The Ngoni in western and north-western : Historical context, geographical spread and the nature of their involvement in the region

By Yusufu Lawi

Introduction It is a well-established fact that within about a single generation – from 1825 to 1858 a group of African people who identified themselves as abaNguni migrated from what is now the Republic of via Thongaland in southern and across the Zambezi River to Lake Victoria in present-day Tanzania. In the course of this movement, the abaNguni (hereafter the Ngoni) interacted vigorously with various peoples they found in the regions and areas they traversed. This movement is a prominent historical phenomenon in the African continent, first because of the vast territory it covered within a single generation and secondly on account of its political, economic, social and cultural impact on the regions and peoples it involved. Because of their widely acknowledged ferocity and continental significance, Ngoni migrations have attracted a great deal of scholarly interest, especially from historians working on southern, central and eastern Africa. Prior to the publication of the first professional histories of Ngoni migrations, European travellers, missionaries and colonial administrators throughout Africa included in their diaries and reports anecdotal and historical accounts on the Ngoni and their activities. Being one of the territories involved in the Ngoni’s movement of the nineteenth century, mainland Tanzania (hereafter Tanzania) is well represented in scholarly writings on the migrations. In their totality, these publications provide a fairly comprehensive picture of the movement and its socio-economic and political impact. However, there are other issues that are worth considering on the context, nature and extent of Ngoni activities in Tanzania. Three of these are of particular interest in the present discussion. The first relates to the historical contextualisation of the advent of the Ngoni in Tanzania. The country’s mainstream historiography shows

199 200 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 that the coming of the Ngoni to western and north-western Tanzania coincided with profound and rapid transformations in the region during the nineteenth century. Although the authenticity of this portrayal is not to be doubted, questions arise on the claim that the arrival of the Ngoni constituted one of the two exogenously propelled forces, the other being the caravan trade that linked some coastal and interior societies. This is worth discussing further, especially in light of the pan-regional character of the Ngoni’s movement in Africa and the questions that arise from the use of post- independence country borders to frame the historical processes that took place before the borders came into being. Accordingly, this chapter will consider, among other things, a different way of contextualising the coming of the Ngoni to Tanzania. The second issue, which is far more extensive in scope than the first, has to do with the notable geographical limitation in the coverage of the history of the Ngoni in Tanzania. A perusal of the literature reveals that most of it focuses on the present-day Songea District and the neighbouring areas in southern Tanzania. Yet it is known that the nineteenth century Ngoni migrations, wars and settlements in eastern Africa also involved areas in the southern highlands as well as the western and north-western parts of the country, such as Sumbawanga, , , and Shinyanga, and the shores of Lake Victoria in the extreme north. The objective here is therefore to shed more light on the nature and extent of Ngoni involvement in these areas. In particular, this chapter focuses on the western and north-western parts of Tanzania, because there are as yet no detailed studies on these regions as far as the history of Ngoni migrations and settlements in this part of Africa is concerned. The third issue arising from the extant literature has to do with contradictions in the sources used to reconstruct the history of the Ngoni in Tanzania. While this is a common problem in historical research, the rate of occurrence of such contradictions in historical works on the Ngoni in north-western Tanzania is relatively high and therefore needs to be addressed. Thus, this chapter sets out to make a meaningful contribution on the context, nature, extent and significance of Ngoni migrations, wars and settlements in what is today western and north-western Tanzania.

The historical context Prominent historians of Tanzania have tended to frame the story of Ngoni involvement in this part of Africa largely on the basis of the country’s post-independence boundaries. The tendency is especially explicit in Juhani Koponen’s book entitled People and Production in Late Pre-colonial Tanzania. He maintains that the advent of the Ngoni in Tanzania and the caravan trade were two externally driven phenomena that played a major role in transforming a number of societies in the country during the nineteenth century. He writes: Caravan trade was not the only outside force interfering in the endogenously propelled development of Tanzanian societies during the 19th century. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 201

Another one, with major consequences in the southern parts of the country, was the irruption of the people who became known as the Ngoni.1 Koponen provides a brief discussion on the Ngoni in Tanzania in connection with the major economic, political and social transformations that happened during the period. He gives due recognition to the agency of what he calls ‘endogenously propelled’ forces, but is categorical in stating that the arrival of the Ngoni marked an external intervention into the ongoing local dynamics of change. Similarly, in his chapter in the book edited by Kimambo and Temu, Andrew Roberts discusses the involvement of the Ngoni in Tanzania within the framework of external forces that influenced historical change in the country during the nineteenth century. His opening statement on this theme is preceded by an argument on the importance of the ivory trade and slave trading in the area at the time and is immediately followed by an emphatic statement that the newly arriving Ngoni were ‘another external factor of great significance’.2 Other prominent historians of Tanzania are less emphatic in externalising the Ngoni factor, but their framing of the story is fundamentally similar to those by Koponen and Roberts. John Iliffe, for example, begins his account of the Ngoni in Tanzania with a brief statement on the exogenous origin of the Ngoni, arguing that ‘the Ngoni were originally refugees from the which convulsed southern Africa early in the nineteenth century…’.3 This is followed by an illuminating discussion on the political and economic processes the Ngoni found in full swing among the societies they encountered in this region and how the newcomers influenced these processes. This approach to understanding the advent of the Ngoni in Tanzania is justifiable in the sense that the respective authors are addressing historical processes in a defined geographical space and that the Ngoni, who entered this space in the nineteenth century, obviously came from outside it. The geographically based framing of the story of the Ngoni in present-day Tanzania also draws its validation from the nationalist historical paradigm that had dominated African historiography for a while. Among other things, the paradigm encouraged the framing of African people’s histories on the basis of the boundaries of the post-colonial political entities called ‘countries’ or ‘nations’. It might be added that this tendency is consistent with the seemingly progressive political ideology that often informs history writings by post-colonial scholars. If nation building was the main preoccupation of progressive African politicians and liberal scholars from the 1960s, it is understandable why country- based historical analyses were dominant in that period. Yet the methodological and political limitations of the nationalist paradigm have long been acknowledged and well-articulated. While this chapter does not intend to engage in a substantive

1 J. Koponen, People and Production in Late Precolonial Tanzania: History and Structures (Helsinki: Finish Society for Development Studies, 1988), 76.

2 A. Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’, in I.N. Kimambo and A.J. Temu (eds), A (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968), 68.

3 J. Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanzania (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 54. 202 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 critique of this paradigm, it dedicates some space to reflection on a particular aspect of the paradigm, namely scholars’ tendency to use post-colonial country boundaries to frame their analyses of historical processes in the pre-colonial period. In the first place, it is obvious that such framing limits the actual geographical space covered by these historical processes and understates their broader historical significance. In other words, such an approach inevitably results in partial coverage of the processes and an underrepresentation of their significance. Incidentally, this is best illustrated by the history of the Ngoni in eastern Africa. It is well-known that when some groups of first arrived in Tanzania, they encountered other dynamic and transforming communities and societies. Many of these societies were themselves still involved in movement across geographical and ecological zones. All of them had descended from peoples who had earlier migrated from different directions and regions within the continent and beyond. This knowledge, which is abundantly represented in African ethnographies and archaeological sources, is seriously contradicted by the framing of the advent of the Ngoni in Tanzania as an externally propelled historical phenomenon. For one thing, to do so is to isolate the Ngoni migrations and wars from the historical movement of other people in what became Tanzania. One may argue that in the nineteenth century, the societies based in the region had achieved relative permanence; that they were attached to specific geographical locations. This permanence may be used to justify the notion that the arrival of the Ngoni was an external interruption into local affairs. However, this reasoning can only be valid if we ignore the fact that, not long before, these societies were themselves involved in migrations and other dynamic processes. In the light of this, the arrival of the Ngoni was an integral part of the historical mobility of people who had characterised the region for centuries. Besides isolating the Ngoni’s movement from the general human mobility in the region, seeing this phenomenon as an externally driven ‘force’ is also premised on an incorrect assumption. The political entities and country units on which the externalising analysis is based were non- existent at the time of the Ngoni’s arrival there. Nor was the assumed socio-economic and political coherence within the country borders adopted for purposes of analysis. How, then, do we contextualise the historical involvement of the Ngoni in the territory now known as Tanzania? It seems rational to note, first, that this phenomenon is yet another testimony to the validity of the widely articulated ‘unity of African history’ thesis. The arrival of the Ngoni in the country and their subsequent contacts with the people they encountered there show long-term interactions among Africans and between Africans and people from outside the continent, through migrations, political intercourse (including, but not limited to, wars), cultural influences and economic exchanges.4 These interactions began long before the modern era and were still in full swing as the Ngoni moved from the area now referred to as KwaZulu- Natal in South Africa to the northernmost point in Tanzania during the nineteenth

4 This fact is acknowledged and articulated in major historical works on pre-colonial Africa. See for example C.A. Diop, The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity (London: Karnak House, 1989); and F.Chami, The Unity of African Ancient History, 3000 BC to 500 AD (Dar es Salaam: E & D, 2006). The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 203 century. It is worth emphasising in this connection that in their political pursuits and economic ventures in southern, central and eastern Africa, the Ngoni not only achieved triumphant successes but also experienced varying levels of adversity at times, and that the outcome of their involvement in the region was determined not only by their capabilities as a political and economic force, but also by the political and economic conditions of the societies they interacted with. These included the levels of socio-political organisation and military strengths of the societies in question, their economic resourcefulness, the standing of each in the face of the newly emerging force and the trade in slaves and ivory. It is the totality of these factors that determined the geographical extent and overall significance of Ngoni involvement in the regions they traversed. In brief, the involvement of the Ngoni in the regions under discussion should be viewed as an integral part of the diverse political and economic dynamics that have shaped the history of Africa over the centuries. Like all other historical processes, Ngoni involvement in particular areas in present-day Tanzania had certain specific features. The most important was that, having occurred at a time when most societies in the region were loosely organised politically and were comparatively less endowed technologically and economically, Ngoni migrations, wars and settlements covered a vast territory extending from present-day southern Mozambique to northern Tanzania. As Koponen explains, in this process the Ngoni groups ‘both grew and ramified’ as ‘the large ones ‘rolled on like a snowball and grew fat by incorporating new members …’.5 At the time of European colonisation of the regions in question, the Ngoni’s movement was ongoing in some areas, but it soon stopped. By the time the colonial order took shape in central and eastern Africa, groups of Ngoni-speaking peoples had settled in definite areas in the territories now known as Mozambique, , and Tanzania. It is worth emphasising that in the light of the above, the involvement of the Ngoni in modern Tanzania during the nineteenth century was part of the longue durée history of human migrations, interactions and integrations, and of the reconfigurations of political and social cohesion and identities in the African continent.

