The Magic of Saida (19 page)

A plot against the Germans was soon taking shape in Kilwa: the plan was to attack the boma, the German headquarters, then spread the resistance northward up the coast and finally capture the governor in Dar es Salaam.

Arms and ammunition continued to be smuggled in from Zanzibar, and were put away in storage behind Punja’s shopfront. Every few days the young poet and teacher Abdelkarim came and spent some time in the shop, where he had been given a small table and a ledger. He updated the inventory of weapons and the list of sympathizers, writing down what and how much each had received, thus creating in his beautiful poet’s calligraphy a topography of the coming revolution. It was kept in Punja’s safe. The scribe wrote and received messages as well and recorded minutes of the secret meetings that took place at Punja’s house late in the night.

Among the plotters, in addition to Punja Devraj and Kassu Ghulamu there were three other Kilwa Indians, Moloo Kanji, Kassam Peera, and Muhammad Suleman. There was a specialist in cutting telegraph lines, called Mkasi, and a spy called Jicho. Always accompanying Abdelkarim on his secretarial assignment would be his younger brother, no more than ten, called Omari. The boy would sit on the threshold of Punja’s shop while his brother worked inside. Punja would give the boy a sweet to eat.

During the secret nightly meetings Omari would be curled up on a mat in the shop, fast asleep. One evening the boy woke up to see a short, thickset character in a white kanzu standing a few feet away, addressing a group of diverse men who stood before him. He had
just been handed a rifle. His voice was thick, his skin a deep black. He was the famous Yao chief and trader, Hassani Makunganya, possibly my mother’s grandfather through a Matumbi slave his men had captured during a raid. For more than two years Makunganya, using this matériel from the town, attacked German settlements around Kilwa, looting and burning down the businesses, cutting telegraph lines, waiting for the big chance to expel the Germans once and for all, for his revolution to happen.

One night, when the sea was raging, a boat heading towards the shore, having received passengers and weapons from a dhow, overturned at the edge of the harbour in the shadow of the mangrove swamp. A few bodies were discovered the next day; what goods could be recovered were done so early in the morning before the incident got reported. Some months later, Commissioner Carl Schmidt wrote about this incident to his sister Katrina Maria in Tübingen:

“… but for us the capsizing of the boat was a Godsend. Among the dead were a tall handsome man held in much awe among the locals, Wasim by name, and one of the sons of a local shopkeeper named Punja. A rifle was discovered at the site at lowtide. This is when I began to suspect that the mild-mannered Indian Herr Punja was involved in the intrigue … It is indeed astonishing, my dear sister, how the uncivilized will resist our mission to lead them out from the darkness, and more so how ordinarily peaceful and God-loving folk will give support to terrorists …”

Circumstances brought Makunganya his chance for the big attack. The spy Jicho reported that the soldiers had been paid in advance and were buying supplies, including tobacco; they were getting drunk and visiting women; there was talk and boasting. It was apparent that soon they would be off on a long march inland to fight Mkwawa of the Hehe, still very much a headache for the Germans. Early one morning a company of African soldiers under their German commander went marching smartly down the main road and out of town. A military band led the way and the German flag was held up high at the back and front of the troop. The townsfolk came out to bid them goodbye and godspeed; some even accompanied them
past the hangman’s tree and wished them never to return. God keep Mkwawa even if he was a pagan. Left behind was a small contingent of soldiers under Captain Schmidt.

Hassani did not attack the town immediately. Instead he raided a village nearby as a diversion and allowed one of his men to be captured, who reported in his confession that Hassani was wounded. Captain Schmidt was not quite fooled. Early every morning, heading out to the boma from his little bungalow, the short, bearded German would make a detour and stroll through the business street, tip his hat to the shopkeepers, and inquire after the townsfolk. He would come upon the boy Omari, in the typical white cotton collar-less tunic over a wraparound msuri, sitting huddled at a corner with a tray of vitumbua for sale. Captain Schmidt would ask for one to be wrapped in a paper for him. And he would ask mischievously, “Is it today, Omari? Will Hassani strike today, do you think?” Playing along, Omari would smile and reply with a little nod, “Yes. Today is the day. Ni leo tu.” But one day, when the captain repeated the question to the boy, the youngster drew a sharp breath and said nothing. The German gave him an extra heller and quickly departed, to prepare for the attack that he felt certain would come later that day.

