The biography of an African Slave-Raider turned Askari and Scout *
The first account of East African history told from an Afrocentric
perspective
‘Mzee’ is the Swahili word for an ‘old timer’, a respected elder.
Mzee Ali Kalikilima was born near the present-day town of Tabora in western Tanzania, probably in the 1870s
(there is mention of ‘The Doctor’, referring to Dr David Livingstone) to black
Muslim parents of noble birth. Aged 14, he led his first slaving safari to the
shores of Lake Tanganyika and thence, with his caravan of captured slaves and
ivory, through the wilds infested with malaria, tsetse fly and lions, to the
Arab markets of Dar es Salaam, some 1,200
kilometres away on the Indian Ocean.
With the arrival of the German colonisers, Mzee Ali joined the German
East African forces, working on the new railway line that was being laid from
Dar es Salaam to Dodoma and finally to Mwanza on the shores of Lake Victoria.
With the outbreak of World War I, he found himself attached to the forces of the
legendary German commander, General von Lettow-Vorbeck. He saw action at the
Battle of Salaita Hill near Mombasa and was with
the General to the end, fighting a guerrilla campaign through southern
Tanganyika, Portuguese East
Africa, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and to
final surrender. After the war, he joined the British Colonial Service as a game
scout. What sets Mzee Ali apart from other African biographies is that it is the
first account of East African history told from an Afrocentric
perspective.
