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Political evolution in the Songea Ngoni chiefdoms, 1850–19051

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

P. H. Gulliver
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Extract

Before he became a professional linguist, Wilfred Whiteley was employed in anthropological research by the then Government of Tanganyika in the Southern Province of that Territory (1948–51). In 1949 he was requested to investigate the customary law on chiefly succession in the Njelu Ngoni chiefdom of Songea District, where dispute had arisen over the appointment of a new chief. In 1952–3 I was asked to continue and to widen those inquiries, both as part of a general anthropological survey and because a succession dispute had developed in the other Ngoni chiefdom in the same District. Whiteley had left a brief memorandum and a few notes which I was able to use as a starting-point. Some of the resulting data have been published elsewhere (Gulliver, 1954, 1955, and 1971). It is fitting, however, to return to those materials in memory of my old friend and colleague, and as a reminder of his sustained interest in social anthropology.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , February 1974 , pp. 82 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1974

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References

2 Barnes, 1954, is a good source for references.

3 For convenience throughout this paper the names of modern African countries and places are used for reference.

4 The chiefdoms persisted until the abolition of all the chiefships in independent Tanganyika.

5 Presumably from the Nguni word isibongo ‘praise-name’.

6 This was the Maseko Ngoni group which later settled in southern Malawi. It was not part of Zwangendaba's group and had reached the Songea area separately. Cf. Read, 1936 and 1956.

7 This analysis is based on data which I obtained in field research in 1952–4, together with materials gathered by earlier inquirers. The more useful sources on the Songea Ngoni are: Prince, 1894; Fullerborn, 1906; Hatchell, 1935; Gulliver, 1954 and 1955; Ebner, 1959. A number of missionaries, travellers, and early colonial officers visited or approached the Songea area during the second half of the nineteenth century and, although leaving rather little in the way of hard data, they have been useful in the establishment of a fairly dependable chronology.

8 He is referred to in the literature on central Africa Ngoni: e.g. Lancaster, 1937, 70; Barnes, 1954, p. 123, n.

9 The term ‘royal’ is used to denote members of Zulu's patrilineage, i.e. the Gama kibongo.

10 See p. 84, n. 6.

11 Their remnants became parts of house II, but were later to be revived as separate segments. See p. 90.

12 Hawayi and his successors held the honorific title of Nkosi Zulu. For convenience the term nkosi will be glossed as ‘great chief’ in this paper.

13 The sites of the main villages were fairly well remembered in the middle of the twentieth century.

14 The rising Hehe state, some 200 miles to the north of Songea, had the only military force within hundreds of miles capable of offering any real threat to the Ngoni chiefdoms before the arrival of the Germans. No other external attack was made on either chiefdom during the period under review.

15 The rumps of houses III and IV had been taken into house II after the death of Zulu and the departure of his sons to Mbelwa in about 1860.

16 i.e. the segments based on Zulu's four houses as against the segments headed by other chiefs (principally Chikuse, Mpambolioto, Putire, and Songea).

17 Fullerborn wrote: ‘When I saw Songea in 1897, he was a sickly old man, but nevertheless he knew with unscrupulous energy how to get his orders obeyed promptly. At the meeting of chiefs which we had called, he was the speaker on behalf of the other chiefs. At times whilst he was speaking his bent body rose and his eyes sparkled so that his opponents trembled. He was a born ruler’ (quoted in Ebner, 1959, 159).

18 Mbonani is nowhere mentioned in the plentiful literature on central African Ngoni. One story current among some of his descendants is that he led a separate migrant band northwards from the Swazi homeland, and only linked up with Zwangendaba's group shortly after the latter's death (Ebner, 1959, 66). There is no supporting evidence for this.

19 He was reported, by several of his descendants, to have been born a year or two before the Ngoni crossing of the Zambesi river in 1835.

20 This was on his own admission in a written autobiography taken from his dictation many years later when he was an old man, of which I have a copy in my files. This submission to Chabruma did not prevent him making renewed claims later on, although he never actively sought to contest his brother's power.

21 It is possible that none had the clear title of nduna (comparable to Njelu) and that all were referred to as lidoda (lesser lieutenant). The data are not clear.

22 See above, p. 93.

23 This model derived from earlier Nguni tradition, and seems to have been largely applied in practice among the Zambian Ngoni (cf. Barnes, 1954, ch. ii).

24 As this article was about to go to press, I was informed that a Ph.D thesis by Redmond, P. M., A political history of the Songea Ngoni, from the mid nineteenth century to the rise of the Tanganyika National Union, was accepted by the University of London in 1972. I was unable to consult this.Google Scholar