Journal of African History,  (), pp. –.

© Cambridge University Press  

doi:./S

BEING ‘CHAGGA’: NATURAL RESOURCES, POLITICAL

ACTIVISM, AND IDENTITY ON KILIMANJARO*
Matthew V. Bender
The College of New Jersey

Abstract
This article argues that the emergence of Chagga political identity on Mount Kilimanjaro
in the 1940s and 1950s can best be understood as a product of intensive debates over the
control of natural resources and the nature of chiefly authority. As a result of perceived
threats to the land and water resources of the mountain and resentment of the role
of the chiefs in these issues, grassroots activists adopted a language of unity using
the ethnic term ‘Chagga’ – a moniker long used by the colonial state but eschewed by
the general population. With the rise of a paramount chieftaincy in 1951, the term shifted
from being a symbol of colonial rule to one of common identity and resistance against the
encroachment of the colonial state in local affairs.

Key Words
Tanzania, ethnicity, identity, environment.

On  November , people from across the region of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanganyika
gathered in the district seat of Moshi to celebrate the first annual Chagga Day. This event,
organized by the Moshi District Office and the Chagga Native Authority, commemorated
the previous year’s election of Thomas Marealle as the first popularly chosen paramount
chief, or mangi mkuu, to preside over the mountain’s numerous chiefdoms. The celebration
started with prayer services held at the Catholic and Lutheran churches, followed by a cer-
emony attended by major local dignitaries District Commissioner J. B. Stubbings and
Tanganyika Governor Sir Edward Twining. At this time, Marealle raised for the first
time a Chagga flag, and both he and District Commissioner J. B. Stubbings delivered

* I would like to thank Sara Berry, Claire Breedlove, Laura Fair, Pier Larson, and my colleagues and students
at The College of New Jersey for their helpful readings of earlier drafts of this article. I also thank staff at
the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), the Tanzania National Archives, the
National Archives of the UK (formerly Public Record Office), and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at the
United Nations for their assistance with my research. I am also grateful to the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral
Dissertation Program, the David Boren Fellowship Program, and the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences at The College of New Jersey for their generous financial support of this research. Author’s email:
bender@tcnj.edu
 A schedule of the events of the day, as well as copies of the speeches, can be found in G. K. Whitlamsmith,
Recent Trends in Chagga Political Development (Moshi, Tanganyika, ). Memories of the first Chagga
Day celebration come from this work as well as the author’s field notes (, , and ) and an
interview with Thomas Marealle by Heckton Chuwa that appeared in a Dar es Salaam newspaper, The
Express, in . H. Chuwa, ‘Interview with Thomas Marealle, OBE’, The Express (Dar es Salaam), issue
 ( Nov.– Dec. ).
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

speeches praising the progress made in the past year and touting the high prospects for the
future. The day concluded with a sundowner, more speeches, live music and dancing, and
an evening football match. For the next eight years, the event was one of the largest annual
parties in the region, with thousands attending from the mountain and nearby areas.
In their speeches, Twining and Marealle declared Chagga Day to be more than just a
celebration of an election; they praised it as a sign that the people had finally embraced
their common identity as Chagga. Marealle himself proclaimed that it commemorated
the day when ‘the Chagga tribe miraculously came together in a unity’. Since the dawn
of European rule in the s, colonial officers had referred to the mountain’s disparate
residents as a single people – ‘the Chagga’. This designation stemmed from their perception
of the mountain as a single, unified landscape, as well as from the similarities of the various
mountain communities in terms of agricultural and cultural practices. The people, how-
ever, largely eschewed this term. Most referred to themselves by the names of their respect-
ive clans and chiefdoms, and though they recognized their commonalities as mountain
people, they rarely expressed a common identity. In the interwar years, as the burgeoning
coffee industry brought tremendous wealth to the mountain, European administrators
became frustrated that economic ‘progress’ was met with neither political centralization
nor a greater sense of social cohesion. The events of  November, therefore, signaled
to many of these individuals a major achievement in the political development of the
mountain region and its further integration into the colonial state.
But what did the celebrations of Chagga Day actually mean? Did they signify the
emergence of a sense of common identity, and if so was this an inevitability, the end of
an evolutionary process? Indeed, many histories of Kilimanjaro – by Bruno Gutmann,
Charles Dundas, Kathleen Stahl, Susan Geiger Rogers, and others – describe a relatively
linear, straightforward process of political and social cohesion, a coming together of dis-
parate mountain people into a unified community. In recent years, however, historians
of Africa have vehemently challenged such frameworks. Scholars such as John Lonsdale,
Terence Ranger, Thomas Spear, and Leroy Vail have shown identities to be actively pro-
duced and contested, inspired by certain historical moments and drawing off of real
and imagined pasts. Thus identity formation is definitely not linear and is anything but
inevitable. Recent studies have brought some of this analytical depth to our understanding

 R. Sadleir, Tanzania: Journey to Republic (London, ).

 ‘Chagga Day speech at the sundowner,  Nov. , by Mangi Mkuu of the Wachagga Marealle II’,
in Whitlamsmith, Recent Trends, .
 For examples, see C. Dundas, Kilimanjaro and its People: A History of the Wachagga, Their Laws, Customs
and Legends, Together with some Account of the Highest Mountain in Africa (London, ); B. Gutmann,
Das Recht der Dschagga (München, ); S. G. Rogers, ‘The search for political focus on Kilimanjaro:
a history of Chagga politics, –, with special reference to the cooperative movement and indirect
rule’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Dar es Salaam, ); and K. M. Stahl, History of the Chagga
People of Kilimanjaro (London, ).
 A few examples include J. Lonsdale, ‘The moral economy of Mau Mau: wealth, poverty, and civic virtue in
Kikuyu political thought’, in B. Berman and J. Lonsdale (eds.), Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and
Africa, Book Two: Violence and Ethnicity (London, ), –; T. O. Ranger, ‘The invention of
tradition revisited: the case of colonial Africa’, in T. O. Ranger and O. Vaughan (eds.), Legitimacy and the
State in Twentieth-Century Africa: Essays in Honour of A. H. M. Kirk-Greene (London, ), –; T.
Spear, ‘Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British Colonial Africa’, Journal of African
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

of Kilimanjaro, but they still leave many questions unanswered. Fausto Mkenda, in a piece
on Chagga identity before , emphasizes the importance of geography and shared cul-
ture in building what he describes as a ‘largely unbounded identity’, but his analysis implies
that identity is a natural development rather than something actively constructed and lever-
aged. François Devenne and François Bart also look to the importance of shared land-
scape in building a common sense of being. While they emphasize that a sense of unity
came with political debates related to coffee, this point remains underdeveloped. Emma
Hunter’s insightful work looks at how the early writing on Kilimanjaro (particularly
travel writing and ethnic histories) set out ‘a linear notion of historical progress that
blots out contested visions and ideas’. As a counter, she examines the debates concerning
paramount chieftaincy and in particular the role of the Kilimanjaro Chagga Citizens
Union (KCCU). While this work provides an illuminating look at how debate shaped
the emergence of political identity, it is limited by its focus on one organization that
operated for a narrow window of time. Consequently it does not develop the extent to
which these debates were part of a longer process, centered on fears over access to the moun-
tain’s natural resources. Another unanswered issue is why the people, in forging a sense
of mountain-wide identity, chose to embrace the specific term ‘Chagga’. Likely of Swahili
origin, it originated outside the mountain, used at first by caravan traders to describe the
mountain’s populations and later adopted by European explorers and colonial officials.
Yet the scholarship has not asked why people chose to adopt this specific term, as opposed
to any others, nor has it looked at how people contested the very meaning of the term.
In this article, I extend the recent scholarship on ethnic identity formation in African
history with the goal of rethinking our understanding of the term ‘Chagga’. Drawing on
a range of sources – published works on Kilimanjaro, colonial government documents
and scientific studies, mission journals, and interviews I conducted on Kilimanjaro in
 and , I argue that the rise of a Chagga political identity on Kilimanjaro can
best be understood in the context of intensive debate over the control of natural resources.
Well before the colonial period, notions of identity had been linked not just to the nature of
the mountain landscape, but also to specific questions of who has rightful access to land
and water. By identifying as members of clans and chiefdoms, people gained access to
land for creating homesteads, water furrows for irrigation, and other necessities. These
identities also served to protect resources from neighboring mountain peoples and others.
In the twentieth century, colonial officials and missionaries promoted Chagga identity as a
means of healing old divides and bringing the mountain together for economic benefit
and political expediency. The chiefs (mangis), who had become governing agents of the

