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ABSTRACT
German colonisation of Tanzania was entrenched in the militia and a coercive apparatus that sought to both suppress local communities and dominate their territories. A network of institutions such as the boma, prison, askari, akida and chiefs were either set up or perverted to establish a colonial system of justice that destroyed the local authorities. This alien system legalised forced labour, imprisonment, detention in chains and corporal punishment – kiboko (whip). It was this same over-reliance on corporal punishment that triggered more than 50 local wars of resistance against the German rule established between 1890 and 1908. Majimaji was one of these resistance uprisings that occurred in 1904–1908. To suppress these outbreaks of resistance, the Germans utilised prisons for the detention and execution of indigenous combatants that forms the focus of this paper. Memories of German colonialism in Tanzania associate prisons with incarceration, pain, execution and the systematic recourse to violence, which I argue represents cultural genocide that deliberately intended to destroy the lives and cultural identity of local communities. Following an archaeological survey, and according to ethnographic and archival sources, this paper reconstructs the history of penology in Tanzania, German recourse to colonial prisons to quench the Majimaji War as well as contemporary memories of mass executions and incarceration in southern Tanzania.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Silayo, “Pre-colonial Ethnic Wars,” 163.
2 Iliffe, Africans, 205.
3 Kato, “Tanzania Innovation in Penology,” 11.
4 Burton, “Jomii ya waholifu,” 85.
5 Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika, 318.
6 Pesek, “The Boma and the Peripatetic Ruler”; Pesek, “The Colonial Order Upside Down.”
7 Schmidt, “(Re)Negotiating Marginality,” 27.
8 Schmidt, “Colonial Intimacy,” 25.
9 Moyd, Violent Intermediaries.
10 Williams, “The Role of Prisons,” 28.
11 Read, “Penal Systems in Africa,” 93.
12 A Focus Group Discussion in Songea with the council of Majimaji elders in February 2013 indicated this as the appropriate legal system and proposed that the Germans are due to pay the same fine for the harm they caused during the Majimaji War. See also Peté, “A Brief History” 41.
13 Read, “Penal Systems in Africa,” 105.
14 Robert, “Law, Crime and Punishment,” 183.
15 Peté, “A Brief History,” 44.
16 Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, xiv.
17 Peterson, “Morality Plays,” 996.
18 Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition,” 74.
19 Schmidt, “Deadly Silence,” 199.
20 Ranger, “European Attitudes,” 72.
21 Becker, “Traders, ‘Big Men’ and Prophets,” 14.
22 Bernault, “The Shadow of Rule,” 56.
23 Read, “Penal Systems in Africa,” 105.
24 Roth, Prisons and Prison Systems, 263.
25 Gewald, “Learning to Wage and Win Wars,” 22.
26 Brennan and Burton, “The Emerging Metropolis,” 13.
27 Peterson, “Morality Plays,” 996.
28 Tanzania National Archive 155/10/1/110.
29 Read, “Penal Systems in Africa,” 95.
30 Williams, “The Role of Prisons,” 28.
31 Dr. Bernhard Dernburg was appointed First Secretary for the colonies in 1906. When he landed at Dar es Salaam, he was shocked by the large number of whips in the hands and on the tables of many planters and colonisers as recounted by Spanton, In German Gaols, 254.
32 Prison was not the only form of punishment for crimes in colonial Africa. Abuses including amputation, hostage taking, the destruction of villages and whipping were widely carried out.
33 Spanton, In German Gaols, 254.
34 Interview with Issa Chitete, Songea. February 2013.
35 Madley, “From Africa to Auschwitz,” 429.
36 Bernault, “The Shadow of Rule,” 56.
37 Iliffe, Africans, 205.
38 Kuss, German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence, 58.
39 Williams, “The Role of Prisons,” 27.
40 Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition,” 74.
41 Gwassa, “The Outbreak and Development,” 164.
42 Foucault, Discipline and Punish; Mamdani, Citizen and Subject, 73.
43 Gibson, “Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison,” 1040.
44 Miller and Campbell, Transnational Penal Cultures.
45 Sadock, “The Maji Maji War and Prevalence of Diseases,” 59; and Levene, “Empires, Native Peoples and Genocide,” 192.
46 Short, “Cultural Genocide and Indigenous Peoples,” 833.
47 Krieken, The Barbarism of Civilization, 298.
48 Dirk, Empire, Colony and Genocide, 13.
49 Ibid., 16.
50 Ibid., 16–22.
51 A discussion about the Majimaji as genocide was conducted on 26 February 2017 in a seminar that preceded the Majimaji War commemorations in Songea. Majimaji scholars, regional administrators, the Tanzanian Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism – Prof. Jumanne Maghembe and the German Ambassador for Tanzania – Hon. Egon Kochanke attended this seminar.
