Most Digo country was governed by elders, not by kings. Each kaya, the fortified hilltop settlement at the heart of a Digo community, had its ngambi, a council of elders. At its head sat the mwanatsi (from mwana wa ntsi, "son of the land"), the senior elder who led the kaya's ceremonies and was almost always chosen by matrilineal descent from the founding clan. In the far south, around Kaya Dzombo and Chikoneni, something different grew up. There one man and his heirs held an office that British officers later called a "chieftainship". The man was Mbogo Mwamzungu, also known as Chikonga, and the office was the Kuboship.
Almost all we know of him comes from the historian David Sperling, who recorded Chikoneni elders in the 1970s and checked their accounts against older writings and colonial files.
The Rain-Bringer from Kwale
The first Digo to settle at Kaya Dzombo may have come from Chinondo as early as the 17th century. Settlers from Kwale followed them and came to dominate the kaya. According to Sperling's informants, Mbogo Mwamzungu came from Kwale during a famine at the end of the 18th century. He is said to have "brought rain to the country", and after that the people accepted him as their leader.
Sperling describes him as "endowed with a forceful personality". He soon became "the dominant leader of the southern Digo" and took the name Kubo. One Chikoneni elder said the name passed to his successors and became a title of authority. Another tradition says the Vumba of the coast gave him the name. During his rule Dzombo was abandoned and Mwamzungu moved to Chirwa, near Chikoneni. He extended his control by placing his sons at Mafisini, Chigombero and other outlying villages, and other Digo of the area came under his authority.
His date rests on a single cross-reference: citing Hollis's "History of Vumba", Sperling places him already in power at the time of a Vumba succession dispute in about 1803–04.
Blood-Brother of the Diwan
Chikoneni, forty miles south of Mombasa and fifteen miles inland, was long isolated from Muslim influence, with one exception: the Vumba Diwans, the Muslim rulers of Wasini and later Vanga. Mwamzungu is said to have valued the magical powers of Diwan Pinda, who was elected Diwan of Vanga in 1826. The Diwan was accepted as the final arbiter in Digo disputes, and he seems to have supplied the Digo with protective charms. The Digo and the Vumba are said to have buried a protective charm (fingo) together at Kaya Dzombo.
The best-remembered episode is a blood-brotherhood (chale). Omari Muhammad Masemo, who had worked as clerk to a later Kubo, told Sperling in 1975 that Mwamzungu proposed mixing their blood with meat and eating it. Pinda, a Muslim, protested at eating meat not slaughtered by Muslim rite. "But Kubo got a chicken and killed it by biting it with his teeth", and once it was cooked "they all ate it, including the Diwan." In Masemo's words: "From the days of Kubo Mwamzungu and Diwan Pinda we became brothers."
The bond was between clans: the Hindzano clan of Chikoneni and the Wanachamvi, the Diwan's clan among the Vumba. Sperling notes that the special relationship between them survived into his own day. Hollis had implied it went back to a 17th-century war, but the Chikoneni testimony places its origin with Mwamzungu and Pinda.
These stories need care. If Mwamzungu was in power by 1803–04 and made his pact with a Diwan elected in 1826, he ruled for at least two decades. The record does not say whether that is so or whether the story has gathered around the founder's name. A further loose end is the Mazrui chronicle of Mombasa, which names a Digo leader, "Kubo Mwachikonga" of the Dzombo Digo, who was persuaded by a Vumba Diwan to pay blood money to the Mazrui for the murder of the Liwali (governor) of Mtangata, sometime between about 1814 and 1824. Mwachikonga would read in Digo as "son of Chikonga". Sperling does not say whether this was Mwamzungu himself or one of his sons.
Neither Muslim nor Forgotten
Despite his ties with the Diwan, Mwamzungu did not become a Muslim. Nor did his son Jita Mwakubo, who took power after his death. Jita's son, Mangaru Mwajita, ruled as Kubo from about 1865 to 1894. Mangaru's nephew, Shehe Mwatsolozi, was installed in 1895 and was, a District Officer wrote, "the first Kubo to adopt the Islam religion". When Kubo Shehe died in 1916, six people claimed the title. The British appointed one of them as headman instead, and the Kuboship fell out of use.
British officers took "singular historical interest" in the Kuboship, Sperling writes, as "a more centralized form of authority than was found elsewhere on the Kenya coast", and filed many papers on it.
Legacy
Mwamzungu's story is told by his community rather than by any document of his own time, so it is thin on detail. Still, it shows that Digo political life was not only government by elders. A rain-bringer from Kwale could become ruler over many villages, bind himself in brotherhood to a Muslim town, and found a title that lasted more than a century. The bond between the Hindzano of Chikoneni and the Vumba of Vanga may be his longest-lasting work.