History, : (), –; and L. Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, CA,
).
 F. Mkenda, ‘Becoming Chagga: population and politics around Kilimanjaro before ’, in T. Clack (ed.),
Culture, History and Identity: Landscapes of Inhabitation in the Mount Kilimanjaro Area, Tanzania
(Oxford, ).
 F. Devenne and F. Bart, ‘Landscape and Chagga identity’, in F. Bart, M. J. Mbonile, and F. Devenne (eds.),
Kilimanjaro: Mountain, Memory, Modernity (Dar es Salaam, ), –.
 E. Hunter, ‘In pursuit of the “higher medievalism”: local history and politics in Kilimanjaro’, in D. R. Peterson
and G. Macola (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens, OH,
), .
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

colonial state, leveraged the term as a means of justifying the allegedly traditional roots of
new policies, but the general population continued to self-identify as members of their
respective chiefdoms and clans. In the s, however, increasing land and water scarcity
fueled popular resentment of the mangis and the colonial state. Those leading the charge
against the mangis, a grassroots mixture of disgruntled clan headmen and coffee farmers,
began to leverage the term Chagga that had been promoted by the very agents they were
contesting. In doing so, they disentangled the term from its colonial context and infused it
with new meaning and a sense of purpose. The election of the first mangi mkuu (para-
mount chief) in  can thus be seen as an intervention in a debate over the political
future of Kilimanjaro as well as an attempt by grassroots groups to mobilize a sense of
common identity to transform the existing political regime.
By looking at the significance of resource control in the development of political
identity on Kilimanjaro, it becomes evident that the events of  November  did
not mark the end of a natural process of ‘coming together’, nor did they indicate feelings
of greater incorporation into the colonial state. Rather, they show the extent to which
people contested the very meanings of the term Chagga. The sense of political identity
that is evident in the s thus resulted from intense debate, and the desire of ordinary
people to resist the encroachment of the colonial state in local affairs and the perceived self-
serving attitudes of the chiefs. These events thus add to our understanding of how ethnic
identities have been constructed, highlighting not only the importance of natural resources,
but also the vital role of contestation and debate within communities.

POLITICAL IDENTITY IN THE HISTORY OF KILIMANJARO

The fertile, well-watered slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro have for millennia been home to
various societies. Ancestors of the present Bantu-speaking populations began to settle
the lower slopes of the mountain in successive waves beginning more than  years
ago. These migrants likely came from nearby highland areas and settled on the mountain’s
southern and eastern slopes (at altitudes between , and , feet). Settlements
tended to be located on ridges, separated by deep valleys formed by the fast-moving rivers
and streams headed toward the plains. These peoples developed an agrarian economy
based upon intensive cultivation of yams, bananas, finger millet, and other crops in
small homesteads called kihamba. Over several centuries, each ridge of the mountain devel-
oped into an autonomous political space comprised of several different clans, each led by
ranking headmen and ritual specialists. Though politically independent, clans on the
same ridge often forged alliances for purposes such as defense, and also had regular contact

 Significant disagreement exists as to when the ancestors of the current population first began to settle the
mountain. Some studies such as Kathleen Stahl’s have looked to genealogical evidence, while others have
looked to linguistic data. Major historical-linguistic studies of this region include D. Nurse, Classification
of the Chaga Dialects: Language and History on Kilimanjaro, the Taita Hills, and the Pare Mountains
(Hamburg, ); G. Philippson and S. Bahuchet, ‘Cultivated crops and Bantu migrations in Central and
Eastern Africa: a linguistic approach’, Azania – (–), –; and G. Philippson, ‘Gens des
bananeraies’: Contribution linguistique à l’histoire culturelle des Chaga du Kilimanjaro (Paris, ).
 For more, see S. F. Moore and P. Puritt, The Chagga and Meru of Tanzania (London, ), .
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

with those on neighboring ridges through both warfare and markets. As a result, though
politically distinct, people across the mountain came to share common agricultural tech-
niques and cultural practices. In terms of language, Derek Nurse asserts that numerous
minor dialects of a single language are spoken on the mountain, the dialects falling
into three major groups defined geographically from west to east: West Kilimanjaro,
East Kilimanjaro, and Rombo. These comprise a dialect continuum, meaning that people
in neighboring areas could understand one another well while those at the far reaches
would have found much of one another’s speech unintelligible.
One of the more revealing similarities among the mountain’s disparate communities is
how they defined themselves and others according to the physical spaces they inhabited.
Ludger Wimmelbücker, in his book Kilimanjaro: A Regional History, discusses this
through the observations of early European explorers. For example, Johannes
Rebmann, in his diaries and letters to Johann Krapf and the Church Missionary Society,
claims that people referred to themselves as Wakirima, meaning ‘mountain people’, and
in turn referred to people living beyond the mountain as Wanyika or ‘people of the
plains’. Another term of classification, one noted by Moritz Merker, was wandu wa
mndeny or ‘people of the banana groves’. People used this to contrast themselves from
the wasi or hunter-gatherers, and humba and kuavi, meaning pastoralists. These terms
indicate the extent to which landscape influenced how people thought of themselves and
others. Wakirima and Wanyika imply the importance of the mountain in juxtaposition
to the plains. The people living on the mountain believed themselves to be the beneficiaries
of divine benevolence, living in a lush, well-watered landscape, in contrast to the peoples
living in the semiarid steppe, such as the Maasai. Wandu wa mdneny, wasi, humba, and
kuavi, meanwhile, indicate the importance of subsistence. Bananas were not only the staple
crop of the mountain, but also were the defining feature of the kihamba and of everyday
life. They implied a certain form of political and social order, which was in turn perceived
as absent from the peoples of the plains. In spite of the existence of terms such as
Wakirima, people tended not to emphasize a shared mountain identity, and a sense of
shared political identity was entirely absent. Rather, they identified with more local entities
such as families, clans, and age-sets.
In the nineteenth century, chiefdoms became increasingly important as units of social
and political organization, and in turn chiefdom names became a common means

 For more on economic and political issues on Kilimanjaro before the colonial period, refer to
L. Wimmelbücker, Kilimanjaro – A Regional History, Volume One: Production and Living
Conditions, c. – (Münster, ); and Moore and Puritt, Chagga and Meru.
 A fourth related group, Gweno, is spoken by people living in the north Pare Mountains. See Nurse,
Classification, . For more on Kilimanjaro linguistics, see G. Philippson and M.-L. Montlahuc,
‘Kilimanjaro Bantu (E and E)’, in D. Nurse and G. Philippson (eds.), The Bantu Languages (London,
), –.
 Wimmelbücker, Kilimanjaro, –.
 J. Rebmann, ‘Narrative of a journey to Madjame, in Jagga’, The Church Missionary Intelligencer, :
(), –. See also, J. Rebmann, ‘Narrative of a Journey to Madjam, in Kirima, during April, May,
and June ’, The Church Missionary Intelligencer, : (), –.
 M. Merker, ‘Rechtsverhältnisse und Sitten der Wadschagga’, Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen,
supplement , vol.  (Gotha, ), . Also see, Wimmelbücker, Kilimanjaro, .
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

of identification. Chiefdoms were confederations of the clans on a given ridge, led by a

