 1855 Uhehe Empire was founded

under Mtwa Munyigumba. As a result, there was an enlargement of scale from

kinship to territorial ancestral spirit’s venerations. The enlargement of scale here

implies that Mtwa’s ancestral spirits became empire’s spirit that every subject of

Uhehe had to venerate. Redmayne has mentioned chansi as a territorial spirit that

was venerated by all the Hehe. Chansi had his spirit medium residing at the border

between Uhehe and the Kilombero valley.81 Kinship spirits were known as

miwhela.82 The Hehe believed that the spirits were the ones who protected and

helped the living. They had more powers than the living. Furthermore, they were the

ones who separated the realm of virtue from the realm of evil. Since the diviners

were also a form of spirit mediums, they condemned witchcraft. The Hehe believed

79
Interview with Stefan Chota,Op. Cit.; Martin Kindole, Op.Cit; Msitingongomi Kapoma,
Usengelindete, Iringa Rural, 16th January, 2010.
80
Hutton, “Anthropological and Historical Approaches to Witchcraft”, 422.
81
Redmayne, “Chikanga”, 114; John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), 207-
8.
82
Interview with Yusta Semduba, Igula, 5th December, 2009.
 54

that the spirits were against witchcraft as an evil practice. The spirits emphasized

good deeds among the Hehe. That is why those who faulted against the norms were

punished by invisible powers.

The Hehe adhered to specific moral principles in the late 19th century. Those

principles were against practices such as killing another person, taking someone’s

property by force, whispering against others, and failure to take care of elderly

persons.83 Looking at those principles one would realize that they upheld human life

and dignity. Any action that went against those principles was considered immoral

and offending the ancestors. Hence, a morally disciplined Hehe typically ensured

that these principles were not contravened. The morally undisciplined Hehe was,

therefore, the one who went contrary to the set principles. Witches, because of their

evil will, fell in this group of the undisciplined since they used witchcraft to harm

others.84 This contradiction of the cosmologically perceived moral values was the

main reason why witchcraft practices were conducted in secrecy.It can be affirmed

that by the late 19th century chiefly and divinely interventions on witchcraft were

already in place, and had become part of the public health system.85 That public

(state) health system existed up to the moment of German colonization in 1898, the

moment when the Mtwa’s control was destroyed and a foreign rule was established.

Witchcraft survived the transition from traditional to colonial political control.

83
Interview with Fr. Egidio Crema, Itunundu, 20 th January, 2010.
84
Crema, Wahehe, 168-74.
85
P.M. Worsley& J.P. Rumburger, “Remains of an Earlier People in Uhehe” TNR 27 (1949), 45,
reveal to us from the rock paintings evidence that Lumuli (located at the central south of Uhehe) had
was reputed for being an abode of witches in the past. What should be underscored here is they too
did not specify which past they were referring to. This uncertainty is what obscures us from ultimately
and confidently dating the beginning of witchcraft beliefs and practices in Uhehe.
 55

2.6. Conclusion

This chapter sought to provide an analysis of health seeking tendencies in the context

of the late 19th century Uhehe. It has revealed that the Hehe faced and understood

illnesses and ill-health in terms of cause and effect. Three main sources were

identified as the main causes of ill-health and misfortune; natural occurrences,

ancestral spirits and witchcraft. Important in mediating health concerns were the

family and clan members when health problems were not serious; but when they

went beyond their control, diviners gained a paramount significance. The chapter

also presented the historical foundation of witchcraft in Uhehe. It uncovered that, up

to the late 19th century Uhehe, witchcraft was a common phenomenon and could not

be separated from the then Hehe health seeking tendencies. Health implications of

witchcraft like ill-health and deaths were thus understood from the cosmology and

local perceptions of the Hehe people.

 56

CHAPTER THREE

WITCHCRAFT BELIEFS AND HEALTH IMPLICATIONS IN COLONIAL

UHEHE.

3.1 Introduction

Tanzania experienced colonial conquest by the late 19th century. She was colonised

first by the Germans from 1884 to 1918, and then by the British from 1919 to 1961.

Colonisation had far reaching consequences over much of the socio-cultural, political

and economic life of the indigenous inhabitants. Uhehe was amongst those

Tanzanian societies that were affected by colonial domination. One of the segments

that experienced the wave of change was the Hehe health seeking tradition. This was

affected by colonial policies relating to culture and health. This chapter seeks to

explain the transformations which occurred in the Hehe witchcraft beliefs and health

seeking traditions during the German and British colonial periods. In the course of

showing such transformations, the chapter unveils changes and continuities in the

traditional health care system, and reveals that health interventions attained a plural

character in the colonial period. A temporal approach has been used to develop a

discussion in the chapter by looking first at the German colonial period before

embarking on the British period.

3.2 Early Colonial Rule in Relation to Witchcraft and Health

German colonization in Africa began in the mid 1880s, and this witnessed present

day Tanzania (mainland), Rwanda, Burundi, Namibia, Cameroon and Togo being
 57

put under the Germans. According to Evans Lewin1, Thaddeus Sunseri2 and Juhani

Koponen3, the Germans sought to transform their colonies into lucrative economic

assets that could supply Germany with adequate industrial raw materials while

providing markets for manufactured goods. Sunseri, who recently made a better use

of German archival sources, has postulated that the Germans wanted to turn their

colonies in Africa into centres of mechanized agricultural production. They sought to

turn their colonies into settler and plantation estates.4 Social and cultural issues did

not win much attention in the German’s colonial policy until the last years of their

rule, when they inserted provision of native education into their colonial policy.5

This orientation reveals how the German colonial policy focused more on economic

ends.

German East Africa, in which Uhehe was located, was the largest German colony in

Africa. This colony witnessed campaigns of conquest progressing from the late

1880s to 1899. In Uhehe, for instance, the conquest ended in 1898 following the

tragic but heroic death of the Mkwawa who had fought the Germans for eight years.6

Uhehe became under full German colonial control from late 1898. Hence, German

colonial policy became fully operational in German East Africa by the turn of the

twentieth century, that is, from 1900.

1
See Evans Lewin, The Germans and Africa (New York, 1915).
2
See Thaddeus Sunseri, Vilimani: Labour Migration and Rural Transformation in Early Colonial
Tanzania (Oxford, 2002).
3
See Juhani Koponen, Development for Exploitation (Helsinki, 1995)
4
Sunseri, Op. Cit., 11.
5
Lewin, Op. Cit., 283.
6
This historic event is one of the most documented events in the history of Tanzania. For a detailed
discussion of this event see Alison Redmayne, “The Hehe” in A. Roberts ed., Tanzania before 1900
(Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968) ); Alison Redmayne, “Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars.”
Journal of African History IX (3) (1968):409-436; Alison Redmayne, “The Wahehe People of
Tanganyika” (PhD. diss., Oxford University, 1964).
 58

To a large extent, German colonial policy had not intended to relieve Africans from

the problem of diseases. Policy was remarkably centred on economic and political

control. This focus was evidenced by poor allocation of financial and human

resources to the health sector as opposed to railway construction, colonial conquest

and opening up of plantations. Evans Lewin, for instance, noted that by 1906 about

£10,000,000 were spent in increasing railway mileage. Despite the absence of health

budget data, he emphasized that in comparative terms the health budget was very

negligible. He further asserted that when the Germans finally turned their attention to

the provision of social services to Africans in the last years of their rule they

emphasized education. German East Africa alone had 4,650 pupils in schools by

1913.7 As Juhan Koponeni put it, the kind of education provided was for manual

work instead of technical issues of which health could be part.8 And this focus would

have had health implications on colonial subjects who were now confronting new

diseases brought by the colonial conquest.9

Historians of public health in Tanzania have argued that biomedical health services

were first introduced by missionaries and travelers in the 1870s after establishing

their health centre at Mamboia in Ukaguru. The centre was established to serve

missionaries and travelers en route to Central Africa from the coast of Tanzania.10

When the Germans colonised the territory they had medical personnel for treating

the wounded German and African soldiers as well as treating the civil colonial

7
Lewin, The Germans, 282-83.
8
Koponeni, Development for Exploitation, 323-4.
9
Evidence presented by many historians show that colonial conquest brought new diseases to the
conquered. See, for instance, Helge Kjekshus, Ecology Control (London, 1996).
10
See David F. Clyde, History of the Medical Services of Tanganyika (Dar es Salaam, 1962).
 59

government employees.11 This history of the biomedical health system followed a

pattern common throughout colonial Africa. Evidence from many parts of colonial

Africa shows that colonial health policy was biased, and had tendencies of racism,

urbanism, and exclusion.12 African health issues were usually addressed only when

diseases of epidemic proportions erupted. This explains why the German, and later

the British health policy focused much on the control of venereal diseases, malaria

and sleeping sickness in colonial Tanzania.13

The Medical Department was formed as early as April, 1891. Its first Chief Medical

Officer was Dr. Alexander Becker. Few health centres and hospitals were built in

some coastal and hinterland posts where the German population was substantial.

David Clyde affirms that military hospitals were built in Bagamoyo and Pangani,

whereas civil hospitals were built in Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Tabora.14 The first

hospital in Uhehe was built at Rungemba after the end of the German conquest

campaigns against the Hehe. The purpose of the hospital was to serve the German

army stationed in Uhehe.15 This small and rather temporary hospital did not last long

for when the Uhehe capital was shifted from Kalenga to Kihesa (present day Iringa

Municipal), a larger and permanent hospital was built at Kihesa. The hospital was

built by the government in 1902.16 The Benedictine missionaries are also reported to

11
Ibid., 2-14; Richard M. Titmuss et al., The Health Services of Tanganyika (London, 1964), 1.
12
Beatrice Halii, “Colonial Public Health Campaigns and Local Perceptions of Illness: Case Study of
the Gogo of Mpwapwa District, Central Tanzania, 19520-1950s” (M.A. diss., University of Dar es
Salaam), 40-42.
13
The German colonial government had, for instance, enacted the Medical Ordinance in 1910 to
control venereal diseases. See East African Force, Extracts from German Ordinance and Decrees of
G.E.A, (Nairobi, 1916), 186.
14
Clyde, Op. Cit., 4-10.
15
Ibid., 14.
16
TNA, 450/53, Iringa Hospital 1944-1958.
 60

have been important in the provision of health services in Uhehe from

Tosamaganga.17

Plate 1: This is the historic church of Tosamaganga Catholic Mission through which
Christianity and mission health care were established in Uhehe during the German colonial
period. It was established by the Benedictine Missionaries in 1896. (Photo by F. Edward,
21.11.2009)