The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania The mainstream historiography of the Ngoni in Tanzania is clear in its articulation of the fact that in the nineteenth century groups of Ngoni people interacted vigorously with other African communities in the southern, central, western and north-western parts of the country. John Iliffe, one of the leading historians of modern Tanzania, draws on Omer-Cooper’s account to provide a brief description of the geographical extent of Ngoni involvement in the territory: Two Ngoni groups reached Tanganyika after incorporating conquered groups on the way. One, led by Mputa […] Maseko, reached the modern

5 Koponen, People and Production in Late Precolonial Tanzania,77. 204 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1

Songea district early in the 1840s, while the other, led by Zwangendaba, reached Ufipa. There Zwangendaba died in the later 1840s and his followers divided, one section moving northwards to settle at Runzewe, north-west of Tabora, while two other sections, led by military commanders, Zulu Gama and Mbonani Tawete, turned southwards and joined Mputa Maseko’s followers in Songea in about 1858.6 The main facts in this summary also feature in accounts on the Ngoni which preceded the publication of Iliffe’sbook as well as those which were published later.7 It is, however, striking that while the events and processes which followed the initial arrival of the Ngoni in the southern and central parts of the country have received fairly comprehensive coverage, those that took place in the western and north-western parts are hardly covered in the mainstream historical literature. John Iliffe, Juhani Koponen and Andrew Roberts, arguably the leading historians of Tanzania, hardly go beyond a mere mention of Ngoni involvement in the western and north-western parts of the country, while devoting considerable space and analysis to the movement and activities of the Ngoni in the southern and central parts. Juhani Koponen, for example, writes that having reached Tanzania in the 1840s, the Ngoni ‘pushed into Ufipa and Buzinza in the north before they were contained and turned back’. He does not go any further than this in describing the extent of Ngoni’s northward movement. The rest of his account dwells on the events and processes involving the Ngoni in southern and central Tanzania, including their interactions with other African societies there and encounters with forces relating to the caravan trade that gained momentum in the area during the nineteenth century.8 In a similar manner, the accounts by John Iliffe and Andrew Roberts focus on the Ngoni’s involvement in southern and central Tanzania. For example, Iliffe’s account of Ngoni activities in the west and north-western parts of Tanzania stops at the mention of the fact that subsequent to the death of Zwangendaba in Ufipa one group of his followers moved as far as the Runzewe area in north-western Tabora. To this statement, Andrew Roberts’s account adds a minor detail adopted from P.H. Gulliver, saying that ‘by 1850 a group of Ngoni had settled in Bugomba, a chiefdom of the southern Sumbwa’.9The authors then turn to extended accounts of Ngoni involvement in southern and central Tanzania. It is clear that mainstream historiography of Tanzania sidelines the story of the Ngoni in other parts of the country. The purpose of this chapter, then, is to extend the existing sketch into a a more comprehensive and coherent historical account of the Ngoni’s movement in western and north-western Tanzania. The materials used to achieve this objective came partly from interviews conducted in Tabora, Mwanza,

6 Iliffe,A Modern History of Tanzania,54.

7 For the earlier publications, see for instance F. Johnson, Zamani MpakaSikuHizi (London: The Sheldon Press, 1929), vii, 94–98; and Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’, 68.

8 Koponen, People and Production in Late Precolonial Tanzania, 79–80.

9 Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’, 68. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 205

Kahama, Bukombe and Sumbawanga in 2017, and partly from information gleaned from scanty archival sources and secondary sources that are peripheral to the mainstream literature on the Ngoni in Tanzania. The chapter begins with an overview of the geographical scope of Ngoni movement and activities in the regions under discussion. This is followed by accounts and analyses of Ngoni activities in specific areas, namely those of Ufipa, Buzinza and Ujiji in western Tanzania;Urundi in the north-west of Ujiji; and Usukuma, Urambo, Unyanyembe and Kahama in north-western Tanzania. It is acknowledged that due to the paucity of sources, the account is far from being fully comprehensive. We hope that future historians will fill this gap.

Arrival of the Ngoni and their general geographical spread The available sources agree that an important starting point for the story of the Ngoni in present-day Tanzania is the arrival in Ufipa of a group which Elzear Ebner has called the Ngoni of Zwangendaba. All accounts indicate that this was a group of who had come from the region now referred to as (northern) KwaZulu- Natal in South Africa, and numerous other peoples whom the Ngoni conquered as they trekked northwards through the territories now known as , Zambia and Malawi. In all the available accounts, this group was led by Zwangwendaba until it arrived in Ufipa near the south-eastern tip of .10 Shortly after its arrival in Ufipa, Zwangendaba died and conflicts over succession and other factors led to the split of the group into five sub-groups. Two of these groups moved back southwards to Zambia and Malawi. Two other groups moved eastwards to Usafwa, Ukinga and Upangwa in the southern highlands of Tanzania, and eventually to the present-day Songea district, where they encountered another group of Ngoni people that had arrived there earlier. The last group, on which this chapter focuses, moved from Ufipa to areas as far as Uzinza, Ujiji, Uha, Urundi, , Uvinza and Usuwi in the south-west of Lake Victoria.11 Later, during the ongoing migrations and wars, the Ngoni encountered Mirambo, the famous ruler and warlord of Tabora. He was initially an ally and later became a threatening enemy to the Ngoni. It was in the course of their interactions with Mirambo that the last known Ngoni groups eventually settled among the Nyamwezi and Sumbwa in north-western Tanzania. Up until the 1920s, a small group of people who claimed descent from the Ngoni of Zwangendaba had settled among the Sumbwa in the area then known as Runzewe.12Scattered individual families of people

10 See, for instance, E. Ebner, The History of the Ngoni (Ndanda-Peramiho: Benedictine Publications, 1987), 25–32; G.W. Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, Man, 35, 73 (May 1935), 69; Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’,68; Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanzania,54.

11 This narrative is based a publication that is peripheral to the mainstream historiography of Tanzania, namely Johnson, Zamani MpakaSikuHizi, 98–100; Ebner, The History of the Ngoni,59–61; and Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni in Tanganyika Territory’, 69–70.

12 Johnson, Zamani MpakaSikuHizi,100. 206 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 who identify themselves as descendants of the Ngoni of Zwangendaba still exist in the greater Kahama area in north-western Tanzania. This overview serves to lay the ground for a more detailed analysis of how the Ngoni trekked from the south of Lake Tanganyika to Lake Victoria. The summary also provides a useful background against which to view the socio-economic and political processes that took place in the course of Ngoni’s northward movement. In tackling these tasks, effort is made in the next sections to put together various pieces of historical account to shed light on the processes involved in each of the main areas mentioned above.

The Ngoni of Zwangendaba in Ufipa and the neighbouring areas What historical processes were the Ngoni of Zwangendaba involved in after their arrival in Ufipa? And how significant were the processes in the history of the region? These are the two main issues that are addressed in this section, albeit briefly. To start with, it is noteworthy that before Zwangedaba’s death and the splitting of his group into five sub-groups, the Ngoni of Zwangendaba launched raiding expeditions in areas to the west of Lake Nyasa in what is today Malawi. One of the earliest accounts, that by Hatchell, indicates that as Zwangendaba’s Ngoni trekked northwards in the territory now called Malawi, they settled temporarily at a place to ‘the west of Domira Bay on Lake Nyasa...’.13 Hatchell does not provide the name of this area, probably because he could not get it from his sources. However, in his recent book on the Zwangendaba-Mpenzeni Ngoni, Yizenge Chondoka draws on oral accounts and identifies the area as Chitipa. He also mentions 1846 as the year when the Ngoni arrived there. Like Hatchell, Chondoka notes that the area is in the north of Mafinga Hills, the source of the Luangwa River.14 According to this account, while at Chitipa, Zwangendaba’s Ngoni raided the present-day southern highlands of Tanzania for cattle and women. After a short while, the Ngoni moved further west and settled in Nachipeta, to the west of Mwenzo. This became the ‘permanent seat’ of the Ngoni government at that time.15 From Nachipeta, they raided people in present-day western Tanzania and northern Zambia. More importantly, according to Chondoka, this is where Zwangendaba died and was buried in 1848.16 However, Chondoka’s account on the place where Zwangendaba died contradicts all previous works, which maintain that Zwangendaba’s final resting place was Chapota. They also show that this place was in Ufipa.17 Hatchell, for instance, claims that ‘shortly after reaching Ufipa, Zwangendaba died and was buried at Chapota,

13 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 69.