mangi, who was usually the leader of the dominant clan. Over the century, the overall
number of independent polities decreased as clans consolidated into chiefdoms, and
many smaller chiefdoms joined into larger ones. According to August Widenmann,
a German physician stationed at Moshi in the s, there were  chiefdoms on the
mountain as of . The increasing importance of chiefdoms, and in turn chiefdom
identities, can be linked to two factors, both of which were tied to the control of
resources. The first was the need of people to secure access to resources not located
within their confines. As the clans grew in size over time, they encompassed the free
space between them and their neighbors, in the process blocking free access to vital
resources lying uphill, such as wood and honey, or downhill, including salt, iron, and
trade goods from the plains. By the nineteenth century, virtually no settlement had unfet-
tered access to both uphill and downhill goods. This necessitated cooperation, which
over time led to tighter political integration and a sense of common identity for people
living on the same ridge.
Perhaps the best example of uphill/downhill cooperation was the development of
an extensive system of water furrows, the mifongo. Though the mountain was lush in com-
parison with the neighboring plains, possessing a wealth of streams and rivers, these
sources tended to pass by areas of settlement in deep valleys, often  feet or more
beneath the homesteads. As a means of compensating for the difficulties of the topography,
and to make water more readily available for both domestic use and irrigation, mountain
farmers developed canals that would channel water away from the valleys and directly into
areas of settlement. These marvels of engineering, often several miles in length, had
become a defining feature of life on Kilimanjaro by the nineteenth century, and remain
important to the present day. Due to the need to tap rivers and streams at points where
they were at close elevation with surrounding land, the furrows frequently originated
well above areas of settlement and passed through the lands of multiple clans. The desire
for furrows, the need to secure access through neighboring lands, and the benefits of
distributing the labor burden of construction and maintenance, gave clans strong incentive
to collaborate. The relationships established through water sharing, in turn, set the
foundation for their unification into chiefdoms.
Another important factor contributing to the rising power of chiefdoms was the expan-
sion of the long-distance caravan trade between the coast and the Great Lakes in the early

 A. Widenmann, ‘Die Kilimandscharo Bevolkerung’, Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen, supplement ,

vol. : (Gotha, ), cited in Moore and Puritt, Chagga and Meru, .
 The importance of access to uphill and downhill goods is cited by Wimmelbücker, Kilimanjaro, as well as
Devenne and Bart, ‘Landscape and Chagga Identity’.
 The irrigation furrows of Kilimanjaro have been the subject of several studies: M. V. Bender, ‘Water brings no
harm: knowledge, power, and practice on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania –’ (unpublished PhD thesis, The
Johns Hopkins University, ); M. V. Bender, ‘“For more and better water, choose pipes!” building
water and the nation on Kilimanjaro, –’, Journal of Southern African Studies, : (),
–; F. T. Masao, ‘The irrigation system in Uchagga: an ethno-historical approach’, Tanzania Notes
and Records,  (), –; D. L. Mosgrove, ‘Watering African moons: culture and history of irrigation
design on Kilimanjaro and beyond’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cornell University, ); and A. G. Pike,
‘Kilimanjaro and the furrow system’, Tanzania Notes and Records,  (), –.
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

decades of the nineteenth century. Consisting of as many as  to , people and
passing through hundreds of miles of arid steppe, these caravans needed provisions that
the mountain, with its abundant surface water and intensive cultivation system, was in a
unique position to provide. Clans drew upon their networks with other clans to mobilize
resources to provide the food, water, ivory, and slaves desired by the traders. Over time,
the dominant members of the dominant clans in these partnerships emerged as mangis.
They not only served as trade negotiators on behalf of the clans, but also organized
the male age-sets for conducting raids of neighboring ridges in an effort to monopolize
trade and procure slaves, as well as in defense against such raids. By the s, mangis
had become the central political figures of the mountain, and the chiefdom a crucial
political unit.
Why did people come to identify themselves as part of chiefdoms? Aside from evident
cultural and linguistic affinities, it is clear that membership conferred privileges.
Through chiefdom membership, one could share in its spoils as well as its protection.
Chiefdom identity became a way of determining who had rights to certain resources,
and who did not. This did not replace other forms of identity, but rather augmented
them, with people leveraging different identities at different points toward different ends.
Thus we see that before the colonial period, people on Kilimanjaro utilized several
means of self-identification related to the landscape and resource control. They considered
themselves to be people of the mountain, and people who grew bananas, terms that distin-
guished them from people outside the mountain. It is accurate to say that people possessed
a shared sense of belonging to the mountain, and they acknowledged the common culture
and practices and similar language of other mountain dwellers. But they did not acknowl-
edge a common political identity, and the term Chagga had little resonance. Rather,
political identities centered on the clan and the chiefdom, reflecting the importance of
both familial ties and the mobilizing and protecting of resources.

COLONIALISM AND THE CONCEPT OF THE CHAGGA

The term Chagga, as a reference to the region of Kilimanjaro and the people living on its
slopes, does not actually derive from the mountain. Linguists have yet to trace an exact ori-
gin for the term, but some speculate that it might be the term used by speakers of the zone
G Bantu languages (which includes Swahili) to describe the mountain’s inhabitants. This
fits with the emergence of the term in the early nineteenth century, following the increased
presence of coastal caravan traders in the region. For the Swahili traders, the term was

 This rise of caravan trading from the East African coast has been the subject of a number of studies. See, for
example: E. A. Alpers, ‘The coast and the development of the caravan trade’, in I. N. Kimambo and A. J. Temu
(eds.), A History of Tanzania (Nairobi, ), –; E. A. Alpers, Ivory & Slaves in East Central Africa:
Changing Pattern of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century (Berkeley,
CA, ); and D. A. Low, ‘The northern interior, –’, in R. Oliver and G. Mathew (eds.),
History of East Africa, Volume  (Oxford, ), –.
 Moore and Puritt, Chagga and Meru, .
 Zone G Bantu refers to one of the categories in the classification system of Bantu languages devised by
Malcolm Guthrie in . M. Guthrie, The Classification of the Bantu Languages (London, ). Also
see, Philippson and Montlahuc, ‘Kilimanjaro Bantu’, .
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

likely used in a similar fashion to Wakirima, as a means of referring to the physical

space of the mountain and its residents, but not as an indication of a political or social
unity among them. Among the people of the mountain, however, the term Chagga had
no significance.
European explorers, arriving on the mountain in the mid-to-late nineteenth
century, adopted the term from their Swahili guides. Johannes Rebmann was among
the first to do so. In his letters and journal entries, he referred to both the place and the
people as ‘Jagga’. Though he did make reference to the individual chiefdoms, he clearly
considered the mountain to be a singular social and cultural space. Those who followed
him, explorers such as Karl Von der Decken (in ), Charles New (), Harry
Johnston (–), Hans Meyer (), and William Abbott (), came to refer to
the mountain itself as Kilimanjaro and the people living there as Chagga. The most
vivid example came from Johnston, who established a homestead on the mountain
and lived there for nearly six months. In his writings, he referred to the chiefdom in
which he resided, Moshi, as one of numerous ‘Chagga states’ on the mountainside. In
spite of the disunity and hostility present on the mountain, he speaks of the peoples of
the mountain as if they are a single group, destined in the natural course of events to
become politically unified.
From an outsider’s perspective, the use of a single term to describe all the people of
Kilimanjaro seemed to make sense. After all, the people lived in the same region on the
slopes of the mountain, practiced the same forms of agriculture and animal husbandry,
had very similar cultural practices, spiritual beliefs, and social structures, and spoke
what were considered to be dialects of the same language. Yet it also reflected a profound
misunderstanding of Africa based upon the assumption that people could and should
be categorized into tribes, irrespective of their own histories and conceptualizations
of difference.
This misunderstanding soon became a cornerstone of colonial rule. In , German
expeditionary forces established military control over the chiefdoms of Kilimanjaro, mak-
ing them a part of German East Africa. In succeeding years, German rule radically altered
governance in the region. Mangis became local administrators working under the jurisdic-
tion of a government officer in the newly created town of Moshi, and were charged with
maintaining the peace, distributing land, organizing corvée labor, and collecting taxes.
Their wealth no longer came from trade and warfare, but rather from extracting money