Despite the provision of missionary and government medical services, many Hehe

people continued to seek health care from the traditional health system. In this

connection, Magdalena Myovela, an informant, stated that “our parents did not trust

the white men’s medicine in the early days until they started seeing people who had

recovered after using them”.18 The Hehe continued to use traditional medicines since

they had not witnessed the rationality of using the new medicines. The missionaries

and the colonial government discouraged the continuity of Hehe health seeking

tradition on various grounds. The missionaries (and the colonial government

17
See Joseph Chusi et al., Historia ya Jimbo la Iringa (Iringa, 1997); Interviews with Fr. Wilson
Myovela, Kilolo, 8th November 2009; Fr. G. Giorda, Tosamaganga, 21 st November, 2009.
18
Interview with Magdalena Myovela, Mlolo, 11th November, 2009.
 61

officials) viewed the Hehe health seeking tradition as merely a continuation of

witchcraft beliefs and practices which they opposed. The missionaries introduced a

new concept of god and hence a new cosmological order that was distinct to that of

the Hehe.19 However, the missionaries were not successful during the German rule

because their efforts set a stage for a clash of cultures and concepts; between

European and African. According to the historian John Iliffe, Africans saw the

missionaries and other Europeans as agents of diseases, famine and disasters. Iliffe

continues;

The natural disasters of the 1890s stimulated the anxious search for the
spiritual aid. . . . Famine stimulated the Shambaa spirit possession cult. Both
in South Pare and Unyakyusa religious leaders blamed rinderpest on newly
arrived missionaries, and the Germans were probably often thought to have
caused natural disasters.20

The Africans were thus defending their cosmologies. Accordingly, the Hehe health

seeking tradition persisted in the colonial period. There were other reasons that made

the Hehe health tradition to continue in the colonial period. First, up to the First

World War there was only one hospital throughout Uhehe. Moreover, the hospital –

the present day Iringa Regional Hospital – provided health services to the non-

African population with only occasional treatment of the African labour force.

Second, the services provided were mainly in few areas of Uhehe especially in the

growing urban town of Iringa and at Tosamaganga, the latter being the only mission

in Uhehe during the German colonial period. This can be accounted for by meager

human and material resources available for the colonial health care. Hence, the rest

of Uhehe, which was predominantly rural, was left free to continue with the

19
See John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), 207.
20
Ibid., 204.
 62

traditional health care system. Lastly, the Medical Department intervened in the

African health problems only when there was an outbreak of epidemic diseases. The

situation implies that non-epidemic diseases were of little significance in the German

colonial health policy. It also signifies the change in the control of public health,

from indigenous authority21 to the colonial authority, which can well be

comprehended from the larger point of view of classes in the political economy. The

Hehe had to rely on their local health seeking tradition to gain relief from non-

epidemic diseases. With time, however, the Hehe health seeking tradition was

gradually becoming weak and had to adapt to the new colonial social context.

The change from precolonial to colonial political economy meant also that the

control of witchcraft beliefs and practices at a societal level was disturbed. As stated

in Chapter Two, Mtwa, the Hehe chief, controlled witchcraft beliefs and practices by

administering poison ordeals on suspected witches. According to the historian Gloria

Waite, control of witchcraft beliefs and practices was an inherent aspect of the

precolonial public health system in Uhehe and in other African societies.22

Missionaries are reported to have incorporated such an African doctrine of evil in the

spread of Christianity.23 In Uhehe and elsewhere, they incorporated it without

understanding fully its place and significance. The immediate ousting of traditional

chiefs by the Germans led to social disorganization, thus breaking the social

cohesion necessary for public witchcraft control.

21
Dr. Greisert, a German medical officer commended the Hehe public health system particularly on
the control of plague epidemic in the late 1880s and early 1890s. See Clyde, History of Medical
Services, 13.
22
Gloria Waite, “Public Health in Precolonial East-Central Africa” in S. Feierman & J. Janzen (eds.)
The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Berkeley, 1992), 216,222.
23
Thomas Spear, “Toward the History of African Christianity” in T. Spear & I.N. Kimambo (eds.),
East African Expression of Christianity (Oxford, 1999), 8.
 63

During German rule, there was no single anti-witchcraft ordinance. The available

documentary sources provide no clues as to why the Germans did not enact anti-

witchcraft ordinances unlike their successors, the British. It is possible that in the

absence of the governing law to address witchcraft accusations, victimization and

hunting, some people might have appropriated the prevailing situation to their

advantage. Evidence from other parts of German East Africa like Masasi, Ukimbu,

Usafwa and Uchagga attest that some individuals used such administrative vacuum

to punish and hunt witches. When the news of such acts reached the German

officials, the accusers were punished. Consequently, public witch hunting and

accusation declined.24 Unfortunately, written sources are silent on whether or not

Germans conducted a study to understand the connection between witchcraft and

African health systems. Working knowledge of German on the part of the researcher

would probably have changed this scenario. Yet it is also possible that the Germans

probably did not put into consideration the interwoven relationship between

witchcraft and health as perceived in many African societies, including Uhehe.

3.3 Later Colonial Rule and the Health System

When the British took over Tanganyika in 1919, they inherited the limited health

facilities built by the Germans. Three significant changes were made in the health

system. The first was to reorganize the previous health system into the East African

British colonial pattern. This happened in 1920. The core change was the alignment

of Tanganyika health policy and system with that of Kenya and Uganda by

24
Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 206-7.
 64

incorporating a sanitary system in the public health system. 25 The second change,

which was influenced by health problems resulting from WWI, was to break the

medical department into medical and sanitation sections. The two sections were to

deal with curative and preventive functions respectively.26 The third change had to

do with manpower. From 1925, Africans were trained to serve in health facilities like

hospitals and dispensaries. Incorporation of Tanganyikans in biomedical services

was gradual and it had racial prejudices in that Tanganyikans were trained in serve

less skilled and lower positions like dressers, nurses and medical orderlies. The

historian Ann Beck believes that such training would not have been successful if

cooperation between missionaries and colonial government had not existed.27 The

missionaries were very instrumental in the provision of health care and providing

basic health education to immediate converts. Missionaries were also advantaged in

identifying the best candidates for health technical training offered by government

institutions.

In Uhehe, missions formerly under the German Benedictine missionaries were taken

over by the Italian Consolata missionaries. Such a change did not come out of

independent volition; imperialistic rivalries percolated into religious affairs so that

when German colonizers were ousted in German East Africa after WWI, German

missionaries had to be ousted too. Whereas as the Benedictines had expanded their

missionary activities to Madibira from Tosamaganga in 1898, further south of

25
Ann Beck, A History of the British Medical Administration of East Africa, 1900-1950
(Massachusetts, 1970), 81.
26
Halii, “Colonial Public Health Campains”, 42.
27
Beck, Op Cit., 81-5.
 65

Uhehe, the Consolata Italians started expanding their reach in different directions.28

According to Father Giorda, a priest who served at Tosamaganga Mission in 2009,

Benedictine missionaries were keen in spreading faith than were in mission

medicine. But the latter concern came to dominate the scene from 1920s, when the

Consolata missionaries took hold of Uhehe. It became like a rule of thumb that

whenever a new mission was opened in Uhehe between 1920s and 1990s it included

not only the church but also a dispensary.29 Most informants interviewed in this

study acknowledged the significant role played by mission medicine in local Hehe

people’s healthcare during the British colonial period.30

Consolata missionaries channeled Italian aid to health facilities in Uhehe during the

British colonial period, and have continued to do so up to the recent past. One

informant stated that the Italians had been funding renovation of Iringa Regional

Hospital since she started working in 1981.31 During research it was observed that

the then on-going hospital renovation was funded by Italians. This proved that

missionaries were partly instrumental in the shape of biomedicine in Uhehe, as noted

by public health historians like Ann Beck and David F. Clyde. According to those

historians, the British colonial public health system owed a lot to the cooperation

between missionaries and government medical department. Missionaries served well

in rural areas whereas the government served well in urban centres.

28
See Chusi, Historia ya Jimbo.
29
Interview with Fr. G. Giorda, Tosamaganga, 21 st November, 2009.
30
For instance, interviews with Katarina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8 th November, 2009; Magdalena Myovela,
Mlolo, 11th November, 2009.
31
Interviews with Rustika Tung’ombe, Iringa, 10th November, 2009; Mwanne Kyula, Iringa, 10th
November, 2009.
 66

Despite the amicable splitting of focus areas between rural and urban centres, there

were occasional hostile relations between missionaries and government towards the

provision of health care in Tanganyika from 1920s. The colonial medical department

staff wanted to have significant power over the mission medical services. That

explains why, for instance, they wanted to reduce subsidies to mission medical

services.32 Services offered by missionaries were free up to the early 1940s when

cost sharing began to be introduced slowly.33 In government hospitals, especially

those in urban centres, cost sharing was already in place from German times, and this

policy can be attributed to the presence of Europeans and Asians in those centres in

large numbers. However, the rates of healthcare payments were not uniform.

Europeans and Asians paid more than Africans.34

In native dispensaries, which were funded by the Native Authorities, services were

free of charge until late 1940s. In Uhehe, each sub-chiefdom had its own native

dispensary which functioned as an auxiliary healthcare facility to the Iringa

Government Hospital.35 Native Authorities were established in Tanganyika in 1926

by the British colonial state for reasons documented well in many works.36 The

establishment of native dispensaries dates back to the mid 1930s, when the Native

32
Beck, History of the British Medical Administration, 204.
33
At Wasa, a third Catholic Mission to be established in Uhehe, narratives have it that around 1940s
Fr. Bora had suffered loin illness and that biomedicine could not heal. He then set to consult a Hehe
traditional healer by the name of SeMwedete who healed him. After healing she demanded payment
for her health care. Fr. Bora paid but lamented that he was charged while he did not charge patients
who went to be healed at his mission by biomedical health care. Following that incident, Wasa
Mission started charging local people who went to be treated. Hence, the charge free period ended.
Interviews with Stefani Chota, Wasa, 17th January, 2010; Martin Kihwele, Usengelindete, 16 th
January, 2010.
34
TNA, 24/33/5 Medical and Sanitation: Fees, Medical and Recovery.
35
TNA, 24/M1/3 Medical.
36
See for instance Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika.
 67

Authorities in Uhehe were strengthened by the coming of Chief Adam Sapi who

inherited his father’s throne, Sapi Mkwawa, son of Mkwawa. These dispensaries

were manned by African medical auxiliaries with monthly visits by medical doctors

from Iringa Hospital. There were three reasons for the weak manning and monthly

visits. Firstly, the Medical Department was allocated so meager budgetary resources

that it could not meet its goals.37 Secondly, the Great Depression exacerbated the

situation as declines in government revenue caused budgetary cuts and retrenchment

of medical staff from 1930 to 1938.38 Thirdly, the Second World War led to further

retrenchment of important medical staff that was recruited to join the allied forces.

