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The Makings of a Tribe: Bondei Identities and Histories*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Justin Willis
Justin Willis
Affiliation:
British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi
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Extract

Since the mid-nineteenth century, there have been several changes in the paradigms of ethnic identity in the area around the modern town of Muheza in north-eastern Tanzania. Such differing tribal schemas have been correlated with differing presentations of history, and today several varying ideas of identity and history coexist. This correlation, and coexistence, suggest that all discussions of history and identity are negotiations, in which individuals attempt to present ethnicity and history in ways which they perceive as consonant with their own interests: the creation of identity, and of history, is thus a process in which all are involved. In such discussions, both immediate situation and wider social context influence how people talk about their ethnic identity and their history, so that political and economic changes have had considerable effect in reshaping identity, and thus history, in the area. The relationship between identity and interest is, however, a two-way process. Peoples' own previous understanding of identity and history may in turn affect their perception of their interests, so that the process is recursive, reacting back on itself: people are able to redefine themselves according to their interests, but this redefinition builds on previous constructs of history and identity.

Type
Constructing Identities
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , July 1992 , pp. 191 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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7 Ambler is rather ambiguous on this; see Kenyan Communities, 31–49, and also 13–14, where the supporting quotation seems to throw doubt upon rather than reinforcing Ambler's argument. One wonders, too, about the history of some identities, like the Yei, in Wilmsen and Vossen, ‘Labour, language and power’.

8 Farler, J. P., ‘The Usambara country in East Africa’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (PRGS), ns 1 (1879), 87–9Google Scholar; Belville, A., ‘Journey to the Universities’ Mission station of Magila on the borders of the Usambara country’, PRGS, XX (1875–1876), 75Google Scholar; Johnston, K., ‘Notes of a trip from Zanzibar to Usambara, in February and March 1879’, PRGS, ns 1 (1879), 546Google Scholar; Krapf, J. L., Travels, Researches and Missionary Labours During an Eighteen Years' Residence in Eastern Africa (London, 1968; first edition 1860), 386.Google Scholar The cultivation of maize, and grain exports, are mentioned in J. L. Krapf, ‘Journal of journey to Usambara, July-December, 1848’, Church Missionary Society (CMS) archives, CA 50 16 173 (hereafter Krapf, ‘1848 journal’), 44, 26 July 1848, and Burton, R. F. and Speke, J. H., ‘A coasting voyage from Mombasa to the Pangani river; visit to Sultan Kimwere; and progress of the expedition into the interior’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (JRGS), XXVIII (1858), 188–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For cattle, see Krapf, ‘1848 journal’, 44, 26 July 1848; and Farler, ‘Usambara country’, 89.

9 See for example interviews B3a, B8a, B11a, B72a.

10 J. L. Krapf, ‘Journal describing Dr Krapf's proceedings from the 10th of February to the 10th of April 1852’, in CMS CA 50 16 177 (hereafter Krapf, ‘1852 journal’), 45 and 91; J. Erhardt ‘Journal containing an account of my journey to Usambara and back and of a three months stay with the king of the country, Kmeri, from the 9th of August to December 1853’, contained in CMS CA 50915 (hereafter, Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’), entry for 26 Aug. 1853.

11 Compare Krapf, ‘1848 journal’, 48, with Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’, entry for 29 Aug. 1853. For the irregularity of communication between the king and his governors, see Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’, entry for 9 Oct. 1853.

12 Krapf, ‘1848 journal’, 44, 58; Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’, entry for 10 Nov. 1853.

13 J. Erhardt, ‘Extracts of a journal kept at Tanga from March to October 1854’, CMS CA 509 16, entry for 1 April 1854.

14 Krapf, ‘1852 journal’, 21–2; Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’, entries for 18 and 20 Nov. 1853; Burton, R. F., Zanzibar: City, Island and Coast (2 vols.) (London, 1872), ii, 155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Erhardt, ‘Extracts of a journal’, entry for 3 June 1854. Compare this with Burton, , Zanzibar, 11, 129.Google Scholar

16 Krapf, ‘1848 journal’, 26 July 1848, 44, and 1 Aug. 1848, 55; Burton, and Speke, , ‘A coasting voyage’, 204–5Google Scholar; Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’, entry for 22 Aug. 1853.