 See entries in J. L. Krapf, Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours during an Eighteen Years’ Residence
in Eastern Africa... (London, ), . Also, J. Rebmann, ‘Narrative of a journey to Madjame, in Jagga’,
–.
 For examples, see W. Abbott, ‘Ethnological collections in the U. S. National Museum from Kiliman-Njaro’,
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington,  (), –;
C. C. von der Decken, Reisen in Ost Afrika in den Jahren  bis ,  vols. (Leipzig, –);
H. Meyer, Across East African Glaciers: An Account of the First Ascent of Kilimanjaro, E. H. S. Calder
(trans.), (London, ); and C. New, Life, Wanderings and Labours in Eastern Africa with an
Account of the st Successful Ascent of the Equatorial Snow Mountain, Kilima Njaro and Remarks
upon East African Slavery (London, ).
 H. H. Johnston, The Kilma-Njaro Expedition. A Record of Scientific Exploration in Eastern Equatorial
Africa, (London, ), –.
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

and labor from their subjects. The Germans also began to consolidate many of the smaller
chiefdoms into larger ones. This reduced the overall number to  by . Christian
missionaries also had a strong impact on the mountain. The Catholic Holy Ghost
Fathers and the Leipzig Lutheran Mission followed the Germans into Kilimanjaro in the
mid-s and quickly spread across the mountain, establishing churches, schools, and
dispensaries. By , every chiefdom on the mountain had at least one resident
European missionary.
Colonial officials and missionaries approached Kilimanjaro in much the same way the
explorers had: as one mountain, one group of people. German colonial officers frequently
spoke of people as coming from their respective chiefdoms, but concluded that regardless
of their political divisions, they were essentially one people. For example, Widenman con-
cluded in his late nineteenth-century writings about health on the mountain that certain
practices were characteristic of the ‘Chagga’ people. Missionaries likewise considered
the people to be all of a single ‘tribe’, one that had merely been fractured by a century
of inter-chiefdom warfare. One of the most egregious examples of this perceived ethnic
unity comes from Leipzig missionary Bruno Gutmann. A prolific writer, he composed
more than thirty books and articles about the people of the mountain between 
and . He not only accepted the idea that they were all members of a common
tribe, with a common identity, but he also documented what he saw as their common
laws and cultural practices. While he does acknowledge that the majority of his obser-
vations come from a single chiefdom and that variation exists, the overall picture he paints
is of a homogeneous Kilimanjaro. Though both the Catholic and Protestant missionaries
assumed the mountain to be comprised of one people, they did acknowledge the presence
of lingering antagonisms between the various chiefdoms. In response, they promoted mess-
ages of cultural and social unity in their religious teachings, school curricula, and even
through sporting competitions between various parishes.
The onset of British rule following the First World War introduced another series of pol-
itical and economic changes to Kilimanjaro. The British, like the Germans, accepted the
premise of one mountain, one people, and they took a number of steps to transform this
cultural ‘reality’ into a political one as well. In , the district office in Moshi Town
grouped the mangis together into a single administrative structure called the Chagga
Native Authority, and transformed them into salaried employees. These steps were
intended to consolidate authority and reduce corruption. The office also created a set of
three regional Chagga councils, each comprised of the mangis in the respective areas, as
well as treasuries for each. In , the district office reorganized again, creating a single
Council of Chagga Chiefs, comprised of those deemed most influential, and a single

 See Moore and Puritt, Chagga and Meru, ; also Dundas, Kilimanjaro and its People; and Widenmann,
‘Die Kilimandscharo Bevolkerung’.
 Widenmann, ‘Die Kilimandscharo Bevolkerung’, –.
 Two of his most prominent pieces are B. Guttman, Das Recht der Dschagga (München, );
and B. Guttman, Die Stammeslehren der Dschagga,  vols. (München, –).
 Emma Hunter points out in her chapter that this is a common problem of much of the work on Kilimanjaro.
Hunter, ‘In pursuit’, .
 Moore and Puritt, Chagga and Meru, .
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

treasury for the whole mountain. These institutions greatly increased the frequency of
communication among the mangis, and led on the whole to greater unity in governance
structures. They also imbued the term Chagga with new meaning. It came to denote
new political bodies and policies (including the Chagga Council), created along so-called
‘traditional’ lines that were managed by the chiefs as part of indirect rule. Often these
usurped authority that had previously rested in the hands of clan heads. For example, in
, the Native Authority issued a Chagga Ordinance called ‘Fifty Paces Tangazo’, pro-
hibiting the clearing of trees or planting of crops within fifty paces of a watercourse.
Using this political instrument, the Native Authority usurped power from local clan
heads and chiefs, and created a policy that stretched across the mountain.
The most significant economic change to occur in the British period was the rise of
coffee. Catholic missionaries had introduced Arabica coffee to the mountain as early as
. During the s, however, coffee production proliferated, largely through the
actions of Charles Dundas. Assigned as the Moshi district officer in , he believed
that coffee was the ‘sine qua non’ for the development of the native economy, and he
began to offer mountain farmers direct governmental support in cultivating the crop.
He instructed his agricultural assistants to provide seed, saplings, and technical assistance
to interested farmers, and he provided assistance in marketing the product. The results
were nothing short of phenomenal. By , an estimated , men were growing coffee,
with just under a million trees among them. Seven years later, the number of farmers had
risen to nearly ,, with the total number of trees reaching six million. The crop
became immensely popular due to its high price and relatively low labor input compared
to other marketable crops. Revenues from the crop enabled families to pay their taxes and
school fees, purchase goods such as tea and rice, and construct larger, more elaborate
homes with tin roofs, concrete floors, and block walls. It also facilitated larger-scale pro-
jects, such as school and church construction, as well as, according to Sally Falk Moore
and Paul Puritt, the completion of a ‘motor road high on the mountain linking the various
chiefdoms and facilitating the transportation of the coffee to Moshi Town’. The embra-
cing of coffee cultivation and the market economy by the people of the mountain, and their
use of coffee revenues for everything from paying taxes to building hospitals, pleased the
administration. By the s, the government in Dar es Salaam considered the peoples of
Kilimanjaro to be economically ‘progressive’.
Yet in spite of these developments, the colonial administration remained frustrated with
what it saw as the backwards political and social state of the mountain. This topic was the
subject of a report entitled ‘The Political Tendencies of the Wachagga’, submitted by the

 Tanzania National Archives, Dar es Salaam (TNA) , Northern Province Annual Report, .
 This ordinance was passed in hopes of reducing soil erosion on the mountain. TNA , Native Authority
Orders, , Government of Tanganyika, Annual Reports, Northern Province, .
 Moore and Puritt, Chagga and Meru, .
 The National Archives of the UK, Kew, Public Record Office (PRO) Colonial Office (CO) //,
Charles Dundas, ‘Native Coffee Cultivation on Kilimanjaro’, .
 TNA , letter from Pennington to the Provincial Commissioner, Northern Province, Arusha,  Sept.
, as cited in J. Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, ), . See also M. von Clemm,
‘Agricultural productivity and sentiment on Kilimanjaro’, Economic Botany, : (), .
 Moore and Puritt, Chagga and Meru, .
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

Moshi district office to the secretariat in . The report describes a Kilimanjaro that
had emerged as a critical part of the colonial economy, but that remained crippled by a
lack of unity. As an example, it cited the fact that the people of the mountain still declined
to identify themselves as Chagga. It noted, ‘if a Chagga, about to give evidence in Court, is
asked his tribe he invariably replies “Mkibosho” or “Mkilema” or whatsoever the name be
by which the people in his particular area are called: if he adds “Mchagga” it is as an after-
thought’. It also references frequent bickering and divisiveness among the chiefdoms,
necessitating intervention by the district officer. It concludes that if the onset of German
colonial rule had not halted inter-chiefdom warfare, a single Chagga polity and common
identity would have been inevitable. It was therefore incumbent upon the British adminis-
tration to use political techniques to encourage the development of political and social
unity on the mountain.