Africans had to pay for the health care services indirectly through native taxes. When

Dr. E.D. Pridie, the chief medical adviser to the Colonial Office, visited Tanganyika

in 1949 and found low standards of health care he recommended improvements.39

The recommendations included increasing personnel and financial resources. On the

latter, Africans were now to pay flat rates in health services regardless of their

differential incomes. In Uhehe this was opposed vehemently by Chief Adam Sapi

Mkwawa on the ground that the majority of the Hehe were poor and therefore unable

to pay the medical fees. Moreover, the chief argued that imposing fees would force

people to resort to the ‘tribal’ medicine when they fell ill, or simply remain at home;

and this could jeopardize the health of the Hehe people. Chief Adam Sapi Mkwawa

suggested that the system should take effect only in the urban centres where many

37
See Beck, History of the British Medical Administration.
38
Titmuss et al., Health Services of Tanganyika, 9.
39
Beck, History of the British Medical Administration. 161.
 68

people were receiving regular salaries.40 Despite the resistance, which got support

from district and provincial commissioners, such fees were implemented in later

years though the implementation was more efficient in urban and government health

facilities.41

Various scholars have documented the budgetary increase in the Medical

Department soon after the Second World War. Such increase was included in the

Ten Year Development Plan which was launched by the colonial government in

1946.42 The budgetary increase was meant to finance development in the health

sector, for instance training more African staff as well as improving and increasing

quantitatively the health facilities.43 Titmuss, for instance, has shown that the

Medical Department’s expenditure in 1945 was £ 364,300 against the 1940 figure,

which was £ 193,300. However, according to him, that increase was in response to

the rise in salaries and prices of health facilities such as drugs, equipment, transport

cost and construction cost, and not in actual quality of services. 44 Official

correspondence between Iringa District rural medical auxiliaries and the District

Commissioner in the 1950s reveal that there were frequent shortages of drugs in

Uhehe’s rural dispensaries. Moreover, only simple drugs such as pain killers were

frequently available in those dispensaries.45 With reference to the Ten Year

40
TNA, 24/33/5 Medical and Sanitation: Fees, Medical and Recovery: Letter from Adam Sapi
Mkwawa to Iringa D.C. dated 22nd August, 1950.
41
TNA, 24/33/5: Letter from Iringa D.C. to Brigadier Scupham dated 15 th January, 1951.
42
See J.P. Moffett, Handbook of Tanganyika, 2nd Edn. (Dar es Salaam, 1958).
43
Beck, History of the British Medical Administration, 161-2; Titmuss et al., Health Services of
Tanganyika , 24.
44
Titmuss, ibid., 14.
45
See TNA, 24/M1/3 Medical. Different letters written to request such drugs from the District
Commissioners reveal that, rural medical auxiliaries had to use submissive language when requesting
 69

Development Plan, the budgetary allocation to the Medical Department was very

small compared to other colonial departments. Emphasis on economic development

in the post-WWII period accounted for such small allocation of funds to the health

sector.46

Looking at the public health system during the British colonial period, a number of

observations can be made. First, the British public health system focused on health

campaigns. Some of these involved resettling populations from disease prone areas.

A good example is the 1940 resettlement scheme in Ulanga, in which people were

moved from the tsetse prone to tsetse free areas.47 These campaigns predominantly

concerned diseases that would reach epidemic proportions like sleeping sickness.

Secondly, education was considered to be an important tool in making people aware

of health-related issues. From 1947 education became important and targeted

tuberculosis, venereal diseases and malnutrition. Posters were used in providing that

health education.48 Thirdly, the British public health system in Tanganyika was

predominantly preventive than curative, particularly before WWII. This feature was

obvious because of limited budgetary resources that were allocated to the health

sector. Lastly, the British colonial public health policy did not consider the place of

traditional healing systems. This explains why the British did not consider witchcraft

as one of the problems that complicated the issue of health. Hence, the British

perspective was the same as that of their predecessors, the Germans.

supply of drugs as if it was a mistake to do so. For instance, such phrases like “Nisamehe Bwana”,
forgive me sir, were not uncommon in those correspondences.
46
Beck, History of the British Medical Administration, 161.
47
Lorne Erling Larson, “A History of the Mahenge (Ulanga) District, c.1860-1957” (PhD Thesis,
University of Dar es Salaam, 1976), 305.
48
TNA 26788, Health Campaigns
 70

Tanzania inherited the colonial health system at independence in 1961. A large

proportion of health facilities were still in urban centres and the quality of healthcare

services in those centres was far better compared to those found in rural areas. That

situation had profound implications on health especially in rural areas like Uhehe. It

is convenient at this juncture to survey British policy towards witchcraft beliefs and

practices before looking at the implications of this aspect on the colonial health

system.

3.4 Later Colonial Rule and Witchcraft

In dealing with witchcraft, the British went a step ahead from where the Germans

had reached. The British introduced anti-witchcraft laws in Tanganyika. This is

perhaps partly due to their historical experiences with witchcraft prosecutions in

other colonies. One can also argue that it was partly influenced by the racial and

paternalistic colonial prejudices the British had towards their colonial subjects.49

Simeon Mesaki has documented the British anti-witchcraft legislation in Tanganyika

thoroughly and critically.50 The archival evidence he gathered attests that, witchcraft

legislation in Tanganyika began in 1922 with the enactment of the Witchcraft

Ordinance.51 The Ordinance went through three amendments during the British rule

which occurred in 1928, 1935 and 1956. As argued by Mesaki, and with the

supporting evidence from the case of Uhehe, the Witchcraft Ordinances aimed to

49
See Simeon Mesaki, “The Colonial State and Witchcraft”, Tanzania Zamani 3 (1) (1997), 50-71.
50
Ibid; Simeon Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-killings in Tanzania: Paradox and Dilemma” (PhD.
diss., University of Minnesota, 1993); Simeon Mesaki, “Witchcraft and the Law in Tanzania”,
International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 1 (8) (2009), 132-138.
51
TNA, 12379 Witchcraft Ordinance.
 71

undermine and replace the traditional political, social and judicial control over such

anti-social phenomenon as witchcraft.52 For instance, the Native Courts were

prohibited from dealing with witchcraft cases during the British colonial period.53

The anti-witchcraft legislation defined the acts that were to be considered as

constituting witchcraft, such as ‘sorcery, enchantment, bewitching’ and ‘possession

of occult power’. In addition, all things that were purportedly used to achieve these

attributes were considered as ‘instruments of witchcraft’.54 The problem with this

definition is that the Ordinance did not separate acts of witchcraft from those of

traditional healing, whose central actors were the traditional healers. This means that

traditional healing was deemed part and parcel of witchcraft beliefs and practices.

That is why some of the colonial officials considered the expansion of health

services and using health propaganda as an important interventions in curbing the

problem of belief in ‘witchcraft’ and exterminating activities of the ‘witchdoctors’.55

The confusion of issues relating to traditional healing and witchcraft shows that there

was very little comprehension of the convergence and divergence of the two issues in

the minds of the colonial officials. This can be said to have originated from lack of

understanding of the historical and social contexts of their subjects. Oral sources

show that the Hehe perceived witchcraft as one of the disease causing agents. As was

shown in Chapter II, identification of witchcraft agency in the causation of ill-health

52
To see how the ordinances undermined the traditional (or precolonial) social, political and judicial
control in Uhehe see Alison Redmayne, “Chikanga: An African Diviner with an International
Reputation,” in Mary Douglas (ed), Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations (London, 1970); Waite,
“Public Health in Precolonial East-Central Africa”.
53
Mesaki, “The Colonial State and Witchcraft”, 57.
54
TNA 12379, Witchcraft Ordinance.
55
Mesaki, Op. Cit., 58, 62-66.
 72

was a specialized work for the diviner. It is worth reaffirming that diviners’ work

was not only witchcraft identification. Among other multiple functions of the

diviners, they healed and were the spirit mediums. What the British colonial state did

was to focus on only one role of diviners, thereby creating a confusion of the two

issues, that is, traditional healing and witchcraft. Some colonial officials, however,

recognized the roles of traditional healers beyond anti-witchcraft activities. That is

why those officials could not accept negative labeling of the healers and banning of

healers’ activities. Those few colonial officials, who were pro-traditional healers,

were encouraged by Lord Hailey, a British colonial official who had undertaken a

survey on Native Medicine in the late 1930s as part of the Africa Survey. Lord

Hailey reported in the East African Governor’s Conference of the 17th March 1939

that:

Not all those who practice medicines in Africa can be dismissed as

witchdoctors; many are much respected, and it is indeed possible that a
study of herbs used by some of them might add to the list of remedies…56

Witchcraft Ordinances were amended several times during the British colonial

period. Those amendments have been documented in Simeoni Mesaki’s works.57 A

letter from the Governor to the Chief Secretary dated 18th June 1928, suggested that

some amendments were made out of colonial officials’ will and not with reference to

actual social contexts in the colony. For instance, the 1928 Witchcraft Ordinance

amendment was influenced by Governor Cameron’s experience in Nigeria as a

colonial administrator prior to his coming to Tanganyika.58

56
TNA 21845, Vol. II, Native Medicines.
57
See Mesaki, “Witchcraft and the Law in Tanzania”; Mesaki, “The Colonial State and Witchcraft”.
58
TNA 12379, Witchcraft Ordinance: Letter from Governor to the Chief Secretary dated 18 th June
1928; Mesaki, “The Colonial State and Witchcraft”, 54-8.
 73

Archival sources show that witchcraft-related cases were common in the Western,

the Lake and the Northern provinces, whereas other provinces recorded only a few or

none.59 This should not be understood that other provinces had weak or no beliefs in

witchcraft; nor should it imply that there were no witchcraft tensions. It is notable

that, whereas colonial authorities recorded no witchcraft cases in Uhehe, oral sources

reveal that witchcraft accusations existed in Uhehe during the British colonial period.

