Who Created Mainland Tanzania?

Mobhare Matinyi, Thursday, 09 December 2011, The Citizen.

Today, Friday, December 9, 2011, our great nation, the United Republic of Tanzania, commemorates the 50th year of the independence of one part of the union, Mainland Tanzania, formerly known as Tanganyika, frankly an antique name. Mainland Tanzania declared its independence on Saturday, December 9, 1961, after 43 years of repressive colonial rule under the British who took over from the Germans in 1918. Luckily, we fought no bloody war as we only had to argue our case before the then United Nations Organization (UNO). Germans were the first colonizers on the Mainland in the early 1880s when Karl Peters, a German adventurer, took control of part of our country and after exploring our wealthy and virgin green land awash with waters, he founded the Society for German Colonization. He then signed false treaties with several chiefs to take control of the land, and the German government granted an imperial charter to his company to establish the East African Protectorate becoming its Administrator on May 27, 1885. Peters employed explorers and started mapping up the area from Rufiji River all the way to Witu, not far from Kenyan-Somali border along the coast. The Sultan of Zanzibar who had colonized Zanzibar back in 1698 before settling there in 1832, protested claiming control of the East African coast and the Mainland, but he was met with a deadly response from the German naval forces in August 1885. The British showed up immediately and agreed with the Germans to divide the mainland between themselves, effectively giving rise to modern day Kenya and Uganda. The Germans took our country and the Ruanda-Urundi Kingdom as one colony making Bagamoyo the capital from 1885 to 1890 before moving to Dar se Salaam. Our forefathers fought their best, but with only spears and arrows they could not defeat the heavily armed Germans who had guns and mortars. In one incident in 1888 Chief Abushiri revolted but the Germans asked the British for help and took him out brutally. However, in the same year the Germans made a deal with Sultan Khalifan of Zanzibar to lease the coastal strip and Mafia Island. Chief Mkwawa challenged the Germans between 1891 and 1894 but was overpowered. He then fought as an insurgent until 1898 when he chose to commit suicide rather than being captured. However, Hehe warriors came up again in 1905 and launched the Maji Maji Rebellion but lost again bitterly. Then in 1890 London and Berlin signed the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty which in effect drew the first borders of the then German East Africa. This treaty is the source of the dispute between Malawi and Tanzania over the actual borderline of Lake Nyasa. Peters lost control of the colony on February 8, 1888 to the German government which then appointed Hermann Wissmann as the Imperial Commissioner. He was replaced by Julius Freiherr von Soden as Governor on September 15, 1893. Thereafter, seven governors followed before the official ouster of the Germans in 1918 after the First World War. Governor Albert Heinrich Schnee was the last to rule our country. While all over the world the Germans could be defeated in open battle during the First World War, here the story was different. General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck with his 12,000 native soldiers and 3,500 Germans was the only German force not to have been defeated in an open battle; they only retreated when outnumbered. He fled to Mozambique and then Northern Rhodesia leaving the colony to the British in 1916. In 1919 the newly formed League of Nations literally handed-over our country to the burgling British who renamed it “Tanganyika” and gave Rwanda and Burundi to the brutal Belgians and the small Kionga Triangle south of River Ruvuma was awarded to the Portuguese exploiters to become part of Mozambique.  The British then plundered our country as much as they could without doing anything to develop it. Comparatively, the German looters were better. Had it not been for the First World War, we would perhaps have been a German-speaking nation with Kionga, Rwanda and Burundi part of our large country.In fact, some places had German names, for example Tabora was Weidmannsheil, Tukuyu was Neu Langenburg, and Lushoto was Wilhelmstal. Sounds odd? We finally attained independence in 1961, and shortly afterwards on April 26, 1964 we reunited with Zanzibar to form what is now the United Republic of Tanzania. Please, mark the word “reunited.” Zanzibar on its part, another British protectorate since 1890, became independent on December 10, 1963 but it was handed over back to Sultan Jamsheed prompting the January 12, 1964 revolution. For these reasons, we have three great days in our nation to mark, and we ought to be proud of our history, freedom and our union. God bless our beloved United Republic of Tanzania as we mark 50 years of the independence of Mainland Tanzania.