Filming the Prolonged Pain of Colonial Violence

For decades, families in Tanzania have been demanding the return of their ancestors’ human remains from Germany. These ancestors, executed leaders of resistance efforts against German colonial rule, were exhumed from their graves and taken to Germany. Cece Mlay discusses co-producing a new documentary on how their descendants are seeking justice and closure today. 

German rule in Tanzania (then known as Tanganyika) lasted from the 1880s to 1918. It was established swiftly with the introduction of cash crops like sisal and cotton, infrastructure including roads, railways and ports built to transport goods, and mining of gold found in the Lake Victoria region. Tanzania was crucial to the German empire because of the economic benefits Tanzania provided from its natural resources. To extract these resources, German rule became violently repressive. They forcibly introduced the hut tax, a per-household taxation system that was payable through money, crops or labour. Not only did this fortify their cash-centred economy, it also led to forced labour of households who could not afford the tax. To enforce this system, the German colonists replaced native leaders with their agents to the great displeasure of the natives. Tanzania not only experienced great economic and labour exploitation resulting from these policies, it also experienced drastic shifts in its social fabric. For instance, the cash-centred colonial economy usurped their trade customs, and with men forced away from their homes to work, women had to take on more roles to keep communities intact. Their indigenous way of life, and therefore their quality of life was incredibly compromised by German rule. 

Resistance efforts to overthrow the German government were buttressed by a deep grief for the loss of their way of life. In the 1890s, the Hehe people, a cluster of chiefdoms that reside in Iringa in Southern Tanzania, led by Chief Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga (commonly known as Chief Mkwawa), fought the Germans. These resistance efforts are referred to as the Hehe Wars and are considered a precursor for the larger and more widespread Majimaji Rebellion of 1905-1907. The Majimaji Rebellion’s name is begotten from spirit medium Kinjekitile Ngwale, who spread the belief that a concoction he called ‘war medicine’ could turn German bullets into water (which translates to maji in Kiswahili), and would therefore protect Tanzanian warriors during resistance efforts. The Majimaji Rebellion is notable for its sheer scale; it united swathes of dispersed people of the southern part of Tanzania and it is said to have resulted in the deaths of up to 300,000 people. Not only did the German government use military action to subdue the rebellions, they also employed starvation tactics as well as public executions of resistance leaders to kill the spirits of the people. In Singida, a region in southern Tanzania, the relics of this violent occupation still exist to this day; an old military station used by the colonial government and a hanging tree near the station. 

One of the ways the Germans justified these atrocities against their colonies was through racial science. German scientists would order human remains like bones and skulls of people executed, in a manner akin to a shopping list, so that they could conduct research that would affirm that the difference in the bones was evidence of Africans’ inferiority. German anthropologist, Felix von Luschan, in particular, owned a collection of Tanzanian human remains that amounted to up to 6,300 samples by the time of his death in 1924. The objectification of these remains is further realized when you consider that collections of bones were routinely stored and exhibited in German museums and institutions. For example, the Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin still holds some of von Luschan’s collection of these remains. More than a century later, most of these human remains have still not been returned home, leaving families grieving not only the painful execution of their ancestors but also the inability to lay their loved ones to rest in their homelands...