COFFEE, LAND, AND WATER

More than thirty years after the establishment of colonial rule, the people of Kilimanjaro
had for the most part not embraced a Chagga political or cultural identity. This is striking,
considering the extent to which the concept pervaded colonial and missionary thinking,
and the manner in which the mangis leveraged the term to bolster their own powers.
In the s and s, however, the term came into increasing use by the populace.
This was certainly not inevitable. Nor was it merely the culmination of thirty years of colo-
nial influence, though that power cannot be denied. Rather, the increasing prevalence of
Chagga as a term invoking a collective identity can be attributed to the work of grassroots
organizations that were striving to preserve and expand access to resources. This becomes
clear by looking at three areas of conflict that dominated politics on Kilimanjaro from the
s onward.
The first area of conflict concerned coffee. The phenomenal success of African coffee
cultivation pleased the government and yielded tremendous wealth for farmers, but it
also created anxiety among the region’s European settlers, most of whom were also heavily
involved in the growing of coffee. Settlers became fierce opponents of African coffee cul-
tivation in the s. They feared that a thriving African coffee industry would not only
depress prices, but would also diminish their access to the cheap agricultural labor necess-
ary for running their estates. In , a group of settlers formed the Kilimanjaro Planters
Association (KPA), an organization that actively lobbied the government to place a ban
on all African cultivation of coffee on Kilimanjaro, as had been done in Kenya. The
Association provided several reasons justifying its request: African coffee provided

 TNA , Moshi District Office, ‘The Political Tendencies of the Wachagga, ’, .
 Ibid. .
 Even Charles Dundas, Moshi district officer in the s and a person with strong friendships with many
mountain farmers, firmly asserted that the mountain was the home of a singular people. Dundas,
Kilimanjaro and Its People.
 European settlers arrived on Kilimanjaro in successive waves, mostly between  and . Iliffe,
Modern History, –; and Wimmelbücker, Kilimanjaro.
 Iliffe, Modern History, .
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

a haven for insects and fungal diseases; African cultivation encouraged theft of saplings,
seeds, and fertilizer from European farms; and the inferior quality of African coffee
would depress the value and tarnish the reputation of settler-grown Kilimanjaro
Arabica. Some members even went as far as to start rumors that a rebellion was brewing
on the mountain. Though the government tended to see the claims of settlers for what
they were, their accusations and lobbying efforts heightened tensions throughout the
whole region. Conflicts between European and African farmers over land, water, and
labor issues became increasingly frequent. Moreover, there was fear among Africans
that the lucrative coffee industry, which had in many ways transformed life on the moun-
tain, would be stripped from them, leaving them no choice but to become wage laborers.
The second area of conflict concerned the availability of land. From the s, land
pressure became a dominant concern of people living on the mountain, stemming largely
from the swiftly growing population. In , government officials estimated the African
population of Kilimanjaro to be around ,. By , it had reached ,. As
young men strove to create homesteads of their own, they increasingly found good land
hard to come by. The colonial government and the mangis responded by encouraging
men to settle in the drier lands near the foot of the mountain. However, this land was gen-
erally too dry for the banana, yam, and coffee economy that characterized the mountain,
and was therefore undesirable. Families with no recourse ended up dividing existing home-
steads among male heirs, which in turn led to a dramatic decrease in the average size of
mountain farms, from an average of ten acres at the beginning of the century, to less
than two by the s. Given the value of coffee and the desire of people to increase pro-
duction, the scarcity of land and the shrinking of kihamba generated resentment.
Furthermore, people feared that the government, the mangis, and the settlers were conspir-
ing to take even more land away from them.
For mountain farmers, the most frustrating aspect of land pressure was the fact that
European settlers and the missions held several thousand acres of prime land interspersed
among the chiefdoms. At the beginning of the century, the German government had
encouraged or outright forced many of the mangis to cede land, which the government
then in turn sold to settlers or the missions. In some cases, the mangis even sold off
land themselves as a way of generating income. In chiefdoms such as Kibosho, nearly
one-third of land had been transferred to European control. Furthermore, on settler
farms and mission estates, it was common practice for much of the land to be left fallow.
By the s, many land-hungry farmers had resorted either to squatting on these lands
illegally or to working as tenant farmers.
As tension over the land issue mounted, the government initially responded by placing
more authority over land issues in the hands of the mangis. In the s, for example,
they gained the ability to supervise the transfer of lands between farmers on the mountain,
a measure intended to facilitate the sale of land, especially between people from

 PRO CO //, ‘Unrest at Kilimanjaro, Situation which has Arisen Among the Native and Non-Native
Communities’, .
 TNA //, Government of Tanganyika, ‘Northern Province Native Agriculture’, .
 TNA , A. W. Griffiths, ‘Chagga Land Tenure Report, ’.
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

neighboring clans. As noted by Sally Falk Moore, however, such changes had the effect
of further enhancing the power of the mangis at the expense of the clans. Clan heads,
who had for centuries held power over land matters, accused the chiefs of usurping their
powers. Rather than alleviating the land crunch, the mangis actually intensified it, often
using their power to increase their own holdings or to pass land on to their supporters.
The increasing power of the mangis and the lingering problem of insufficient land alienated
two groups in particular, the clan headmen whose powers were being undermined, and an
emerging class of educated, Christian coffee farmers who found themselves denied the very
resource so crucial to their future prosperity.
The third area of conflict centered on the water supply of the mountain. In the s, the
control, use, and management of water resources emerged as a concern of both the colonial
administration and the mountain population. Several factors lay behind this, the first being
a series of severe droughts that afflicted the region. In the first half of the century, signifi-
cant shortages of rainfall in highland East Africa occurred in at least six periods: –,
–, –, –, –, and –. For the colonial administration,
however, these droughts sparked fear that East Africa was becoming progressively more
arid. Another factor was increasing concern over soil erosion, which emerged at the fore-
front of environmental preoccupation in the s. Due to the steeply sloping contours
of the mountain, its fast running rivers, the widespread use of flood irrigation on both set-
tler and African farms, and the nature of rainfall – usually much in short spans of time –
the region seemed especially susceptible to erosion caused by water. A third concern was
increasing demand for the resource from all sectors of society: the swiftly growing chiefdoms,
the settlers at the foot of the mountain, and industrial users throughout the Pangani Valley.
These concerns led the British administration to step up its involvement in the manage-
ment of water supplies on the mountain. Initially, it took three steps. One, it created a new
legal foundation for water control in the  Natural Water Supply Ordinance, which for
the first time placed controls on the construction of irrigation canals, such as those on
Kilimanjaro. It also created Water Boards that were responsible for the settling of
water disputes and the allocation of water. Lastly, it hired several scientists, including
Clement Gillman and Francis Kanthack, to conduct research on the water ‘situation’