14 Y.A. Chondoka, The Zwangendaba-Mpenzeni Ngoni: History and Migrations, Settlement and Culture (Lusaka: Academic Press, 2017), 44.

15 Chondoka,The Zwangendaba-Mpenzeni Ngoni,47.

16 Ibid., 48.

17 See Ebner, The History of the Ngoni,32; Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’, 68; Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 69; and Johnson, Zamani MpakaSikuHizi,98. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 207 where his grave, marked by a grove of trees, can still be seen’.18For his part, Ebner says that as they trekked to Tanzania, Zwangendaba and his group passed through Mwenzo in northern Zambia and thereafter the group ‘entered the Ufipa country and settled at a place called Mapupo or Chapota’, where ‘Zwangendaba ended his eventful career’ in 1845 or 1848.19 However, as noted above, according to Chondoka, King Zwangendaba died in Nachipeta, which is part of the territory now called Zambia. The contradiction in the sources on this particular piece of history concerns two related issues. The first is the name of the place where Zwangendaba died. The question that needs to be answered is whether the king died in Chapota (as the earlier sources indicate) or in Nachipeta as Chondoka claims in his recent publication. The second issue concerns the place where the king died, relative to the present-day boundary between Zambia and Tanzania. Did Zwangendaba die in Zambia or Tanzania? It turns out that to resolve this issue is no easy matter. Any attempt to sort out the disparities in a historical account such as this inevitably becomes tangled with the broader question of the reliability of the sources available to the historians of Africa, especially those working on the pre-colonial and colonial periods. Since the 1960s, the common practice in the reconstruction of Africa history has been to combine written and oral sources, while paying attention to the weaknesses inherent in each. Indeed, the weaknesses of the sources, their vulnerability, are at the very nub of the contradiction in question. On the one hand, we have accounts by European travellers, missionaries and colonial administrators. Such accounts were the main fount of historical account for Johnson, Hatchell and, to some extent, Ebner as well. And, of course, we must bear in mind that some of the early publications, such as Hatchell’s, are also based on oral testimonies from the local narratives they collected. As is well known, the main weakness of the records compiled by European travellers, missionaries, explorers and colonial officials is that they are based almost exclusively on historical accounts gathered through ad hoc observations and a collection of local narratives and testimonies without paying due attention to the sociological and power dynamics in the respective areas. In the case of Johnson’s and Hatchell’s accounts, the problem is compounded by the fact that neither of the authors identifies the source/s of his historical account. On the positive side, however, the earlier records were based on observations of events by the writers or on oral testimonies collected from the local people who lived in closer, temporal proximity to the areas where the events in question occurred, compared to the narratives such as those gathered by Chondoka nearly a century later. The testimonies coming from these sources are, therefore, likely to be relatively more authentic and less affected by the mechanics and social forces involved in their transmission.

18 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 69.

19 Ebner, The History of the Ngoni,32. 208 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1

Chondoka’s account, on the other hand, is based on oral narratives gathered in the present decade.20But these narratives also have their advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages is that they were collected by a researcher who, given his position as an elder from the region,21was able to relate to the respondents not as a stranger, but as a credible insider, one who could be trusted with a detailed account. Chondoka himself makes an effort to show the authenticity of his narrative by, for instance, including in his book a photograph showing a gravesite marked with basalt rocks. He tells us that the local people in Nachipeta showed the gravesite to a school teacher who was working in the area in 1980 and that the teacher asked his pupils to mark it with rocks. And yet, as noted above, the downside of Chondoka’s version is that they were narrated by people who are far removed in temporal terms from the events in question. This makes them far more likely to be affected by memory lapses and errors in transmission than those collected a century earlier. The resulting confusion is amplified by the account gleaned in 2017 through interviews, which shows that Chapota is quite some distance inside present-day Tanzania and that there is a long and widely acknowledged oral tradition indicating that Zwangendaba died and was buried there.22 Clearly, the lack of clarity regarding the monarch’s place of death is difficult to resolve. Depending on the significance attached to this detail at any given historical moment, it might be necessary to continue searching for records and undertake new inquiries into local oral traditions, or to take recourse to modern technology to establish the place where Zwangendaba died and was buried. Yet, for the purpose of this account, it would be fair to state that Zwangendaba died in Ufipa, which incorporated the area at the southern tip of Lake Tanganyika. In the pre-colonial period, Ufipa extended from present-day south-western Tanzania to northern Zambia.23 Notwithstanding the disparities in the sources on King Zwangwendaba’s death and burial place, the history of the Ngoni in northern and north-western Tanzania can still be told. According to a testimony by a respondent in Ushirombo, north- western Tanzania, Zwangendaba’s entry into Ufipa was initially smooth, as the main leader (Nsokolo) of the Fipa made a peace deal with the Ngoni leader because he feared that military confrontation would have devastating consequences.24 The oral accounts also show that the Fipa chief was involved in struggles with the rulers of the

20 Chondoka himself clearly states his reliance on recently collected local narratives. He notes that his account is based on historical traditions passed down orally through generations. Concerning the location of Zwangendaba’s place of burial, he notes that ‘…the only grave of a Ngoni that is currently known at Nachipeta is indeed that of King Zwangendaba’. See, Chondoka, The Zwangendaba-Mpenzeni Ngoni, 52.

21 The late Yizenga Chondoka was a Zambian Professor of African History. His recently published book, The Zwangendaba-Mpenzeni Ngoni (note 15) is largely based on oral interviews carried out in parts of Zambia and Malawi.

22 Interview with Angelo Mbalamwezi, conducted by Yusufu Lawu, Sumbawanga, 2 December 2017.

23 Interview with Godfrey Senga Kifunda, conducted by Yusufu Lawu, Dar es Salaam, 4 January 2017; and with Angelo Mbalamwezi, 2 December 2017.

24 Interview with Bernard Kazina, Ushirombo, 26 December, 2017. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 209 neighbouring societies and that the move to befriend Zwangendaba was designed to boost his position against them. In part, this account corroborates Hatchell’s and Johnson’s versions of the same issue. Hatchell, for instance, writes that the ‘chief of Ufipa, Nsokolo, hearing of the threatened invasion, succeeded in coming to terms with the enemy, thus saving his people from the terrors of an Angoni raid’.25 The author is, however, silent on the struggles in Ufipa which predated the monarch’s arrival in the area, which are mentioned in the oral account above. Yet, in their totality the accounts on this event have two important implications. They show that the might of Zwangendaba’s force was widely known in the regions which the Ngoni traversed. In addition, they suggest that, as the Ngoni trekked northwards, they encountered active political dynamism in the form of power struggles and wars among societies and between neighbouring ethnic groups and clans. These implications will become more significant when we consider the details of Ngoni involvement in western and north-western Tanzania. After King Zwangendaba’s death in 1845 or 1848 (as reported by Ebner) the Ngoni came under the regency of Ntabeni, the king’s younger brother. This arrangement was necessary because Zwangendaba’s son, Prince Mpenzeni, was still young. However, upon the death of Ntabeni a few years later, a major succession crisis ensued and, as noted above, the Ngoni split into five sub-groups. According to Ebner, in about 1850 one of the sub-groups moved northwards from Ufipa under the leadership of Ntabeni’s son, Mtambalika.26 However, Andrew Roberts contradicts this view and claims that the first leader of the Ngoni sub-group that moved northwards was Mpangalala. Ebner’s account is corroborated by Hatchell’s, although Hatchell shows that Mtambalika and Mpangalala were brothers and were co-leaders of the group.27This is highly unlikely, because a single sub-group would not have been led by two leaders with equal authority. In Ebner’s more elaborate account, based on other written sources, Mpangalala was actually Mtambalika’s son and his successor.28In line with this account, other writers, such as the historian John Kabeya, note that Mpangalala became the leader of the Ngoni much later in their northward migrations.29 Kabeya gives an interesting account of the interactions that took place in the 1860s between Mpangalala, the leader of the Ngoni, and Mirambo,the famous Nyamwezi warlord of the nineteenth century whose history we shall narrate in due course. While still in Ufipa, the Ngoni of Zwangendaba raided other societies in the region. For instance, they attacked the Kimbu, whose country was located in the northeast of Ufipa.30 Another major group they encountered in the north of Ufipa

25 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 69.

26 Ebner, The History of the Ngoni,5.

27 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 70.

28 Ibid.

29 J. Kabeya, MtemiMirambo: MtawalaShujaawaKinyamwezi(Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau, 1971), 68; 69.

