The Hehe (Swahili collective: Wahehe) are a Bantu ethnolinguistic group based in Iringa Region in south-central Tanzania, speaking the Bantu Hehe language. In 2006, the Hehe population was estimated at 805,000, up from the just over 250,000 recorded in the 1957 census when they were the eighth largest tribe in Tanganyika. There were an additional 4,023 of them in Uganda in 2014.
Historically, they are famous for vanquishing a German expedition at Lugalo on 17 August 1891 and maintaining their resistance for seven years thereafter under the leadership of their chief Mkwawa.
Etymology
The use of Wahehe as the group's designator can be traced to their war cry, and was originally employed by their adversaries. The Wahehe themselves adopted it only after the Germans and British applied it consistently, but by then the term had acquired connotations of prestige (keeping in mind, of course, the term's roots in Hehe warfare and the victory over the Germans of 1891).
History
"Of scientific literature on British East Africa", remarked John Walter Gregory in 1896, "there is unfortunately little to record. There is nothing which can compare with the magnificent series of works issued in description of German East Africa […] The history of the exploration of Equatorial Africa is one to which Englishmen can look back with feelings of such just pride, that we may ungrudgingly admit the superiority of German scientific work in this region." It is no surprise, therefore, that most of the important sources for the history of the Hehe are German. Once German East Africa was split between the British and Belgian empires after World War I, the interest of German scholars waned, and the British chose not to continue their research.
The people who were eventually to be called Hehe by Europeans, lived in isolation on a highland in southwestern Tanzania, northeast of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi), and had few ancestors who had been in Uhehe for more than four generations. With the exception of some pastoralists on the plains and some keeping a limited number of cattle and goats, the Wahehe were primarily an agricultural people. In the beginning they seemed to have lived in relative peace, although the various chiefs did quarrel with one another, raided each other for cattle and broke alliances. The population was probably small, with no chiefdom over 5,000 people. By the middle of the 19th century, however, Nguruhe, one of the more important chiefdoms led by the Muyinga dynasty, began to push its weight around and expand its influence and power.
It was Munyigumbe, of the Muyinga family, who began to create the beginnings of a 'state' by both marriage and conquest. A good deal of this was at the expense of the Wasangu, using the Sangu's own military tactics and even utilizing forms of the Sangu language to properly rouse Hehe warriors to battle. Munyigumba even forced the Wasangu, under Merere II, to move their capital to Usafwa.
With Munyigumba’s death in 1878 or 1879, a civil war broke out and a Nyamwezi slave, married to Munyigumba's sister, was able to kill Munyigumba's brother, leaving the unhappy prospect of dealing with Munyigumba's son Mkwawa. Mkwawa killed the Nyamwezi slave, Mwumbambe, at a location called the "place where heads are piled up", and Mkwawa took center stage, a stage that he continued to dominate until the end of the 19th century. John Iliffe describes Mkwawa in his book, A Modern History of Tanganyika as "slender, sharply intelligent, brutal, and cruel with a praise-name of the madness of the year".
It was Mkwawa who, by 1880 or 1881, became the sole ruler of Uhehe through war and intimidation. Mkwawa continued expanding Hehe power northwards toward the central caravan routes and afflicting the Wagogo, the Wakaguru, the Germans, etc., and in the south and east, anyone in their way, not least of all their old enemies the Wasangu, who then began turning to the Germans for support. By 1890, the Hehe were the strongest most dominant power in the southeast and began conflicting with that other raiding power, the Germans.
'The Hehe' had no elaborate organization but did have the flexibility to make difficulties for their enemies.
Sub Chief Motomkali Mukini ″Mkini″ was assigned to rule and during his reign had established a military base used to recruit and train at the place so called Ihumitangu, meaning the place where colonial fighters were trained. He was succeeded by his son Galakwila Motomkali Mkini.
Society
The Wahehe reside primarily in Uhehe, an area that: