Zigula (people)
The Zigula or Zigua are an ethnic group in the Tanga region in northeastern Tanzania . their language is the Bantu language Zigula . Their population was estimated at 355,000 in 1993. According to estimates, around 20,000 Zigula lived in southern Somalia for the same year, whose ancestors were abducted as slaves in the 19th century.
The settlement area of the Zigula between the rivers Pangani in the north and Wami in the south is also called Uzigua and lies largely within the present-day Handeni district in the Tanga region.
history
From the 19th to the middle of the 20th century, the Uzigua area was repeatedly hit by food shortages and famine. These contributed to Zigula, knowingly or unknowingly, coming under the control of slave traders in the East African slave trade .
Zigula in Somalia
Descendants of Zigula, who were abducted as slaves in the 19th century, now live in Somalia as Somali Bantu . They refer to themselves as Wazigua to this day , have retained the Zigula language and feel connected to the Tanzanian region of origin. The Somali name Mushunguli for this group is probably derived from the singular name of the Zigula, Muzigula .
Of all the slave descendants in Somalia, they have retained the strongest memories of their history and origins: they were lured into slavery during a famine and sold via Bagamoyo and Baraawe on plantations in the Shabelle valley . From there they fled together in the 1840s. They wanted to return to Tanzania, but settled in the Juba Valley because the route was too dangerous. They founded their own villages near Jamaame .
Like the other "Somali Bantu", the Zigula were discriminated against in Somalia and suffered disproportionately severely in the civil war since 1991. Some of them therefore fled to neighboring Kenya. Around 3,000 Somali Bantu refugees, mostly Zigula, were allowed to settle in Chogo in the Zigula area in Tanzania in 2003 .
swell
- ^ Ethnologue.com
- ↑ James Giblin, in: African Economic History , No. 15 (1986), pp. 85-105: Famine and Social Change during the Transition to Colonial Rule in Northeastern Tanzania
- Daniel J. Lehman, UNHCR: Resettlement of the Mushunguli, Somali refugees of southeast African origins , 1993