30 Ebner, The History of the Ngoni,59. 210 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 was the Pimbwe (sometimes spelt as ‘Pimbue’), who lived at the northern end of the Rukwa Valley, about fifty miles north of Chapota.31 This might have happened not too long after the death of Zwangendaba. According to Hatchell, the Ngoni ‘raided and subdued’ the Pimbwe. They settled in the country of the Pimbwe for a while and raided other communities in the surrounding areas, such as Ukonongo (the country of the Konongo) and Ukabende (the country of the Bende).32 The latter country is located on the eastern side of Lake Tanganyika around a point which the British colonisers named Cape Kungwe (see the map below). At the time of the Ngoni’s arrival in the area under the leadership of Mtambalika, the local population consisted of people who had crossed the lake from its western side due to pressure exerted on them by the Ngoni during their northward expeditions before Zwangendaba’s death. This illustrates complications in the Ngoni’s movement in central and eastern Africa, contrary to the simplistic accounts of a unidirectional progression often given by historians and other writers. Their encounters with the people of Ukabende, whom Hatchell calls Baholoholo, highlights the fact that sometimes the Ngoni encountered other societies on two or more different occasions. The narrative on the encounter between the Ngoni and the Holoholo also illuminates a weakness in framing the analysis of pre-colonial historical processes on the basis of post-colonial national boundaries. It shows that in the nineteenth century the societies in the region under discussion moved across what later became the boundaries of colonial and post-colonial political entities such as Zambia and Tanzania. The tendency to conceptualise the involvement of the Ngoni in Tanzania as an externally propelled process is, therefore, based on the incorrect assumption that in the nineteenth century there was a distinct territorial entity that could be attacked by people from ‘outside’. During their encounters with the Ngoni, the people of Ukabende reportedly put up strong resistance against the invaders. On one occasion they took the war into the Ngoni area in the country of the Pimbwe. According to Hatchell, although the Pimbwe were eventually defeated, the strength they demonstrated made the Ngoni avoid this territory in their subsequent raids and northward movement.33 This happened during the reign of Swima in Ukabende,34 and bears out the point made earlier that during their movement northwards the Ngoni often experienced resistance, setbacks and sometimes outright defeats in battles. This is different from the image portrayed in the dominant narrative in the mainstream literature, which presents the northward movement of the Ngoni as a single plot of dramatic triumph.

31 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 70.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., 70.

34 This name is mentioned by Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 70, but Johnson, Zamani MpakaSikuHizi,who wrote earlier, mentions that the leader of the Wabende at this time was Kanjimba (p 98). The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 211

Map: Ngoni movement in western and north-western Tanzania 1840s–1890s Source: Constructed by Hitson Pazza (2018), based on a sketch initially published by G.W. Hatchell (1935).35

35 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 69. 212 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1

From Upimbwe and Ukabende the Ngoni, while still under Mtambalika, moved further north through the Malagrarasi Valley. All accounts, oral as well as written, show that they raided Uvinza, Kigoma and Ujiji. According Andrew Burton, in the late 1860s the ruler of Uvinza asked the Ngoni to assist him in his battles with the people of Uha (Buha).36 This happened nearly twenty years after King Zwangendaba’s death. The outcome of the war in Uvinza is still a subject for historical research, but the writer P. Chubwa provides a relatively extensive account of the involvement of the Ngoni in Buha. He notes that the Ngoni fought a number of wars with the Ha in many different areas in their territory, including Kibondo, Kasulu, Ujiji, Uvinza and Nguruka.37 His account also provides some details of the wars, showing that the Ngoni used ‘short clubs, short arrows, spears and shields,’ while ‘the Waha used long spears, arrows and clubs’. He also suggests that on at least one occasion, the Ha resorted to seeking the powers of their chief rain-maker, who ‘caused prolonged and heavy rains’ that weakened the Ngoni and resulted in heavy casualties on their part. Yet, in assessing the comparative strengths of the two groups, Chubwa notes that the Ngoni ‘often won the battles’. According to him, the war encounters between the two groups ended when the Ha ‘used [wild] bees’to defeat their adversaries once and for all.38 We shall return to this point about the deployment of bees in wars shortly. The missionary W.A. Elmslie reports that during the same period, the Ngoni attacked Ujiji, an Arab settlement located on the north-eastern side of Lake Tanganyika. The attack is reported to have been sudden and dramatic. According to the missionary, during his visit to Ujiji in 1890, some elderly Arabs remembered clearly that the Ngoni appeared suddenly and forced the Arabs and other people of Ujiji to take refuge on Bangwe Island in Lake Tanganyika. In Elmslie’s words: ‘It is in the memory of the oldest Arab residents at Ujiji how the Watuta suddenly appeared and drove them and the Wajiji [people of Ujiji] to take refuge upon Bangwe Island.’39 This victory was, however, short-lived, because after the surprise attack, the Arabs of Ujiji launched a successful counter attack. According to Johnson, the Arabs eventually succeeded in expelling the Ngoni from Ujiji.40 Taken together, these accounts on the Ngoni in the Ha country (Buha), indicate that the northward movement of the Ngoni was a complex historical process involving, on the one hand, military triumphs alternating with periodic defeats and, on the other hand, direct confrontations blended with occasional negotiations with the forces they encountered. From Buha, the Ngoni moved further north and west, and reached Urundi, the land of the Rundi. As elsewhere, their primary target in this area was cattle, with

36 As reported by Johnson, Zamani MpakaSikuHizi,99–100.

37 P. Chubwa, Waha: Historia na Maendeleo (Tabora: TMP Books, 1986), 44.

38 Ibid.

39 See W.A. Elmslie, ‘Among the Wild Ngoni: Being Some Chapters in the History of the Livingstonia Mission in British Central Africa’, 1899, at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/africa/ngoni/chapter01.htm Accessed 15 November, 2017. Watuta is the name often used to refer to the Ngoni who moved northwards after Zwangendaba’s death.

40 Johnson, Zamani Mpaka Siku Hizi, 100. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 213 women as a subsidiary interest. Unfortunately, the sources available say nothing about their activities in Uvinza. It is, nonetheless, almost certain that they did not stay long in this area. According to the missionary Elmslie, the Ngoni found ‘a stock of people who had superior military capabilities’ in Uvinza, and so before long they retreated and moved further north and northeast. It is possible that at a later point in time, the Ngoni raided these areas again. Andrew Roberts writes that ‘from 1850s the Ngoni repeatedly troubled the Ha and the Zinza...’.41There might be a miscalculation in estimating the time period when later raids took place, yet the likelihood of the Ngoni’s return to Buha and Urundi is strengthened by an oral account collected from Tabora which shows that the Ngoni attacked Uha and Urundi on several occasions.42 As regards their defeat by the Rundi during the first raid, two independent oral accounts indicate that the Rundi used bees to disperse their rivals.43As noted above, the use of bees is also mentioned in the narratives on the interactions between the Ngoni and the Ha. The reference to bees is made to emphasise the role of the supernatural powers of local spiritual leaders in matters of conflict and war. The narratives might have been constructed spontaneously to symbolise the tacit moral power of a local community that withstood the mighty military attacks of an invading force. But they may also signify environmental knowledge on the part of local spiritual leaders, who could mobilise local environmental forces against threats from fellow human beings and other enemies. The important task here is not to determine which of the two possibilities approximates the reality about the deployment of bees in the wars between the Ngoni and the people they encountered in the region. Rather, it is to underline the fact expressed in the narratives: that up to this point in time the Ngoni people were a formidable force in north-western Tanzania although they often suffered defeat and had to alter the direction of their movement.

The Ngoni’s arrival in Unyamwezi and surrounding areas Accounts on the Ngoni’s movement after they had raided the areas on the north- eastern side of Lake Tanganyika are rather scanty. They mention only in passing that from western Tanzania and Urundi, the Ngoni carried out raids in the east and the north, where they encountered, among other groups, the Nyamwezi, Sumbwa and Sukuma. According to Hatchell’s account, up until then the Ngoni had been under the command of Mtambalika. The author narrates that the Ngoni ‘eventually reached the Runzewe country, north-west of Tabora, where [they] settled down and established a base from which [they] raided as far north as the southern end of Smith Sound on Lake Victoria’.44 While in Runzewe, in about 1870, the Ngoni were still under the leadership of Mtambalika, and it was in Runzewe that this leader died and

41 Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’,78.

42 Interview with Chief Msagata Fundikia, Tabora, 27 October, 2017.

43 Interviews with Gaudence Mpangala, Dar es Salaam, 4 November, 2017; and Fundikira, Tabora, 27 October, 2017.

44 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 70. Although Hatchell does not mention the source of his historical account, he seems to have drawn it from P. Kollman, The Victoria Nyanza: The Land, the Races and their Customs 214 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 was buried.45As noted earlier, upon his death, the Ngoni leadership passed to his son, Mpangalala. This account contradicts the one Henry Morton Stanley gives on the same events. Stanley was a Welsh explorer of central and eastern Africa, and according to him, the Ngoni moved northward quickly from Uvinza and Uha, passing through ‘Unyamwezi, Uzumbwa [read Usumbwa] Utambara, Urangwa, Uyofu, Uzinja [read Uzinza] to the Victoria Nyanza’, and ‘rested’ there for ‘some years’ before ultimately returning to and settling ‘in Ugomba [read Bugomba], between Uhha and Unyamwezi’.46 Stanley’s account is marred by his confusion on place names and locations. Yet, his main point is clear: that the Ngoni settled in Mwanza before finally settling down in Bugomba; and this is different from Hatchell’s version. All other available accounts indicate that the Ngoni only carried out a series of raids in Usukuma (the land of the Sukuma), known generally as Mwanza. According to a former chief in Usukuma, the Ngoni raided Usukuma repeatedly but never ‘settled’ in that land. His account emphasises that the raids resulted in a joking (utani) relationship between the Ngoni and the Sukuma. This kind of relationship symbolises past enmity and fighting encounters, and was meant to ameliorate the bygone sour relations of the distant past between the concerned parties. This oral narrative corroborates Hatchell’s and other accounts closely as far as the Ngoni exploits in north-western Tanzania are concerned. It is to these accounts that we now turn.

