TANGANYIKA (TANZANIA): MAJI MAJI REBELLION, 1905-1907

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    TANGANYIKA (TANZANIA): MAJI MAJI REBELLION, 1905-1907
Maji Maji is the name that German colonial rulers gave to a rebellion that broke out in the Matumbi-Kichi region of Tanzania in late July 1905, spreading in the next few months to much of southern Tanzania. Named after the maji water medicine that many African fighters believed would give them immunity to German bullets, the rebellion was led by majumbe (village headmen) who had become caught between onerous German economic policies and villagers who bore the brunt of German rule. Those policies included a massive campaign to grow export cash crops, especially cotton, on village fields and on German and Arab estates in some regions of the south. Germans and their appointed maakida required majumbe to send villagers to work on these estates for virtually no compensation. German rulers also curtailed African use of forests as a commons, the use of nets to hunt crop predators, and the use of fire to open up new fields for agriculture. The effect of these laws was to severely encumber African agriculture and to create an environment conducive to famine in the outbreak regions. Many majumbe who refused or were unable to implement German policies were whipped or jailed. Oral evidence has suggested that the rebellion was planned about a year in advance under the aegis of spirit mediums located on the Upper Rufiji River, especially Kinjikitile Ngwale, who distributed water medicine and sent out hongo messengers to encourage revolt among neighboring peoples. In this way, once fighting broke out, many majumbe were prepared to take up arms.
The rebellion began in the eastern Matumbi hills when a jumbe attacked the local German-appointed akida, who demanded that workers be provided for local cotton plantations and as porters for inland expeditions. As word of the conflict got out, other majumbe organized their forces to assault representatives of German rule, including missionaries, German settlers, Arab maakida and planters, askari police and soldiers, Indian traders, and German garrisons. Majumbe who did not rise up were also attacked. In some cases ma-jumbe who heard rumors of war sent representatives to obtain water and commit themselves to fight. In this way the rebellion spread north of the Rufiji as far as the central caravan route, south to the Ruvuma River, and inland as far as Lake Nyasa, encompassing over twenty Tanzanian societies. For some people, such as the Mwera and Ngindo, Maji Maji was the first concerted resistance to German rule. In the southern highlands, patterns of patronage, alliance, and struggle over territory dating back to the nineteenth century determined whether leaders of militarized societies such as the Bena, Sangu, or Ngoni chose to aid the Germans or join the rebellion. Ngoni participation has been viewed as the effort by a chiefly class to reassert control over sutu common people who had experienced greater autonomy under German rule. Leaders of peoples who had only recently been defeated in German wars of conquest, including the Nyamwezi and Hehe, did not participate in the uprising and some aided the Germans. Rebels armed with muskets, spears and arrows confronted German forces, composed largely of African askari commanded by German officers, who put down the uprising with machine guns and modern rifles. While most of the fighting was over within a few months, the search for some rebel leaders continued until 1907. In localities of the uprising Germans confiscated food, burned villages and crops in the field, and sometimes took women hostage to prevent them from aiding rebels. As a direct result of these tactics, many thousands of civilians died through dislocation and famine, which engulfed some regions for two years. German officials put the number of African casualties at 75,000, while critics of colonial policies in Germany put the figure at over 200,000.
The uprising came on the heels of the Nama-Herero war in German southwest Africa, at a time when critics assailed the German colonial state for poor administration and abuse. Although the goal of Maji Maji majumbe to end German rule failed, German policy in East Africa underwent important changes after the rebellion. Most historians have viewed Maji Maji as a break between an era that favored European settler immigration and compulsory labor and one privileging African peasant production. Governor G. von Gotzen, whose forced-labor policies created the grievances leading to the uprising, was removed from office. The new administration of Albrecht von Rechenberg emphasized the production of cash crops grown by African householders as the backbone of the new economy. German settlers and plantations were assisted only inasmuch as they were prepared to accept a free labor market, as forced labor was discouraged as a means of recruiting labor for plantations. Following the uprising, German officials combated the influence of spirit mediums in rural societies, viewed as instigators of dissent, opening the door to the wider dissemination of Islam and Christianity as forms of African religious expression and leadership.
Maji Maji is central to Tanzanian national identity. During the independence campaign of the 1950s, Julius Nyerere and his Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) political movement invoked Maji Maji as its predecessor. Much of the subsequent historical literature on Maji Maji has been shaped by the nationalist tradition inaugurated by Nyerere. Citing the rebellion as the first example of a concerted interethnic Tanzanian resistance to colonial rule, the TANU depicted itself as the heir of the earlier movement. In the 1960s the History Department of the University College at Dar es Salaam responded to this comparison by launching an oral-history research project to record the memories of Tanzanians who had participated in or observed the uprising. The Maji Maji Research Project has become an important source for African perspectives on the uprising.
                                                  REFERENCE
Gwassa, Gilbert. “Kinjikitile and the Ideology of Maji Maji.” In The Historical Study of African Religion, edited by T. O. Ranger and I. N. Kimambo. London: Heinemann, 1972. Gwassa, Gilbert, and John Iliffe (ed. s) Records of the Maji Maji Rising. Nairobi: East African Publishing, 1968.
Iliffe, John. “The Organization of the Maji Maji Rebellion.” Journal of African History, no. 8 (1967): 495-512.
Maji Maji Research Project: Collected Papers. Dar es Salaam: University College History Department, 1969.
Mapunda, O. B. and G. P. Mpangara. The Maji Maji War in Ungoni. Nairobi: East African Publishing, 1969.
Monson, Jamie. “Relocating Maji Maji: The Politics of Alliance and Authority in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, 1870-1918.” Journal of African History, no. 39 (1998): 95-120.
Redmond, Patrick. “Maji Maji in Ungoni: A Reappraisal of Existing Historiography.” International Journal of African Historical Studies, no. 8 (1975): 407-424.
Sunseri, Thaddeus. “Famine and Wild Pigs: Gender Struggles and the Outbreak of the Maji Maji War in Uzaramo (Tanzania).” Journal of African History, no. 38 (1997): 235-59.
Wright, Marcia. “Maji Maji: Prophecy and Historiography.” In Revealing Prophets: Prophecy in Eastern African History, edited by David M. Anderson and Douglas H. Johnson. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1995.