Chaga

ethnic group
group=Chagga


poptime=2,000,000
popplace=Tanzania
rels=Christian, Islam, indigenous beliefs
langs=Chagga
related=Ongamo

The Chaga (also called Wachaga, Chagga, Jagga, Dschagga, Waschagga, or Wachagga) are Bantu speaking indigenous African ethnicity and the third largest ethnic group in Tanzania. They live on the southern and eastern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru, as well as in the Moshi area. Their relative wealth comes from not only the favorable climate of the area, but also from successful agricultural methods which include great extensive irrigation systems and continuous fertilization practised for thousands of years. They were one of the first tribes in the area to convert to Christianity. This might have given them an economic "advantage" over other ethnic groups, as they had better access to education and health care as Christians.

The Chagga have descended from various Bantu groups who migrated from the rest of Africa into the wonderous foothills of the mighty Kilimanjaro. While the Chagga are Bantu-speakers, they do not speak an undifferentiated language but rather a unique mixture of related Chagga dialects. These dialects are related to Kamba, which is spoken in the northeast Kenya along with other languages spoken in the east such as Dabida and Pokomo.The Chagga land is traditionally divided into a number of politically independent chiefdoms with a superior egalitarian social system. The Chagga are culturally related to the Pare, Taveta and Teita peoples. They follow a patrilineal system of descent and inheritance. The Chagga subsist primarily by agriculture, using great methods of irrigation on terraced fields and oxen manure to develop the fields. Although bananas are their staple food, they also cultivate various crops including yams, beans, and maize. In agricultural exports, the Chagga are best known for their Arabica coffee, which is exported to American and European markets, resulting in coffee being a primary cash crop.

Demographics

Current population is estimated at about 1,500,000 ( 2003 estimate), mostly concetrated in Kilimanjaro region in Tanzania, and the cities of Arusha and Dar-Es-Salaam.

Early history

Early migration patterns of the Niger-Congo Bantu's led the Chagga to settle in the North Pare Mountains. This is the Home of the ancestral chagga. The population growth by about eleventh or twelve century led a number of people to begin looking for a new land on which to live. They found it on the nearby and, in those days, still heavily forested southern and eastern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. The movement of the early chagga banana farmers to Kilimanjaro set off a period of rapid and extensive cultural amalgamation, in which large numbers of the Ongamo people and the Rift Southern Cushites were assimilated into the newly expanding chaga communities. Though apparently growing in numbers and territory, the chaga remained organised in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into a great many very small and very local social and political units, whose histories are still largely unstudied by Western scholars. But if the Maasai settled in the open plains around much of the chaga country, they presently cannot be credited with great influence on chaga affairs during this period, another people, the Ongamo or Ngasa who were closely related in language to the Maasai, did have much influence in chaga history.

Interactions

Interactions with the Ongamo

A striking blending of features of ancient Afsan and Niger-Congo civilizations, with some features of Sudanic civilization contributed by the Ongamo, emerged out of this period of cross-cultural encounter. The dominance of the new highland planting agriculture ensured that the new communities came to speak the Chagga Language of the makers of that agriculture. Initially these communities took the form of villages built along highland ridges. This custom apparently preserved an old practice coming from the Kaskazi and Upland Bantu side of their ancestry. The Chagga also circumcised boys and initiated them into age-sets of the typical old Bantu type, but at the same time they adopted from the Southern Cushitic side of their ancestry the practice of female clitoridectomy which they stopped after Christianity/Islam came. In a variety of other aspects, Cushitic or Nilotic ideas prevailed in Chagga culture, notable case being music, in which drumming anciently typical of Niger-Congo civilization was entirely lost. The drawing of blood from cattle was a specifically Southern Cushitic addition to the sources of food. And like the Ongamo and Southern Cushites, the emerging Chagga society was entirely patrilineal. The beginnings of Chagga interactions with the Ongamo date well before 1600, and at some point in time the Ongamo had even been the dominant people through much of the Kilimanjaro area. By seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ongamo were probably becoming increasingly restricted, by Chagga expansion, to eastern Kilimanjaro. Yet within that region they must have remained an important and still independent society, even as late as the second half of the nineteenth century and in the face of massive acculturation to the Chagga about them, Ongamo society retained sufficient cohesion to keep its age-set system functioning to some extent.Cleanup|section|date=May 2008the Chagga people have their own unique life style compared with other tribes found in Tanzania. For many years when it reachrd the ceremonial month of December, the Chagga people will gather themselves from where they have been working and earning, and travel back to their mother land to celebrate. They remember their ancestors by performing sacrifices. They have a local brew called mbege, their traditional foods include kiumbo which they cook using banana and beans, ngande, shiro, and kishumba.