Could such a simple ruse ensnare a child’s life forever? That is what Omari bin Tamim would always believe.

A fierce and long battle took place that day, beginning at the outskirts of town, where the soldiers waited in ambush, as hundreds of warriors approached, most bearing spears, a few with rifles, and none carrying a shield. After the first skirmish, the outnumbered soldiers fell back to a position outside the boma and continued to engage, while others fired down on the swarming warriors from the windows above. Hassani Makunganya was defeated, though narrowly, and retreated to the forest to regather his forces and plan anew. The Kilwa boma had proved impregnable, though no doubt with the aid of a betrayal. Another such chance would never occur, and the chief resorted to hit-and-run in the outlying area, until the exasperated governor, von Wissmann, put a price of a thousand rupees on his head and sent more troops on a ship from Dar es Salaam.

Hundreds of soldiers combed the area for Hassani the Fearless, as he was called, tracking him from place to place. In the final battle,
on the road to Lindi, facing a bevy of machine guns and rifles, as his warriors fled his hideout and disappeared, he emerged into the open, wielding a knife, daring the soldiers, “Makunganya does not fear death! Come and get me!” The soldiers didn’t shoot him, they fell on him instead and took him in chains to Kilwa.

Von Wissmann himself came down from Dar es Salaam to pronounce judgment on the fighters, bringing the rope with him for the hangings. A call went out in town: “Tomorrow all assemble at the boma. Makunganya will get his justice, Bwana Wissmann will deliver his hukumu. You must come and witness.” Early the next morning the people came and sat outside the boma and watched in awe as the smartly attired von Wissmann, with a sword and a pistol at his waist, arrived in brisk military steps accompanied by his officials, including Captain Schmidt the Kilwa commissioner and two German translators, and sat down before a table. Makunganya and seven others were brought in chains and presented to the court; then the five Indians were brought, and the hearings began. Witnesses included the soldiers who had captured Makunganya, Captain Schmidt and others, including the chief’s own men, one of them his disgraced witch doctor who had selected the fateful day of attack. Makunganya and his men were all sentenced to hang, upon hearing which the people bowed their heads in grief and shame, murmuring exclamations to Allah. Astaghfirullahi. We have become women; if the Dachi—the German—can get Fearless Makunganya like this, to tie him up like a goat, who else can fight them?

The turn of the five Indians came to face the court. Accused of aiding the terrorists, all pleaded not guilty, upon which a commotion arose. Captain Schmidt strode off to Punja’s shop along with some askaris and returned with a suitcase containing papers incriminating many people and the book in which the poet and scribe Abdelkarim had meticulously written down details of the plot. How the captain learned of the suitcase never came out; perhaps someone had bargained with him. Punja Devraj, calling himself Sawahil, was sentenced to be hanged. Captain Schmidt pleaded on behalf of the four other Indians, who were consequently sentenced to pay a heavy fine and to go to work on the Tanga railway line in the north.

As von Wissmann stood up, he glared witheringly at Makunganya.
“Hassani! You are finished, do you hear? I have defeated you and you will hang.” Then he turned to Hassani’s grieving supporters and told them, “Women, all of you! Why do you weep now? Isn’t this what you asked for?”

A camera had been set up and photographs were taken.

Early the next morning, four of the Africans and Punja Devraj were marched off in chains along the main road to the hangman’s tree, where von Wissmann and the other Germans had preceded them on mules. The hanging had not been announced publicly, and young Omari and his brother, Abdelkarim, were among the handful, scattered across the road and partly hidden by the grass, who watched the proceedings. The brothers saw mighty Makunganya, his eyes covered by a white cloth, his demeanour as defiant as always, accept the rope and swing from the hefty branch until he became still; whereupon a murmur of the shahada erupted from the grass: There is no God but Allah. Whatever his folly and cruelty, he was a man of Kilwa. He was ours and his motives were right. Angry looks from across the road restored stillness once more. The brothers watched the chief’s war minister, his spy, Jicho, and his telegraph saboteur, Mkasi, do likewise. But their hearts were heaviest when they watched the small figure of the man they had come to know well, the Indian Punja, also walk to the gallows, where he removed his black fez and handed it to a policeman before accepting the rope.

