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I arrived in Tanganyika Territory in May 1927, only some
50 years from the time of Livingstone, Stanley and the Arab slave trade.
In 1885 the country came under German colonial rule. This lasted
effectively for only some 30 years till the first world war of 1914-18.
A considerable part of this period was spent in putting down Arab and
Native rebellions, the last of which was the Maji-Maji uprising, so called
because the tribal witch doctors claimed that the sprinkling of
especially blessed water would give protection against German bullets.
During most of the period of German colonial rule, the country was under
military rule. Their District Headquarters - Bomas - were always
castellated, often towered forts, built as a precaution against possible
revolts. Under the military, native administration was carried out by
Government appointed Liwalis and Akidas, for they did not trust the
traditional Native rulers. Even when civil administration took over
under Baron von Rechenberg and Dr Schnee (Governors 1906-16 ), local
Government under Liwalis and Akidas continued, though there were
exceptions to the general pattern. Bukoba and Ruanda-Urundi, following
the example of Sir Frederick Lugard in Nigeria, were indirectly
administered by the local chiefs under German Residents. Mahenge, my
first station, one of the main centres of the Maji-Maji uprising, and
Iringa, the home of the Wahehe tribe, whose chief Mkwawa committed suicide
after leading a rebellion, that had in 1891 annihilated a German company
some 350 strong, remained under military rule. This period of civil
administration had only been in existence for some eight years when the
1914-18 war broke out. Throughout the whole of this war, Colonel Lettow
von Vorbeck maintained German resistance, his aim being to keep the German
flag flying in the face of superior British forces. This he did by rapid
retreats and forays, standing and fighting, if necessary, when too hard
pressed. He even made incursions into Portuguese East Africa and only
surrendered after November 11th 1918, when he was actually at Ndola in what was then
Northern Rhodesia.
I reached Dar-e -Salaam on May 29th 1927 on board the
Llandaff Castle on her maiden voyage - she was herself sunk during the
second world war in the Mozambique channel. On passing through the
narrow channel that led to the lagoon, on the north side of which lay Dar-es-
Salaam, we saw to our port the dredger that the Germans had sunk to
block the entry of British warships.
We anchored in the lagoon itself, as in those days there
was no dock or wharf deep enough for mail steamers, all cargo being landed
into barges by a lighterage company using the ship's own derricks.
Opposite the anchorage was the spired German Lutheran church and behind it
the one hotel, originally the Kaiserhof now rechristened the New Africa.
A broad road ran between the two, leading southwards to the railway
station and northwards to the European Hospital, Government House and the
sea. This latter building had been built by the Germans in the Moorish
style, bombarded by the British in 1916 and then repaired by them in the
original fashion. Another road ran in front of the Lutheran church
alongside the lagoon to the High Court and the Secretariat, both housed in
German two storied buildings facing the narrow harbour entrance. The
town, in fact, had hardly altered at all since German times.
The Germans had built a railway from Dar-es-Salaam to
Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika, following more or less the old Arab slave route
from Bagamoyo north of Dar-es-Salaam on the coast to Ujiji just south of
Kigoma. The Crown Prince Wilhelm had been due to open the line in 1914,
but the outbreak of the 1914-18 war gave him other duties. To house him
and his staff the Germans had built two large identical buildings at
Tabora and Kigoma, both called the Kaiserhof. I was District
Commissioner, Kigoma, from 1948-51 and the Kaiserhof was the District
Commissioner's residence. My wife remarked to some of the local Africans
how fine and lofty the Kaiserhof building was. They replied "Yes, but
many Africans died on the job". I was stationed at Tabora in 1939 during the first year of the second world war. The Kaiserhof at Tabora had
become a hotel. By a strange coincidence in 1939 a bag of Tabora
sovereigns was dug up by a local African in the grounds of that hotel.
He took it to the District Office. The sovereigns were treated as
"Treasure Trove" and the finder received his due reward. These
sovereigns had been manufactured at Tabora during the period 1914-16, when
Tabora was the administrative capital of German East Africa at a time when
the country was cut off from the Fatherland by the British blockade. The
sovereigns were manufactured from gold mined at Sekenke at the eastern end
of the Werabere steppe, some hundred miles to the north-east of Tabora.
They bore on one side the figure of an elephant and, on the other, as far
as I remember, a mango tree. Presumably they had been buried by the
Germans prior to its capture by the Belgians in September, 1916.
