Maji Maji Rebellion Begins (1905)
Mon Jul 31, 1905
Image: Wilhelm Kuhnert's painting "Battle at Mahenge", German East Africa, 1905 [Wikipedia]
On this day in 1905, Matumbi tribesmen in colonial German East Africa (modern Tanzania) destroyed cotton crops and a trading post in the city of Samanga, beginning the Maji Maji Rebellion. German repression killed 250,000-300,000 people.
The Maji Maji Rebellion (Swahili: "Vita vya Maji Maji"), was an armed rebellion of Islamic and Animist Africans against German colonial rule, triggered by a colonial policy designed to force the indigenous population to grow cotton for export.
In the days leading up to the rebellion, a spirit medium named Kinjikitile Ngwale developed a belief that the people of German East Africa had been called upon to eliminate the Germans. After the Matumbi tribesmen attacked Samanga, Kinjikitile was arrested. Before being executed, he stated that he had already spread the "medicine of rebellion" throughout the region.
The resulting war lasted two years, with the Germans successfully putting the rebellion down by force. As a means to weaken the rebellion, German soldiers deliberately orchestrated a famine by destroying available food sources, devastating the region and killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Such was the scale of this destruction that, in 1953, journalist John Gunther noted "even today the Southern Province of Tanganyika, the 'Cinderella Province,' has not fully recovered from the German terror half a century ago. The economy of the region has never been successfully rebuilt".
Although Tanzania demanded reparations from Germany for these atrocities in 2017, the German government has not paid them as of July 2021.
- Date: 1905-07-31
- Learn More: scholarblogs.emory.edu, www.blackpast.org, en.wikipedia.org.
- Tags: #Colonialism.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org