Chief Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga (1855–19 July 18981), more
commonly known as Chief
Mkwawa, was a Hehe tribal leader inGerman East Africa (now mostly the mainland part of Tanzania)
who opposed the German colonization.
The name "Mkwawa" is derived fromMukwava, itself a shortened form of Mukwavinyika, meaning
"conqueror of many lands".
In July 1891, the German
commissioner, Emil von Zelewski,
led a battalion of soldiers (320 askaris with officers and porters) to
suppress the Hehe. On 17 August, they were attacked by Mkwawa's 3,000-strong
army at Lugalo, who, despite
only being equipped with spears and a few guns, quickly overpowered
the German force and killed Zelewski.
On 28 October 1894, the Germans,
under the new commissioner Colonel Freiherr Friedrich von Schele,
attacked Mkwawa's fortress at Kalenga.
Although they took the fort, Mkwawa managed to escape. Subsequently, Mkwawa
conducted a campaign of guerrilla
warfare, harassing the Germans until 1898 when, on 19 July, he was
surrounded and shot himself to avoid capture.
After his death, German soldiers
removed Mkwawa's head. The skull was sent to Berlin and probably ended up in
the Übersee-Museum Bremen. In
1918 the then British Administrator of German East Africa H.A. Byatt proposed
to his government that it should demand a return of the skull to Tanganyika in
order to reward the Wahehe for their cooperation with the
British during the war and in order to have a symbol assuring the locals of the
definitive end of German power. The skull's return was stipulated in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles:
"ARTICLE 246. Within six months from the
coming into force of the present Treaty, ... Germany will hand over to His
Britannic Majesty's Government the skull of the Sultan Mkwawa which was removed
from the Protectorate of German East Africa and taken to Germany."
The Germans disputed the removal of
the said skull from East Africa and the British government took the position
that the whereabouts could not be traced.
However, after World War II the
Governor of Tanganyika, Sir Edward Twining,
took up the issue again. After enquiries he was directed to the Bremen Museum
which he visited himself in 1953. The Museum had a collection of 2000 skulls,
84 of which originated from the former German East Africa. He short-listed the
ones which showed measurements similar to surviving relatives of Chief Mkwawa;
from this selection he picked the only skull with a bullet-hole as the skull of
chief Mkwawa.
The skull was finally returned on 9
July 1954, and now resides at the Mkwawa Memorial Museum in Kalenga, near the
town of Iringa.
Notes
1. According to the Report of the
German soldier, who found the corpse of Mkwawa, the date of Mkwawa's death was
definitely 19 July 1898 (Bericht des Feldwebels Merkl, BArch R1001, 289)) [1], [2].
REFERENCES
·
Martin Baer, Olaf Schröter: Eine
Kopfjagd. Deutsche in Ostafrika. Berlin
2001.
·
Doebold, Holger: Schutztruppe Deutsch-Ostafrika.
·
Iliffe, John: A modern history of Tanganyika.
Cambridge 1979.
·
Nigmann, Ernst: Die Wahehe: Ihre Geschichte, Kult-, Rechts-,
Kriegs- u. Jagd-Gebräuche. Berlin: Mittler 1908.
·
Nigmann, Ernst: Geschichte der Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe für
Deutsch-Ostafrika. Berlin: Mittler 1911.
·
Patera, Herbert: Der weiße Herr Ohnefurcht: das Leben des
Schutztruppenhaupmanns Tom von Prince. Berlin 1939.
·
Prince, Tom von: Gegen Araber und Wahehe: Erinnerungen aus
meiner ostafrikanischen Leutnantszeit 1890-1895. Berlin 1914.
·
Redmayne, Alison Hope: The
Wahehe people of Tanganyika. Oxford
1965.
·
Redmayne, Alison: The Hehe. Tanzania Before 1900.
·
Small wars &
insurgencies. London: Taylor & Francis, ISSN 1743-9558,
Online-Resource.
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