 M. Hailey, An African Survey: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara (London,
), .
 S. F. Moore, Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach (London, ), –.
 Records from the Holy Ghost Fathers mission stations at Kilema, Kibosho, and Rombo indicate that drought
conditions were present in these time spans. The observations of explorers, Lutheran missionaries, and
colonial officials corroborate these observations. See Archives of the Congrégation du Saint-Esprit,
Chevilly-Larue, France (CSEA) K., ‘Journal de la Communauté de Rombo’; CSEA K., ‘Journal de
la Communauté de Kibosho’; and CSEA K., ‘Journal de la Communauté de Kilema’ ; as well as
Johnston, The Kilima-Njaro Expedition.
 The American Dust Bowl was a major catalyst in the spread of erosion concern, leading to the implementation
of heavily invasive agricultural policies throughout much of Eastern Africa. D. Anderson, ‘Depression, Dust
Bowl, demography, and drought: the colonial state and soil conservation in East Africa during the s’,
African Affairs, : (), –.
 Bender, ‘Water brings no harm’, .
 Government of Tanganyika, ‘Natural water supply regulation ordinance of ’, No. , Annotated
Ordinances,  (Dar es Salaam, ).
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

on the mountain that would help the government maximize the resource and stop the evils
of soil erosion.
These water control initiatives sparked a tremendous amount of concern and anxiety in
the chiefdoms. For one, the primary focus of government concern over water was the
mifongo. Government officials, especially Kanthack, considered the mountainside system
of water furrows to be ‘primitive, wasteful, and inefficient’. He especially criticized the
use of furrows to irrigate finger millet and coffee, a practice he felt contributed to soil ero-
sion. Kanthack concluded that the government should allow existing furrows to remain,
but that under no circumstances should it allow the construction of additional ones.
This generated much resistance on the mountain, as the furrows had for generations
been central to local agriculture.
Conflicts over land, water, and coffee cultivation did not arise in a vacuum, but rather in
the context of a rapidly changing society, one marked by an increase in educational oppor-
tunity and conversions to Christianity. As people looked to address their grievances, they
went first to their mangis. The mangis, however, had come to occupy a precarious position.
They ostensibly served the interests of their people, yet they were salaried agents of the
colonial state. In addition, they had managed to alienate three important power players
on the mountain: clan headmen, coffee farmers, and a new generation of educated elites.
Seeing the mangis as ineffective, aloof, corrupt, and the combination of old guard and
colonial bureaucrat, these individuals went in a different direction to redress their grie-
vances: creating grassroots organizations whose membership would stretch beyond the
boundaries of the chiefdoms and across the mountain.
The first of these organizations was the Kilimanjaro Native Planters Association
(KNPA). It was created in  by Joseph Merinyo and Natheniel Mtui (the former an
assistant of Charles Dundas, the latter a protégé of Bruno Gutmann). At first a coopera-
tive society aimed at the purchasing and sharing of spray equipment, it quickly grew into a
marketing agency for African coffee and the political arm of the mountain’s growers. The
KNPA actively lobbied the Moshi district office to preserve their coffee rights, to provide
more land for the creation of homesteads, and to preserve water rights, while also refuting
the claims made by the settlers. Within one year, the organization claimed over ,
members from all across the mountain. By the next, it had nearly tripled.
Initially, the KNPA had the unconditional support of the government, which was happy
to see coffee production and its tax revenues, on the rise. It soon came to fear, however,
that the organization was becoming too political, and that it might undermine the auth-
ority of the mangis. In , District Commissioner F. C. Hallier proposed what he saw
as a compromise between the growers, the mangis, and the settlers. His Coffee Industry
Ordinance called for the registration of all African coffee farms for the purpose of control-
ling disease (an attempt to appease the settlers) as well as the abolition of the KNPA

 F. E. Kanthack, Report on the Control of the Natural Waters of Tanganyika and the Framework of a Water
Law on which Such Control Should Be Based (Dar es Salaam, ). Contrary to its name, the document
focuses almost exclusively on the Kilimanjaro region.
 S. F. Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications: ‘Customary’ Law on Kilimanjaro, – (Cambridge,
), .
 PRO CO //, ‘Kilimanjaro Native Planters Association’.
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

and the consolidation of its powers into the Chagga Council. This generated a tremen-
dous outcry, partly because of the registration clause, but mainly because most people
had no interest in seeing the KNPA dissolved. The organization had become a rallying
point of sorts, not just against the settlers but also against the mangis, to the extent
that people were willing to defy them to save it. The organization remained standing, sig-
naling that for the first time, people on the mountain were identifying politically with
an entity that crossed chiefdom boundaries. The KNPA remained a powerful force on
Kilimanjaro for another few years, until an accounting scandal in  led to its demise.
By this point, the government had made a firm commitment to supporting African coffee
cultivation (which had become extremely lucrative), but desired to rid the organization
of its ‘radical’ elements. The scandal allowed the district office to oust the existing leader-
ship, dissolve the organization, and replace it with a successor, the Kilimanjaro Native
Cooperative Union (KNCU). The new co-op served as less of a political space than its
predecessor, but it did remain outside the authority of the chiefs.
Both the KNPA and the KNCU succeeded in mobilizing people to protect their coffee
growing interests. Doing so gave them access to a wider forum for voicing their concerns
and creating relationships extending beyond the chiefdom. In these organizations, people
came together to defend themselves not from one another, but rather from outsiders
beyond the mountain and their own mangis. In looking for a way in which to identify
themselves against these outsiders, people adopted the term that had long been used to
describe them, yet in doing so they imbued it with new meaning. In the KNCU, the
term Chagga came to be used to refer to members and their families in juxtaposition to
non-members on the mountain, Europeans, and newly arriving African migrants from
other parts of the colony. It also emerged as a tool for distinguishing their coffee from
that grown by settlers. ‘Chagga’ coffee came to embody a sense of pride, and also a
sense of obligation among growers to produce at high quality.

REDEFINING ‘CHAGGA’: THE ELECTION OF 1952 AND

PARAMOUNT CHIEFTAINCY
While the KNPA and the KNCU successfully addressed concerns about coffee, they were
not as effective in dealing with land and water resources. Land, in particular, proved to
be the most problematic issue, since authority to distribute unclaimed or abandoned moun-
tainside acreage rested in the hands of the mangis. In the years following the Second World
War, tensions again began to flare between the chiefs and various discontented groups,
with two issues in particular generating new concern. One was an announcement of plans

 Rogers, ‘Search for political focus’, –; cited in Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications, .
 This occurred as part of the Co-operative Societies Ordinance. See Government of Tanganyika, ‘Co-operative
Societies Ordinance of ’, Annotated Ordinances,  (Dar es Salaam, ). See also, Rogers, ‘Search
for political focus’, iv–vi.
 Interview with Fr. Aidan Msafiri, Kilema,  Mar. . Also from field notes of interviews with several retired
members of KNCU offices on the mountain.
 While coffee from the mountain was branded for the international market as ‘Kilimanjaro’ coffee, people used
the term ‘Chagga’ coffee to indicate that it had been grown by a member of the co-op, as opposed to either an
African non-member or a European settler.
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

by the Arusha-Moshi Lands Commission to redistribute lands and water furrows that had
been seized from German settlers. Though less contentious than on nearby Mount Meru
(where the dispute over land reallocation would eventually make its way to the United
Nations Trusteeship Council), the decision generated controversy on Kilimanjaro because
it placed power over redistribution in the hands of the chiefs. The other issue was a set of
reforms made to Chagga Native Authority governance. The district office chose to conso-
lidate several of the chiefdoms into neighboring ones, leaving only . The chiefdoms were
then grouped into three divisions: Hai (West Kilimanjaro), Vunjo (South Kilimanjaro), and
Rombo (East Kilimanjaro). Each received its own divisional chief (mangi mwitori) and its
own council. The existing Chagga Council remained in place, but came to be dominated by
the new divisional chiefs. These reforms, though allowing for some popular representation
by the masses, centralized power in the hands of the divisional chiefs and further eroded
the authority of the clan heads. Most notably, they placed power over land distribution solely
in the hands of the divisional chiefs with little check on their powers.
Fearful of these changes, a group of concerned coffee farmers led by former activists
Merinyo and Njau banded together in early , calling themselves the Chagga
Association. Their group became interested in questions of governance, in particular the
preservation of land and water rights for the populace. In a letter written to the district
commissioner, the association’s leadership indicted what they saw as haphazard and incon-
sistent laws among the chiefdoms, completely at the whim of the given mangi. They called
for government to provide a ‘decent law to govern Wachagga’, one that would both foster
unity among rulers and involve young, educated people to a greater extent. In particular,
Merinyo and Njau advocated the election of a paramount chief to preside over the existing
mangis. They felt this would reduce the powers of the local chiefs and, through the power
of the ballot box, lead to greater say by the local population and greater fairness in land
and water issues.
What is perhaps most profound about the Chagga Association is how it challenged the
way in which the mangis used the term Chagga. In the political context, the term had come
to refer to colonial governance through ‘traditional’ authorities. This new organization,
however, used the term to describe the unity of the people as a whole, and their struggle
against the oppressive use of power by the mangis. Note the words of Merinyo in a letter
to the divisional chiefs.
I would be glad if we could cooperate and look into the deep distress the Wachagga are expressing
at this very moment: and we should reflect objectively irrespective of the flattery that the Wachagga
have progressed and are in good condition.

