Volume 192, 24 June 2015, Pages 398–407
The Proceedings of 2nd Global Conference on Conference on Linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching
Open Access
Abstract
Lukanga Mukara
(1912), a young East African's letters written during his visit to the
German interior and sent to his king anxiously awaiting news of his
impressions of Germany. The letters are a social critique of pre-World
War I Germany seen through the eyes of the young Lukanga Mukara. Never
once does he refer to German colonial excesses on the continent where
his king to whom he sends his letters lives. Hans Paasche, a young naval
officer, author of Lukanga Mukara, son of the Vice Chancellor
of the German Reichstag, arrived in Darussalam in 1904. In 1905 he led
the Rufiji expedition, the German force that suppressed the Maji Maji Rebellion
in German East Africa. The wholesale slaughter of Africans led to Hans
Paasche's later conversion to pacifism and his eventual murder in 1920
at the hands of the Brigade Erhardt, ultra-nationalist forerunners of
the Nazi Regime. Paasche's German East African experiences, his
familiarity with Swahili, the knowledge he must have had of the effects
of German colonialism, make his portrayal of the simple, naïve African
character and his pastoral community untouched by Western civilization
rather surprising. This paper examines African images dominating Lukanga Mukara
and places these in the context of historical events and of literature
written during and about this period of African history. It asks: What
are the effects of images that form and inform the national
consciousness.
