The Sukuma culture is the largest in Tanzania. In many
ways, the Sukuma are experiencing a renewed interest in traditional culture.
Some think that the strength of this movement is found in the reconciliation of
the modern and traditional. Cultural traditions appear to be spreading through
contemporary means and not as a contest between the old and the new. Sukuma
traditional arts and culture are thriving as much as the economic growth in the
region.
Tanzania has accelerated its movement toward democracy,
increased its communication networks, and opened its economy to the world. This
has influenced the traditional culture of the Sukuma. While many Sukuma remain
in small villages, others move to cities and assimilate to the urban society
which is a combination of many different cultures and international influences.
Possibly to renew awareness in Sukuma culture, identity and history, some
people provide cultural leadership through a mix of traditional and modern
culture. This movement reflects an increased interest in utamuduni or
traditional culture, which lies in the dynamic social and political changes
that are currently spreading through Usukuma. Today, a revival of Sukuma
culture is taking place among traditional doctors, chiefs, artists, and
dancers.
As the Tanzanian government has shifted from state
controlled socialism to capitalism, it has created a more mobile work force and
a diversification of employment opportunities. Many Sukuma are still farmers,
merchants, builders and traditional doctors; but, in today's economy, there are
also working in the communications, health, shipping, transportation, mining
and banking sectors. Mwanza, the city center of Usukuma, is one of the largest
and fastest growing urban areas in Tanzania. While most of Usukuma is rural and
many live in the countryside, people throughout the country and central Africa
are flocking to Mwanza to find work in one of the many emerging economic
industries.
The Sukuma people live in an area called Usukuma which is
located to the west and south of Lake Victoria, the second largest lake in the
world. The area is only a few hundred miles south of the equator where there is
a year round temperature between 60-100 degrees Fahrenheit. There are short
rains from September through October and longer rains from February to May.
After the early rains, the temperature rises until the heat is broken by the
long rains in February. People depend on the rains to irrigate their fields and
to provide water for their cattle.
For many in Usukuma, farming is a family activity. The
Sukuma are known as cattle herders and most people farm the land for rice,
cassava, potatoes and corn. Some also grow cotton as a cash crop. In rural
areas, the cultivation of the farm, or shamba in Kiswahili, is a necessary part
of daily life. During the cultivation season, when the land is prepared for
planting, the family works together to ensure that they will harvest enough
food for the coming year.
While men in rural areas generally farm or seek
wage-paying jobs in larger towns, women have full time work maintaining the
family needs. Yet many women also have full-time jobs. In larger villages and
city centers, women also work as teachers, nurses, administrators and business
women. If a woman works an additional job outside her daily work, she has
little free time. For most women in the countryside, an ordinary day starts
with a trip to search for firewood, then going to the well for the day's water
supply, cooking ugali, a stiff porridge which is a staple of the Sukuma
diet, walking to the market for supplies or grinding corn at the mill. Children
help their mothers with the day's chores, such as going to the local well for
water or sweeping the family compound.
In primary and secondary schools throughout the country
children are taught Kiswahili. Tanzania is one of the only African countries to
have been colonized by a European nation and not to have adopted the language
of the colonizer. The Sukuma and all other Tanzanian cultures are closely
united through the national language of Kiswahili which makes it easier for
people from different linguistic groups to communicate with the other ethnic
groups of Tanzania, the Sukuma also have their own language. Kisukuma is the
first language learned by most Sukuma children; yet, they also speak Kiswahili.
Kiswahili is spoken in Tanzania, Kenya, parts of Uganda, Zaire, Zambia and
other countries and is one of the diplomatic languages of the United Nations.
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A common misconception is that Africa is a place without
a long history and one which had no political structures before the Europeans
formally colonized the continent. This is not true. Over many centuries African
civilizations prospered and created strong cultural traditions and government
structures that were maintained from generation to generation and leader to
leader. The traditional Sukuma customs of today were formed in this way. Their
history has been determined by their endurance and ability to assimilate
cultural influences from Africa, Arabia, Europe and now America. During the
Berlin Conference in 1890, European governments divided the continent to create
the modern geographical map of Africa which has mostly survived until today.
These geographical divisions did not take into account the traditional
boundaries created by African languages, cultures and chiefdoms.
