THROWING AWAY THE DEAD:

COMMUNAL SITES FOR THE DISPOSAL OF CORPSES IN

PRE-COLONIAL SOUTH-WEST TANZANIA

Martin T. Walsh

Natural Resources Institute, Chatham, and

School of African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex, U.K.

corrected version of a paper originally published in

Mvita: Bulletin of the Regional Centre for the Study of Archaeology in

Eastern and Southern Africa, 7: 1-4

1998

The published English text and a French translation of this paper

are also available on the National Museums of Kenya website at
www.museums.or.ke/mvita. It was translated into French by
Edouard Bugingo as ‘Jeter les Cadavres: Sites Communs où sont
Déposés les Cadavres au Sud-Ouest Tanzanien dans la Periode
Pre-Coloniale’.

{NB: the page numbers in this corrected version do

not follow those of either the published or online texts}

current address:
kisutu@hotmail.com
Throwing Away the Dead:
Communal sites for the disposal of corpses in pre-colonial south-west
Tanzania

Martin Walsh
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Introduction
The ethnographic record indicates that disposal of the dead by leaving their corpses in the
bush was once a widespread feature of mortuary practice in East Africa, practised by many
Bantu as well as non-Bantu speakers. The following notes describe an interesting variation
upon this practice, recorded (and still remembered) among different groups of Bantu speakers
in what is now south-west Tanzania. Whereas most peoples known to have disposed of their
dead in this way appear to have done so in any convenient spot away from habitation, the
Sangu and others referred to below “threw away” their dead in particular sites designated for
this purpose. These sites for communal disposal are recognisable by their common names
and, though no longer used in quite the same way, are still feared through their association
with death.

Sangu Practice
I have most information on the practice of the Sangu (avasango), among whom I conducted
anthropological research between 1980 and 1982. The Sangu are the indigenous inhabitants
of the Usangu Plains, which lie to the north of the mountain ranges which rise up from the
northern shores of Lake Malawi. They speak an Eastern Bantu language which is classified in
the Southern Highlands group together with Hehe, Bena, Wanji, Kinga, Pangwa, Kisi and
Manda (Nurse 1988: 59). The development of trade routes from the East African coast in the
early nineteenth century appears to have stimulated the early unification of the Sangu into a
single chiefdom. The Hehe followed suit, and in the late 1870s forced the Sangu out of
Usangu. The Sangu chief, Tovelamahamba Merere, established a new capital in the hills of
Usafwa, to the west. The Sangu remained in exile there until after the turn of the twentieth
century, when they were restored to Usangu (under Tovelamahamba’s son and successor,
Mgandilwa Merere) by the newly established German administration (see Walsh 1984 for a
detailed survey of Sangu history).
The contemporary Sangu bury all of their dead, and appear to have done so since the first
decade or so of the colonial period. Earlier European travellers and missionaries, however,
noted otherwise. When Elton and his party visited Tovelamahamba Merere in 1877 at
Mfumbi, on the southern border of Usangu, they found large numbers of decomposing
corpses, the victims of Hehe assaults, piled up outside of the stockade. At first it seemed that
this may have been a temporary exigency of warfare, but after observing a dead woman being
thrown into the bush Elton concluded that the Sangu did not in any event bury their dead
(1879: 350-351, 358, 361-362). The Moravian missionaries who founded a mission station in
1895 outside of the Sangu capital-in-exile, Utengule-Usongwe (Kwa Mwalyego in Usafwa),
were shocked to learn that corpses were being tossed into a nearby ravine. They appealed to
Mgandilwa Merere to stop this practice, which he did, at least in this particular place (PA
1896: 288).
Comparative evidence suggests that the Sangu, like many of their neighbours, once
disposed of all of their commoners in this way. Indeed contemporary linguistic usage has
preserved the memory of this practice: the phrase kitaga umunu, ‘to throw away a person’,
has been retained in ishisango, the Sangu language, as a polite euphemism for burial, and is
used in preference to the verb kisiila, which means ‘to bury’ pure and simple. However,