Interactions with the Pare and the Outside world

The Pare had been the chief suppliers of iron to the inhabitants of the mountain regions of north-eastern Tanzania. The demand for Pare iron, increased from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The cause of the increase was the military rivalry among the rulers of the Chagga. It is likely that there was a connection between this rivalry and the development of long distance trade from the coast to the interior of the Pangani river basin, suggesting that the Chagga made contacts with the coast may have dated to about the end of the eighteenth century. The rivalry among Chagga rulers was probably the result of competition among them for the control of the trade with people from the coast. Raids and counter raids characterised the Chagga rivalry, as observed and understood by European colonisers. Subsequently there was an increase in demand for Pare iron to forge military weapons to equip the armies of the Chagga rulers.

Early religion

In religion a thoroughgoing syncretism took place. The importance of ancestors, a Niger-Congo feature, was strongly maintained by the chagga to this day, they had an idea of Divinity, identified with the majestic sun as life giving, a faith also seen in the Rift Southern Cushitic version of the Sudanic religion, with the creator god concept of the Niger-Congo belief. Later on they became victims of forced Christianity and Islam that destroyed their religious system.

Daily life and culture

Since fish are absent from most of the streams of their areas,like the Taita, fish were seen as unfit to eat, and of them were seen having same nature as serpents, who are considered bad in Chagga culture. The Chagga people bred fowls in large number, to sell to the passing caravans of traders from the East coast, for they themselves abjured poultry as food, it was as seen as unwholesome and unmanly for obvious reasons, like the tenderness of its flesh. Their most prized domestic animals are the oxen, the goat and the sheep the dog however, is used to help guard compounds from intruders at night. The oxen are still highly valued. They belong to the humped Zebu breed prevalent throughout East Africa since the days of Ancient Egyptians. The goats are small and handsome with small horns. Milk is an essential part of Chagga diet. The chagga diet is predominantly meat, but the main diet is vegetables. Among the plants grown for food are maize, sweet potatoes, yams, arums, beans, peas, red millet and bananas. The chagga brew a delicious drink called Mbege, which is made of millet and bananas and left to ferment for 10 days prior to festivities.

Chieftains

Chiefship in chaga appears to be very specific with no influence from early ancestors according to western observations done in the 19th century. In the neary south Pare Mountains, the old clan chiefship of the Mashariki Bantu world, continued to be the ritual center of life among the early Asu and remained so, in fact, down through the nineteenth century. But among the ancentral chaga of North Pare and among their descendants who settled around Mount Kilimanajro, a new kind of chiefship, "Mangi", probably originally meaning "the arranger, planner" came into being not much before 1000 AD.

Politics and Mangi rule

The Mangi are great chiefs that govern largely clan-based states. The great Mangis controlled chaga affairs even during the oppressive and depressing colonial times, even though some ethnic groups did not have such control. It was also during this time that the amazing Chagga held an election in 1952 to elect Mangi Mkuu, "(Chief of all Chieftains)"' to look after their affairs and speak on behalf of the chagga people. Thomas Marealle of Marangu, and divisional chiefs M.H. Abdiel Shangali of Hai and John Ndaskoi Maruma of Rombo contested in the election, which saw Thomas Marealle being elected to the post. Another divisional chief Petro Itosi Marealle of Vunjo withdrew from the election. Mangi Mkuu Consolidated power from the other 3 Chagga divisional Chieftains thus making the Chagga more powerful and in control of their affairs during harsh Colonial times. His capital was in the great town of Marangu. The Practice of Mangi Mkuu led to their sad downfall during the struggle for independence. One might have expected that the most progressive local governments in the country at that time, would have continued to support the national movement now that its aims were becoming realities, and that Mangi Mkuu would have played a leading part. The opposite was the case. Local rivalries determined the issue, thanks largely to colonial mentality. And it was the chagga critics of Mangi Mkuu who ranged themselves behind the Tanganyika African National Union TANU. Significantly enough, Kilimanjaro was the last place in Tanganyika to be won by TANU, and the price of victory unfortunately was the downfall of the great Mangi Mkuu.

Mangi Sina of Kibosho

in the same area, [Kilimanjaro region] and in permanent competition with Mangi Rindi, Mangi Sina had by 1870 developed a great large army and was active in agriculture and cattle raids. He was still in control of his empire at the unfortunate arrival of the Germans in 1891, which broke down most of Chagga lifestyle through "colonisation".

Rindi

Mangi Rindi of the a subgroup of the Chagga was another major chief ruling in the Kilimanjaro region in 1860, making the now, city of Moshi an important base for ivory and game trading with Zanzibar. He manipulated and signed a Treaty with the Germans in 1885 and the cityMoshi became their headquarters and most important economic and political centre.