One informant, for instance, said that when he came to Uhehe from Ubena in 1948

he found out that “many people were accused as witches. They really practiced

witchcraft since they were identified by the traditional healers after divination”.60

Moreover, during the British colonial period, the traditional witch hunt persisted, but

was operated underground and was not mediated by ‘tribal’ authorities as it had been

the case in the late precolonial period. Individuals who felt affected by witchcraft

practices consulted diviners. When a person was accused, the accuser could send the

accused to the diviner for confession, cleansing and resolving the tense relationship

between the accused and accuser. Through these arrangements, the accused would,

for instance, pay a damage fine in kind or money.61 Witchcraft accusations and witch

hunting were discouraged by Mtwa Adam Sapi Mkwawa.62 Archival records of the

Native and colonial authorities in Uhehe portrayed no cases related to witchcraft

beliefs and practices in the British colonial period. As elsewhere in colonial

59
TNA 10757, Collective Punishments Ordinance 1921; TNA 13402/57/2 Witchcraft Ordinance
Prosecution; TNA 13402 Witchcraft Ordinance Vol. II; TNA 13402/55 Witchcraft Ordinance; TNA
24/18/15 Witchcraft Judicial.
60
Interview with Lukemelye Mgaya, Maduma, 18th November, 2009.
61
Interviews with Martin Kihwele, Usengelindete, 16 th January, 2010; Stefani Chota, Wasa, 17th
January, 2010; Redmayne, “Chikanga”.
62
Redmayne, ibid, 120.
 74

Tanganyika63, no witch-killings were reported in Uhehe. This might be connected to

the Hehe chief’s suppression of witchcraft accusations. As a result this work had to

rely on oral and secondary data to recount the health implication of witchcraft in

Uhehe during the colonial period.

3.5 Implications on Health

The biomedical health system established by the German and British colonial

administrations had a significant impact on the public health system in several ways.

The most vivid was that it added the number of specialists within the society who

could address health concerns. Such new healthcare specialists included local

dressers, nurses, rural medical aids and doctors. The implication was that healing

became a complex phenomenon. Concerns over health and healing started to involve

patients’ relatives, traditional healers, nurses and doctors. Comparing the list of

health specialists during the precolonial and colonial periods, the added list of

specialists was a significant change. This change was also experienced in Uhehe

during the colonial period with the coming of biomedical health system.

Another remarkable implication was the emergence and development of medical

syncretism or mixing in Uhehe. In this mixing of medical approaches, the patients or

their relatives consulted traditional healers at times and biomedical practitioners for

the same disease or vice versa. Several informants who lived during the British

colonial rule for some decades testified that they used to go for ‘European medicine’

63
See Simeoni Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-killings in Tanzania”
 75

while consulting traditional healing for the same health concerns. One of the

informants, Lukemelye Mgaya, said that;

The relatives of patients (admitted in dispensaries or hospital) used to seek

the cause of illness through divination while their patients were in hospital. .
. . They used to secretly mix traditional and hospital medicine for fear of
being expelled by nurses and doctors.64

The most stated reason for their duality in addressing health problem was that they

were not certain whether the cause was ‘man-induced’ (witchcraft) or ‘godly’

(natural occurrences).65 It can thus be argued that there was rationality in their

approach.

Examining medical syncretism from the vantage point of an observer, it had

consequences among the Hehe who employed it during the colonial period. It led to

the use of more resources in restoration of health during the colonial period that it

had been the case in the precolonial period. The resources implied here are the

material payments made in kind, service or money for seeking health care. In

addition to these material and temporal implications, there were deeper economic

implications, but these were indirect, and perhaps went unnoticed by the patients and

their relatives.

Several informants stated that patients did not finish medicine as prescribed by the

biomedical practitioners.66 Such a tendency was probably caused by either early

64
Interview with Lukemelye Mgaya, Maduma, 18th November, 2009.
65
Interviews with Martin Kihwele, Lumuli, 15 th November, 2009; Yusta Semduba Mbuta, Igula, 5 th
December, 2009; Folomena Salingo, Maduma, 18 th November, 2009; Lukemelye Salimboga Mgaya,
Maduma, 18th November, 2009.
66
Interviews with Fr. Modeste Massika, Ulete, 12th November, 2009; Amina Mnyihanga Nyenza,
Kiponzero, 12th November, 2009.
 76

relief or ignorance of the new therapy or both. “Whenever we started getting relief”,

says Yosefa Kihwele, “we stopped the dose since we knew we had recovered”. 67

This informant was referring to the biomedical drugs given to them at Wassa

Mission during the British rule. The possible health implication of such tendency is

that it might have hindered total cure of ailments, causing them to reoccur after a

while.68 This might have cemented the belief held by the concerned Hehe; that the

patient in question was suffering from a non-modern illness, which was considered

treatable only by traditional medicine, including witchcraft.

There were also shortages of qualified personnel for biomedical health care during

the colonial period.69 The situation was exacerbated by an insufficiency of drugs. In

colonial Uhehe, there were much correspondence between Rural Medical Aids

(RMAs) and Iringa District Commissioner. In that correspondence, the RMAs sought

drugs for the Native Dispensaries. As noted above most of the drugs requested were

pain killers.70 This gives an indication that the biomedical health system of the

period forced people to depend on the traditional healing system.

To make matters worse, Mtwa Adam S. Mkwawa had limited his role in providing

health care to the handling of epidemic diseases only. Correspondences between

Mtwa Mkwawa and the Vanzagila (sub-chiefs) during the British colonial period, for

instance, show that Mtwa was concerned only with diseases that reached epidemic

67
Interview with Yosefa Kihwele, Usengelindete, 16 th January, 2010.
68
Compare drug resistance in www.who.int/features/qa/75/en/index.html as accessed on 18th July,
2013
69
Beck, History of the British Medical Administration, 157-63.
70
TNA M1/3, Medical.
 77

proportions like the 1938 bubonic plague. The quote below from Mtwa’s letter dated

February 11th, 1938 tends to suggest that non-epidemic diseases were of little

significance to both colonial and native authorities in Uhehe.

I am writing to you Vanzagila ordering to report urgently to the District

Commisioner whenever you encounter any epidemic case in your
chiefdoms. . . . Inform your subjects to observe how the vector (rodents)
have died like having limb swelling, tail or ear swelling, or back hair
depletion. Alert your people to be careful with vectors and people who have
contracted bubonic plague.71

It may however be disputed that Chief Adam Sapi Mkwawa’s concern over

epidemics is not proof he was unconcerned with preventative medicine or even less

dramatic illnesses, as no evidence was found confirm this. The British colonial anti-

witchcraft laws in Tanganyika gave powers to District Commissioners to lawfully

order eviction of the alleged witches on security grounds or “injury in mind”.72 The

eviction meant forceful removal of a suspected witch from one place to another

within or outside the district. Such evictions might have had health impacts on the

evicted persons sent to new disease ecologies or to areas where there were epidemic

diseases.73 The ordinance gave the administration the power to expel ‘witches’, but

this did not happen in Uhehe.

Traditional anti-witchcraft activities persisted during the colonial period though at a

limited and covert level. Alison Redmayne, for instance, illustrates cases of caught

warlocks in the 1950s Uhehe. The identified witches were shaved forcefully, given

anti-witchcraft medicine, incised in different parts of their bodies, and prohibited

71
TNA A2/5, Native Affairs: Miscellaneous Letters Received from Chiefs, Sub-Chiefs and Jumbes.
72
See Section 8(a) and (b) of the 1928 Witchcraft Ordinance in TNA 12379, Witchcraft Ordinance.
73
See Kenneth Ombongi, “The ‘Rage’ for Sanitary Improvement: Urban Malaria Control in Kenya,
1896-1926”. Mimeo, Boston (2002).
 78

from engagement in certain practices as prescribed by anti-witchcraft experts. One

of the famous anti-witchcraft experts in that period was a Malawian called Chikanga.

He operated from Malawi and had an “international” reputation since many people

who visited him came from neighbouring countries like Zambia, Tanganyika and

Zimbabwe. Redmayne reveals that Chikanga’s reputation in Uhehe was great, to the

extent that some of the Hehe people travelled to consult him in Malawi.74 Some

informants testified that some people in Uhehe also travelled long distances to

Upangwa and elsewhere to seek healing and protection from witchcraft.75 The extent

to which those anti-witchcraft practices impacted on people’s health is difficult to

establish due to lack of empirical data. Nonetheless, oral accounts had it that a

considerable number of witches who did not cooperate well in the cleansing process

saw their health deteriorate, or died when they returned to their homes as the result

of being uncooperative.

According to one informant:

If one was identified as a witch by the diviner, he would be called to the

diviner’s shrine. Other diviners would come by themselves after being paid
by people for hunting witches. The witches were told to submit their
witchcraft medicine and tools such as cow horns. The diviner would burn
them. If one refused to submit them or follow the conditions given by the
diviner, he would not survive long. He would die soon.76

It seems that such kind of information did not get avenue in written record due to the

secrecy under which the anti-witchcraft campaign was carried out in Uhehe. The

74
See Redmayne, “Chikanga”.
75
Interviews with Alberto Kilovele, Isoliwaya, 11 th December, 2009; Martin Kihwele, Usengelindete,
16th January, 2010.
76
Interview with Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8th November, 2009.
 79

presence of such information among the people shows that people’s perceptions of

witchcraft as a common phenomenon in their society was strong.77

3.6 Conclusion

This chapter has demonstrated that the Hehe continued to consult traditional healers

despite colonial interventions and the launching of a new anti-witchcraft campaign

and creation of the biomedical health system. It has also demonstrated that traditional

anti-witchcraft phenomenon persisted during the colonial period. This means that

there was continuity of traditional values and practices. Colonial government and

Christianity introduced new definitions of witchcraft which had implications on the

traditional health system. Medical syncretism was one of the notable impacts, as it

signified the emergence of new ways of controlling witchcraft. Medical syncretism

was also an interface between traditional and modern health systems.

77
See how witchcraft perception was strong enough to be subject of the Hehe poetry in Appendix II.
 80

CHAPTER FOUR

CHANGING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WITCHCRAFT AND HEALTH:

1960s TO 1990s

4.1 Introduction

In Tanzania, the period between 1960s and 1990s witnessed the formulation,

implementation and ultimate failure of the well documented Ujamaa policy. An

important aspect of the policy was the reorganization of rural populations into

settlements known as Ujamaa villages. The intentions of the programme in Uhehe,

as elsewhere in the country, were to transform and improve the community

materially, and to improve access to education, health and other important social

services like water, housing and transport.

