Mangaru Mwajita ruled the Digo of Chikoneni through the most dangerous thirty years of their 19th-century history. In the same year that he is thought to have come to power, a new and aggressive ruler took over at Gasi on the coast. For the next three decades the country between Gasi and Vanga was, in the words of the historian David Sperling, "the most turbulent and least secure part of Mijikenda country". Mangaru is remembered as the one Digo ruler who could stand against Gasi.
What follows rests mainly on Sperling's 1988 thesis, which draws on Chikoneni oral testimony, a French missionary's account of a visit in 1890, and letters in the Kenya National Archives.
Heir to the Kuboship
Mangaru inherited a title, not just a village. His grandfather, Mbogo Mwamzungu, had come from Kwale at the end of the 18th century and made himself the dominant leader of the southern Digo, taking the name Kubo. The name became a hereditary title. Most Digo kayas, the old fortified settlements, were governed by a council of elders (ngambi) led by a senior ritual elder, the mwanatsi. The Kubo held wider and more personal authority, which colonial officers later described as unusually centralised for the coast. Mwamzungu was succeeded by his son Jita Mwakubo, and Jita by his son Mangaru. Sperling dates Mangaru's rule to about 1865–1894. Chikoneni stood some fifteen miles inland, and its Digo looked mainly to the Vumba Diwans of Vanga, with whom the Kubos had a long alliance.
Mbaruk of Gasi
In 1865 Shaykh Mbaruk bin Rashid al-Mazrui became leader at Gasi. Sperling describes him as "more aggressive and more ambitious" than the man before him. He tried to expand his influence and raided those who opposed him. From the late 1860s he quarrelled with the Sultans of Zanzibar, and the region's peoples were drawn in. In general the Vumba, the Digo of Chikoneni, the Shirazi and the Segeju opposed Mbaruk, while the Digo and Duruma north of Gasi tended to support him. Mbaruk attacked Vanga in 1873, and Sultan Barghash used armed force against him several times between 1872 and 1886.
The French missionary Alexandre Le Roy visited Kubo Mangaru in 1890. Afterwards he wrote: "The Digo testify unanimously that in times past Mbaruk has ruined their villages, and transformed the magnificent countryside into a solitary desert." The damage lasted. In 1921 a District Commissioner still found the land between Gasi and the Ramisi river thinly settled, because "fear of Sheikh Mbaruk of Gazi (slave raiding)" had driven many Digo west of the Ramisi.
According to Mkpwulu bin Abdallah, who spoke to Sperling in 1976, Mangaru was "the only Digo ruler strong enough to offer resistance". When he came into conflict with Mbaruk, Sultan Barghash sent Baluchi soldiers to Chikoneni to protect him. The tradition gives no date for this. Barghash ruled from 1870 to 1888.
Was He a Muslim?
The same informant said Mangaru became a Muslim on a visit to Barghash in Zanzibar. Sperling doubts it. Mangaru seems never to have used a Muslim name, and none is remembered for him. In 1894 he wrote to Mr Pigott, Sub-commissioner of the Imperial British East Africa Company, and signed himself "Kubo bin Jetha", Kubo son of Jita. Sperling points out that Mangaru used a Vumba scribe, and the Muslim "bin" may have been the scribe's choice. In 1916 a District Officer stated that Mangaru's successor was "the first Kubo to adopt the Islam religion".
Islam was nonetheless close at hand. Le Roy noticed it at Chikoneni: the people "were not the same", their bodies "more heavily clothed"; "there was a leaven of Islam here."
Between Zanzibar and the Company
Mangaru's letters of 1894 show him dealing directly with a European chartered company in the last years before the British protectorate of 1895. By then Mbaruk himself was on peaceful terms with Zanzibar and drew a stipend from the Company. The peace did not last. In 1895 Mbaruk led the rising against the Sultan and the British, and in July of that year he sacked Vanga. Sperling found that most Digo south of Mombasa, "whose links with the Mazrui were tenuous, if not hostile, showed little inclination to join the Rising." Chikoneni's long hostility to Gasi helps to explain why.
Sperling's dates end Mangaru's rule in 1894. His nephew Shehe Mwatsolozi, son of Tsolozi Mwajita, was installed as Kubo at Chikoneni in 1895. The sources do not say how or when Mangaru died.
Legacy
Mangaru's story survives in pieces: an elder's memory, a missionary's travel book, letters written for him by a scribe. It is enough to show a Digo ruler who held his ground against Gasi for a generation, won the support of Zanzibar, and negotiated with the British East Africa Company. After Kubo Shehe died in 1916 the title was disputed and then lapsed, so Mangaru was the last Kubo to rule before colonial government took hold.