Interaction with Chief Mirambo of Unyamwezi Henry Morton Stanley once referred to Mirambo as the ‘Napoleon’ of central Africa. King Mirambo was the ruler of Urambo, a part of the wider Nyamwezi country in present-day north-western Tanzania. Through numerous raids on other societies in the region and further south, he managed to establish strong control and influence over a large territory, mostly during the 1870s and 1880s. His raiding expeditions reached as far as Mwanza, Uzinza, Urundi and Ujiji (in the north and the west), and Ufipa,Unyakyusa, Iramba, Unyaturu and Ugogo (in the south and the south-east). Apart from expanding his influence in north-western and central Tanzania, he also endeavoured to control the Arab-dominated caravan trade that was thriving in the region during the period in question.47 It was in the course of these ventures that he encountered the Ngoni of Mtambalika. Two different oral accounts indicate that the earliest encounter between the Ngoni and Mirambo was after the Ngoni turned their attacks away from Mwanza, Uzinza and Urunduand onto Urambo in Unyamwezi. Certain Ngoni oral traditions show that the Ngoni encountered and interacted with Mirambo in Urambo for some

(London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1886), 106; J.D. Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath: A Nineteenth-century Revolution in Bantu Africa (London: Longman, 1966), 74, also quotes this source to convey the same historical account.

45 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 70.

46 As reported by Elmslie, ‘Among the Wild Ngoni’.

47 Kabeya, MtemiMirambo; Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 70. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 215 time.48 A detailed historical account provided by a Nyamwezi interlocutor, Chief Msagata Fundikira, shows that prior to their encounter with Mirambo, the Ngoni, now under the leadership of Mpangalala (sometimes referred to as Mpangala), attacked a Nyamwezi sub-chiefdom of Ndelelwa.49 At the time, the sub-chiefdom was under the control of Kalunde, the daughter of Chief Fundikira of Unyanyemba. Kalunde was married to Mohhamad bin Hamad, the son of the famous slave trader, Tippu Tip. During the war that lasted about a week, the Ngoni were defeated, partly because the Arabs of Tabora supported Kalunde militarily. Thereafter, the Ngoni moved from Unyanyembe to Ulyankulu, a part of the then Urambo kingdom. The leader of Urambo was Kasanda at the time. A fierce war between Mpangalala’s and Kasanda’s forces ensued. According to Chief Fundikira, during the fighting the Ngoni captured Kasanda’s son, Mbula, who would later be known as Mirambo.50 Further intensification of the war following strengthening of Kasanda’s forces resulted in the defeat of the Ngoni who, nonetheless, managed to escape with Mbula. According to the two respondents, the Ngoni taught Mirambo (then still known as Mbula) their military skills and tactics. Mirambo mastered the skills within a short period of time and fought along with Mpangalala’s forces. However, he later ran away from one of the Ngoni war operations and returned to Ulyankulu, where he found his father, Kasanda, sick and weak. Kasanda passed away shortly afterwards and Mirambo took control of his father’s forces. That was the beginning of a long history of Mirambo’s involvement in the political and economic affairs of north-western Tanzania from the late 1860s to the 1880s. Further encounters between him and the Ngoni (after he had seized power) were part of this history. More details of these early military encounters between the Ngoni and Mirambo are available in various written sources. Omer-Cooper writes that while in the region under discussion, the Ngoni, whom he refers to as the Tuta, captured many and that one of their captives ‘was a young chief [sic]’, Mirambo. Omer-Cooper’s identification of Mirambo was erratic, as it is absolutely clear that Mbula was not a chief when he was captured, neither was he called Mirambo at that point. His narrative however corroborates that from oral sources in respect of the fact that the young man ‘was [then] trained in Ngoni fighting methods and learnt their language ...’, but later on ‘escaped and began building up a following of his own’.51 Other details are provided in an account written in 1878 by the missionary J.B. Thomson, as he narrates: As a boy the Chief [Mirambo] was brought up among the Wangoni or Watuta. By the way there are some of them here just now and they speak

48 Interview with Mpangala, Dar es Salaam, 4 November, 2017.

49 Interview with Chief MsagataFundikira, Tabora, 27 October, 2017.

50 According to Chief Fundikira, whose testimony corroborates with Kabeya’s written account, Mbula acquired the name Mirambo after he had become a renowned fighter and conqueror. It is a Nyamwezi name for corpses, referring to his devastating attacks on his enemies.

51 Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath, 74. 216 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1

[isi]Zulu and I can converse with them. Mirambo can also speak Kingoni and I can converse with him. We have had many conversations together on religion and morals.52 It is therefore clear that one of the earliest episodes in the history of the Ngoni involvement in Unyamwezi was the capture and military training of Mbula, who became one of the best-known leaders of the Nyamwezi in the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet it is notable that except for the few sources cited here, other accounts of Mirambo’s life and his military activities do not include the story about his capture and his stay with the Ngoni.53 These include the account by John Kabeya (Mirambo’s biographer and enthusiast) which indicates that Mirambo spoke the Ngoni language well.54 Such mastery of the language can only be the result of a considerably long and cordial contact between him and the Ngoni. The reason for this silence on Mirambo’s capture by the Ngoni can only be a matter for speculation, which is hardly relevant in the context of the present discussion. The second well-known encounter between the Ngoni and Mirambo took place in Tabora. Hatchell writes that in about 1870, Mirambo and Mtambalika, the leader of the Ngoni, joined forces and launched an attack on the Arabs of Tabora. The Arabs had organised an expedition against Mirambo and the Ngoni. Corroborating this narrative, the historian Omer-Cooper reports that during the clash, Stanley fought on the side of the Arabs and that ‘he [Stanley] was lucky to escape unharmed, for his companions were defeated’ because ‘Tabora was sacked and five of the leading Arabs killed’.55 In providing further details of the event, the historian Norman Bennet reports that of the 2000 warriors in the joint force, 1000 were Ngoni warriors who had come to assist Mirambo.56These figures are probably exaggerated, but the impression created regarding the magnitude of the Ngoni’s involvement in the war is almost certainly correct. According to Hatchell, the decisive battle was fought in a place called Issasa Magazi.57 The victory was, however, short-lived, because the Arab forces soon reorganised, retaliated and defeated the allied forces. Hatchell reports that sometime after this incident, Mtambalika ‘retired to Bugomba’, where, as already noted, he died and was buried.58 What happened to the relationship between the two allies shortly after the defeat by Arab forces is unclear from the available sources. It is however apparent in the oral sources that, for quite some time, Mirambo had many Ngoni warriors among his troops, popularly known

52 University of London, Archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies (hereafter SOAS), CWM/LMS Central Africa/Incoming Correspondence, Box 1, J.B. Thomson, Letter to Rev. Joseph Mullens D.D., 4 August 1878.

53 Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’, 75, notes somewhat vaguely that ‘Mirambo probably spent part of his youth among the Ngoni in Bugomba’.

54 Kabeya, Mtemi Mirambo,75.

55 Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath, 75.

56 Cited by Kabeya, MtemiMirambo, 28.

57 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 70.

58 Ibid. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 217 as the rugaruga. During oral history interviews, one informant highlighted that, at one point in time, Mirambo put some of his Ngoni warriors in two major camps in Usumbwa, specifically in Bulangwa in the Ushirombo chieftaincy and in Busonge in Bugomba.59 According to this oral account, Mirambo settled some of his Ngoni warriors in these camps in order to strengthen his influence and control over the surrounding areas. The narrative further indicates that the Ngoni who were initially settled in these two camps later migrated to Bugomba. The informant just referred to above argued convincingly on the authenticity of his account, saying that it camefrom a testimony by one Lilanga Kafuku, a rugaruga fighter in Chief Lutege Nkulu’s troops. He also noted that Chief Lutege was himself a very close friend of Mirambo’s.60 Meanwhile, it is well-documented that Mirambo continued to be the Arabs’ greatest foe until his death in 1884. This was because he maintained efforts to put the caravan trade under his control. It has also been asserted that during the heydays of Mirambo’s cooperation with the Ngoni, he married Mtambalika’s sister,61 and fathered a son wth her.62 But he soon had the boy killed in fear of possible Ngoni influence in the royal succession dynamics.63 It is said that Mirambo fell out with Mtambalika not long afterwards. According to one oral account, this happened because Mtambalika was angered by Mirambo’skilling of his nephew.64 This account is, however, contradicted by Mirambo’s biographer, John Kabeya, who writes that the friendly relations between the two former allies came to an end when the Ngoni stole Mirambo’s cattle.65 Both accounts are plausible and it can be argued that one or both of these events caused the breakup of their alliance. There might also have been other unrevealed reasons. In any case, it is certain that by the early 1880s, the Ngoni had become one of Mirambo’s greatest enemies. This is expressed most strongly in a diary entry by the missionary Fr. Simeon Lourdel, who writes that at this time Mirambo sought to establish peace and order in Unyamwezi so that ‘traders’ and ‘tourists/travellers’ could move freely through the territory. He also notes that in order to succeed in this mission, Mirambo fought the Ngoni and their Nyamwezi supporters ‘who had the habit of looting trade goods’.66 In line with this, Kabeya elaborates that in the early 1880s Mirambo was engaged in a prolonged battle with his maternal uncle, Kapela,

59 Interview with Mwobahe, 24 December, 2017.

60 Interview with Mwobahe, 24 December, 2017.

61 Some sources, such as Ebner, The History of the Ngoni,61, mention ‘daughter’ in place of ‘sister’, but all oral sources accessible to this author maintained that Mirambo married Mtambalika’s sister and not his daughter.