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chiefs and certain other special categories of person, including twins and their parents, are
said to have always been buried. The burial of the Sangu chief was a particularly elaborate
affair, and when Tovelamahamba Merere died at the end of 1893 he was consigned to the
grave together with a number of retainers (Heese 1913: 141), as well, it is said, with a large
number of elephant tusks and other worldly goods to help him on his way.
Contemporary accounts also make it clear that the Sangu possessed designated sites for
the disposal of corpses. The ravine near the Moravian mission station at Utengule-Usongwe
was presumably one of these. One site, called Pitago (sometimes Kwitago), literally ‘the
place for throwing away’, is located at the north-east of the twentieth century Sangu capital,
Utengule-Usangu. It is possible that this site dates back to the nineteenth century, because
Tovelamahamba Merere’s pre-1877 capital also stood close by. Informants cannot recall
Pitago ever having been used for the general disposal of the dead, though it is described as a
sacred site on which sacrificial offerings can be made for the whole population. According to
one middle-aged male informant it was used in the past (in the days of his grandfather) to
dispose of transgressors, such as men who had unwisely seduced wives of the chief. In such a
case the tribal elders would approach the accused and ask him to dress in his best clothes in
order to accompany them to Pitago to sacrifice a bull. Once there they would slaughter the
bull, and shortly thereafter the unwitting victim, whose corpse they would simply throw down
on the spot. My informant thought that the victim’s decapitated head might have been
brought back to the settlement for display, but he was not sure on this point. He added that in
the daytime corpses left at Pitago would be consumed by vultures, and at night by hyenas
(compare Elton: “...and now over a heap of skeletons, scattered leather aprons and beads,
hovered flocks of vultures and gigantic storks, which, gorged with their loathsome feast, had
scarcely power to flap away into the lower branches of the magnificent forest trees which
adorn the once peaceful Usango valley”, 1879: 350-351).
This account recalls that of the Moravian missionaries, who discovered the Sangu
practice of throwing away the dead following an incident in 1896 when Mgandilwa Merere
had ordered the execution of two of his wives and a man for adultery. We can hypothesise
that at this time Sangu mortuary practice was in a stage of transition, as burial became
increasingly fashionable among commoners, perhaps initially for those who held political or
military office and their close relatives. Disposal by exposure was subsequently restricted to
the corpses of criminals and people in lower social categories, such as non-Sangu (as
suggested by another informant in discussing the uses of Pitago). Thereafter burial became
the universal practice: this was certainly the case in the south of Usangu around Brandt
Lutheran Mission when Heese (1913) wrote on local customs. At the same time the chief /
commoner distinction remained marked by different forms of burial: chiefs and the special
ritual categories of persons treated analogously to them were and still are buried in a sitting
position, whereas ordinary people are buried lying down.
Pitago in Utengule-Usangu still has strong associations with death for the local
population. Broken pots and other remains are said to be found there, and the site is thought
to be especially fearful during and after the rainy season when the grass has grown long. In
1981 Pitago had been set aside as a site for a future village cemetery, an appropriate
transformation of its original purpose. I was unable to establish whether other, similar sites,
are recognised elsewhere in Usangu: it may be that communal exposure was only practised in
the vicinity of the Sangu capital(s), where the density of population and numbers of people
dying over time meant that disposal of corpses in isolated spots in the bush was not as feasible
an option as it was in less densely settled and cultivated areas. Certainly all of the known
sites of collective disposal by the Sangu are located close to past and present capital
settlements both in and outside of Usangu (Mfumbi, Utengule-Usongwe, and
Utengule-Usangu), though this may be a function of observer-bias.