To reach my first station Mahenge, I had a 120 mile foot
safari south from the nearest railway station, Kilosa, 160 miles west of
Dar-es-Salaam. I did the journey with porters, travelling some 15 miles
a day. These porters earned 50 cents a day plus their food, maize flour,
beans and salt. One shilling, the standard coin, was worth 100 cents.
The Africans did not refer to the 1 cent coin as a "centi" but as a
"heller", the "heller", though originally Austrian, being the lowest
German East African copper coin. The heller, like the Tanganyika cent,
had a hole through its centre, the Africans liking to thread a string
through the hole and carry a collection of such coins attached to their
garments by the string. The German silver coinage was beautiful, made of
pure silver with the Kaiser's head in an eagle crowned helmet on one side
and its value in rupees on the other. On our safari to Mahenge the
Africans we met would frequently greet us by saying a word that I took to
be "Morning". In was, in fact, the German "Morgen".
The Mahenge District office was, like all German Bomas,
a castellated fort. It lay on the western edge of the main area affected
by the Maji-Maji rebellion. There was a tree outside its east wall,
from which the Germnas were said to have hanged local chiefs, who had
participated in that uprising. In 1927 there was a half company of the
6th K.A. R. stationed at Mahenge with two British officers. Both were
keen on shooting elephant. On one such hunt the commanding officer found
a cache of boxes of bully beef left behind by a column of British troops
who, in 1916, were chasing a company of Germans and their African askari
in the Kilombero valley. When hard pressed Von Lettow's soldiers stood
and fought. The Mkasu area of the Mahenge district lay in the upper
waters of the Kilombero-Rufiji riverine system. It had been the scene of
one of their rearguard actions. On safari there I saw the remains of
some of their trenches. A year or two before I arrived at Mahenge, Von
Lettow had been allowed to return to give his ex-askari the back pay due
to them. I was told how they crowded around him to salute and shake his
hand. As already said, he had surrendered after the Armistice in
November, 1918 in what was then Northern Rhodesia and his remaining
troops, only 150 Germans and 1150 African askari strong, were interned
near the Kalambo Falls, the Kalambo river being the boundary between
Northern Rhodesia and German East Africa. I visited the area in 1934
when District Commissioner of the Ufipa District. The foot of the Falls,
where the Germans were interned, have revealed tools made by palaeolithic
man some 300,000 years ago. In 1934 they were the home of countless
Marabou stork.
To return to the boxes of bully beef, they were taken
into the K. A. R. store at Mahenge and given at times to friends of the
K.A.R. Officers. The Wapogoro of the Mahenge plateau kept cattle and
meat was available in the Mahenge market, but below the escarpment was
tsetse country with no cattle, So the tins of bully beef made excellent
and very welcome curry or hash. Care had to be taken before eating that
a tin was not blown, but surprisingly few in view of their age were in
that condition.
On Lake Tanganyika the Germans had two Headquarter
stations, Kigoma, railhead of the Central Line, and Bismarckburg near the
border with Northern Rhodesia. The Boma at Bismarckburg was the usual
castellated fort built on a promontory jutting out into the Lake. Under
the British it had ceased to be the District Headquarters, which had been
transferred first to Namamyere and then to Sumbawanga both on the Ufipa
plateau. There was a note in the Ufipa District Book that read"
"Bismarckburg was occupied by a British column under Colonel Murray on
8th June 1916, the small enemy garrison escaping by boat. Commander
Simson R. N. with captured German steamer KINGANI and two motor boats
arrived at Bismarckburg on 9th June. These boats were named FIFI, MIMI
and TOUTOU respectively".