The chiefdoms in Usukuma began to consolidate in the 16th
century. Early on, the Sukuma culture traded with neighboring chiefdoms such as
the Baganda, in modern day Uganda. They also began trading with Arabs of the
coast and Zanzibar in the 1800s. The first European contact with Usukuma came
in 1857 when John Hanning Speke traveled from England to Lake Victoria. He was
followed in the 1870s by the explorer Sir Henry Livingston and later by the
English Anglican Church Missionary Society and the French Catholic Missionaries
of Africa. But, it was Carl Peters who opened the way for the German East
African Company to colonize what was to become Tanganyika. He did this through
treaties that were signed with leaders and chiefs in order to exploit them for
economic gain. The German colonizers were authoritarian and forced unfair laws
on the local people. They governed by military force and their rule was
challenged by numerous insurrections. The Germans were eventually forced out
after their defeat in World War I. In 1918, Tanganyika Territory was placed
under the British government who had already colonized Uganda and Kenya to the
north.
In the early 1950s, under the leadership of Julius
Nyerere, the Tanganyika Africa Association, a collection of farm cooperatives
joined other political organizations to become TANU (Tanganyika African
National Union). With the rallying call of "uhuru na umoja", "freedom
and unity", Tanganyika gained its independence in 1961 and TANU's leader
Nyerere became President of the country. Unlike other African movements toward
independence, Tanganyika's transition was peaceful and without tribal conflict.
In 1963, Zanzibar joined Tanganyika and the country became Tanzania, a
combination of the names of each country. The most difficult task facing the
new nation was to unite the country's numerous cultures as Tanzanians without
destroying local identities or allowing certain groups to dominate others.
In 1967, the famous Arusha Declaration was proclaimed and
President Nyerere's socialist policies of the state controlled economy and
Ujamaa Village Program were put into action. These strategies were intended to
bring rural people closer together to share limited technology, education and
medical services within organized communal villages. The downfall of these
initiatives was that people were forced to move from areas where their families
had lived for generations to new villages without history or familiar
surroundings. Most people did not like being moved forcibly by the government
and local officials of the state controlled policies were sometimes corrupt.
These two factors helped to undermine Tanzania's Ujamaa policy.
Tanzania has experienced many hardships since
Independence. But the lasting legacy of the first President, Julius Nyerere,
was his ability to forge a National identity through language and purpose -
Kiswahili and modernization - without civil war. During the Independence
period, Nyerere emphasized Socialism and National identity to fight the
calamities of colonialism. Today, Julius Nyerere, known as Mwalimu, the
teacher, is remembered for Tanzania's peaceful transition to Independence, the
creation of Kiswahili as the national language, his enduring support of the
African National Congress and Nelson Mandela against apartheid South Africa,
and his assistance in freeing Uganda of the dictator Idi Amin.
In the 1980s Ali Hassan Mwinyi was chosen as president by
President Nyerere and CCM (Chama cha Mapunduzi), the ruling political party.
CCM developed from the original TANU when Tanganyika became Tanzania. In
October of 1995 Tanzania held its first multi-party election and the CCM
candidate Benjamin William Mkapa was elected. These presidents have
relinquished the state controlled industries and have slowly embraced the open
market systems of capitalism.
Religion in Usukuma
In
Usukuma there is a diversity of religions. Many people practice traditional
religion while others are Muslim and Christian. Before the arrival of Arab
traders, Christian missionaries and colonial governments, the Sukuma had an
organized form of religion which was practiced within the confines of the
family compound. Those who practice traditional religion still worship god as
the supreme being and creator of the universe. In Kisukuma there are several
words for the creator god: Lyuba, Liwelelo, Lubangwe and Seba. Many of these
names are associated with the sun. This does not mean that the Sukuma worship
the sun, but rather that the creator god has attributes of the sun, such as
shining over the earth and providing a life giving force. The practice of
Sukuma traditional religion does not take place in a structure like a mosque or
church. Instead prayers are said among the family in the compound and are
directed to the creator god in hopes of good rainfall and prosperity.
Those
practicing Sukuma traditional religion also honor the eternal spirit of
deceased ancestors. When a person dies, many believe that their spirit
continues on to live in another realm. The deceased person becomes an ancestor
and the family remembers them through special prayers and offerings of millet
beer and cow dung. Millet beer, a mixture of millet seed and water (called lwanga),
represents the local brew of the ancestors. The cattle dung also recalls the
ancestors through its reference to the wealth of a family with many cows and
those ancestors who had cattle. When a family member dies, they are then in a
position to watch over their descendants. It is believed that if the ancestor
is not remembered through offerings, the family might encounter bad luck or
even illness. For example, when a child is sick, the parents might consult a
traditional doctor, or nfumu in Kisukuma. If the doctor attributes the
cause of illness to angry or offended ancestors, the remedy might be for the
family to give special offerings to appease the ancestor, or even to rename the
child after the ancestor. Children in Usukuma are often renamed after ancestors
during life-threatening illnesses. Another cure might be for the child to wear
a necklace of beads with a central, triangular polished shell disk, called a lupingu,
in honor of the child's ancestors. The belief in such remedies suggests that
the ancestors or deceased relatives, have an ongoing relationship with their
families.