Mangi Mkuu's downfall

Mangi Mkuu's downfall was due to two main reasons:

*First, He lost support among western educated people. When chaga students at Makerere University criticized him in their college magazine, he publicly humbled them when they came home, in an "old" tribal ways. He placed his faith in Petro Njau, the elderly astute party organizer who had put him in. From 1958 Njau set himself the task of enlisting the support of the old conservatives and the clan elders. This was a spurious return to the great tribal past. But Mangi mkuu believed and trusted implicitly in him, and in the exaggerated accounts of popularity which Njau reported.

*Second, Mangi Mkuu crossed swords with T.A.N.U on his home ground of Kilimanjaro. He still supported the national aims of T.A.N.U for Tanganyika. He continued to support Julius Nyerere personally, as the national leader long after he had begun to deal summarily with local T.A.N.U critics at home, perhaps because these critics did not need to be taken seriously, since they were insignificantly unrepresentative of the people. In 1957-58 the British Administartion were belatedly trying to organize a council of Chiefs in Tanganyika as a delaying action against T.A.N.U, Mangi Mkuu wrote the governor asking that Nyerere himself should be invited to address the Chiefs. The request was refused. It was not until 1959, when he was fighting for his political life, that Mangi Mkuu cut across Nyerere personally and cut across the national movement as such. In January 1959, by which time he was sharply on the defensive at home, Mangi Mkuu criticized Nyerere's visit to Moshi to hold an open-air TANU meeting in the town. A few months later he circularized the chiefs on the mountain, threatening to sack them if they supported TANU.

TANU

In the local field of Chaga politics, however the break came earlier. It did not come from TANU branches as such which, though they had started in 1955 on the mountain, had made little headway among the people. It came from Machame, from the chiefly rival whom Mangi Mkuu had supplanted in 1951. Chief Abdieli Shangali threw the weight of his authority behind his son-in-law, Solomon Eliufoo, and this was the decisive factor. Eliufoo, a commoner from one of the oldest clans in Machame, and a Lutheran-trained teacher, was abroad in the United States and Great Britain from 1953-1956. In 1957 he returned as a teacher and joined the TANU branch in Machame. In 1958 he entered politics; he became a nominated member of the Chagga Council, being nominated by Hai divisional council of which his father-in-law, Chief Abdieli Shangali was chairman. The same year he was elected member of the legislative council in Dar-Es-Salaam on the TANU ticket. From 1958 onwards he was engaged in central politics becoming Minister of Health from 1959 to 1960, and in 1962 Minister of Education, a post which he held up to 1967. At the local level, he organised and led opposition to the Mangi Mkuu and by 1959 he called for the resignation or abdication of the Mangi Mkuu and the democratization for the local governments, forming a new party called Chaga Democratic Party

Chagga Democratic Party

Towards the end of 1959 the opposition of the Chaga Democratic party forced a deadlock in the Chaga Council. A vote was taken in the council as to whether a referendum should be held on Kilimanjaro to decide whether the Chaga wanted a Paramount Chief for life or a periodically elected president. The Vote was carried by a narrow majority, and the Mangi mkuu was abolished. After independence, through Nyerere's socialism and integration policies, the rule of Chiefs, was diminished.

Modern history

The current Chagga population is estimated at about 2 million. They once used to live under the rule of the Mangi Mkuu, even though they are not as organised as they used to be, and the Mangi is not involved in the day to day activities and life of the modern chagga. The Mangi's are still respected by the chagga. The Paramount chief (chief of all chiefs) is Mangi Marealle. The chagga are now modern wage earners in large modernised cities or abroad and entrepreneurs in the tourism industry around Kilimanjaro and Arusha areas. The Chagga still try to hold on to some of their traditions like the allocation a kihamba, a plot of land for each family. A kihamba is a Chagga family plot of land, usually passed down from generation to generation. Coffee is the primary cash crop for many Chagga people after its introduction to the area in the late nineteenth century, although bananas and maize are also staples. The Chagga are also famous for a traditional brew known as mbege. It is made from a special variety of bananas and millet.

In North America

In recent times, the Chagga have adopted a practice of bestowing honorary membership in their tribe to influential foreign tourists, particularly individuals from the United States. The current U.S. Chagga emissary is Mr. R. Tremaine of Massachusetts, who traces his Chagga roots to a Tanzania vacation in November 2007.

ee also

*Chaga languages
*Kirombo Language
*Kivunjo language
*Kimachame Language
*Petro Itosi Marealle
*Thomas Marealle
*Marealle
*Mount Kilimanjaro
*Tanzania
*Moshi

References

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External sources

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=92713 Ethnologue Report on the Chaga]
* [http://www.edwardgoldsmith.com/page164.html Traditional Irrigations Systems of the Chaga]
* [http://www.mtsobek.com/features/Climb_Kilimanjaro/about.htm About Kilimanjaro]
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90131 Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic, Nilotic, Eastern, Lotuxo-Teso, Lotuxo-Maa, Ongamo-Maa]