Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars

Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars

Alison Redmayne

The Hehe now live mainly in the Iringa and Mufundi districts of Tanzania. Little is known of their early history before the mid-nineteenth century, when chief Munyigumba of Ng'uluhe extended his rule over the other chiefdoms of the Usungwa highlands and central plateau of Uhehe. By his death in ca. 1878 he had also won important victories against the chiefs of Utemikwila, Usangu and Ungoni.

After Munyigumba/s death the Hehe suffered a temporary set-back when Mwambambe, who had been a subordinate ruler under Munyigumba, tried to usurp the chiefship, killed Munyigumba's younger brother and caused one of his sons, Mkwawa, to flee to Ugogo. However, eventually Mwambambe was killed in battle against Mkwawa, and his surviving followers, whom he had recruited from Kiwele, fled. By 1883, when Giraud visited Uhehe, Mkwawa was the unchallenged ruler of his father/s lands, and under him the Hehe, who had only recently acquired political unity, had extraordinary military success. Their most important raids were on the caravan route which ran from Bagamoyo on the coast to Lake Tanganyika. By 1890 these raids were a threat to German authority and a major obstacle in the way of colonization and the development of trade. In spite of the Germans' effort to make peace with them, the Hehe persisted in attacking caravans and the people who had submitted to the Germans so, in 1891, a German expedition was sent to Uhehe. This was ambushed and defeated by the Hehe, who then continued their raids, causing the Germans to return in 1894 with a larger expedition and destroy the Hehe fort. Chief Mkwawa may have attempted suicide in the fort, but he was persuaded to flee and then maintained his resistance to the Germans until 1898 when he shot himself to avoid capture. The Hehe then submitted to the Germans. Mkwawa's own determination not to surrender was a very important factor in the long struggle. During this war the Germans acquired a respect for the Hehe which has affected the way that the Hehe have been regarded and treated ever since.

Footnotes

* I have worked on the Hehe and related peoples since October 1961. I spent two years in East Africa from 1961 to 1963, when I was financed by scholarships awarded by the Goldsmiths' Company and the Emslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarship Fund. I also received assistance from the East African Institute of Social Research at Makerere College, Uganda, where I was an Associate. Since October 1963 I have held a Studentship at Nuffield College, Oxford. I was given leave of absence from February 1965 until October 1966, and I returned to East Africa to do further field research, which was financed by a scholarship from The British Institute of History and Archaeology in East Africa. I am grateful to everyone who has assisted me and supported me in my research. Because my first period of research was undertaken as a social anthropologist and my D.Phil. thesis was submitted to the board of the faculty of Anthropology and Geography, I have not been primarily concerned with the pre-colonial history of the Hehe. This article therefore depends more on my knowledge of Hehe society, language and culture than on a detailed knowledge of the relevant documentary sources, which I have not yet had the opportunity to acquire. I have only cited the names of informants where my statements depend on information given by only one person, or by a number of people closely associated with each other. Copies of all my tape-recordings of historical stories and praise songs are available in the British Institute of Recorded Sound, 29 Exhibition Road, London S.W. 7.