17 Krapf, , Travels, Researches and Missionary Labours, 384Google Scholar; Burton, , Zanzibar, ii, 195–6Google Scholar; Krapf, ‘1848 journal’, 26 July 1848, 45.

18 Compare Krapf, ‘1848 journal’, 45, 26 July 1848; Burton, , Zanzibar, ii, 129 nGoogle Scholar; with Woodward, H. W., Collections for a Handbook of the Boondei Langauge (London, 1882), IVGoogle Scholar, and Baumann, O., Usambara und Seine Nachbargarbiete (Berlin, 1891), 122.Google Scholar

19 Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’, entry for 22 August 1853.

20 Krapf, ‘1852 journal’, 20–1; Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’, entry for 27 Aug. 1853.

21 Krapf, ‘1852 journal’, 20–2; see also Abdullah bin Hemed l'Ajjemy, Habari za Wakilindi (Nairobi, 1978; first edition 1962), Sura XXXVIII, 76.Google Scholar

22 Erhardt to CMS Secretary, 27 Oct. 1854, CMS CA 50 19 13.

23 Hemed l'Ajjemy, Habari za Wakilindi, Suras CLIX–CLXI.

24 It is impossible to establish any generally agreed rules for clan membership. Some clans claim to have had founders, but it would seem that these were patrons, attracting male and female followers, rather than progenitors. For a range of ideas on how clans are constituted, see interviews B11a, b; B12a; B24b; B26b; B61a, b; B70a; B75a.

25 Compare B26C, 1 with B49a, 2; B61a, 4; B43a, 1–2; B37a, 2–2.

26 Krapf, , Travels, Researches and Missionary Labours, 280–1, 391Google Scholar; Erhardt, ‘1853 journal’, entry for 1 Sept. 1853.

27 Erhardt, ‘Extracts of a journal’, entries for 22 June 1854, 30 Aug. 1854.

28 That such travellers were a potential source of firearms seems always to have been uppermost in the minds of those they visited; New, C., ‘Journey from the Pangani, via Wadigo, to Mombasa’, PRGS, XIX (1875), 322.Google Scholar

29 Erhardt, ‘Extracts of a journal’, entry for 31 Aug. 1854. For Krapf's action and its repercussions, see Travels, Researches and Missionary Labours, 403–5; and the ‘Introduction to the second edition’ of this work, xxxi–xxxii. For the CMS in Mombasa, see Willis, J., ‘The Mijikenda and Mombasa to c. 1930’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1989), 64–5.Google Scholar

30 Hemed l'Ajjemy, Habari za Wakilindi, Suras XLIII–CLXI. Analysis of the dispute is given in Feierman, , Shambaa Kingdom, 149–66.Google Scholar

31 White, L., Magomero: Portrait of an African Village (Cambridge, 1987), 3–70Google Scholar; the UMCA belief in political work over preaching was stated baldly in Bishop Smythies to Mission, Magila, 9 July 1884, in UMCA archives, Rhodes House, Oxford (hereafter UMCA), Box A1 IV B.

32 Iliffe, , Modern History, 218Google Scholar; A. F. Roberts, ‘History, ethnicity and change in the “Christian kingdom” of southeastern Zaire’, in Vail, The Creation of Tribalism, 197.

33 Farler, , ‘Usambara country’, 85Google Scholar; Anderson-Moreshead, A. E., History of the UMCA (2 vols.) (London 1955; first edition 1897), 1, 54–6.Google Scholar

34 Steere, the mission linguist, therefore set to work in Zanzibar compiling a language handbook; Steere, E., Collections for a Handbook of the Shambala Language (Zanzibar, 1867).Google Scholar The confusion of the mission in London is evident in Annual Report of the UMCA, 1874 (London, 1875), 9Google Scholar; Annual Report of the UMCA, 1875 (London, 1876), 15.Google Scholar The convention was finally fixed that the people be referred to as Bondei and the area as Bonde. See the typewritten Ms. ‘Half a century in East Africa’, by Woodward, n.d., but presumably around 1910, UMCA Box A1 VIII, 40–3. This convention is often followed by informants today. For acceptance in London of the term Bondei, see the map in the Annual Report of the UMCA, 1879–80 (London, 1880)Google Scholar, which shows the area of ‘Bondei’. The next year's annual report referred to the Bondei language; Annual Report of the UMCA, 1880–81 (London, 1881), 30.Google Scholar Such confusions over the location of missions and the identity of those being evangelized were not unique; the CMS were similarly confused about their mission to what they eventually decided was Kaguru; Beidelman, T. O., Colonial Evangelism (Bloomington, 1982), 56.Google Scholar