62 Interview with Chief Fundikira, 27 October, 2017; Kabeya, MtemiMirambo, also reports on the marriage but says nothing on the birth and killing of the male child.

63 Interview with Chief Fundikira, 27 October, 2017.

64 Interview with Kazina, 29 December, 2017.

65 Kabeya, Mtemi Mirambo,71.

66 Quoted in Kabeya, Mtemi Mirambo,63. 218 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 and that during this battle the Ngoni came along and supported Kapela.67 The participation of the Ngoni in the battle made Mirambo withdraw temporarily and his uncle took all the booty Mirambo had obtained during the war.68 Kabeya’s account further emphasises that Mirambo experienced prolonged ill health in 1883 and 1884. As a result of this condition, he often allowed his forces to be led by his brother, Mpandashalo, who was, however, not as good at war as Mirambo himself. This meant that his forces were frequently defeated in encounters with the Ngoni.69 Yet, even as Mirambo’s health continued to deteriorate in 1884, the Ngoni remained one of his biggest enemies, for they continued to support his uncle, Kapela. Shortly before his death on 2 December 1884, Mirambo was forced to call upon one of his allies, Chief Ntinginya of Busongo, to come and assist him in the war against his uncle. Because Chief Ntiginya had been in touch with the Maasai, who had helped him in his previous wars with the Taturu in what is today central Tanzania, he came along with these warriors. According to a seemingly exaggerated and yet informative diary entry by Father Lourdel, the military encounter on that occasion had devastating effects on the Ngoni. One hundred Ngoni warriors were massacred, decapitated and their heads taken to Mirambo along with 120 shields and several head dresses.70 The oral accounts collected in Ushirombo, Bukombe District, which is one of the best-known places where Ngoni descendants in north-western Tanzania live at present, show consistently that at this point, the Ngoni became weak and stopped raiding other societies in the region.71 However, this assertion contradicts another assertion by Norman Bennett, that in 1890 Mirambo’s heir, Mpandashalo, died while fighting Ngoni forces. Bennett appears to have obtained this historical account from German archival sources. Bennett further notes that during the fighting, a German expedition led by Emin Pasha was in Tabora. After they had heard about the death of Mpandashalo, Emin Pasha and his expedition intervened in the war and installed Mirambo’s son as ruler of Urambo.72 In a related account by Ebner, in 1890 a German Lieutenant Langheld commanded a convoy of 70 askaris and 2000 Urambo warriors against the Ngoni.73 They fought intensely for four days, but finally the Ngoni were defeated. This is apparently how the long-term military engagements between the Ngoni and Mirambo, as allies and as foes, ended in the late nineteenth century. It can, therefore, be argued that as was the case elsewhere in Africa, the internally generated economic and political developments of the nineteenth century in what is now north-western Tanzania were eventually halted by European colonisation and

67 Ibid., 65.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid., 67.

70 Quoted by Kabeya, MtemiMirambo, 72.

71 Interviews with Bernard Kazina, Ushirombo, 28 December, 2017; Buledi Mkosa, Ushirombo, 28 December, 2017; and Mianda Mabuga, Ushirombo, 29 December, 2017.

72 Bennett, cited in Kabeya, MtemiMirambo,79.

73 Ebner, The History of the Ngoni, 61. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 219 administrative control. From then onwards, new dynamics arising from the colonial political economy and political hegemony took shape and began to impact differently the lives of the people in the region. It is worth reflecting on the significance of the encounters between the Ngoni and Mirambo. An important point that should be made in this regard is that for over forty years, the Ngoni interacted vigorously with other African societies in north-western Tanzania. These interactions must have resulted in mutual influence between the Ngoni and those they encountered in their northward and westward movement. Much has been written about the people in central and eastern Africa learning and adopting Ngoni fighting skills and tactics. The encounters between Mtambalika’s Ngoni and Mirambo’sforces seem to reaffirm this assertion. This follows from Mirambo’s capture, grooming and subsequent ascent to power and influence through warfare. The dialectical character of these encounters is, however, not often emphasised. The fact that initially the Ngoni worked hand in hand with Mirambo’s forces against Arab traders in Tabora is an indication of some mutuality in the relationship between the two groups. Similarly, Mirambo’s killing of his son signifies a strong influence of the Ngoni on the Nyamwezi politics of royal succession, while the noted association between this incident and the breakdown of the good relationship between the Ngoni and Mirambo’s forces is clear evidence of some mutuality and the changing internal dynamics in the relationship between the two groups. Perhaps of greater significance in our discussion is the fact that in their ventures after the death of King Zwangendaba, the Ngoni who moved northwards from Ufipa sometimes had devastating experiences. This is best illustrated by their encounter with Maasai warriors in the war between Mirambo’s and his uncle’s forces, during which many of the Ngoni warriors were killed. Such historical incidents are seldom included in the accounts on the history of the Ngoni in central and eastern Africa. The story as presented here also contrasts the way the Ngoni and their activities are portrayed, especially by European travellers. Stanley, for instance, writes: The Watuta [Ngoni who proceeded northwards from Ufipa] became separated from the Mafitte (the rest of Zwangendaba’s Ngoni) by an advance in search of plunder and cattle. They carried war and bloodshed over a vast extent of country, as may be seen by a glance at a map of Central Africa.74 In this quotation, Stanley puts emphasis on the phenomenal and devastating nature of the Ngoni’s movement as they trekked northwards. A little later, in the same spirit and a much more amplified tone, the missionary W.A. Elmslie wrote: We see before us a horde of barbarians, their faces set to the north, who, over hundreds and hundreds of miles, are to spread death and desolation ere [sic] the Gospel comes to them to make them new men.75

74 Quoted by Elmslie, ‘Among the Wild Ngoni’.

75 Elmslie, ‘Among the Wild Ngoni’. 220 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1

Juhani Koponen gives a sound critique of this manner of rendering the Ngoni experience, noting that ‘...the picture of Ngoni hordes sweeping from Natal to Lake Nyanza while overrunning and destroying vast tracts of central Africa is greatly oversimplified’.76 As illustrated in part by the historical narrative on the interactions between the Ngoni of Mpangalala and Mirambo, such generalisation lacks the details of the actual Ngoni experiences, which included not only victories and triumphs but also setbacks and devastating losses. It is also significant that the experiences of the Ngoni in western and north- western Tanzania were of continental significance. In the preceding section, mention was made of their encounter with the people of Urundi which is located beyond the borders of present-day Tanzania. The fight between the Ngoni and the Maasai warriors in the battle between Mirambo and his uncle, Kapera, illustrates even further the complexity of the Ngoni’s interactions with other societies in central and eastern Africa. As John Kabeya narrates, earlier the Maasai warriors had fought wars with the Taturu in the south of the territory that was under Mirambo. It is also known that the Maasai had waged wars in southern and central Tanzania, and that in the nineteenth century, their territory extended as far to the north of the area now referred to as central Kenya. Adding to this complex picture, Andrew Burton notes that the majority of the Ngoni in central and eastern Africa ‘were Ngoni in name and behaviour rather than by descent’, emphasising that they ‘consisted of a mixture of polities men recruited from prisoners of war taken in the course of their migrations ...’.77 This shows that the Ngoni themselves were a complex group, comprised partly of people who originated from various regions of southern, central and eastern Africa. These hints illuminate the fact that the Ngoni’s dealings in what is today north-western Tanzania were part of a broader process of political and demographic transformations going on in central and eastern Africa during the second half of the nineteenth century. They also strengthen the rationale for considering Ngoni’s incursions into and migration to this region largely as an internally driven process rather than as an external intrusion.

The Ngoni in Kahama There are conflicting accounts on how the Ngoni who reached north-western Tanzania eventually stopped raiding and settled in the region. Writing in 1929, Johnson narrates that having defeated the Ngoni, Mirambo made them his citizens and gave them a country (then known as Ugala)in which to settle.78A related historical account is the one referred to above, which asserts that the earliest Ngoni settlers in north-western Tanzania were Ngoni warriors in Mirambo’s army, those whom he put in strategic areas in the region to enhance the security of his expanding sphere

76 Koponen, People and Production in Late Precolonial Tanzania. 78.

77 Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’, 69.

