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 2002 after the national census, the tribe's population estimates is expected to exceed 300,000. The Wasafwa population had increased from 9,000 in 1910, during the German occupation.

Organisation

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.