After the hangings, a few soldiers under the command of a German superior carted away the bodies to be buried in secret. Governor von Wissmann and the other Germans rode their mules back to the boma. That afternoon, the governor inspected a guard of honour of the troops, after which, tables having been laid on the ground outside the boma, he and his fellow Germans sat down for tea and, it was thought, liquor. Finally, his boat ready, von Wissmann waved to the assembled crowd as he was rowed away to his ship. The four
remaining guilty men went with him in a separate boat to be hanged in Lindi, to set another example.

Omari watched this impressive finale from the edge of the town square in the company of his mates; like them he’d been awestruck by the might and panache that the Germans had displayed over the last few days. How foreign they looked, with their pale skins and cat eyes, their helmets, their moustaches; and yet there was not a trace of the uncertain about them, not a doubt to their rightness. How deliberately they moved and acted; no element fazed them. They were always prepared. Their men, the Sudanese, the Somalis, the Zulu, were like an army of fearsome djinns under their command. Whereas the Swahili walked about barefoot on the hot ground, these soldiers, rude and ill behaved, speaking no Swahili, came out in clean clothes and boots and carried rifles, trampled through the forests, fearing neither man nor beast. They marched with authority, all as one, their commander’s sharp calls as clear and precise as a whip, and when they stopped their boots hammered the ground like the rumble of a terrible and ominous thunder. The boy could not help but come to a secret conviction: the methods of the old men had proved ineffective. As he would say many years later, when he himself was an elder, Learn the conqueror’s language. By learning the German ways and language, he himself would survive and succeed.

His brother, the austere and pious Abdelkarim, who—when not chanting the name of Allah—preferred more than anything else to sit in silence and compose his poetry, was of another mind. He prepared to leave the town and follow his spiritual master to the interior, to see the country and spread the message of their order. Omari stayed behind; as soon as his brother left, he accepted work as a servant for Captain Schmidt in exchange for a place to stay and lessons in German.

British East Africa and Deutsch-Ostafrika were finally subdued and became established as two more European colonies in Africa. The former would become Kenya, the latter, Tanganyika, or the mainland of the future Tanzania. The German Kaiser being related to the British Queen, the boundaries were soon redrawn to give Kilimanjaro to the Kaiser. Chief Mkwawa had been defeated at Iringa, his skull dispatched to Berlin to receive a standing ovation in parliament;
in the south, Machemba of the Yao, weary of resisting, escaped to the territory called Mozambique, ruled by the Portuguese. And the British bombarded Zanzibar for forty-five minutes from the sea, in what was, as they would proudly proclaim thereafter, the “shortest war in history,” though it was a one-sided affair undertaken to ensure that it was their man who acceded to the sultan’s throne.

At the age of eighteen, Omari bin Tamim, as he styled himself, graduated from the elite German school in Tanga, where he had been sent by the government. He returned to Kilwa to work as a teacher, and always comported himself about town with the utmost dignity. He was almost as tall as his brother, though less lean, and in his demeanour Abdelkarim’s influence might have seemed perceptible. Like his brother and father he too was a poet, though perhaps not as gifted; in Tanga he had published a poem in the school magazine,
Kiongozi
. It was one of his German teachers who had encouraged this interest, and had sent along that poem, an homage to the Kaiser, to Berlin to be published in an anthology of Swahili verse. By coincidence, his Tanga teacher and patron was none other than Hans Zache, one of the two translators who had accompanied Governor von Wissmann to Kilwa to assist with the trials. The other translator had been Carl Velten, who had returned to Berlin and was the editor of the anthology. These two Swahili enthusiasts had stood to attention side by side, their hats in their hands, as one after the other the Kilwa conspirators were brought forward in front of them and hanged from the projecting limb of the mango tree, the last of them the Indian Punja. That memory was forever carved into young Omari’s mind; he had trembled and cried as he watched the lives thrash out of the warriors, his brother’s arm tight around his shoulder. That scene would play out in his mind, he would visualize it on the blackboard every time Herr Zache, known as Bwana Saha, stood before the class in Tanga and gave his lesson.