Tanzania Army - Early History
Many of the ethnic groups that make up the population have histories in which warfare plays a significant part. The warriors of the Masai, for example, enjoyed a reputation that protected them from the rapacious slave traders of the late eighteenth and nine¬teenth centuries who preferred to attack less formidable peoples. Less militant neighbors were often protected by their proximity to the Masai. The Ngoni, an offshoot of the warlike Zulu group to the south, also cherished their military traditions, Although most of East Africa's ethnic groups consisted of peaceful farmers and pastoralists, oral history indicates that great and small military ventures occurred as migrations from north and south took place. and numerous groups established themselves in areas that even¬tually became their homelands.
For the indigenous groups of peoples. the arrival of outsiders generally meant conflict. Although the Arabs had arrived on the coast and islands by the end of the first millennium AD, extensive slave trading in the Tanzanian area did not begin until the late 1700s, but it then had substantial effects on the southern quarter of the mainland. Some groups were able to defend themselves against the slavers, but more often peaceful rural peoples were easy prey for the caravans that scoured the countryside. In central Tanzania the Africans were not so strongly affected because the caravans passed through on their way to what was to become the Congo (later Zaire).
The slave trade continued until the late 1800s, and foreign domination did not end until the early 1900s. By 1890 Zanzibar had come under British control and Tanganyika under German. The colony of German East Africa lasted only from the mid-1880s until World War 1, but the legends of African uprisings against oppressive German rule during that short period have become part of the military traditions of present-day Tanzania.
The obstacle in the way of development, as the German administration and Germans at home understood the term, was the difficulty of finding enough plantation labor. The country was divided up among communities of peasant cultivators, to whom the idea of labour for wages was entirely novel, and difficulty in carrying out so sweeping a change as that determined upon would in the like circumstances present itself anywhere. Instead, however, of taking that view, German officialdom, both in Berlin and on the spot, looked, or professed to look, upon the native usages and economy as an obstinate adherence to African barbarism. At first it was necessary to proceed with caution. As the white population were a mere handful, and never at any time more than 5,000, the first measure was the establishment of a native police, armed and trained under German instructors on military lines.
The pay offered was, for a native, high — twenty to thirty German rupees a month, and to a native brigand wealth. This professional army, for such it was, and the police force was really part of it, did not, according to German official representations, exceed, police included, 5,000 men. In the course of time, however, it was steadily increased, the military charges being covered by a subvention from the German Government at home, until the strength of the force became more than three times that total.
Now a standing black army of that strength and character was an unpleasant portent, and it was the more unpleasant, not to say dangerous, because the men who entered the German service became de-tribalised. It was one of the conditions. To be de-tribalised, however, was among the natives of East Africa, as it always is in the tribal stage of society, to be an outcast, or pariah. By the natives at large, consequently, the German police and German soldiery were on that ground despised. But they were, according to native standards, highly paid, and were encouraged by the Germans to regard themselves, in view of their military instruction, as a superior caste. There was thus set up between them and the native population at large a chronic antagonism.
Before the turn of the century warriors of the Hehe group attacked German caravans that were making incursions into Hehe territory. The Germans retaliated by sending an army of about 1,000 men to attack the recalcitrant Hehe. The punitive expedition, consisting mostly of trained African mercenaries led by German officers and noncommissioned officers, was ambushed and all but wiped out by the Hehe under Chief Mkwawa. Incensed by the fact that an African chief had the temerity to attack and defeat) a colonial army, the German authorities determined to capture and punish Mkwawa.
For the next seven years Chief Mkwawa successfully evaded the German expeditions sent against him, but when his small force was surrounded in 1898 he committed suicide rather than surrender to his enemy. Mkwawa's head was severed from his body and taken to Germany where the skull was exhibited in a museum until 1954 when, at the request of the Hehe, the skull of the revered leader was returned to his people. The name of Mkwawa is proudly remembered when Tanzanians commemorate their past heroes.
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