Maji Maji Rebellion - The Uprising

The Uprising

The followers of Bokero's movement were poorly armed with spears and arrows, sometimes poisoned. However, they were numerous and believed that they could not be harmed because the German's bullets would turn to water. They marched from their villages wearing millet stalks around their foreheads. Initially they attacked small outposts and damaged cotton plants. On July 31, 1905, Matumbi tribesmen marched on Samanga and destroyed the cotton crop as well as a trading post. Kinjikitile was arrested and hanged for treason. Before his execution, he declared that he had spread the medicine of the rebellion throughout the region. On August 14, 1905, Ngindo tribesmen attacked a small party of missionaries on a safari; all five, including Bishop Spiss (the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dar es Salaam) were speared to death.

Throughout August, the rebels moved from the Matumbi Hills in the southern part of what is now Tanzania and attacked German garrisons throughout the colony. The attack on Ifakara, on August 16, destroyed the small German garrison and opened the way to the key fortification at Mahenge. Though the southern garrison was quite small (there were but 458 European and 588 local soldiers in the entire area), their fortifications and modern weapons gave them an advantage. At Mahenge, several thousand Maji Maji warriors (led by another spirit medium, not Bokero) marched on the German cantonment, which was defended by Lieutenant von Hassel with sixty African soldiers, a few hundred loyal tribesmen, and two machine guns. The two attacking tribes disagreed on when to attack and were unable to co-ordinate. The first attack was met with gunfire from 1000 meters, and after the tribesmen had stood firm for about a quarter hour they broke and retreated. After the first attack, a second column of 1,200 men advanced from the east. Some of these attackers were able to get within three paces of the firing line before they were killed.

While this was the apex of the uprising, the Ngoni people decided to join in the revolt with a force of 5,000. The Muslim Gwangara Ngoni were relatively recent arrivals in the region, descendants of a remnant of the Ndwandwe confederation defeated by the Zulu in 1818 (other Ngoni states were formed in Malawi, Zambia, and north-central Tanzania). German troops, armed with machine guns, departed from Mahenge to the Ngoni camp, which they attacked on October 21. The Ngoni soldiers retreated, throwing away their bottles of war medicine and crying, "The maji is a lie!" Upon the outbreak of the fighting, Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen, governor of East Africa, had requested reinforcements from the German government. Kaiser Wilhelm immediately ordered two cruisers with their Marine complements to the troubled colony. Reinforcements also arrived from as far away as New Guinea. When 1,000 regular soldiers from Germany arrived in October, Götzen felt he could go on the offensive and restore order in the south.

Three columns moved into the rebellious South. They destroyed villages, crops, and other food sources used by the rebels. They made effective use of their firepower to break up any attacks the rebels might launch. A successful ambush of a German column crossing the Rufiji River by the Bena kept the rebellion alive in the southwest, but the Germans were not to be denied for long. By April 1906, the southwest had been pacified. However, elsewhere the fighting was bitter. A column under Lt. Gustav von Blumenthal (1879–1913, buried at Lindi) consisting of himself, one other European and 46 Askaris fell under continuous attack as it marched in early May, 1906, from Songea to Mahenge. The Germans decided to concentrate at Kitanda, where Major Johannes, Lt. von Blumenthal and Lt. von Lindeiner-Wildau eventually gathered. Lt. von Blumenthal was then sent along the Luwegu River, partly by boat. The southeast campaign degenerated into a nasty guerrilla war that brought with it a devastating famine.

The famine following the Maji Maji Rebellion was partly planned. Von Götzen was willing to pardon the common soldiers as long as they gave up their weapons, leaders and witch doctors. However, he also needed to flush out the remaining rebels and famine was the chosen weapon. In 1905 one of the leaders of German troops in the colony, Captain Wangenheim, wrote to von Götzen, "Only hunger and want can bring about a final submission. Military actions alone will remain more or less a drop in the ocean."

After the Maji Maji fighters undertook guerrilla tactics as the Germans were using machine guns and cannons to systematiclly destroy villages and wells, including removal of livestock, and burning of fields and food stores. This forced the Maji Maji to surrender. The resulting famine caused an estimated 100,000-300,000 deaths. Not until August, 1907, were the last embers of rebellion extinguished. In its wake, the Maji-Maji rebellion left 15 Europeans and 389 African soldiers and between 200,000 and 300,000 insurgents dead. It also broke the spirit of the people to resist and the colony remained calm, thanks also to a change of governors which brought a more enlightened regime, until the outbreak of World War I. Lions in the area developed a taste for human flesh in the wake of the slaughter and the Songea region is still plagued by man-eaters.