Despite the modest achievements made in realizing these goals, continuities from the

pre-colonial and colonial socio-cultural aspects persisted. Witchcraft beliefs and

practices were amongst those continuities. This chapter seeks to recount changes and

continuities from the 1960s Uhehe to the recent decades. The focus will be on

elaborating the changing relationship between witchcraft and health. The aim is to

discern the ways in which witchcraft beliefs and practices impacted on health

realities of the post-colonial Hehe. The chapter begins by providing the legal context

of witchcraft in post-colonial Tanzania before making an attempt to relate witchcraft

to the new policy of Ujamaa and pertinent developments in health care and culture in

the period from 1960s to 1990s.

 81

4.2 Witchcraft Legislation, Beliefs and Practices: Ujamaa Era to 1990s

The attainment of independence in Tanzania in 1961 came with a wave of changes

and great optimism. However, a few years after independence real changes were

seen more in quantitative than in qualitative terms. The early post-independence

years, not only in Tanzania but also in other newly independent African countries,

were largely characterized by euphoria. Over time, some significant changes were

made. They included Africanisation of government bureaucracies, expansion of

social services, and reforms in the political, economic and legal systems. In the

political system, for instance, ‘tribal’ or ‘native’ authorities were abolished as early

as in 1962.1 Ironically, anti-witchcraft laws were not dropped in that wave of

reforms. They were only modified in wording, leaving the content intact.

The modification of wording in the Witchcraft Ordinance reflected the change of

political and legal framework that occurred in Tanzania after independence. Between

1960s and 1980s there was only a single revision of the Witchcraft Ordinance, which

gave birth to the 1965 Witchcraft Ordinance. With reference to the Magistrate Courts

Act of 1963, the revision incorporated new terms like ‘Police Force’, ‘Public

Officer’, ‘Regional Commissioner’ and ‘the President of the Republic’.2 The latter

two new terms, for instance, replaced colonial terms such as the Provincial

Commissioner and the Governor, which were in the Witchcraft Ordinance prior to

the 1965 revision.

1
See Alison Redmayne, “The Wahehe People of Tanganyika” (PhD. thes., Oxford University, 1964)
2
Simeon Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-killings in Tanzania: Paradox and Dilemma”, (PhD. diss.,
University of Minnesota, 1993); Simeon Mesaki, “Witchcraft and the Law in Tanzania” in
International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 1 (8) (2009), 135.
 82

The 1965 revision of Witchcraft Ordinance was however not the first one to be

effected since 1922. There had been three revisions prior to this, in 1928, 1935 and

1956. Nor was it the last one, as other amendments were effected in 1998 and 2002.

These latter amendments did not address the core issues either. Instead they dealt

with minor sections of the law and wording. Yet from the beginning anti-witchcraft

legislations used foreign concepts and incorporated a wide range of practices related

to those concepts. Those imported concepts formalized the ‘Western’ anti-witchcraft

codifications in an African social environment. According to the Italian leftist

Antonio Gramsci, this imposition of foreign elements of culture such as concepts and

legal practices can technically be called hegemony.3

Postcolonial African bureaucrats – like their colonial counterparts – did not accept

the reality of witchcraft, nor did they treat it like one of the religions in a wider world

of African belief systems. The colonial Witchcraft Ordinance reflected the self-

loaded anti-witchcraft crusade of the colonial officials who thought that witchcraft

should “be suppressed by us to the best of our ability”. 4 That the postcolonial

government modified it and still retains the ordinance up to the present whilst

denying the existence and role of witchcraft beliefs and practices has surprised many

scholars. Simon Mesaki, as one example, views such a tendency as a paradox and

dilemma, because the state does not recognize witchcraft while it retains colonial

witchcraft legislation.5Some social scientists have argued that Ujamaa was linked

with the burgeoning number of witchcraft cases in many rural areas of Tanzania. Not

3
See Kate Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology (London, 1997), 99-105.
4
TNA 13402, Witchcraft Ordinance. See a letter District Officer to Provincial Commissioner, Lake
Province dated 1st November, 1947.
5
Mesaki, “Witchcraft and Witch-Killings”.
 83

only did Ujamaa act as a lubricant of love and unity among villagers as anticipated, it

also acted ironically as a source of friction, some of which were medicated by

witchcraft. One of those contenders is Mesaki, who believes that the Ujamaa policy

rekindled ills of witchcraft because there was a substantial decline of living standards

manifested by low incomes.6 Certainly, his own study on Sukuma witch-killings was

set in the same context of Ujamaa. From the statistical evidence he compiled, it is

evident that between 1970 and 1984 there were more than 3,693 murder cases related

to witchcraft in thirteen (13) regions of Mainland Tanzania. Iringa had a share of 132

murder cases.7 Compared with the sum total of witchcraft cases reported in colonial

times especially between mid-1930s and mid-1940s8, witchcraft beliefs and practices

seem to have consolidated in the Ujamaa era, and this is despite the continued use of

the colonial Witchcraft Ordinance.

We may therefore affirm that the Ujamaa policy did indeed rekindle witchcraft

beliefs and practices. This was not due to the policy’s “backward looking . . .”

nature, as Mesaki and other analysts would want us believe.9 Rather, this

revitalization of witchcraft beliefs and practices resulted from the very act of

bringing people together in nucleated settlements, with limited resources and space,

which maximized chances of inter-family and inter-personal misunderstandings and

conflicts. One of the ways of interpreting and mediating such conflicts resulting from

limited resources seems to have been witchcraft beliefs and use. Indeed, this was the

case in some witchcraft cases of the 16th and 17th century Europe and America.

6
Ibid., 229-230.
7
Ibid., 153-160.
8
TNA, 18/15, Witchcraft Judicial – Iringa Province.
9
Mesaki, Op. Cit., 229.
 84

During this period, the few wealthy persons monopolized much of the land resources

leaving the majority nucleated in village centres with limited land resources. Land

conflicts that ensued were accompanied by witchcraft allegations, and witch hunting

was often used as a way of resolving them. The wealthy people brought foreign

witch hunters, and by so doing reinforced their attempts to sustain the socio-

economic differentiation.10 This resembles the situation in the Ujamaa era. Prior to

villagization people had enjoyed free access to vast land resources, and the

movement of large numbers of people into nucleated villages squeezed many

households in close proximity, consequently leading to increased social conflicts.

Comparing oral testimonies on the colonial and post-colonial state of witchcraft, one

may realize that witchcraft accusations did not increase to a significant extent. When

one also examines the written sources, it would be stated that the rate of witchcraft

accusations remained more or less the same in the two periods. The difference would

be that during the colonial days few accusations were reported in the official record

than in the post-colonial especially in the Ujamaa era.

Rekindled by Ujamaa policy, and probably driven with new vitality, witchcraft

beliefs and practices might have contributed to the decline in the significance of

traditional healers, as they tended to concern themselves more with the provision of

relief to witchcraft victims. According to informants, many healers indulged

themselves more in the identification and cleansing of witches than in healing.11

10
J.H.M. Salmon, “History without Anthropology: A New Witchcraft Synthesis”, in Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 19 (3) (1989), 484; Paul Boyer & Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed:
The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Massachusetts, 1974).
11
Interviews with Yusta Semduba Mbuta, Igula, 5th December, 2009; Stefani Chota, Wasa, 17th
January, 2010; Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8th November, 2009.
 85

Traditional healers’ significance might have also declined due to the rise in the belief

in the effectiveness of biomedicine among the people from the 1960s.

An attempt by the government of Tanzania in 1968 to register traditional healers,

after having denied their recognition since independence12, was probably influenced

by increased rate of witch hunting activities conducted by many healers at the time.

What made healers give lesser significance to healing was probably the increase in

the cases of witchcraft allegations. It was during that period that the Hehe started

bringing witch finders from outside of Uhehe. According to informants, one of the

famous witch finders who were imported in Uhehe was one Mr. Tekelo, who was

ethnically a Fipa. He was brought by some unidentified people in the Usungwa area

in the 1970s from the present day Rukwa region. 13 Tekelo had risen as a powerful

anti-witchcraft expert in southwestern Tanzania in the early 1970s, making his fame

spread to central, southwest and western parts of Tanzania. Informants narrated that

“whenever he (Tekelo) came to your village he would start cleansing witches by

capturing their fipembe (cow horns meant to facilitate night flying by the witches in

Uhehe) either from the alleged witches’ bedrooms or from the ground or from the

bushes”.14 Tekelo used mirrors to identify hidden fipembe during the day.15

Witchcraft identification was followed by witch cleansing, which followed two

stages. The first stage consisted of burning of the witchcraft ‘tools’, like fipembe and

12
Z.H. Mbwambo et. al., “Traditional Health Practitioner and the Scientist”, in Tanzania Health
Research Bulletin 9 (2) (2007), 117.
13
Interview with Stefan Chota, Wasa, 16th January, 2010.
14
Interview with Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8th November, 2009.
15
Interview with Msigula Seluvingo, Ndiwili, 8th November, 2009.
 86

other objects employed by the alleged witches in their activities. The second stage

involved shaving of the alleged witch, which was done by Tekelo or his aide.16 It has

been reported none of the people identified as witches denied it. Some of the alleged

witches refused be cleansed. Those who refused are reported to have been told by

Tekelo that they would either fall ill or die once they practiced witchcraft again. 17

Interestingly, the local authorities did not prohibit anti-witchcraft activities by Tekelo

in rural Uhehe. The local authorities’ indifference to Tekelo’s activities implies that

witchcraft was perceived as a major problem during the Ujamaa period. In other

words, they implicitly accepted witchcraft as a phenomenon that exists. Tekelo

gained so much popularity that songs were composed by the Hehe folk singers

acknowledging his power against the witches. One song went as follows:

You shall speak before Tekelo

You shall speak before Tekelo
For you have ‘Kipembe’ [cow horn used by witches] in your house
Iya ya ya
You shall be shaved by Tekelo
You shall be shaved by Tekelo
For you have ‘Kipembe’ in your house
Iya ya ya18

The indifference to anti-witchcraft practices by local authorities in Uhehe during the

Ujamaa period was also witnessed in other adjacent areas. One of those areas,

according to an anthropologist Maia Green, is part of Kilombero Valley in Ulanga

District.19 The existing tensions and their probable effects on societies prone to

witchcraft beliefs and practices is what might have influenced local leaders to permit
16
Ibid.
17
Interviews with Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8th November, 2009; Msigula Seluvingo, Ndiwili, 8 th
November, 2009
18
Michael Ng’umbi, “Magic Beliefs in Hehe Lamentation Songs”. Mimeo (2001)
19
See Maia Green, “Witchcraft Suppression Practices and Movements: Public Politics and the Logic
of Purification”, in Comparative Studies in Society and History 39 (2) (1997): 319-345.
 87

informal anti-witchcraft cleansing by some traditional healers, contrary to the

directives of the central government and the Witchcraft Ordinance.

