Tanzania’s population is concentrated along the coast and isles, the fertile northern and southern highlands, and the lands bordering Lake Victoria. The relatively arid and less fertile central region is sparsely inhabited. So too is much of the fertile and well watered far west, including the shores of Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasa (Malawi). About 80% of Tanzanians live in rural communities.
Zanzibar, population about 1.3 million (3% of Tanzania’s population), consists of two main islands and several small ones just off the Tanzanian coast. The two largest islands are Unguja (often referred to simply as Zanzibar) and Pemba. Zanzibaris, together with their socio-linguistic cousins in the Comoros Islands and the East Africa coast from modern-day southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, created Swahili culture and language, which reflect long and close associations with other parts of Africa and with the Arab world, Persia, and South Asia.
Tanzanians are proud of their strong sense of national identity and commitment to Swahili as the national language. There are roughly 120 ethnic communities in the country representing several of Africa’s main socio-linguistic groups.
Before
colonial invasion, the indigenous people had built up formidable
political systems and institutions. These were either kingdoms,
chief-doms or social orders such as the Maasai Age-set rule. The
Nyamwezi people under chief Mirambo, the Hehe under chief Mkwawa
and a series of kingdoms among the Chagga
and the Haya people are some of such developments recorded.
It
is from some of these institutions that resistance to colonial
domination, subjugation and exploitation emerged from late 19th
century to the 20th century. For instance, in
1905-7,
through the famous "Majimaji War" the people in the
Southern part of Tanzania took up arms and fought the
German rulers there. Helped by the world wars, eventually, the local
people kicked the Germans out of Tanganyika. Traces of
historic
exotic artifacts have been made as evidences of the
interactions
between Tanzanians and the rest of the world societies.
The
Periplus of the Erythrean sea, for instance, puts clear
the record
that the East African coast had strong political
developments.
Further
Arabian influence in the country is recorded since the 7th
century after the Birth of Christ. The occupation of the Isles and
the Coastal areas by Asian societies did culminate in a systematic
inhuman slave trade. Tired of cosmetic political changes in
Zanzibar, the "Zenj" people evicted the Arabian rulers
in 1964 through an armed revolution.
Similarly,
after a protracted occupation by the unsuspecting traders,
explorers and missionaries from Europe since the 15th
Century Tanzania found itself being subjected to systematic
colonial domination by Germany and Great Britain at different
times before 1961. The Great Berlin conference of 1884 was the
springboard of all what had happened for subjugating Tanzania and
Africa.
Chagga society in a market
During
the domination of Tanzania by Germans, British and Arabs, the
indigenous people were decimated, lost their destiny and cultural
identity, were economically exploited and their technology
disrupted. However, the worst evil of all committed by
colonialists has been their wishful intent to discourage
individual initiative to venture, discover, make attempts and to
fabricate. The outcome is the current dependency status!
As
early as 1950's different, but very interesting forms of modern
struggles for independence were being created. For example by 1954
the
Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), a political party
already was a force to reckon with under the able
leadership of Julius Kambarage. Nyerere. It is under the same
political party that Tanzania got rid of British domination in 1961. In Zanzibar, the Afro Shirazi Party emerged
late in the 1950's and toppled the Arab rule on the island in
1964. Tanganyika and Zanzibar United in that year to form the
United Republic of Tanzania.
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