35 Woodward to Penny, Magila, 7 Feb. 1884; Farler to Penny, Magila, 20 Sept. 1886; Farler to Penny, Magila, Oct. 1887; Farler to Randolph, Magila, 17 and 27 April 1877; Farler to Penny, Magila, All Souls 1881, UMCA Box A1 VI A; Farler to Steere, Magila, 10 Oct. 1876, UMCA Box A1 VI A; Farler to Penny, Magila, 13 Dec. 1886; and Farler to Penny, Magila, 4 Oct. 1881, all in UMCA Box A1 VI. A. Farler, ‘Usambara country’, 92; also Farler to Steere, Magila, 10 Oct. 1876; Farler to Deedes, Magila, 20 Feb. 1877, UMCA Box A1 VI A. Farler recorded his belief that he was fulfilling God's will in Farler, J. P., The Work of Christ in Central Africa: A Letter to The Rev H. P. Liddon (London, 1878), 9.Google Scholar This belief in the role of divine will in selecting missionaries was not unique to Farler; Wilson, G. H., The History of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (London, 1936), 3.Google Scholar

36 Letter to the British Anti-Slavery Society, cited in Feierman, , Shambaa Kingdom, 193.Google Scholar See also Farler to Penny, Magila, All Souls 1881; Farler to Deedes, Magila, 20 Feb. 1877, UMCA Box A1 VI A.

37 Farler to Maples, Magila, 27 April 1877, UMCA Box A1 VI A.

38 Farler, , The Work of Christ, 8–9.Google Scholar

39 Farler to Wilson, Magila, 12 Nov. 1881, UMCA Box A1 VI A.

40 Farler to Steere, Magila, 19 Nov. 1881, UMCA Box A1 VI A.

41 Woodward to Penny, Magila, 7 Feb. 1884, UMCA A1 VI A.

42 See Woodward, ‘Half a century’, UMCA Box A1 VIII. Beidelman has commented on the need for missionaries to promote certain stereotypes of themselves for metropolitan audiences; Colonial Evangelism, 16–17.

43 Woodward, ‘Half a century’, UMCA Box A1 VIII, 65–6. The missionaries claimed, quite untruthfully, to have brought all aspects of civilization to the Bondei, including clothes and peaceful commerce in grains: Smythies, ‘Account of a journey to Magila’, 6 April 1884, UMCA Box A1 IV B; and Annual Report of the UMCA, 1878 (London, 1879), 20.Google Scholar Compare these with Krapf, ‘1848 journal’, 44, 26 July 1848; and references to the grain trade noted above.

44 Farler, ‘Usambara country’, 84; Johnston, ‘Notes of a trip’, 549.

45 Farler to ?, Magila, 23 Feb. 1877; Farler to Heanley, Magila, 3 Oct. 1877, UMCA Box A1 VI A. Feierman (Shambaa Kingdom, 166) may understate the continuing power of the Kilindi over the Bondei in the area of Mlinga-Magoroto. For calls on Bondei in time of war, see Kombo to Farler, Magila, 15 May 1879, UMCA Box A1 VI A; for other exactions, see Farler to Penny, Magila, 14 Oct. 1886, UMCA Box A1 VI A; for continuing Kilindi rule as adjudicators, see Smythies to Mission, Mkuzi, 11 March 1887, UMCA Box A1 IV B; for Makange counter-raiding in retaliation for attacks on the Bondei, see Woodward to Child, Misozwe, 10 Dec. 1888, UMCA Box A1 VIII.