78 Johnson, Zamani Mpaka Siku Hizi,100. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 221 of influence.79 The fundamental difference between the two narratives is that, while the first account highlights Mirambo’s benevolence towards his exhausted and now harmless former enemies, the second emphasises continued deployment of Ngoni warriors, but now as a firewall against possible threats against Mirambo’s continued influence and power in the region. In both cases, the independent Ngoni agency is lost from the narrative once and for all. In his book, the historian Kabeya first affirms the point made by Johnson,80 but critiques it later. As mentioned above, he cites Norman Bennett to support his argument that until the advent of German intervention in 1890, the Ngoni were still fighting the Nyamwezi who were now under the leadership of Mpandashalo. Oral accounts by some of the Ngoni currently living among the Sumbwa in Ushirombo are unclear on this issue, as none of the respondents provided a coherent narrative on how the Ngoni eventually came to settle among the Sumbwa and Nyamwezi. However, it is worth recalling the point made earlier, namely that the Ngoni arrived in the region before Mirambo rose to power. With this understanding, we can provide a twofold explanation of how they came to settle among the Sumbwa and the Nyamwezi. On one hand, it seems reasonable to argue that after operating in Unyamwezi and Usumbwa for some years, the Ngoni settled first at Runzewe in the north of present-day Ushirombo. According to Hetchell’s account, it was from here that the Ngoni conducted raids against the surrounding societies and those in Usukuma. This might have been the context within which the Ngoni captured the young Mirambo and incorporated him in their raiding force. It was probably also in the same period and context that Mirambo, having gained power and influence, asked the Ngoni to assist him in a battle against the Arabs of Tabora. He recruited Ngoni warriors into his army and married the sister of the Ngoni leader of the time, Mtambalika. As noted above, there is insufficient information on how and why the ties between the Ngoni and Mirambo eventually broke up. On the other hand, as briefly noted above, it is clear that at some point in time, Mirambo settled a large number of his Ngoni warriors in camps located within Usumbwa. There is uncertainty on whether this happened when Mirambo was still in good terms with the Ngoni in general or after the relations had turned sour. On the basis of the account Hatchell provides, it can, however, be argued that Mirambo’s placing of his Ngoni warriors in the camps at Bulungwa and Busonge happened sometime after the Ngoni had entered Usumbwa and settled at Runzewe. It is certain that the initial Ngoni settlement in Runzewe happened sometime before the protracted battle between Mirambo and his uncle, which forced Mirambo to solicit support from the Maasai warriors to fight the Ngoni who were supporting his uncle. In the final analysis, it seems that there were at least two instances of Ngoni settlement in Usumbwa and Unyamwezi in the wider Kahama area: the earlier settlement at Runzewe and the later placement of the Ngoni warriors at Bulungwa and Busonga

79 Interview with Benedict Mwobahe, MusekiVillage, Kahama, 24 December, 2017.

80 Kabeya, MtemiMirambo,71. 222 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 by Mirambo. As already mentioned, the group that initially settled in Runzewe eventually moved to other regions and settled in those areas in comparatively smaller communities. Yet, one cannot rule out the possibility that there were other Ngoni groups that settled in the region under different circumstances. How the Ngoni in these groups related to each other, and the way in which they interacted with the communities in Usumbwa and Unyamwezi, is yet to be researched. Nonetheless, even with the considerable amount of uncertainty concerning the manner in which the Ngoni eventually came to settle in the region under discussion, one issue is certain. Whereas at the time of German colonisation of the region at least one Ngoni group was still actively involved in wars, that activity stopped when the region fell under effective colonial control in the early 1890s. What happened to the Ngoni who were still in the region at the time is well summarised by Johnson: Thereafter, the Watuta [the Ngoni who moved northwards after Zwangendaba’s death] dispersed and were absorbed into various ethnic groups in the region. But a small group that exists deep in the country of the Wasumbwa has remained there till today [late 1920s]. These people now call themselves the Ngoni. They show more signs of having descended from the Zulu, Swazi and Matebele than others who have settled elsewhere in our country [colonial Tanganyika].81 As already mentioned, written accounts identify Runzewe as being the main settlement area of the Ngoni after they arrived in Unyamwezi and Usumbwa.82 This area is in the north-west of Ushirombo in the greater Kahama area which situated to the north-west of Tabora. The oral narratives collected from Ushirombo in 2017 portray Runzewe as a fairly large area that is in close proximity to what is today the Kigozi game reserve. In addition, many of the interlocutors in Ushirombo mentioned Ivuga as the specific place where the Ngoni had settled. Some of the respondents noted that Ivuga was a particular location in the Bungoni Hills, which are located to the south of the larger Runzewe area. Both oral and written sources agree that the Ngoni settled there before the establishment of the German colonial administration in the region. A few details of how the Ngoni lived in this area can be discerned from oral narratives. All such accounts indicate that from the beginning, the Ngoni who settled at Ivuga existed as a distinct ethnic group, even though they were in close proximity to the neighbouring Sumbwa communities. One interlocutor remembered the specific localities within Ivuga where the Ngoni lived: they were areas such as Bulele, Ishokela, Itandala and Kongendi.83 While in the hills, the Ngoni maintained some of the customs and traditions that defined them as a coherent group, including piercing of ear lobes, ancestor veneration and performance of traditional dances and ceremonies. In addition, oral traditions emphasising their southern African origins and the wars

81 Johnson, Zamani Mpaka Siku Hizi,100. See also Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanzania, 54.

82 Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath, 74 and 75.

83 Interview with Kazina, 28 December, 2017. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 223 they had fought as they moved northwards were passed down to their descendants. Oral accounts also indicate that the Ngoni settled at Ivuga for about three generations. According to one of the key respondents interviewed at Ushirombo, when the Ngoni inhabited this area they were under the leadership of Mtambalika.84 This corroborates Hatchell’s narrative given earlier, except that the latter mentions Bugomba, rather than Ivuga, as the settlement area. It is known that Bugomba is located some distance to the south-east of Runzewe and that it is a wide area rather than a small locality. Therefore, it seems that Hatchell’s account and the oral traditions collected during the present study refer to one and the same place, except that Hatchell is referring to a broad geographical area called Bugomba while oral respondents referred to a specific locality within the broader Bugomba area. In any case, it is certain that one group of Ngoni people eventually settled in the north-eastern part of the larger Kahama area, with Mtambalika as its first local leader. As previously noted, Mtambalika eventually died and was buried at Bugomba. He was succeeded by his son called Mpangalala (sometimes spelt as Mpangarara), who was in turn succeeded by his son Mtambalika II. During Hatchell’s research in the early 1930s, Mtambalika II was still the leader of the Ngoni of Bugomba.85 This implies that by the 1930s the Ngoni had resided in the original settlement area for nearly three generations. The genealogies collected during the present study from two descendants of the Ngoni now living in Ushirombo confirm this. One of them, Buledi Mkosa (aged 80+) narrates that his grandfather, Buledi, was one of the first Ngoni to move from Ivuga to an open landscape located in the south-east. Another interlocutor, Bernard Kazina, to whom reference was made earlier, provides the genealogy of the leading clan among the Ngoni at the time of their stay in Ivuga. He mentions three succeeding leaders: Mtambalika, Kabaka and Kaminzula, which suggest the Ngoni had a continuous stay of three generations in the region. According to this account, Kaminzula, the grandson of Mtambalika, was one of the many Ngoni who moved from Ivuga in the late 1920s and settled in areas to the south-east of this area.86 The interlocutors invariably said that while Ivuga was a rather bushy or forested area, the regions to which the Ngoni moved in the 1920s were more open. Interestingly, the historical narrative about people moving from a bushy landscape to more open areas is in line with a particular set of events in the general history of colonial Tanganyika in the 1920s and early 1930s. John Iliffe writes that during this period the British authorities took serious measures against the spread of tsetse fly and sleeping sickness, which at one stage included moving ‘men into settlements large enough to prevent bush regeneration, leaving the remaining land to tsetse until natural population growth permitted re-colonisation’.87 In addition, respondents in Ushirombo provided details of what happened at Ivuga in connection with the

84 Interview with Kazina, 28 December, 2017.

85 Hatchell, ‘The Abangoni of Tanganyika Territory’, 70.

86 Interview with Kazina, 27 December, 2017.

87 Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanzania, 271. 224 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 campaign to control the tsetse infestation. They indicated that during this period, the bushy area where the Ngoni and their Sumbwa neighbours had settled was made shamba la bibi, literally translated as ‘grandmother’s farm’. By that they meant that the area was given to the Queen of England to control and own as her personal property.88 This is how the eviction measure relating to the colonial tsetse control campaign was locally interpreted. According to the narratives, the Ngoni who had settled in Ivuga initially objected to the eviction order because they were not promised another area in which to settle. They were worried that this would lead to complete disintegration of their community and the end of the Ngoni as a coherent cultural and social group. However, colonial government’s pressure on them persisted, and this made their resistance short-lived. The Ngoni soon began to move to other areas. In this connection, the interlocutors recited a tradition handed down orally from that time, saying that as the Ngoni left Ivuga, a spontaneous, rather pessimistic expression arose among them. They took to saying: ‘Tiyambe, tiyambe ... Bungoni bupalile...’According to one respondent, the expression can be loosely translated as: ‘Let’s go, let’s go... The Ngoni country is no more ...’.89 The translation in isiZulu reads; ‘Asihambe, asihambe…ubuNguni buphelile’. The relationship between the languages is obvious and emphasises the cultural connectedness of the Tanzanian group with their South African kith and kin. As noted above, the Ngoni left the forested area for the Ushirombo area, a more open area. According to oral accounts, some of the localities they settled in within Ushirombo were Ukune, Ikuzi and Sekwe. One large Ngoni community subsequently moved farther south and settled at Malunda. Following recent infrastructure developments in the area, this place is now in the vicinity of the Kahama–Bukoba highway and has been renamed ‘Strabag,’ after the company that constructed the highway.