It is evident that in Uhehe, as elsewhere, Ujamaa did not eradicate witchcraft beliefs

and practices. Witchcraft had reached ‘endemic’ proportions. Fr. Massika, a Catholic

priest, recounted that during his teenage years in the late 1960s and 1970s “the belief

in witchcraft was prevalent in Uheheland”.20 Also, Temilingeresa Nywagi, a Hehe

grandmother, recounted that it was during “Uhamisho” (Ujamaa relocation) that they

started hearing stories of people asking for permits to leave hospitals to seek

traditional healing. The reason for seeking such permits was to cure diseases

associated with witchcraft.21

What Ujamaa achieved was to bring people closer to the basic social services.

Hence, from the late 1960s to the early 1970s people lived in Ujamaa village

communities addressing productive, developmental and social issues together.

Conflicts relating to witchcraft cases, though most of them were not reported to the

government offices, were to some extent common in daily social discourses.

The important question to ask at this point is in which forms did witchcraft beliefs

and practices manifest themselves in the Ujamaa era and afterwards. Were those

practices similar to those that existed in the pre-colonial and colonial contexts? It has

been noted that witchcraft beliefs and practices occur in a given social context “and

generally use techniques, or . . . powers, that have been handed down within the

20
Interview with Fr. Modeste Massika, Ulete, 12th November, 2009.
21
Interview with Temilingeresa Nywagi, Lumuli, 15 th November, 2009
 88

society concerned from time immemorial or introduced from outside”.22 In this

regard, the witchcraft practices that persisted in most post-colonial African societies

were either local or foreign or a combination of local and foreign elements. As was

intimated in Chapter Two, during pre-colonial times witchcraft in Uhehe was a local

development influenced by wars with the neighbouring societies. During colonialism

witchcraft in Uhehe underwent adaptation to suite new social contexts; and some

oral testimonies have pointed to World Wars I and II as responsible for bringing

foreign witchcraft practices from distant and neighbouring societies. 23 One example

of the areas mentioned as the origin of some of the witchcraft originated that came to

Uhehe is Upangwa.

Some beliefs and practices that many informants from rural Uhehe have identified in

relation to witchcraft were also noted in the colonial and pre-colonial periods. During

the Ujamaa era such beliefs and practices, according to informants, mystically led to

bodily, psychological and physical harm. Oral testimonies point to conditions and

occurrences such as body exhaustion in early morning hours, unexpected illnesses,

sudden deaths, incisions in some parts of body and shaven spots in the head were

caused by witchcraft. Waking up with mud or dust on the legs, a situation culturally

attributable to mystical involvement in cultivation or other manual work, as well as

finding oneself turned around in bed so that the head faces the opposite direction

from the normal orientation, have been given as examples of physical signs of

witchcraft. In addition, seeing an owl on ones’ house in early night hours, or foreign

22
Ronald Hutton, “Anthropological Approaches to Witchcraft: Potential for a New Collaboration?” in
the Historical Journal 47 (2) (2004), 423.
23
Interviews with Alberto Kilovele, Isoliwaya, 11 th December, 2009; Stefan Chota, Wasa, 17th
January, 2010.; Martin Kihwele, Usengelindete, 16 th January, 2010.
 89

bodies on junctions of pathways, were also considered as manifestations of

witchcraft activity.

Witchcraft bred deep fear among local people, and brought about considerable

mistrust in communities. For instance, some informants stated that they avoided

eating in the homes of people alleged to be witches for fear of harm. Others said that

they refrained from undertaking material progress, lest they suffer harm from

witchcraft. For instance, some male informants said that they could not build modern

houses with burnt bricks sand corrugated iron sheets to avert being bewitched. These

fears caused psychological stress, but were at the same time an adaptation to cope

with witchcraft.

4.3 The Health Sector in Iringa: 1960s to 1990s

Uhehe was predominantly rural by the time of the establishment of the Ujamaa

policy in 1967. Administratively, Uhehe was divided into two districts by 1964,

Iringa and Mufindi.24 Our informants have recounted scenes of bushes and natural

forests nearby their settlements in the 1960s and 1970s. Msigula seLuvingo

recounted that in those days “we used to collect firewood within reach from our

homes.” This contrasts sharply with the situation these days, where villagers have to

travel long distances of two to five kilometers in search of firewood, the chief source

of fuel.25 Significant changes that affected environment as well as socio-economic

sectors, including health sector, swept across Uhehe dating back to Ujamaa period.

24
TNA, Regional Commissioner’s Annual Report, 1964.
25
Interview with Msigula Seluvingo, Ndiwili, 8th November, 2009.
 90

By the late 1970s Ujamaa villages were supposed to have schools, dispensaries and

water supply. In reality, however, it was difficult for a poor country like Tanzania to

achieve all of these goals at once, given her colonial legacy. In the health sector, for

example, the country had inherited few modern healthcare centres with few health

professionals, drugs and equipment. Furthermore, the inherited healthcare structure

was urban oriented and racially biased. The rural masses had the lowest probability

of accessing modern health care. As noted by Turshen, “in 1972, 75% of the

population did not live within 10 kilometers of a hospital” in Tanzania.26 “In 1979”,

says Harald Heggenhougen, “. . . 92% of the population were within 10km . . . of a

health facility”.27 In Uhehe, oral accounts tell of people travelling more than 10

kilometers to seek hospital services. One elder remembered walking from Kilolo to

Nyabula Mission Dispensary, a distance of 25 kilometers, to seek treatment for his

sick daughter.28 This shows that health seeking from biomedical health facilities was

still constrained during the Ujamaa days despite the efforts to ameliorate the

situation.

Uhehe continued to rely on missionary services for modern health services since

there was no considerable build-up, in qualitative and quantitative terms, of

government-run health facilities. Throughout the Ujamaa period there was only one

hospital run by the government, and that is the present day Iringa Regional Hospital.

Catholic and Lutheran Christian missionary societies had established hospitals in

some plcaes like Tosamaganga, Ilula and Usokami. The present day Iringa Rural

26
Meredith Turshen, “The Political Economy of Health” (PhD. diss., University, 1975): 220-225.
27
Harald K. Heggenhougen, “Health Services: Official and Unofficial”, in J. Boesen et al. eds.
Tanzania: Crisis and Struggle for Survival (Uppsala, 1986).
28
Interview with James Msungu, Kilolo, 8th November, 2009.
 91

District designate hospital was built by the Tosamaganga Catholic Mission to replace

a dispensary established in 1978.29 A larger part of Uhehe was probably served by

dispensaries run either by local authorities operating from former headquarters of

sub-chiefdoms, or by dispensaries run by Christian missionaries. It is evident that the

Hehe had to walk long distances to the sub-chiefdoms’ headquarters or to the

Christian missions despite the promises Ujamaa villagisation. The reason behind

such situation is that Ujamaa villagisation was not as successful in establishing

dispensaries as it did with primary schools and rural roads.

It is probable that a considerable proportion of Hehe did not seek biomedical services

at least partly due to such long distances. It is also possible that such distances would

have made people to continue with their traditional health seeking tendencies which

survived the colonial purge. A study conducted in 2002 by public health specialists

revealed that about 80% of the rural population in Tanzania relied on traditional

medicine for primary health care needs. This reflected the situation that existed since

independence.30 In Uhehe, many informants have stated that, when illness befell a

person, immediate family members intervened with the Hehe traditional therapies.31

Only when relief was not immediately attainable the illness became a clan affair.

Clan members would make a collective decision to consult a traditional healer or

biomedical health facilities or both. In other words, during the Ujamaa period illness

in Uhehe was handled almost in the same way as was done in pre-colonial and

colonial times.

29
Interview with Fr. G. Giorda, Tosamaganga, 21 st November, 2009.
30
Mbwambo et. al., “Traditional Health Practitioner and the Scientist”, 117.
31
Interviews with Yusta Semduba, Igula, 5th December, 2009; Venanzia Myovela, Mlolo, 11th
November, 2009
 92

One of the significant features that continued into the era of biomedical health care

after surviving the colonial period was that of duality of the health care. Hospitals in

Uhehe, whether run by missions or government, built a separate building for the

relatives who took active roles in taking care of patients. This phenomenon probably

permeated from the Hehe traditional health seeking system as revealed in Chapter II

of this work. Such helpers washed the clothes of their hospitalized relatives, cooked

for them and provide any other assistance deemed necessary. The fact that hospital

management often provided a shelter for these informal attendants shows that

traditional health care imposed remarkable influence on the biomedical health care.

The phenomenon also had an economic significance for the hospitals and the

relatives, as hospitals did not provide food or wash clothes for the patients.

The dual hospital care system was clearly a negotiated settlement of a conflicted

situation. The conflict arose from the fact that there was no place for relatives to take

care of the patients admitted in hospital other than paying health care fees or taking

home the patient after they were discharged. In the biomedical health care system it

is the function of hospital staff to take care of the patients, which include cooking

food, washing clothes, and more importantly administering treatment. With the

presence of patients’ relatives, the functions of health professionals were reduced to

healing alone and occasional contact with patients’ relatives to advise on what food

stuffs they should prepare for the sick. Furthermore, there was no government policy
 93

for building such extensions. It was out of hospitals’ administration humanistic

consideration that they decided to construct those extensions.32

4.4 Health Implications of Witchcraft

In the previous sections an attempt was made to elaborate the context for witchcraft

beliefs and practices as well as for the health sector in the period from 1960s to

1990s in Uhehe. In this section we present a contextual interpretation of the

implications of witchcraft on health in the same period. Evidence is drawn from

available oral and secondary sources. The general statement that can be made at this

juncture is that there were direct and indirect health consequences of witchcraft

beliefs and practices in Uhehe from the 1960s to the recent past.

The first health consequence of witchcraft manifested itself in the interconnection

between biomedical and traditional medicines. This represented continuity from the

colonial period. The patients, by their own volition or persuasion from their relatives,

tended to mix medicines from two different healing traditions. “Whenever we

realized we were not getting an early relief after being admitted in hospital our

relatives consulted traditional healers”, said one informant. 33 According to

Tung’ombe and Mfwalamagoha, who are the biomedical health care professionals,

the belief in the role of witchcraft in patient’s illness condition became strong after a

prolonged hospital treatment. This made the patients and relatives to resort to

32
Interviews with Prisca Mutayoba, Iringa, 10th November, 2009; Sophia Simwita, Iringa, 10th
November, 2009.
33
Interview with Temilengeresa Nywagi, Lumuli, 15 th November, 2009
 94

traditional treatment.34 The length of the treatment and healing period was thus an

influential factor in this development. It acted as a motivator in an endeavor to find

explanations as to why patients suffered longer.