46 Farler to?, Magila, 23 Feb. 1877, UMCA Box A1 VI A.

47 Smythies to Mission, Magila, 9 July 1884, UMCA Box A1 IV B; Farler to Penny, Zanzibar, 23 Aug. 1884, UMCA Box A1 VI A. Also Feierman, Shambaa Kingdom, 192–3; and Woodward's comments in the report on the mission for the German government, April 1896, UMCA Box E1; also Smythies to ?, Magila, 7–25 Feb. 1886, UMCA Box A1 IV B. Woodward to Child, Magila, 19 March 1890, UMCA Box A1 VIII.

48 Farler, ‘Usambara country’, 92; also Farler to Steere, Magila, 10 Oct. 1876; Farler to Deedes, Magila, 20 Feb. 1877, UMCA Box A1 VI A.

49 Smythies to Mission, Magila, 9 July 1884, UMCA Box A1 IV B; Farler to Penny, Magila, 4 Oct. 1881, UMCA Box A1 VI A. Farler to Steere, Magila, 30 Sept. 1876, UMCA Box A1 VI A; see also ‘Pambili’, anon., 1881, UMCA Box A1 VI A. Smythies to?, Magila, 7–25 Feb. 1886, UMCA Box A1 IV B.

50 Farler, , The Work of Christ, 22–5Google Scholar; for the Simbamwene's rights, see Burton and Speke, ‘A Coasting Voyage’, 215. For the mission ransoming captives, see Farler to Wilson, Magila, 12 Nov. 1881, UMCA Box A1 VI A. Farler to Steere, Magila, Low Sunday 1877; Farler to Steere, Magila, 3 Oct. 1877, UMCA Box A1 VI A; Farler to Penny, Zanzibar, 17 June 1884, UMCA Box A1 VI A. Also Richardson to Friend, Magila, 9 March 1899, UMCA Box A1 VIII. Dale to Viner, Mkuzi, 3 May 1894, UMCA Box A1 VIII.

51 Interview B13a.

52 Farler to Steere, Magila, 16 Oct. 1881, UMCA Box A1 VI A. Despite their assertions that the Bondei were one nation, the missionaries were well aware of the intense rivalries between the minor headmen of the area: Farler to Penny, Zanzibar, 30 May 1881, UMCA Box A1 VI A.

53 Dale, G., ‘An account of the principal customs and habits of the natives inhabiting the Bondei country’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XXV (1896), 182.Google Scholar

54 Dale, , ‘An account of the principal customs’, 182.Google Scholar

55 The missionary version of events was passed on to the authorities both by themselves and to an extent by Baumann, who shared the mission's dislike of the other Kilindi faction. The dependence of the authorities on these sources was at times laughable. In 1893 they were thrown into confusion over the succession to the Kilindi throne because they could not locate their copy of Baumann's book. See the Tanga Provincial Book, Tanzania National Archives (hereafter TNA) MF.5.

56 The mission station at Korogwe was established in 1891; Anderson-Moreshead, , History of the UMCA, i, 176–7.Google Scholar

57 Farler to Penny, Kiungani, 8 Nov. 1885, UMCA Box A1 VI A; Dale to Bishop, 3 May 1894, UMCA Box A1 VIII.

58 For the migration, see Dale to Travers, Mkuzi, 4 April 1895, UMCA Box A1 VIII. For the declining authority of the mission, see Woodward to Travers, Magila, 4 Dec. 1897, UMCA Box E1.

59 Kayamba, M., ‘The story of Martin Kayamba Ndumi, of the Bondei tribe’, in Perham, M. (ed.), Ten Africans (London, 1963; first edition 1936)Google Scholar; Iliffe, , Modern History, 255–6.Google Scholar

60 For use of the ethnonym in this period, see for example Mshihiri bin Mkabara to Das Kaiserliche Bezirksamt, Tanga, 1 June 1914, in Tanga District Book, TNA MF.9.

61 Minute from Governor, quoted in Chief Secretary to A. O. Pangani, 17 Oct. 1925, in ‘Administration’, Pangani District Book, TNA MF.9; see also Tanga District Annual Report, 1928, 10–11, and Tanga District Annual Report, 1930, 3–4, TNA 967:822.

