Safwa people

The Safwa are an ethnic and linguistic group based in the mountains of the Mbeya Region, Tanzania. The Safwa language is a member of the large Niger–Congo language family group. Alternate names for Safwa are Ishisafwa, Cisafwa, and Kisafwa. Its dialects are Guruka, Mbwila, Poroto, and Songwe. ISO 639-3 language code is sbk.

In 1957 the Safwa population was estimated to be approximately 158,000. In 2012 after the national census, the tribe's population estimates is expected to exceed 450,000. The Wasafwa population had increased from 9,000 in 1910, during the German occupation.

The Safwa were a very loosely organized people, hardly more than subjects of the Wasangu, by whom they had been conquered in 1893. They apparently had no traditional history and came close to being stateless. Even though they can be considered stateless they were still split into many small chiefdoms, much as the Nyika and Wanda with whom they seem to have been related. They were easily defeated (being accused of never getting their act together), but difficult to control. They hated being under the dominion of Merere's Wasangu, and were later a difficult to administer, wanting nothing to interfere with their feeling of equality, which was central to their identity and ideology.

As the Wasangu spread terror, the stateless Wasafwa retreated and scattered into the hills, leaving empty land. It was not only the Wasangu domination they hated, in hope of expelling all Europeans, they killed off all male animals on the supposed order of a reincarnated ancestor-hero. In the 1890s Safwa children played at assaulting fortresses. Perhaps the same fortress forced on them by the Sangu or when they were surprised by the sudden arrival of Safari Conductor Bauer and his people.

As the occupation by the Wasangu continued, the traditions and customs of the Safwa slowly disappeared. Some, however remained, such as allowing new born children to die of hunger with the death of their mother, as no woman was allowed to breast feed a child not her own. There were no wet nurses.

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