 For more on the Arusha-Moshi Lands Commission, and in particular the Meru Land Case, see T. T. Spear,
Mountain Farmers: Moral Economies of Land and Agricultural Development in Arusha and Meru
(Oxford, ).
 P. H. Johnston, ‘Chagga constitutional development,’ Journal of African Administration,  (), –.
These changes are discussed in detail in Rogers, ‘Search for political focus’, –.
 TNA //, Letter from the Chagga Association, Moshi, to the District Commissioner, Moshi,
 May .
 Letter from Merinyo to the Honorable Excellencies, the Wamangi Waitori, Hai, Vunjo, and Rombo,  Sept.
, ‘The Traditional Structure of Leadership in the Past and Today’, Swahili typescript, cited in Rogers,
‘Search for political focus’, .
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

You, our leaders – the Waitori [divisional chiefs] and the Wamangi – it is obvious that you are
interested only in strengthening your positions, and that you are not interested in the welfare of
your people.

In essence, the way in which leaders such as Merinyo and Njau used the word Chagga
transformed it from a term of exploitation into one of potential liberation. The key to free-
dom from the oppressive use of chiefly power lay in the unity of the people. As a means of
building this unified front, they leveraged the term long used by the administration – but
eschewed by the people – to refer to those living on the mountain.
Initially, their voices went unheard. In , the government handed over several hun-
dred acres of prime ex-German land to the divisional chiefs. As predicted by the Chagga
Association, the lands remained in their hands and were never redistributed. In response
to the lack of progress being made, Merinyo and Njau organized a new political organiz-
ation, the Kilimanjaro Chagga Citizens Union (KCCU). It had two aims: to reform the
distribution of land and to make governance across the mountain more unified by having
an elected mangi mkuu. John Iliffe notes that the organization became extremely popular
among a wide range of politically alienated people, including ‘dispossessed chiefs, ambi-
tious traders and farmers, old KNPA activists, unprivileged Muslims, [headmen] who
resented chiefly authority, and young educated men impatient with the old order’. It
quickly grew, sporting as many as , members in , and established itself as a
major thorn in the side of the Chagga Council.
The colonial administration viewed the KCCU with a great deal of anxiety, as it feared
that this popular resistance to government policies could undermine the local implemen-
tation of indirect rule. However, it shared the desire to bring central leadership to the
mountain as a means of making governance more efficient and reducing costs. In ,
the administration struck an agreement with the Chagga Council and the KCCU to
implement a paramount chieftaincy, and even to allow the mangi mkuu to be chosen by
popular vote. By the summer, four candidates had emerged to run in the  October elec-
tion, three of whom were the sitting divisional chiefs: Petro Itosi Marealle of Vunjo, Abdiel
Shangali of Hai, and John Maruma of Rombo.
The fourth, Thomas Marealle, was to some extent an outsider. Like the other candidates,
he came from a chiefly clan, a requirement for participating in the election. He was, in
fact, nephew of fellow candidate Petro Marealle. But unlike his opponents, Thomas
Marealle had not spent all of his life involved in local politics. After completing his
secondary schooling on the mountain, he studied abroad at both the London School of
Economics and Trinity College, Cambridge. He then returned to Tanganyika, working
for a time as a government clerk, and later as the manager of the Tanganyika
Broadcasting Corporation. His chiefly heritage, combined with his high level of

 For a more detailed background and discussion, see Hunter, ‘In pursuit’.
 Iliffe, Modern History, .
 Ibid. .
 See von Clemm, ‘Agricultural productivity and sentiment on Kilimanjaro’.
 Chuwa, ‘Interview with Thomas Marealle’.
 Iliffe, Modern History, ; also Chuwa, ‘Interview with Thomas Marealle’.
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

education and disconnect from local politics, made him attractive in the eyes of the KCCU.
As a candidate, Marealle distanced himself from the divisional chiefs by selling himself not
as representing a particular chiefdom or division, but rather as representing all the moun-
tain’s people. Though few materials survive documenting the actual campaigning, Rogers
notes that the KCCU devised powerful propaganda for Marealle. It claimed that as
mangi mkuu, he would ‘abolish the Waitori system, do away with the coffee cess, and
lead the Chagga to greatness as an independent sovereign’. Further, ‘he would restore
respect to the clans and clan leaders and abolish corruption in the administration, and
speak authoritatively to Government, and they would be forced to listen.’ Most impor-
tantly, he promised that ‘Chagga vihamba would be safe forever, and more land pro-
vided’. His language emphasized not only his desire to secure land for the people, but
also that unity of the people was essential to winning it.
Voters responded favorably to Thomas Marealle’s candidacy. In the election, nearly
 per cent of the electorate (, people in total) turned out to vote. Marealle
claimed , votes, winning every chiefdom with the exception of one. Marealle’s vic-
tory represented an important moment in the history of Kilimanjaro. He not only became
the first paramount chief for all of Kilimanjaro, but also he did so with popular support
from across the chiefdoms. Marealle’s appeal lay in a number of factors, including his char-
isma, his outsider status, and his high level of education. Nonetheless, people’s ongoing
struggle to secure access to the mountain’s resources, and their belief that Marealle
would be most successful in championing their interests, contributed first and foremost
to his victory. As John Tawney, a writer for the journal Corona noted in a  article
summarizing the election, ‘land is life to the Chagga and their feeling for it was a main
cause of the election’.
Thomas Marealle took office as paramount chief of Kilimanjaro on  January .
The installation ceremony, led by Governor Twining, featured a blend of so-called
‘traditional’ rites and rituals alongside modern ones. Marealle himself dressed in a
white Western-style suit with a black tie. After speeches by the governor, members of
the Chagga Council came forward, dressed him in a ceremonial robe and hat made with
the skins of a leopard and a colobus monkey, and declared him to be Mshumbue, the
anointed one. The ceremony ended with speeches by Marealle and the three divisional
chiefs, and an evening of dancing and sundowners. In the coming weeks, many of the chief-
doms also held parties in his honor. Among the people, hopes ran high that the new para-
mount chief would solve many of the region’s problems, and help to preserve and expand
access to its vital resources. In truth, the newly created office offered Marealle little power

 Rogers, ‘Search for political focus’, .