62 See Auersbacher's report on land, 1913, quoted in Tanga Provincial Book, ‘Geographical’, TNA MF.5; Interview B71a. For the high number of migrants in the area, see the census figures for Tanga District in DO Tanga to PC, 3 Aug. 1928, TNA 183/2. Problems are mentioned in Tanga District Annual Report, 1923, TNA 967:822, 16, 21. Migration to take advantage of estate markets is mentioned in Interviews B1a and B16a; B11a mentions the planting of land in the area of plantations by settled migrant labourers.

63 Interview B56B; see ‘Political agitators’, in Tanga District Book, vol. II, TNA MF.5; also Tanga District Annual Report, 1928, TNA 967:822, 3.

64 Interviews B45b; B43d, 3–4.

65 The mission had supported the appointment of Juma and Kayamba. John Juma is buried in the little graveyard next to Magila church. See interviews B56b, 3–5: B6c; B11c. See also ‘Report on native affairs, Tanga District, 1935’, TNA 967:822, 7.

66 Interviews B6a; B6d; B7a; B7b; B11a; B11b.

67 Dale, ‘An account of the principal customs’, has uolo as the word for clan. This word is never used now. Kolwa does not appear in the Bondei lexicon given in Woodward, Collections for a Handbook of the Boondei Language, but does appear in Gleiss, F., Schambala-Grammatik mit Ubungssatzen (Berlin, 1912).Google Scholar

68 Farler, , ‘Usambara country’, 84–5Google Scholar; New, C. ‘Journey from the Pangani, via Usambara, to Mombasa’, JRGS, XLV (1875), 414–15Google Scholar; Hemed l'Ajjemy, Habari za Wakilindi, Sura LX–CLXXXIX.

69 Interviews B6a; B7a; B11a; B64a; see Willis, J., ‘“And so they called a Kiva”: histories of a war’, Azania, XXV (1990), 79–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Interviews B7a, 5–6; B11a. For a mention of ‘fuzzy’ logic—the articulation of a set of ideas which a strictly rational analysis would reject as mutually incompatible—see S. Hugh-Jones, ‘Waribi and the white men’, in Tonkin et al., History and Ethnicity, 63; also R. Just, ‘Triumph of the ethnos’, Ibid. 75.

71 P. Richard bin Hadj, ‘Vumbukano la asili ya kabila la Wabondei’, Document no. 18 in the Swahili manuscript collection in the University of Dar es Salaam Library, Africana section, 1–14. The exact genesis of the Zingo and Nkalekwa clans is confused; they are said to have migrated both from the north and from the south.

72 Interview B56b.

73 Interviews B57a, B64a.

74 Richard, ‘Vumbukano’, 20; Interview B11a.

75 Interviews B7b; B56b. The invention of regalia for the Bondei chief was largely the work of Andrea Msisiri, president of the BCU: Interview B11c, 4.

76 Interviews B24b, 8; B61b, 6.

77 Interviews B8a; B26a; B65a; B70a.

78 Baumann, Usambara, 121; see also field notes, 12 March 1990. The presentation of the Zigua as a tribe with a single origin, offshoots of which formed the Bondei, was also fixed in print in Kiro, Selemani, ‘The history of the Zigua tribe’, Tanganyika Notes and Records, XXIV (1953), 70–4.Google Scholar Burton, Zanzibar, i, 129 n., rather ambiguously recorded a similar story.

79 Interviews B8a, B19b; for the Kiva war, see Willis, ‘And so they called a Kiva’.

80 Iliffe, , Modern History, 488Google Scholar; Luke Luhiza Mwabela to Ali Kambi, 13 March 1944; and Mwabela to Chief Secretary, 15 June 1949, TNA 6 A 6/2.

81 Interview B7a, and field notes for 12 March 1990.

82 The linguistic devices employed here seem similar to those involved in the reproduction of, and innovation in, ritual practice; see C. Kratz, ‘“We've always done it like this… except for a few details”: “tradition” and “innovation” in Okiek ceremonies’, Comp. Stud. Soc. Hist, (forthcoming).

83 Interview B7C, 4, where a question about an informant's desire to demonstrate his knowledge in discussion of a named historical figure elicited a presentation of the Kiva quite different from that given by the same man in an earlier interview; compare this with interview B7b, 3. Richard, ‘Vumbukano’, 21–3.