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The River Patagu

One possible exception is the River Patagu, which forms the boundary between the territories
of the Sangu and the Poroto in the south-west corner of Usangu. The Poroto are often classed
as a sub-group of the Safwa, though they have retained something of a separate identity, and
are definitely thought of as separate by the Sangu. Like the Safwa they speak a language
which is not particularly closely related to that of the Sangu, but is classified in the Nyika
sub-group and Corridor group of Eastern Bantu languages (other languages of the Nyika
sub-group include Lambya, Malila, Nyiha, and Tambo: Nurse 1988: 20). Throughout the
German colonial period and for some years afterwards a section of Poroto territory across the
Patagu was under the nominal control of a Sangu chief. This was Kahemere, a brother of
Mgandilwa Merere who had refused to recognise the latter’s accession to the Sangu stool and
subsequently also refused to follow him back into Usangu (though he relented during the
British period, long after the death of Mgandilwa, when he was offered a sub-chiefship in
south-east Usangu).
The Sangu nickname for the Poroto is avaxawuxa, which literally means ‘the dried-up
ones’. This is a reference to what the Sangu think of as the deep and throaty voices of the
Poroto, which are alleged to be a consequence of their habit of drinking water from the River
Patagu. No one else, it is said, will drink from this river. The implication of this, recalling
also the name of the river (which is cognate with the Sangu Pitago), is that corpses were once
cast into it and have therefore contaminated the water, rendering it unsuitable for human
consumption. I have no information, however, on who might have been responsible for this
(the Sangu or even the Poroto themselves), or whether the disposal of bodies in the river was
a singular occurrence or a regular event.

Nyakyusa and Kukwe Practice

The existence of communal exposure sites can be more readily documented among the
Nyakyusa and related peoples whose territory begins further to the south-west of Usangu,
beyond that of the Poroto. The Nyakyusa (once known, together with the closely related
Ngonde, as the Konde) live on the plains and in the mountains at the northern tip of Lake
Malawi. Their language, like that of the Poroto, belongs to the Corridor group of Eastern
Bantu, but is classified, together with that of the Ndali, in a separate sub-group (Nurse 1988:
59). Like the Sangu, the Nyakyusa now bury their dead, but there is good evidence that this
was not always the case:

“Here and there throughout Kondeland are places called Itago, so named
from the verb kutaga, to cast away. In the long past, when a man was dying,
and all hope of recovery had been abandoned, he was carried to the Itago,
placed in a sitting position, and left to die. After death the flesh was
devoured by birds or beasts. Nowhere, as far as I have discovered, is this
repulsive practice now followed.” (MacKenzie 1925: 296)

While working in Usangu I spoke to Kukwe informants who confirmed that ‘throwing
away the dead’ (no mention was made of the dying) was once practised at such communal
sites. The Kukwe live in the north-west of Unyakyusa, on the western side of Mount
Rungwe, and maintain a separate identity, despite their adoption of common Nyakyusa
culture. One Kukwe woman I spoke to knew of a particular cliff called Itago, over which
corpses had been cast in the days before burial had become widespread. This place was also
called Ipanga after its steep cliff. She opined that corpses treated in this way would simply
decompose, given the absence of either vultures or hyenas in this part of Kukwe territory.
Another Kukwe informant, a man, recalled the existence of a similar site called Itagano, east
of the main road to Tukuyu, from which corpses were also once cast. Modern maps of the
Rungwe area show a number of possibly related place names, including Itaga (a place and a

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river), c.14 km north of Itumba, and Itagata, c.10 km south of Mount Rungwe. These might
well be worth further investigation.