In some cases, the mixing of healing traditions involved running away from hospital

to try a traditional healer. In other cases, which have been dominant from 1990s, the

tendency has been for the patient’s relatives to consult traditional healers without

involving the patient. They would seek to know the cause of disease and get the

medicines that they gave to the patients admitted in hospitals with the knowledge of

neither the patient nor hospital staff. One informant said that they used to mix

medicine provided by traditional healers with tea so that the nurses would not notice

what they were giving to their patient.35

Administering of traditional medicines in hospital while the patient is receiving

biomedical treatment meant that the patients and people in Uhehe were not fully

confident with the biomedical health care system. Similarly, since traditional

medicine was administered secretly, it implied that people were conscious about the

illegality of traditional healing. In several cases of child delivery, for instance,

attending nurses and midwives noted “charms, talismans and a variety of

concoctions” worn or used by expectant mothers.36 Some of the interviewed Hehe

grandmothers testified that they used to give traditional medicine to admitted patients

34
Interviews with Rustika Tung’ombe, 10th November, 2009; Asumta Mfwalamagoha, Tosamaganga,
18th January, 2010.
35
Interview with Temilingeresa Nywagi, Lumuli, 15 th November, 2009.
36
Interview with Prisca Mutayoba, Iringa, 10 th November, 2009.
 95

along with the meals.37 This implies that, in essence, tradition and modernity co-

existed in post-colonial Uhehe. It confirms the fact that we cannot have modernity

without tradition, as long established by social anthropologists such as the

Comaroffs, Gaschiere and Rowland.38

Some scholars, however, have articulated that the interconnection between

biomedical and traditional healing traditions did not develop because of witchcraft-

associated illnesses.39 Their argument is that the mixing of medicines would have

developed because of recognition among people that there are diseases that can be

treated by biomedicine only and others by traditional healing alone. This has also

been pointed out in the oral testimonies. For example, Stefani Chota, a traditional

healer stated that there are illnesses that could only find treatment in hospitals but not

in traditional healers. He provided an example of AIDS. 40 Those scholars have also

pointed of the possibility of some people have perceptions on relevance of particular

healing tradition especially on diseases that can be addressed by both traditions. In

post-colonial Uhehe, this belief is also shared by people. Among the Hehe elders and

traditional, the belief that has been strong is that traditional medicine is more

relevant and effective that biomedicine. And their perception has been welcome to

the patients after prolonged biomedical treatment.

37
Interviews with Katalina Lumato, Ndiwili, 8 th November, 2009; Temilingeresa Nywagi, Op.Cit.
38
See Jean & John Comaroff eds. Modernity and Its Malcontent (Chicago, 1992); Peter Gaschiere &
Michael Rowland, “Domestication of Modernity: Different Trajectories”, Africa 66 (4) (1996):552-
554.
39
See Steven Feierman & John M. Janzen eds., The Social Basis of Healing and Healing in Africa
(Berkeley, 1992).
40
Interview with Stefani Chota, Wasa, 17th January, 2010.
 96

Another consequence of witchcraft on health in the period between 1960s and 1990s

is the underutilization of the biomedical health facilities. Questions might be raised

on the reasons why such situation arose. One explanation is that many problems of ill

health were often attributed to witchcraft. As one informant note, “some ailments

result from people’s malice”.41 Such a belief probably contributed to situations

whereby patients go to biomedical health facilities only after reaching a critical

condition. In this connection, Rustika Tung’ombe, a current chief patron at Iringa

Regional Hospital, recounted that:

The patient was brought in a very serious condition. She had many incisions
in her body, and had bled a lot. Hence she needed immediate blood
transfusion. If they had brought her late, she could die.42

In this case the patient was brought to the hospital late, but was fortunately cured.

However, there are cases in which people underutilized biomedical health facilities

because of lack of financial resources. Testimonies from biomedical health care

professional reveal that people who underutilized their services were either

handicapped by meager financial resources or still believed in witchcraft. 43 An

informant Modesta Lunyungu, for instance, testified that she had witnessed cases of

“some patients escaping from Wasa dispensary before full treatment for lack of

money to pay for treatment”.44

Another significant consequence of developed from the interplay between

Christianity, health and witchcraft. This has been the development of vague, if put in

technical terms, medical pluralism. It differs from medical mixing hinted above

41
Interview with Msitingongomi Kapoma, Usengelindete, 16 th January, 2010.
42
Interview with Rustika Tung’ombe, Iringa, 10 th November, 2009.
43
Interviews with Rustika Tung’ombe, ibid.; Modesta Lunyungu, Wasa, 16th January, 2010.
44
Interview with Modesta Lunyungu, ibid.
 97

because of adoption of ‘prayer healing’ factor. According to the anthropologist

Elizabeth Whitaker, medical pluralism in Italy developed when one therapeutic

tradition had failed to address the disease condition; hence, a new therapeutic

tradition was used as a complementary therapy.45 In Uhehe, African and European

cultures started co-existing since the late 19th century. Hence up to the 1980s,

interventions in problems such as ill health were either purely African or European

or a blend of the two.

Apparently in the 1990s medical pluralism emerged following the rise of Christian

revival movements in Uhehe. According to the oral testimonies, the emergence of

revival movements coincided with the occurrence of HIV-AIDS in Uhehe. Since

many people had little understanding of the nature and incurability of AIDS, it

became easy for them to impose their cultural perception that ‘most of the illnesses

that took long to be cured resulted from witchcraft’. Most of the revivalists

Christians were thus offering prayers to AIDS patients believing that it resulted from

witchcraft or was the work of evil. “Prayers in the hospitals were influencing some

patients to stop taking drugs given by medical practitioners”.46 This is because they

now believed they would be ‘healed by prayers’. “Healing by prayer”, according to a

Christian scientist Thomas Leishman, has a long history in Christianity dating back

to Jesus Christ’s days.47 The perception among biomedical health care professionals

45
See Elizabeth D. Whitaker, “The Idea of Health: History, Medical Pluralism and the Management
of the Body in Emilia-Romagna, Italy”, in Medical Anthropology Quarterly 17 (3) (2003).
46
Interview with Sophia Simwita, Iringa, 10 th November, 2009.
47
Thomas L. Leishman, Why I Am a Christian Scientist (Edinburgh, 1963).
 98

is that healing by prayer led to deterioration of human health especially those

admitted in hospitals.48

4.5 Conclusion

This chapter has attempted a brief exposition on the post-colonial context of

witchcraft beliefs and practices, and their implications for health. The chapter

focused mainly on the identification and elaboration of witchcraft consequences on

health in Uhehe, especially in the period from the 1960s to 1990s. To achieve the

task, the chapter paid attention to the dominant historical event of the period, the

Ujamaa villagization programme. During the Ujamaa period, Uhehe had no reported

cases of illnesses resulting from witchcraft in the official record. Yet as shown in this

chapter, ordinary people perceived that witchcraft existed. Their perception

contradicted the official position, and therefore there were cases of communities

secretly allowing witch hunting in their areas. That the local authorities permitted

witch-finding by experts like Tekelo should be considered as a triumph of people’s

perception against the official indifference to witchcraft. It has also been

demonstrated that there were some direct and indirect health consequences of

witchcraft. They included underutilization of biomedical facilities and vague or

rather loose medical pluralism.

48
Interview with Sophia Simwita, Iringa, 10 th November, 2009.
 99

CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION

Witchcraft and health are two of the most important issues that have received

attention by social historians and anthropologists. For a long time the approach has

been to understand each issue separately and, as pointed out in this work, the end

product of this approach has been a very limited understanding of how the two issues

are related. Although this outcome has been universal, it has also had different

manifestations across cultures and societies. The study in Uhehe demonstrates how

witchcraft and health are historically interwoven in a given culture while at the same

time bearing a global significance.

It has been stated by many scholars that studying witchcraft was part of the global

fallacy of the anthropological view of itself as the study of the ‘other’.1 That fallacy

of the ‘other’ has thus tended to create dichotomies that have excluded or

downplayed the relationship between witchcraft and health. Perceived as the ‘other’,

non-Western societies have been viewed as simple and reminiscent of early cultures

as found in less developed continents of the world. This perception has been part of

hegemonic influence curved by the dominant societies of the world over the

supposedly weaker ones.

1
See Todd Sanders, “Reconsidering Witchcraft: Postcolonial Africa and Analytic (Un)Certainties”, in
American Anthropologist 105 (2) (2003), 338-9; Ronald Hutton, “Anthropological and Historical
Approaches to Witchcraft: Potential for a New Collaboration?”, in The Historical Journal 47 (2)
(2004), 413-434 ; Allan Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, 2000); J.H.M.
Salmon, “History without Anthropology by G.R. Quaife”, in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
19 (3) (1989), 482.
 100

Some of the dichotomies that have developed as an outcome of treating non-western

societies as the “other” include magic versus religion, magic versus science, nature

versus supernatural2, and modern versus traditional.3 The first dichotomy has placed

witchcraft in a broader field of beliefs and, as shown in the introduction, the

analytical tools used in this dichotomy are those developed by demonologists.

Witchcraft is considered to be a rival religion and remnant of ancient religious

beliefs.4 The second dichotomy has treated witchcraft as pseudo-science in that it

goes against the values of empirical science. The third dichotomy treats witchcraft as

representing superhuman powers that human beings possess and can manipulate to

their advantage. The last dichotomy, unlike the three preceding ones, has been

predominantly applied to Africa as the ‘other’. Witchcraft in that dichotomy is

considered as part of the many values and practices falling under the analytic term

‘tradition’ that are found in less developed societies. That explains why the

conclusions drawn by such studies have treated witchcraft as anti-development.5

The aforementioned dichotomies have, to a large extent, contributed to providing

detailed explanations on witchcraft. It remains a question of choice to individual

scholars to decide which type of theory and explanation they should align themselves

with. In this work, witchcraft has been considered as a belief and a set of practices

that use medicine and magic for evil purposes. This working definition has been

2
Salmon, “History Without Anthropology”, 482
3
See Jean and J. Commaroffs, Modernity and Its Malcontents (Chicago, 1992); Sanders,
“Reconsidering Witchcraft”, 338-352.
4
See Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Demonology” in The North American Review 124 (255) (1877): 179-
190; Salmon, Op.Cit, 483; Sona R. Burstein, “Demonology and Medicine”, in Folklore, 67 (1956),
22.
5
See, for instance, in Golooba-Mutebi, Frederick. “Witchcraft, Social Cohesion and Participation in a
South African Village.” Development and Change 36 (5) (2005): 937-958
 101

developed from the perceptions of the Hehe as captured in the oral testimonies and

written sources. That is why the general stance of the researcher in this work is that

one cannot separate witchcraft from health; and that witchcraft has had varied

implications on health across cultures. This explains why different societies devised

different strategies against witchcraft. For instance, in Renaissance England,

continental Europe and North America, legal and religious measures were resorted to

as interventions against witchcraft, as historians Burstein6 and Gaskill7 have

elaborated. In many of the 19th century Bantu societies found in eastern and central

Africa, administrative and medical interventions were common. In Uhehe the chief

known as Mtwa administered poison ordeals to control witchcraft.8

Historians who have used an anthropological approach have often presented

comparative analyses of interventions in witchcraft. In that type of analysis,

witchcraft cases from different places were used to compare and generate a cross-

cultural understanding of how cultures shared and differed in controlling witchcraft.

