Hehe Rebellion
Perhaps the best known instance of local resistance to the Germans was that of the Hehe in the southcentral interior of Tanganiyka. It was indeed astonishing how infectious the fighting temperament can become when those predisposed to it were brought under the requisite conditions. The Masai are held to be the fiercest tribe in Eastern Central Africa; but when waMasai meet waHehe, then comes the tug of war. For, they were frequently defeated in their contests with the Hehe. In 1882 strong parties of Masai were nearly annihilated by the Hehe.
These Hehe are comparatively new arrivals in their land of domicile. They appeared, as Stanley was informed, as a powerful and strange tribe in the Ruaha country, soon after the invasion of Roriland by the Fipa abaNgoni or maViti, about the year 1844. There they set about despoiling or demolishing the local peoples in quite orthodox Shakan style. They overran Sagaraland, pigsticking the males and stealing the females of the industrious Itumba and Kaguru clans; then they administered some wholesome castigation to the bullying Ngurus of Zeguhaland; and finally, in more recent days, they brought permanently to their knees the brave Roris, who had so long successfully withstood the onslaughts of the maViti of Fipaland.
About 1880 Munyigumba, who had acceded to chiefly office in one of the small chiefdoms of the heterogeneous people later to be called Hehe, began a process of military expansion that led, by the time of his death in 1878 or early 1879, to his domination of much of the area. The Hehe had also acquired a considerable reputation as warriors, although they did not then have the guns that had begun to make their appearance among the Nyamwezi and others.
Munyigumba was eventually succeeded by his son Mkwawa who, by the early 1880s, was in unchallenged control of all Hehe country. The processes of military expansion and raiding continued as before, the Hehe coming into conflict with the southernmost extension of the Masai with whom they competed for control over the weaker peoples in the area.
Hehe advances to the north and east occurred at the same time that the Germans began to move into the interior. When, after the Germans had begun to construct administrative forts at Kilosa and Mpwapwa, Mkwawa's forces continued to raid the peoples presumably under German protection, the Germans decided that the Hehe would have to be dealt with. Negotiations with subordinate Hehe chiefs had little effect, and the Germans sent a military expedition to deal with the problem. On August 17, 1891, the expedition was attacked by Hehe forces, its commander and nine other Germans killed and arms and ammunition captured. Hehe losses were very heavy, and they undertook no major forays for two years because of them. Nevertheless their reputation among the Germans and other Africans as warriors was confirmed.
A better organized German expedition including many Africans managed to seize Mkwawa's fortified capital on October 30, 1894, despite strong resistance by some Hehe in hand-to-hand fighting. Mkwawa and his Arab ally, Rumania, had fled, however.
Despite defeat Mkwawa continued to have an effect on events in the area. German patrols operating out of the fort that was built at New lringa (later called Iringa) in 1896 were attacked by the Hehe who also continued to raid neighboring Africans. By 1898, however, German pressure and the onset of famine had told on the Hehe. In July of that year the Germans, responding to news of Mkwawa's whereabouts, dispatched a patrol in pursuit of him. By the time they reached him, however, Mkwawa had committed suicide.
Hehe opposition to German rule was less a matter of rebellion against oppressive rule — it had begun before the Germans had a chance to establish themselves in the area — than the resistance of a people who had developed a predatory way of life and saw the Germans as still more powerful predators who would have put an end to their mode of existence. The Hehe leader, Mkwawa, apparently could not see an alternative to armed resistance, and all save a few of his people were loyal to him. So important was his part in maintaining resistance that it ended after his death. Later the Hehe were perfectly prepared to join the Germans in putting down the peoples involved in the Maji Alaji Rebellion, some of whom the Hehe had fought against earlier.
Few peoples offered so stiff and prolonged a resistance to German authority, although there were other instances of short-lived rebellions in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Some chiefs adapted very well to German administration to the point that they acquired power and territorial jurisdiction that exceeded any they had held in the precolonial period.
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