These bald words conceal a most interesting story. The MIMI and TOUTOU
had been brought from England, landed at Cape Town and sent by train to
railhead 140 miles north of Elizabethville in the Belgian Congo, where
they arrived on 5th August, 1915. The two motor launches were then
dragged by two steam tractor engines, aided by oxen and manpower, through
untracked bush to the 15 mile stretch of rail that lead to the Lualaba
river, a tributary of the Congo. Thence they went by river steamer to
Kabalo, where a 175 mile length of recently completed rail took them to
the mouth of the Lukuga river at the end of October, 1915. Near the
mouth of the Lukuga the port of the future town of Albertville was being
constructed. This was the base from which the two motor launches
operated. On Boxing day, 1915 they badly damaged the German gunboat
KINGANI, really only an armed tug, as she was reconnoitring outside the
port. She surrendered. After being repaired and rearmed she was taken
over by the British as H. M. S FIFI. In February, 1916, the German HEDWIG
VON WISSMAN, three times larger than the ex-KINGANI, was sighted. The
British flotilla, aided by two Belgian boats, chased and sank her. There
remained the GRAF VON GOTZEN. She had been assembled at Kigoma in 1913,
the various parts, made in Papenburg-on-Ems, having been transferred there
from Hamburg via Dar-es-Salaam. In June, 1916, Belgian aeroplanes
attacked her with bombs and claimed to have damaged her. Whether this
was so or not, the Germans, having greased all the machinery, scuttled
her, hoping to refloat her after the war. But it was the British who
raised the GRAF VON GOTZEN, rechristened her the Liemba and put her on the
southward run from Kigoma to Mpulungu, the port for Abercorn in Northern
Rhodesia. She was wood burning and still was, when I travelled on her in
1934, when District Commissioner of Ufipa district.
I recall reading some letters to the Times which explained that after a refit in 1952 she was converted to an oil firing unit and later in 1970 was given a diesel engine. Still to this day the Liemba making the trip from Kigoma
to Mpulungu every fortnight with an extended run northwards to Burundi.
This gives her a life of over a century and still going strong. Can any other
vessel, ocean greyhound, merchant tramp or coaster match this record?
One reason for her long life, according to the Times correspondent, is
that, working in a fresh water lake, she would not rust like an ocean going ship.
African opinion varied as to the rival merits of German
and British administration. For instance, when I was stationed in the
Tanga District in 1936-37, a local chief told me that, under German rule,
anyone employed by a German, official or settler, could behave as he
liked. He could commit rape, theft or arson and no complaint was
possible. The British gave everyone a hearing. As an illustration he
told the story of a German settler, who put up a pole on his estate and
ordered every passer-by to say "Jambo"(Good Day) to the hat. The
chief, as a young man, had been a cattle trader and was passing by this
estate at the head of a herd of cattle. He had heard about the order and
duly bade the hat "Good Day". The lad, who was looking after the tail of
the herd, knew nothing of the order and was duly hauled off and given 25
lashes. Another story concerns Tukuyu, where the German Commandant, in answer to a question as to how law-abiding was his district, is alleged to
have put a bag of gold on the road outside his office. Next morning it
was still there. "That shows how fearful my natives are of the
consequences of stealing" he boasted with pride.
Yet some Africans seem to have appreciated the rough and
ready justice, which under German military rule was swift. Certainly in
Mahenge, if murder was committed, the culprit was hanged on the spot;
other crimes were punished by immediate flogging. Under the British the
punishment for severe crime was long delayed. Between arrest, committal
for trial, trial by the High Court, conviction, appeal and execution of
sentence, weeks even months could elapse. My Native Treasury clerk at
Musoma as late as 1947 was in no doubt. He had been brought up, educated
under the Germans, and spoke German. He was also addicted to the
consumption of Nubian gin and, in his cups, he let me know in no uncertain
terms how much he preferred the Germans.
In Ufipa district the Germans had constructed a road
from Bismarckburg on Lake Tanganyika to Neu Langenburg (Tukuyu) near Lake
Nyasa, along which, according to the Wamambwe through whose territory the
road ran, the Germans had used wheeled transport drawn by mules. I saw a
section of this road in 1934, while on safari in the area, which was close
to the Northern Rhodesian border. Though heavily overgrown owing to the
lapse of time, it had clearly been excellently constructed, paved with
stone and flanked at intervals with stone lined drains. The intervening
years since its construction had, however, wrought irreparable damage,
especially to the sections near Lake Tanganyika, and it was no longer
usable.
Alt Langenburg had been built by the Germans as their
nothernmost port on Lake Nyasa. For some reason the level of the Lake
rose and Alt Langenburg was submerged. The Headquarters of the district
were then transferred to Neu Langenburg. In the 1950s the remains of Alt
Langenburg could still be seen under the water.