Islam
The
first Arab traders traveled to Lake Tanganyika in the middle of the Eighteenth
Century and slowly moved north into Usukuma toward Lake Victoria. Islam
influenced the coastal area of Tanzania as early as the Twelfth Century, but it
did not take hold inland until Arab merchants had settled in trading camps. For
the Sukuma, Islam is mostly centered in urban areas. In Mwanza there are
several mosques with large congregations of both Sukuma as well as other
cultures. In more remote villages, Sukuma Muslim communities assemble to pray
in smaller mosques. Muslim worshippers all over the world regard Friday as the
holy day and pray five times every day: at 6:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m.,
6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. These daily prayers are called adhana. In many places a
call to prayer can be heard at a distance over loud speakers from the tops of
the mosques. This call is sung and reminds people to come to pray.
In
the 1870s Christian missionaries traveled from Europe to Tanzania. Both
Catholic and Protestant missionaries, such as the Missionaries of Africa and
Church Missionary Society, formed local missions in Usukuma. Church missions
provided many services, such as primary schools for children, which attracted
people to the religious communities where some converted to Christianity. Many
of the early Protestant churches forbade the use of alcohol, tobacco and
traditional practices such as dancing. The Catholic church did not prohibit the
use of alcohol or tobacco and even permitted some traditional singing and
dancing. Both churches forced people to renounce traditional religious beliefs
as well as special objects associated with ancestor worship before conversion
to Christianity. But today in Usukuma, local culture and songs are often used
in the Christian religious services which occur on Sundays and sometimes daily.
The Bujora Catholic Church represents one example of a church that is devoted
to a mixture of Catholic religion and traditional Sukuma language, songs and
dance.
The Bujora Church and
Adaptation
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The
Bujora Church was founded in 1952 as a site where Sukuma traditions were used
to teach the Catholic liturgy. The former Bishop of Mwanza, Josef Blomjous,
selected the town of Kisesa for the experimental church. He sent the Canadian
priest, Father David Clement, to learn about Sukuma culture and to teach Catholicism
in a style that would be interesting to the Sukuma community. Father Clement,
known as "Fumbuka Klementi" in Usukuma, formed a group of elders who
called themselves Bana Sesilia (people of Sesilia, the Catholic patron saint of
music) to conduct research on Sukuma traditions. They helped Father Clement to
experience local culture and wrote many original Sukuma melodies with religious
lyrics taken from the Bible. They also performed religious plays which taught
large audiences about Christianity. Together the Bana Sesilia and Father
Clement successfully integrated Sukuma music and dance into the Catholic
ceremony.
Bujora remains an important center for adaptation.
Adaptation is the teaching of the Catholic liturgy through indigenous cultural
terms. Church services at Bujora include Sukuma music and dance. In addition,
the Bujora Church is the first in Usukuma to be built in the shape of a
traditional round house. The large, concrete Church is built in the round with
a peaked, tin roof designed to resemble a thatched Sukuma dwelling. The Church
is painted white with red, blue and black triangles decorating both the
interior and exterior. The triangles represent the hoe, an important symbol in
Usukuma for farming, which is associated with food and life. It has also been
equated to the Catholic trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The choice
of the red, black and blue colors is also significant, according to the Bujora
Parish Priest, Father Alex Mugonya. Black represents the people of Africa;
blue, the color of Lake Victoria; and red, fire and life. Inside the Church,
symbols associated with the Sukuma chiefs are used to signify God. The altar is
built in the shape of a royal throne, a symbol of the chief's reign and
chiefdom. The tabernacle, where the Eucharist or symbolic body of Christ is
stored, is designed to resemble a chief's house with a shield and crossed
spears on the door. This suggests that Christ of the Christian Church is to be
compared to the power and reign of the Sukuma chief.
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Bujora
has also maintained practices of adaptation during religious festivals. In
several Catholic parishes in Usukuma, priests attracted the unconverted public
during the Feast of Corpus Christi, a Catholic ceremony to celebrate the
Eucharist. In the ceremony, flowers are thrown at the "body" of
Christ at intervals during a long processional walk. Today, the Feast of Corpus
Christi ritual is called Bulabo in Kisukuma, which means "flowers."
The ceremony coincides with the beginning of the Sukuma dance season, which
takes place from June to August after the harvest of local crops. This mix of
Christian religion and traditional ceremony attracted many Sukuma individuals
to Catholicism.
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