East Africa: diplomacy and defiance - a continent resists colonization

UNESCO Courier, May, 1984 by Henry Mwanzi

The colonialist scramble for east Africa was three-pronged, involving, as it did, three competing powers: the Sultanate of Zanzibar, Germay and Britain. The first on the scene were the Arabs who operated from Zanzibar. Their interests both on the coast and in the interior were largely commercial, revolving around the trade in slaves and ivory. Before the 1880s and 1890s, these Arabs and Swahili traders were content to operate from the coast. But during the closing decades of the last century, Arab interests in the interior of east Africa began to be threatened by German and British interests that had been steadily penetrating the area. In the face of this, the Arabs attempted to take political control of some areas in order to protect their commercial concessions.

The Europeans in the inerior included traders and missionaries, all of whom wanted the occupation of east Africa by their home governments in order to provide them with security as well as a free hand to carry out their enterprises without hindrance.

The methods of European advance varied from place to place. But, on the whole, they were characterized by the use of force combined with, where it was possible, diplomatic alliances with one group against another. The African response to all this was both military and diplomatic, though at times there was withdrawal or non-cooperation or passivity.

The coastal people of Tanganyika organized their resistance around the person and leadership of Abushiri. Socially, the coast of Tanganyika, as of Kenya, was dominated by Shahili and Islamic culture. Here existed a mixed population of Arabs and Africans who intermarried freely and carried out local trade.

In the nineteenth century, the coastal Arabs increased their activities in the interior in response to increased demand for ivory and slaves. The result of this flourishing trade was that many towns sprang up along the coast. The coming of the Germans threatened this trade which they sought to supplant with their own. The local populations, especially the Arabs, resented this and organized a resistance.

Abushiri, the leader, was born in 1845 of an Arab father and a Galla mother. He was a descendant of one of the first Arab settlers on the coast who came to regard themselves as local people. Like many others, he opposed the influence of the Sultanate of Zanzibar on the coast and even advocated independence. As a young man, he had organized expeditions into the interior to trade in ivory. From the profits made, he bought himself a farm and planted sugar cane.

Under his leadership, the coastal people fired on a German warship at Tanga in Septemeber 1888 and then gave the Germans two days to leave the coast. They later attacked Kilwa and killed two Germans there and then attacked Bagamoyo with 8,000 men on 22 September. But the Germans who termed this "the Arab revolt" sent out Hermann von Wissmann. He reached Zanzibar in April 1889, attacked Abushiri in his fortress near Bagamoyo and drove him out. Abushiri escaped northwards to Uzigua where he was betrayed and handed over to the Germans who hanged him at Pangani on 15 December 1889. The coastal resistance finally collapsed when Kilwa was bombarded and taken by the Germans in May 1890.

The Germans, like the British in Kenya, were practiced in the art of divide and rule by allying with one group against another. There were many such allies. The Marealle and the Kibanga near the Tanganyikan mountains of Kilimanjaro and Usambara were, to name but two examples, among those who saw in the Germans an opportunity to make friends in order to defeat their enemies. These people, like others such as the Wanga in Kenya, believed that they were using the Germans than perhaps they realized. The Arabs on coast, however, were firmly in the employ of the British in Kenya and they provided the first local personnel in the service of imperialism.

A similar pattern of response to British colonialism took place in Uganda. The period between 1891 and 1899 saw a clash between the forces of Kabarega, the King of Bunyoro and those of Lugard and other British agents. After some clashes in which his forces were defeated, Kabarega turned to diplomacy, Twice he attempted to come to terms with Lugard, but the latter would not contenance these gestures. Mwanga, the Kabaka of Buganda, at times tried to intercede on behalf of the Bunyoro King but to no avail. Eventually, Kabarega resorted to guerilla warfare, probably the first of its kind in East Africa. He withdrew from Bunyoro to the Lango country in the north from where he harassed British forces time and again.

One of the British officials occupying Bunyoro at the time, Thurston, commented: "Kabarega was at his old tricks-- giving every possible trouble but never standing up for a fair fight, preferring to pursue his favourite methods of assassination. Kabarega caused poison to be given to a friendly chief and he died, but I have had the poisoner killed".

What Thurston says here is a perfect example of guerilla tactics, of withdrawing to a neighbouring contry in order to harass occupying forces in one's own country. Kabarega was later joined in Lango by Mwanga, but their hide-out was stormed in 1899 and both kings were captured and taken to Kisimayu where Mwanga died in 1903.