Ngoni communities after eviction from Ivuga According to oral accounts, the Ngoni who moved from Ivuga became a much weaker and more disintegrated people. They settled in various places in present- day Usumbwa in much smaller communities than had previously been the case. In most instances, they lived in small clusters of Ngoni families. The group that settled initially in the Ushirombo area, for example, comprised about twenty families.90 The rate of intermarriage between them and the larger Sumbwa society that surrounded them soon increased rapidly and their integration into Sumbwa society gained greater momentum than ever before.91 Yet their identity as descendants of the people from southern Africa is recognised to date.

88 Interviews with BulediMkosamali, Ushirombo, 27 December 2017; Kazina, 28 December, 2017; and Mabuga, 29 December, 2017.

89 Interview with Kazina, 27 December, 2017.

90 Interview with Mabuga, 29 December 2017.

91 Interview with Mwalimu Sylvester Konde, Ushirombo, 28 December 2017; and Mabuga, 29 December 2017. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 225

Politically, as soon as the Ngoni moved from Ivuga, they lost their autonomy and became part of the Sumbwa chiefdoms in whose territories they had settled. While in Ushirombo, the larger society they belonged to was under the control of a Sumbwa chief known as Kizozi. According to oral narratives, the Ngoni did what their Sumbwa neighbours were doing in the area. For example, they worked on the chief ’s farms, just as his Sumbwa subjects did.92 Socially, however, their relations with the neighbouring Sumbwa families were sometimes uneasy. According to one testimony, when Ngoni children wandered into a predominantly Sumbwa locality they risked being beaten up; the same was true for Sumbwa children whose daily wanderings led them accidentally into the heart of a Ngoni cluster.93 It is unclear from oral accounts how long these relatively uneasy relations lasted, but no traces of such tensions existed at the time when this research project was conducted. In the cultural realm, the Ngoni made efforts to sustain some of their customary practices. For a while they maintained the custom of piercing men’s and women’s ear lobes, but the custom soon faded out as it is now also the case in KwaZulu-Natal. At the time, when the author carried out this research not a single expression of this culture could be spotted. Initially, the Ngoni also endeavoured to sustain some of their traditional songs and dances, including a song with the phrase ‘Sinda dadi wasinda’, literally translated as ‘My brother, you have survived [the war]’.94However, the Ngoni continued to cherish cultural traditions that linked them to their Zulu ancestry, which they identified with closely, even if they had only faint memories of that link. According to an oral testimony, Misri Kabaka, the grandson of MtambalikaII, was one of the descendants of the Ngoni who grew up in the Ushirombo area. He received some schooling at a mission school and imbibed certain aspects of western culture. Yet it is still remembered that he often demonstrated some ability to perform the vigorous Zulu dance that involves jumping and lifting one’s feet to a level above one’s head. One respondent testified that Misri would do the steps so energetically that pens fell from his breast pocket. Since he was a member of the former nobility, the people in his company picked up the pens respectfully and gave them back to him.95 Another example of how the descendants of the Ngoni of Ushirombo still cherish their southern African origin relates to their keeping of cultural relics associated with the military might they were so well known for during their northward movement. Such relics are difficult to come by today, but one elderly respondent was enthusiastic about displaying a club, a spear, a stool and a bow. He clarified that save for the spear, which he himself had made, the instruments he displayed were made by his father while he was still living in Ivuga.96 Despite the traces of Ngoni’s cultural resilience mentioned above, it is clear that the surviving descendants of the Ngoni in north-western Tanzania have largely

92 Interview with Mabuga, 29 December 2017.

93 Interview with Mabuga, 29 December 2017.

94 Interview with Kazima, 28 December 2017.

95 Interview with Mkosamali, 28 December 2017.

96 Interview with Kazina, 29 December 2017. 226 The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 8, Part 1 lost their Ngoni affinity and identity. Certainly, this loss began while they were still at Ivuga. But evidently this process escalated after they moved to other areas and continued to split into smaller groups. The British tsetse fly control campaign, which involved moving people into concentrated settlements, was another important factor for the decline of the cohesion and identity of the Ngoni in north-western Tanzania. However, this was only one of several factors for their disintegration. According to the interlocutors, the major factor for the weakening of their cultural heritage was the villagisation campaign of the mid-1970s. As is well known, during this campaign, rural populations were forced to relocate to areas chosen by the Tanzanian government without scant regard for their cultural, political or social bonds. This was the final blow to the formal ethnic politics which the British indirect rule system had nurtured and exploited for both administrative and imperialist purposes. The long- term outcome was seen in the character and lifestyles prevalent among the Ngoni encountered in Ushirombo during the fieldwork the author conducted in 2017. While they proudly identified themselves as Ngoni or descendants of the Ngoni, only one of those encountered when conducting interviews could speak the Ngoni language of isiZulu fluently. None of them said they were still involved in the veneration of Ngoni ancestors, or displayed any other Ngoni cultural traits. Above all, due to the long- term intermarriages with their neighbours, they are all of mixed Ngoni and Sumbwa descent. In short, the process that began with frequent raids and fierce military encounters between the Ngoni and the people in the region during the second half of the nineteenth century has culminated in an almost total disappearance of the Ngoni as a political and cultural entity in the area. Tracing the history of gradual disintegration of the Ngoni of Mtambalika and Mpangalala, Omer-Cooper reports that whereas in 1931 the colonial government considered the Ngoni a separate group in what was the Kahama district, in the 1948 census they were not counted as such and by the mid-1960s, they had ceased to appear on the ‘tribal map’ of Tanganyika.97 It is worth emphasising that in this account Omer-Cooper writes about the ‘Tuta’, which is the name often used by early European writers with reference to the Ngoni of Mtambalika and Mpangalala. The comment does not apply to the other Ngoni groups in colonial Tanzania.

Conclusion This chapter has attempted to provide a regional perspective of the Ngoni involvement in the history of eastern Africa, specifically in the area known today as western and north-western Tanzania. It has positioned the Ngoni’s movement and interaction with other people in the region within the broader regional demographic, political and economic dynamics of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, the chapter commences with the assertion that the involvement of the Ngoni in present-day Tanzania, including the region discussed in this essay, is better understood as a

97 Omer-Cooper, The Zulu Aftermath, 75. The Ngoni in western and north-western Tanzania 227 regional or continental phenomenon rather than as an external intrusion into the societies concerned. The regional perspective is explained by making reference to the dynamic and changing nature of all the societies in central and eastern Africa during the nineteenth century. It is argued that the Ngoni were an integral part of those dynamics, even though they originally came from an area which is now called KwaZulu-Natal in the Republic of South Africa. This is, however, not to discount or belittle the phenomenal character of the movement in question, especially as defined by the Ngoni’s coverage of a vast territory which extends from southern to eastern Africa in just over one generation. A larger part of the chapter attempts to provide a more coherent account of Ngoni involvement in the area now constituting western and north-western Tanzania. Despite the acute scarcity of sources, and the contradictions revealed by those which do exist, considerable achievement has been made in pursuance of this objective. Important highlights in this chapter include the early raiding missions in areas to the east of Lake Tanganyika, including Ukimbu, Upimbwi, Ukonongo and Ukabende. These raids were then followed by others over areas further north, including Uvinza and Ujiji. It was during this phase that the Ngoni gained a short-lived victory in a clash with Arabs in Ujiji. From there, they moved onward to Uha and Urundi, where they suffered at least one defeat, after which they travelled eastwards and encountered the Nyamwezi in areas to the north-west of Tabora. The Ngoni then settled in Runzewe. From there, they raided people in the neighbouring areas, including those living in areas close to Lake Victoria, such as Uzinza, Usukuma and Usuwi. This is also the period during which the Ngoni encountered Mirambo, first as an ally and later as a long term foe. Besides providing a coherent narrative of Ngoni involvement in western and north-western Tanzania, this chapter adds to our understanding of the political and demographic dynamics in this region during the nineteenth century. Knowledge about the political history of the region was previously dominated by accounts of Mirambo’s incursions into neighbouring societies, and Isike’s struggles against the colonisation of his empire by the Germans.98 This analysis therefore adds to the knowledge of what can be termed the ‘Ngoni factor’ in the region, proving that it was a dynamic force on which the mainstream historiography of the region has thus far been silent. As demonstrated above, Ngoni involvement in the region had clear political repercussions. This is illustrated by the capture of Mirambo by the Ngoni during their early incursions into Unyamwezi, the military defeat of the Arabs in Tabora during a joint attack by the Ngoni and Mirambo’s forces and shifting of the balance of power between Mirambo and his uncle after the Ngoni entered the war. In addition, the presence of the Ngoni in the region was the sole reason for the military involvement of the Maasai in the area at a time when they were not part of the historical dynamics in north-western Tanzania. Thus, although the Ngoni did not establish a kingdom or an empire in western and north-western Tanzania, their activities constitute an important chapter in the region’s history.

98 See, for instance, Roberts, ‘Political Change in the Nineteenth Century’, 72–82. Moderna, 1985): 21 : Herói da Resistência à Ocupação Colonial. (Maputo: Empresa (Maputo: Empresa à Ocupação da Resistência Colonial. Ngungunhane : Herói Histórico. DNPP e Arquivo Source:

Prison of King Ngungunhane and fusilage of Manhune and Quêto.