Discussion
While there are clear parallels between what is known of Sangu practice and that of the
Nyakyusa / Kukwe, it is difficult to determine whether these might be the result of
independent developments (out of a common culture of throwing away the dead) or of contact
between the two peoples. The Sangu and the Nyakyusa / Kukwe are not closely related and
were not immediate neighbours in the pre-colonial period, although various contacts can be
traced between them in addition to a pattern of raiding by the Sangu which was particularly
intense during their period of exile in Usafwa. The Sangu are the only members of the
Southern Highlands group who are known to have regularly exposed the dead at communal
sites. It is possible, however, that further research among the Corridor peoples will reveal that
this practice had a wider distribution than I have been able to document here. The apparent
absence of the practice among other Southern Highlands speakers and the geographical
proximity of the Sangu to Corridor speakers suggest that the Sangu may well have borrowed
it from the south and west.
Otherwise it is conceivable that the Sangu and Nyakyusa / Kukwe practices represent
independent developments. In the Sangu case the exposure of corpses on designated sites
outside of the royal capital might be interpreted as a solution to the problem of disposal in a
context of high population density. Whether or not high population density also favoured the
development of a similar practice among the Nyakyusa / Kukwe is more difficult to
determine, though it seems quite possible given reports of dense settlement in some
chiefdoms in the immediate pre-colonial period. The Kukwe predilection for casting their
dead off the tops of cliffs suggests that the nature of local topography may also have played a
role in the evolution of this practice, although MacKenzie’s report indicates that the dead (or
rather dying) in Unyakyusa were not everywhere thrown away in such a dramatic fashion.
The cold climate and absence of animal scavengers in Ukukwe may also have made it a more
attractive option for the living to place some vertical distance between themselves and the
slowly rotting dead. The Usangu Plains are completely lacking in mountainous terrain, but
are (or at least once were) replete with suitable scavengers to complete the work of disposal.
Once they had moved up into Usafwa, however, the Sangu were quick to make use of local
ravines for the same grim purpose.
If anything, it is evident that further research is required to determine the distribution of
communal sites for the disposal of corpses and the possible reasons for this apparently
unusual variation upon the practice of throwing away the dead. The preservation of these
sites in name and memory, as well as their contemporary use as sacred (and possibly burial)
sites, suggests that ethnographic enquiry on this subject may still bear fruit, despite the
passage of time since they were last used for their original purpose. The practice of throwing
away the dead (and abandoning the dying), whether randomly or in such designated places
has obvious implications for our interpretation of the archaeological record. The prehistory
and history of mortuary practices in south-west Tanzania, not to mention elsewhere in the
region, remains to be described in detail. Exposure of the dead was clearly an important
component of this history, at least in the immediate pre-colonial period. At present, however,
we can only guess at what future research might reveal about the past of this and other
mortuary practices.

Acknowledgements
My research in Tanzania in 1980-82 was funded by the then Social Science Research Council
(U.K.), with additional support from the Smuts Fund and Wolfson College in the University
of Cambridge. I am very grateful to my hosts in Utengule-Usangu and all those who provided
me with information on the topic of this article, in particular Ngwila Simuhongole, Eliuter
Shinangonele, Betitha Mwakalinga, and Jackson Mwakabalile.

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References
Elton, J. F. 1879. Travels and Researches among the Lakes and Mountains of Eastern and
Central Africa (edited by H. B. Cotterill). London: John Murray.
Heese, P. 1913. “Sitte und Brauch der Sango”, Archiv für Anthropologie, 40 (n.s.12):
134-146.
MacKenzie, D. R. 1925. The Spirit-ridden Konde. London: Seeley, Service & Co.
Nurse, D. 1988. “The Diachronic Background to the Language Communities of Southwestern
Tanzania”, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 9: 15-115.
[PA] = Periodical Accounts Relating to the Foreign Missions of the Church of the United
Brethren (London).
Walsh, M. T. 1984. The Misinterpretation of Chiefly Power in Usangu, South-west Tanzania,
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge.

Dr Martin Walsh is a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of African and Asian Studies,
University of Sussex. At the time of writing he was working for the Natural Resources
Institute (U.K.) as a social anthropologist on the ODA-funded Zanzibar Cash Crops Farming
Systems Project in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources, Zanzibar,
Tanzania. He is currently setting up a new DFID-supported community natural resource
management project in Iringa, Tanzania: MBOMIPA Project, P.O. Box 148, Iringa,
Tanzania.

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