Rosen9 and Burstein10 are good examples of such historians. Other historians, such

as Gaskill11 and Bever12, have done contextual interpretations and analyses of

interventions in witchcraft. Nevertheless, comparative analysis has been dominant

than contextual analysis for many years. One reason is that witchcraft was a

6
Burstein, “Demonology and Medicine”, 24-7.
7
Malcolm Gaskill, “Devil in the Shape of a Man: Witchcraft, Conflict and Belief in Jacobean
England”, in Historical Research 71 (175) (1998)
8
See Gloria Waite, A History of Traditional Medicine in East-Central Africa (Lampeter, 1992), 106-
107.
9
Barbara Rosen, Witchcraft (London, 1965)
10
Burstein, Op.Cit.
11
Gaskill, Op. Cit.
12
Edward Bever, “Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Disease”, in The Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 30 (4) (2000), 573-590.
 102

phenomenon that many anthropologists had researched extensively as part of their

main subject matter, that is, cultures. In their studies, anthropologists were looking at

how witchcraft originated and impacted in the daily lives of people. The origins and

impacts of witchcraft were, however, considered as static. Anthropologists hardly

considered them as changing. Consequently, witchcraft beliefs and practices fell in

the same static category.

Since historians are interested in studying the dynamics and continuities of different

issues including witchcraft and health, they have tended to hesitate to immerse

themselves in the study of witchcraft. Those few who tried to study witchcraft before

the 1980s were highly influenced by the anthropological approaches. That explains

why some used comparative approach while others abhorred it. There were also

other methodological problems resulting from the comparative approach. The

anthropologists who used it had studied the ‘simple’ societies that preserved

‘traditional’ cultural values in a modern era. Generalizations were made from the

daily observations made during field work. Historians could not buy those

generalizations knowing that reality is a complex and ever-changing phenomenon.

In trying to avoid such a methodological pitfall, historians had to rely on archival

material. This has been true for all historians whose works have been cited in this

work. The current work is one of the attempts to address the methodological pitfalls

of the anthropological material. Oral sources have been used to complement and

enrich the archival materials as well as add new knowledge beyond what exists in

written records. However, the attempts made to address methodological pitfalls of

 103

the existing anthropological works should not be considered as endeavors to sever

the close relationship between history and anthropology in themes related to

witchcraft and health. Instead, it should be considered as an endeavor to produce

historical explanations that offer multi-causal mechanisms at play in shaping reality.

The main argument of this dissertation is that witchcraft has had implicit and

negative influences on health and health seeking tendencies of the African people

since the late precolonial period. The influences became elaborate during the

colonial and post-colonial periods because it became possible to discern comparisons

and coexistence of the traditional and biomedical health systems. The case of Uhehe

is used as an illustration of this phenomenon. It has been demonstrated that

witchcraft and health are historically interwoven. Chapter II demonstrates that

witchcraft beliefs and practices were ‘medicalized’ in the 19th century Uhehe.

According to the perceptions of the Hehe people, witchcraft impacted on health by

causing such misfortunes as illnesses and deaths. Witchcraft was also understood

from the Hehe cosmology. This implies that witchcraft and health realities had

comparable significance among the Hehe. This fact can be discerned when one

examines the chiefly intervention of epidemic diseases and witchcraft in the late 19th

century.

In Chapter III, it is argued that despite the colonial and postcolonial attempts to

impose hegemonic perceptions of witchcraft, the majority of the Hehe people still

believed that witchcraft had existed and functioned, and that it significantly affected

health of the people. It is demonstrated that during the colonial period witchcraft
 104

impacts on health had implications on the colonial public health system. Western

cosmology and the ideology of modernity shaped the way witchcraft and health was

understood hence affecting local perceptions. Conspicuously missing in the colonial

records was the view that witchcraft could cause health problems which in turn could

only be attended by traditional healers. Moreover, it was found out that in the

colonial period witchcraft was controlled through legal, educational and traditional

means. These control mechanisms continued to be used in the postcolonial period,

but new means such as spiritual control through prayers emerged. This new

mechanism evolved socially, based on the Christian faith as briefly explained in

Chapter IV.

The coexistence of beliefs in witchcraft, Christianity and biomedicine raises a

number of issues that should be stated at this point. The first is that western

cosmological view as introduced by the missionaries with support from the colonial

authorities from the late 19th century did not penetrate deep into the foundation of

African cosmologies. This outcome is probably due to the lop-sided development of

Christianity and other forces of modernity in rural Africa during the period in

question. Secondly, the introduction and development of biomedical services as

explained in Chapters III and IV have had several inherent problems. They included

general lack of qualified health personnel, inability of the few facilitators and

facilities to penetrate deep into the rural areas and, more importantly, the perpetual

underfunding of the health sector by the state throughout the period under study.

These weaknesses on the part of the modernising forces certainly contributed to the

persistence of African traditional approaches to the understanding and handling of ill

 105

health. The outcome was the blending of traditions as manifested in medical

syncretism, as briefly discussed in Chapter III.

Yet it can be argued that, even with the strongest of the modernizing forces, it would

have been improbable for African traditions and social practices to be erased

completely. As ably argued by nationalist historians of Africa, people in the

continent did not simply receive new ideas or technologies from outside their areas.

Rather, they always creatively selected, adjusted, and adopted elements that

happened to be in line with their core culture and material needs. 13 This is to say, the

coexistence of witchcraft, Christianity and biomedicine long after the latter were

introduced in Uhehe confirms a long established fact about the nature of historical

encounters between Africans and external forces.

13
Terrence Ranger, The Recovery of African Initiative in Tanzanian History (Dar es Salaam, 1969),
12; Jean Comaroff & John Comaroff (eds.), Modernity and Its Malcontents(Chicago & London, 1992)
 106

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 114

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 115

APPENDICES

Appendix 1: List of Informants

S/N Name Place of Interview Date of Age

Interview
1 Katalina Lumato Ndiwili, Iringa 8.11.2009 69

2 James Msungu Kilolo, Iringa 8.11.2009 70+

3 Prisca Mutayoba Iringa Municipal 10.11.2009 44

4 Sophia Simwita Iringa Municipal 10.11.2009 59

5 Rustika Tung’ombe Iringa Municipal 10.11.2009 53

6 Mwanne Kyula Iringa Municipal 10.11.2009 51

7 Musa Abdalla Myula Iringa Municipal 11.11.2009 76

8 Magdalena Myovela Mlolo, Iringa 11.11.2009 80

9 Klementina Mwedege Mlolo, Iringa 11.11.2009 78

10 Venanzia Myovela Mlolo, Iringa 11.11.2009 72

11 Fr. Modeste Massika Ulete, Iringa 12.11.2009 53

12 Sr. Jane Mfwalamagoha Ulete, Iringa 12.11.2009 55

13 Amina Mnyihanga Kiponzero, Iringa 12.11.2009 81

Nyenza
14 Jonisia Kadeha Kiponzero, Iringa 12.11.2009 70

15 Martin Kindole Lumuli, Iringa 15.11.2009 77

16 Temilingeresa Nywagi Lumuli, Iringa 15.11.2009 78

17 Wamola Mtende Lumuli, Iringa 15.11.2009 80+

18 Valeria Kafunde Lumuli, Iringa 16.11.2009 71

19 Thomas Mtende Lumuli, Iringa 16.11.2009 79

20 Lukemelye Salimboga Maduma, Iringa 18.11.2009 80+

Mgaya
 116

21 Chotuwukali Kiwale Maduma, Iringa 18.11.2009 80+

22 Folomena Salingo Maduma, Iringa 18.11.2009 80+

23 Yusta Semduba Mbuta Igula, Iringa 5.12.2009 70+

24 Alberto Kilovele Isoliwaya, Iringa 11.12.2009 47

25 Martin Kihwele Usengelindete, Iringa 16.01.2010 80+

26 Yosefa Kihwele Usengelindete, Iringa 16.01.2010 80+

27 Msitingongomi Kapoma Usengelindete, Iringa 16.01.2010 80+

28 Modesta Lunyungu Wasa, Iringa 16.01.2010 55

29 Stefani M. Chota Wasa, Iringa 17.01.2010 77

30 Asumpta Mfwalamagoha Tosamaganga, Iringa 18.01.2010 50

31 Fr. Egidio Crema Itunundu, Iringa 20.01.2010 79

32 Msigula Seluvingo Ndiwili, Iringa 08.11.2009 80+

33 Fr. G. Giorda Tosamaganga, Iringa 21.11.2009 57

Appendix 2: Lamentation Song

I CRY FOR HELP

1. Oh! Oh! Help!

Help out there!
Come and see what is happening
Wonders in the world
2. Father! Father! What are you doing?
What are you becoming?
What trick are you playing?
Oh! I am in trouble
3. It came the time
When you began coughing
 117

And clammed chest pain

And endless headache
4. So I begged you to take you to medicine men
But you told me to stay back
For you were soon going to recover
Alas! You were deceiving me
Now you are nobody
5. We had gone to ask the source in case you had ‘lisoka’ (the ancestral spirit)
The answer was ‘no’
Or Perhaps ‘litego’ (bewitched)
In case you had seized some other people’s property
The answer was ‘no’
Or perhaps you had some evil medicine within
The answer was ‘no’
The diviners always talked of witches
The same witches
6. Turn back and see your beloved mother crying
Turn back see and see your father
Shivering in a hot daylight
Turn back and see your beloved wife
That beautiful lady
Turn back and see your children
Queued for the gift of orphanhood

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