Sultan Mkwakwa and the Hehe tribe
by Oscar Tamsen
The missing skull of an influential African Muslim chief and sultan murdered before the turn of the Twentieth Century was the reason for another memorable safari I made into the wilds of Tanganyika when I was working as a foreign correspondent more than 60 years ago.
The chief was assassinated when this part of Africa was under German rule following the Fatherland’s race against Britain, France, Belgium and Portugal to claim Old World territories and when Germany’s Colonial rulers always insisted that all African tribal leaders had to be subservient to their European power.
The chief in this case was Sultan Mkwakwa, the head of the Hehe tribe. He believed he was the exception to German imposed rule, flatly refused to take any orders from his so-called masters and soon adopted terrorist tactics against them. He also started — and lost — a major war against Tanganyika’s German Government, now known as the Maji Maji Rebellion.
As a result of his failed aggression, a handsome bounty was placed on his head by the Government, dead or alive. This caused Mkwakwa to flee to the safety of Tanganyika’s deserted wilderness lands where he was eventually tracked down in 1891 by a posse of German Colonial Troopers.
Mkwakwa was shot from a distance in the head which was then severed from his body as evidence for the troopers to claim the ransom. His skull was later sent back to Germany where it was held by the Ubersee Museum in Bremen together with over 2,000 similar exhibits.
When the Hehe tribe heard of their chief’s demise, they immediately adopted a policy of permanent mourning until such time as Mkwakwa’s skull was returned to them for burial with the rest of his body. They also devised an order that no Hehe should ever work for or have any dealings with any future governments unless the skull was returned to its rightful resting place.
The return of Mkwakwa’s skull was also an important item discussed by the European powers during the post-WW1 Treaty of Versailles, but nothing eventuated from this.
By the 1950s when I was in East Africa, the poverty stricken and still mourning Hehe had become a major social problem for the British Government which had captured Tanganyika after defeating its German enemy during the 1914-17 hostilities. As a result, a couple of senior British administrators happened to discuss the long-drawn-out story of the missing skull. I happened to hear of this conversation, and, after much research, I wrote an article on Sultan Mkwakwa which was published internationally as well as locally in East Africa.
I like to think that this article was a catalyst to getting the job done of returning the skull to the Hehe. Tanganyika’s Governor, Sir Edward Twining, fortunately decided to go to Bremen while on overseas holiday, armed with the cephalic statistics of Mkwakwa’s ancestors’ heads; statistics which are carried forward in all families. This index, and the fact that the skull would have a bullet hole on its one side, enabled Sir Edward to find the skull in the Ubersee Museum and return to East Africa with it.
Overjoyed by the successful discovery of the Hehe tribe’s ‘missing link,’ I journeyed into Hehe country to witness Sir Edward, dressed in his white colonial uniform and plumed helmet, making an official ceremonial hand-over of something which had kept the Hehe tribe in a state of social limbo for more than half a century.
On arrival, I also saw that the Hehe had built a small glass mausoleum for the skull from single cent pieces collected from tribal families throughout their ancestral lands. Already interred in the mausoleum were Sultan Mkwakwa’s remains, buried at the time of his death.
As the skull was put in its final glass resting place, a regiment of mud daubed Hehe warriors thrust their gleaming spears towards the sun, proclaiming “The Hehe are alive again” in their particular vernacular. For the first time in so many years, the Hehe were once again able to laugh aloud and drop the mass melancholia of their historic bereavement.
Interestingly, the Hehe chief in the 1950s was a grandson of Sultan Mkwakwa, one Adam Sapi who had been forced as a young man to live in utter subjection by his tribe’s desire to honour his grandfather’s memory. After the all-important skull had been returned home, however, Chief Adam Sapi offered a hand of friendship to the British and eventually became an outstanding member of Tanganyika’s Legislative Council. His life story was undoubtedly one of hope regained.
Yamba resident and former foreign correspondent Oscar Tamsen whose work around the world from the early 1950s saw him in Colonial Africa for nearly two decades as a working journalist. Oscar’s years in the ‘Dark Continent,’ as it was then known, had him travelling from Cairo to Cape Town, meeting some of the world’s top newsmakers of the time as well as participating in a number of wars and rebellions.