52 Dedering, “The German-Herero War of 1904,” 80.
53 Sunseri, “Statist Narratives and Maji Maji Ellipses,” 573; Schaller, “Genocide in Colonial South-West Africa,” 47.
54 Gwassa, “The Outbreak and Development,” 38.
55 Tinker, Missionary Conquest, 5.
56 Aguilar, “The Archaeology of Memory,” 60.
57 Battaglia, “The Body in the Gift,” 3; Castell and Roura, “The Thirty-Years War,” 260.
58 A woman, Mkomanile, who was imprisoned and hanged in Kitanda colonial prison, her photo is yet to be found and as a result only her name appears in a built structure to indicate that she also participated in the war.
59 Palmberg, Encounter Images, 7.
60 Bertram Mapunda applied similar techniques to study the Majimaji sites in Ungoni in 2010.
61 Gwassa, “The Outbreak and Development,” 88.
62 Kuss, German Colonial Wars, 64–65.
63 Mamdani, Define and Rule, 107.
64 The first prison/ gereza was built by the Portuguese at Kilwa in 1505 as a garrison and it included a chapel. See also Lane, “Maritime Archaeology,” 121–22.
65 Stanley, How I Found Livingstone, 191.
66 Iliffe, “Tanzania under German and British Rule,” 290.
67 Prisons also sometimes served as shade for the experimental animals of colonial medical experts and as houses for the Askari and their families, see also Calwell, “Colonial Medical Service,” 12; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 161.
68 Gwassa, “The Outbreak and Development,” 195.
69 Original manuscript of Fr. Ebner Elzear on the history of the Wangoni archived in the East Africana section of the University of Dar es Salaam; the manuscript was later published in Songea by Peramiho Benedictine Publishers in 1986.
70 All the ethnic groups interviewed in southern Tanzania mention people either executed by the Germans after arrest or simply ruthlessly slaughtered in the Majimaji battles.
71 There is hitherto no list of all Majimaji prisoners. Research that annotates the Majimaji war prisoners is therefore required, possibly opening new lines of inquiry.
72 Gwassa, “The Outbreak and Development,” 170.
73 Most of the detailed accounts of the Majimaji war derive from the works of University of Dar es Salaam students under the supervision of Gilbert Gwassa and John Iliffe in the 1960's. Other early collectors of the Majimaji narratives were the historians R.M Bell and A.R.W Cross-Upcott as well as a local priest Rev. Eliezer Ebner.
74 This description was provided by the British colonial administrator R. M. Bell in Tanganyika; See Notes and records 28. 1950.
75 Student Research Report about the Majimaji war in Upangwa written by GK Mbeya in 1968, archived in the East Africana section of the University of Dar es Salaam.
76 Weule, “Lindi,” 46.
77 Ibid.
78 Interview with Gabriel Mchekenje, Ndanda. July 2014.
79 There is no evidence of the Majimaji graves in the landscape. Only two memorialised mass graves exist and a tomb in the Peramiho church cemetery that is associated with the Majimaji war and entered in the 1905 death record of Wafu/1905 archived in the Peramiho mission.
80 Calwell, “Colonial Medical Service,” 26.
81 The German procedure for the disposal of bodies and the place of burial for imprisoned and executed people such as Selemani Mamba is not known to the local people. See also Larson, “The Ngindo,” 35.
82 Interview with Abdallah Mwambe, Lindi. July 2014.
83 See also Logan and Reeves, Places of Pain and Shame.
84 Interviews with the local inhabitants of Lindi (Abdallah Mwambe, Said Ndimbo and Khasimu Mkapali) explained that the buildings are of no use to them but dangerous because thieves tend to hide in them.
85 Bwasiri, “The Challenge of Managing Intangible Heritage,” 129–35.
86 González-Ruibal, “Making Things Public,” 203–26.
87 Libaba, “The Maji Maji Rising in Lindi District,” 11.
88 Gabriel, “Local Communities’ Perceptions of Archaeology,” 152.
89 Monson, “Claims to History,” 554.
90 Rushohora and Kurmann, Look at Majimaji!.
91 The photos of the Majimaji leaders, their arrest and execution features on the national history curriculum.
92 Interview with Hassan Mchimaye, Liwale. August 2014.
93 Koponen, “Majimaji in the Making of the South,” 1–58.