On March 2, 1900, something sombre, gloomy and painfully mournful took place at Tsudunyi village of what is now Old Moshi when the Germans hanged Mangi Meli and 18 other chiefs of the area, for the “crime of plotting to attack German Forces.” Granted. Eight years earlier, Mangi Meli had successfully defeated the Germans. However, there was little evidence that at the time of his hanging he had mobilised fighters to attack the Germans.
In any case, it still begs answers as to why the Germans did not wait at least until Mangi Meli had attacked for them to have some sort of excuse for committing the heinous crime they did, driven partly by the belief that they were actually taking the lives of inferior humans, most shameful for people who called themselves followers of Jesus Christ.
In 1900 most Tanganyikans had not quite known that they had fallen under German rule following the Berlin Conference of 1884/85 that carved Africa among European powers without the people being involved or knowing what was going on nearly 7,000 kilometres away. So, even if Mangi Meli had attacked the Germans, he would have, in a way, been right for defending his territory and nation for which he was the sovereign ruler.
As a true hero, Mangi Meli was never led to the gallows. Instead, he majestically trotted to the hangman’s noose and sticked his neck in the loop, telling his people: “The lamb has gone back to his mother’s womb but he shall be back.” In many ways, he was more Christian than his killers.
Mangi Meli dangled in the hangman’s noose for a good eight hours without giving up the ghost after the wooden stairs under the hangman’s rope had been kicked away. His life was not ended until a German soldier drove a bullet, in sniper style, through his skull, dying witnessed by his mother.
A campaign is currently going on to return his skull so that it could finally “rest in peace,” joined by the ancestral spirits before him. However, it is not just his skull that should be returned. The Germans never shipped off the remains of many of the dead they killed in Africa because they (the Germans) were depraved necromaniacs, no.
The separation of torsos from heads was motivated strongly by phrenology, a science that some say is now discredited but I think Africans should not be fooled. Phrenology refers to scientific belief that someone’s fundamental characteristics, including their level of intelligence, were reflected in the shape of their skulls. The Germans, therefore, should not merely return the skulls of Mangi Meli and 18 others killed together with him but also any research finding they did, involving the skulls.
Doing so would address and redress the historical injustice that the Germans, and the other western colonising powers in general, including the French and the Britons, did to Africa. Mangi Meli walked to the gallows to die believing he would one day return, and that shall indeed come to pass. His skull shall be returned and join peacefully the ancestors before him to appease the spirits for a more prosperous Africa.
But it is not just the remains of Africa’s heroes that the west should return to Africa. Europe should repatriate all the cultural and spiritual artefacts that they stole from Africa. The same Germans took “Nalunzwi,” the spiritual effigy of the Wakerewe after they caused the abdication of Omukama Rukonge by placing a bounty on his head to be captured “Dead or Alive.” Like Mangi Meli, Omukama Rukonge had in about 1895 defeated a column of German soldiers on his Island kingdom.
Europe and Africa need to enter a new phase of both political, diplomatic and business relationships based on mutual respect for the dignity of the others. That cannot happen as long as Europe continues to hold onto highly emotional reminders of their troubled past. Africa is ready to forgive but not forget.