Ghost stories abound about the Germans. Rob Hall, who
was my Provincial Commissioner, when I was District Commissioner, Musoma,
in 1947, was at one time District Commissioner of Tukuyu. He told me
that one evening he was sitting down relaxing in his quarters in the Boma,
when there was a knock on his door. A messenger entered and asked in
Swahili if he could make a request. Rob told him to come back in the
morning and the messenger departed. It was only a moment or two later
that Rob realised that the messenger was dressed in a very different
uniform to the usual Government khaki, being greyish-green with a grey-green
tarbush. It was even later that he learnt with a shock that this
was the German uniform.
The District Commissioner's house at Mwanza was some 100
yards from the cemetery, which lay on a flattish piece of ground between
Capri Point and an arm of Lake Victoria leading westwards from Smith
Sound, Capri Point itself was a hilly, forested area that jutted out
into Smith Sound. The cemetery was a gloomy spot, set amidst dark gum
trees. It dated from the German times and contained the graves of
Germans, some of whom had died at a very early age. probably from
Blackwater fever, which in those days was usually fatal. The sun always
set early there, hidden behind the steep slope of Capri Point. One
evening towards dusk my wife was walking towards the cemetery gate. As
she drew near, she saw what appeared to be an askari dressed in a strange
looking, drab grey uniform. She became very uneasy - she had always felt
that the place had a brooding, eery atmosphere - and turned back home.
She looked back twice and on each occasion the figure was still there.
She is convinced that what she saw was the ghost of a German native
soldier.
On the open lake side of Capri Point, between that Point
and the docks, was a broad topped, granite inselburg jutting some twelve feet out of the lake a few yards from the shore. It was still called the
Bismarck Rock in the 1950s for in German times it had been used by the
officers of the garrison as a beer garden, the scene of much revelry. In
the neighbouring district of Musoma to the north, there was a German built
fort at Ikoma at the western edge of the Serengeti plains. It had been
used in the 1914-18 war as a heliograph station to warn the Mwanza
garrison of any British incursion. In my time at Musoma, 1945-48, it was
a desolate place, overgrown and eery. No African would go near it. To
further the tourist trade after Independence, it was cleared up and turned
into a hotel. I hope the tourists sleep sound.
Another German fort had been built near the border
between Nzega district in the Western Province and Singida District in
the Central Province. It was near Lake Kipingiri. The German
Commandant had ordered the hanging of six of the local tribesmen for some
offence or other. He watched the executions, sitting on a chair and
drinking. Thereafter for some occult reason - perhaps the spirits of the
hanged men took up residence - the doors of the fort would never stay
shut. If shut, they mysteriously opened of their own accord. Jock
Griffiths, my Provincial Commissioner at Mbeya in 1956-57 and Nevill
Shann, the Provincial Education Officer at Mbeya over the same period,
both of whom on different occasions had slept in the fort, testify to the
truth of these happenings.
The Germans, following the example of all Colonial
powers, gave German names to some of the more important centres. Lushoto
in the Usamabara Mountains, a centre of German settlement, was called
Wilhemstal. Kasanga at the southern end of Lake Tanganyika became
Bismarckburg. As already narrated, their most northerly port on Lake
Nyasa was called Alt Langenburg. When this was submerged under the Lake
waters, the new district headquarters was termed Neu Langenburg. Another
tiny port Manda, some 60 miles south of Alt Langenburg, was rechristened
Wiedhafen. This was because it was the intended Lake terminus of a
railway, starting at Kilwa on the coast and opening up southern German
East Africa. The 1914-18 war prevented any such construction. With the
arrival of the British such names disappeared off the map with one notable
exception. Lake Kipingiri became Lake Kenworthy. This lake was
visited in the twenties by a Parliamentary Commission, one member of which
was the Liberal Member of Parliament, Commander Kenworthy. The local
District Commissioner, with a sense of humour, christened Lake Kipingiri
Lake Kenworthy, as it was "short, fat and never dried up". Somehow the
name stuck and appeared on maps for many years after that. It was not until 1939 that it was formally changed to Lake Kitangire by a British government that did not have the same sense of humour as the local District Commissioner.
Perhaps the attitude of the African as to the rival
characteristics and attitudes of the Germans and British was best summed up by the
Liwali of Mikindani Township. On the archway of the German built Boma
was inscribed the date of its completion, 1895. This was still there
when I was District Commissioner in the early forties. Quoth the Liwali
"If it had been a British Boma, taken over by the Germans, this date would
have been removed long ago".
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