 Since the mid-s, the government had assessed a coffee cess or tax, on growers at the time of sale. The tax
was extremely unpopular among coffee farmers, in part because the revenues helped to support the Council of
Chagga Chiefs. See Rogers, ‘Search for political focus’, ; and Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications,
 and .
 TNA /, ‘Election Results’, as cited in Rogers, ‘Search for political focus’, –.
 In this three-page article, Tawney spent nearly one page discussing the land problems of Kilimanjaro, and the
relationship between land politics and the creation of an office of paramount chief. J. Tawney, ‘Election in
Tanganyika’, Corona, : (), –.
 A fuller description of this ceremony can be found in Whitlamsmith, Recent Trends, –.
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

with which to make change. As noted by Rogers, ‘he was to be, in fact, a Chief in Council –
more than a simple executive officer, but far less than the independent ruler [KCCU]
leaders and followers had envisioned and hoped for’. For the next several years,
Marealle worked with local leaders on critical issues including water supplies, road con-
struction, and school and dispensary construction, benefiting from tax revenues from the
thriving coffee industry. However, he had little real power as regards the issue of greatest
concern.
Marealle’s tenure as paramount chief is best known for his attempts to promote, even
exploit, the burgeoning sense of Chagga cultural identity. In his eyes, the destiny of the
people of the mountain lay in a fusion of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ practices, and he
worked tirelessly to promote cultural symbols reinforcing that vision. For example, he
wore his Chagga ceremonial robes atop a white suit for nearly all official functions and
visits by dignitaries (see Fig. ). He also engaged in the creation of new cultural imagery.
In , he commissioned the design of a Chagga flag. The flag features Kibo, the great
snow-covered peak of the mountain, anchoring the background. Three images emerge in
the foreground: a banana tree on the right, a coffee tree on the left, and a masale plant join-
ing the two. The banana tree, as the staple of the mountain, represents tradition and heri-
tage, while the coffee points to the mountain’s current and future prosperity. The masale, a
common symbol on the mountain for peace, thus bridges the past and present. Lastly, a
leopard, representative of power, shrouds the whole scene. The image as a whole symbo-
lized the common heritage of the people, as well as their hopes for the future, and as such
served as a symbol for unity throughout the s.
Perhaps most interesting is that Marealle promoted Chagga identity and political unity
as something that had been bound to develop in the course of time, an idea drawn from
the colonial discourse of one mountain, one people. In the introduction he wrote for the
Chagga Day  brochure, he referred to the  election as the ‘historic come-together
of the whole tribe’. He then referred at length to the writings of Charles Dundas, who
asserted in  that if not for the interruption of colonial rule, a singular Chagga king-
dom would have arisen in the course of time. Marealle, in essence, interpreted Chagga
Day as a delayed realization of what Dundas and others had predicted, that it was the des-
tiny of the peoples of Kilimanjaro to become a single entity. This starkly ignored the grass-
roots political processes that had not only shaped the emergence of this identity, but also
had led to his very election.
Marealle’s ideas regarding Chagga unity can also be seen in a speech he delivered to the
United Nations Trusteeship Council in  June , regarding his vision of the future
of the Tanganyika Territory. He begins by pointing out the shared alpine landscape, the
use of land resources, and the challenges facing the people, before moving to a discussion
of the region’s stunning economic growth and the political advancements being made.
Throughout, he refers to the people of the mountain as the Chagga, only once making
reference to the diversity of chiefdoms or clans. He also mentions the importance of
preserving ‘Chagga History’, and refers to two initiatives being undertaken: the creation

 Ibid.
 ‘Introduction to Chagga Day Brochure, ’, in Whitlamsmith, Recent Trends, I-III.
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

Fig. 1. The Rt. Hon Alan Lennox-Boyd, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, speaks with Mangi Mkuu
Thomas Marealle II during a visit to the Chagga Council, . Photo courtesy of the National
Archives of the UK, The Public Record Office. PRO CO --.

of a cultural heritage society and library called the Chagga Trust, and the commissioning of
Oxford scholar Kathleen Stahl to write a history of the Chagga people. He also tries to
situate this identity in the context of the newly emerging discourse of Tanganyikan identity

 The Chagga Trust paid Stahl a sum of £, to write an accurate ‘history’ of the Chagga people. It was
published in  by Mouton Press, London under the title History of the Chagga People of Kilimanjaro.
MATTHEW V. BENDER v o l .   , n o .  

being promoted by nationalist organizations such as the Tanganyika African National

Union (TANU).
In spite of his initial popularity, Marealle struggled to maintain broad support. Despite
several successes in terms of regional development, he failed to address the core issue lead-
ing to his election: the land question. This caused him to lose the support of clan heads and
coffee farmers, who felt he had failed to bring needed reforms to fix land distribution pol-
icies (such as eliminating the system of divisional chiefs). He also alienated educated youth
who questioned not only his dedication to land reform but also his reliance on traditional
imagery and autocratic forms of political action to the exclusion of more democratic ones.
Most importantly, Marealle’s political views placed him into conflict with the nationalists.
Kilimanjaro was one of the last regions in the colony to embrace the nationalist movement.
TANU leadership – particularly Julius Nyerere, a former friend of Marealle – felt that the
overt sense of identity being expressed on the mountain bordered on ethnic nationalism
and actually harmed their cause. Amid increasing pressure, Marealle resigned his post
in . Two years later, the people voted again for political reform, this time replacing
the paramount chieftaincy with an elected presidency.
The year  marked the end of an era in mountain politics, a definitive shift away
from chiefly leadership in the concluding days of colonial rule. The Chagga Day celebra-
tions, and the almost nationalistic symbols of Chagga identity that emerged in
Marealle’s tenure as mangi mkuu, disappeared almost overnight. As the independent
Tanzanian state took form over the next several years, a common identity of being
Tanzanian began to emerge. However, the sense of Chagga identity forged by decades
of political dispute and contestation over resources has remained, especially as people
from Kilimanjaro have migrated to other parts of the country. Today, it implies common
cultural and political heritage, and a sense that the mountain landscape is home.

CONCLUSION
Marealle’s decline as mangi mkuu thus leads back to the event in question, the Chagga Day
celebration of . By looking at how the peoples of Kilimanjaro developed and used
identities in the past, as well as the conflicts and debates leading up to , we gain a
clearer sense of the significance of this celebration, as well as how the people of
Kilimanjaro mobilized political identity in relationship to landscape and the control of
resources. In the nineteenth century, the people of the mountain utilized chiefdom identities
as a means of securing access to needed resources, and of protecting these resources from
those in neighboring chiefdoms. In the twentieth century, however, people began to
perceive the biggest threat to their livelihoods coming not from neighboring chiefdoms,

 Dag Hammarskjöld Library, United Nations, New York T/PV., ‘Hearing of Chief Marealle II, Paramount
Chief of the Wachagga, member of the executive council, Tanganyika. Verbatim record of the Eight Hundred
and Seventeenth Meeting, Twentieth Session,  June ’.
 For more on Thomas Marealle’s relationship with Julius Nyerere and TANU, see P. K. Bjerk, ‘Julius Nyerere
and the Establishment of Sovereignty in Tanganyika’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, ), –; and K. M. Stahl, ‘The Chagga,’ in P. H. Gulliver (ed.), Tradition and Transition in
East Africa: Studies of the Tribal Element in the Modern Era (Berkeley, CA, ), –.
 v o l .   , n o .  BEING ‘CHAGGA’

but rather from their own chiefs. By joining grassroots organizations whose membership
spanned the mountain, such as the KNPA and the KCCU, individuals hoped to protect
their resources while at the same time giving themselves voice in government. Thus by for-
ging an identity as Chagga, the people of Kilimanjaro appropriated a term long used by
others to describe them and transformed it into a powerful instrument for confronting
their oppressors. The vibrant celebration that accompanied Chagga Day in  thus sig-
nified a crucial moment in the social and political life of the mountain.
These events not only illuminate issues of identity formation on Kilimanjaro, but they
also add much to our understanding of the emergence of ethnic and political identities
more generally. They call into question linear narratives of identity development by show-
ing how specific forms of identity, and even the terms used to denote those identities, were
subject to contestation. Far from inevitable, notions of identity were actively forged by
groups engaged in struggles with the colonial state and among themselves. Furthermore,
the case of Kilimanjaro draws specific attention to the relationship between identity for-
mation and resources. On the mountain, notions of identity had long been shaped by
the need to secure access to land and water. The emergence of Chagga identity represents
a recent example of this, but by no means the only one. This shows us that identities arose
not only from increased feelings of belonging but also the need to exercise and protect
specific claims. It also indicates that the rise of ethnic identities, often associated with
the colonial period, was not exclusively a product of colonialism but rather part of
long-term historical patterns of political mobilization and resource control.
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