The Luguru are an ethnic group in the Uluguru Mountains of Tanzania, about 180 kilometers west of Dar es Salaam. Their preferred name, “Waluguru,” means “people of the [Uluguru] mountains.” A majority of the Luguru live in in the heart of the mountain range, at 4000-8000 feet above sea level.
The Luguru also known as Rugulu, Lugulu and historically considered Kami (Waluguru, in Swahili) are a Bantu, matrilineal ethnic group from northern Morogoro Region of Tanzania specifically indigenous to Morogoro District, Mvomero District and Kilosa District of Morogoro Region and Kibaha District of Pwani Region in Tanzania. They speak the Bantu Luguru language and are native to the Uluguru Mountains that are named after them.
The Luguru of Tanzania are numbering 1,345,000, according Peoplegroups.org in 2025
Luguru people speak Kiluguru, a Bantu language with only slight dialectal variations from those spoken by the culturally similar, matrilineally-organized Zaramo, Kami, Kwere and Kutu. Most Luguru, like other Tanzanians, also speak Swahili, the national lingua franca.
The Luguru consider themselves descendants of refugees who settled in the Uluguru Mountains in reaction to the northward expansion of Ngoni invaders. Originally believed to have hailed from different ethnic groups, the settlers gradually evolved to become the distinct people known as Luguru.
In the early nineteenth century some Luguru expanded down from the central mountains to the adjacent valleys and plains, forming splinter groups distinguished by their adaptation to specific environments: the Kutu, Zaramo, Kwere, Sagara, Vidunda, Ngulu, and Zigua. Collectively referred to as the matrilineal peoples of eastern Tanzania, these groups speak mutually intelligible languages, adhere to the same traditional religion, and share a range of material culture traits.
Prior to German colonial occupation in the 1880s, the Luguru had very little contact with either Arab traders or European travelers. Their relative isolation gradually came to an end, starting in the mid-nineteenth century when Kisabengo, the leader of an army of raiders, established a fortified settlement at the present-day town of Morogoro, using it over the ensuing decades as a base for taxing caravan traders, raiding neighboring peoples on the plains and, eventually, collaborating with the Germans.
Traditionally, the Luguru lived in dense villages, typically consisting of the closely-related descendants of a matriline, together with their spouses and children. The size of a settlement reportedly ranged from 50 to 800 households, depending on the availability of sufficient water and arable land. In 1934 the commonest type of house in the area was the typical East African beehive hut with a grass-thatched roof. By the turn of the twenty-first century, well-off Luguru farmers owned rectangular, urban-style homes with cement floors, plaster walls, and corrugated metal roofs.
The Luguru were hoe cultivators. Their traditional farm tools were wooden hoes (kibode) and digging sticks ([n]muhaya[n]). Crops planted varied across local agro-ecological zones. Important cereals included rice, maize and sorghum. Many Luguru also cultivated beans, peas, cassava, bananas, sweet potatoes, and other vegetables. Domestic animals included chickens, and some sheep and goats. They kept no or very few cattle, even though the mountains appear to be tsetse-free.
There are more than fifty exogamous matrilineal clans among the Luguru (Lukolo, Lukero, and Kungugo). Although the clans are not land-owning entities, their histories and customs link them to specific general regions of Uluguru. They are not linked to any dietary or totemic restrictions either. Although they might not marry, some of these clans are connected to one another. Some maintain that such clans should not marry each other, and some are also associated as special ritual and joking partners. It is also claimed that some patrilineal groups among the Luguru exist, and their sole purpose appears to be to spread food prohibitions.
Every matri-clan is further subdivided into several matrilineages, each of which is linked to a specific land area that the lineage has corporate rights over. The matrilineage was the fundamental political unit of the Luguru in the past; it not only approximated settlement groups, but its membership dictated political allegiance in the settlement and in retaliating for feuds. Tombo dwkuru (large breast), tombo dukati (middle breast), and tombo dudogo (small breast) are the lineages that are ranked according to seniority. Historian McVicar refers to these units as mlango . They appear to be ranked according to specific rights to perform ancestral propitiation ceremonies, though there are not enough details available.
Each lineage has its own insignia, such as a stool (mkunga), an axe (mambaza), a hat (fia) and hatband (kilemba), a wrist-bangle (mhande), a staff (tenge), and a drum. Young and Fosbrooke estimate that there are about 800 such lineages. Mlunga is another term for these insignia. Typically, lineage heads are men from the matrilineage; women or sons of lineage men are only occasionally selected in exceptional and brief situations. These positions' successors are occasionally selected at the predecessor's funeral and occasionally prior to the current head's passing. In any event, it appears that other lineage heads from nearby regions attend these ceremonies.
To succeed to a name, the head of a lineage is said to kutawala jina. He is Insignia's owner, Mwenye Mlunga. Because a given name is always associated with a matrilineage, a lineage head and owner of regalia will always share the same name as all of his predecessors. In addition to overseeing land distribution and other potentially contentious issues, the lineage leader is responsible for organizing significant ceremonies to appease ancestral spirits for fertility, rain, and protection from misfortune and other issues.
Slaves who were captured or received as compensation for wrongdoing were frequently married into families in the past. In terms of their rights to land and office, descendants of female slaves continue to enjoy a quasi-alien status because they were never fully assimilated. Although this would seem to be challenging in the case of uxorilocal marriage, Luguru are reported to have engaged in a type of mother-in-law avoidance.
The Luguru are permanent farmers. Historically, due to a lack of metal, digging sticks (muhaya) and wooden hoes (kibode) were utilized. When planting grains such as sorghum and millet, the digging stick served as a dibble. Men and women both farm, but women plant seeds. Both men and women would harvest. Scarecrows are frequently designed to ward off rodents and birds from crops.
Hill rice is a staple in the east, while sorghum and maize (the latter introduced in the 17th century) are in the west. People in every region grow some vegetables, beans, peas, cassava, bananas, and sweet potatoes. Coffee is also grown in some mountainous regions, though it has not been very successful, as in the Kilimanjaro region and Mbeya. Significant amounts of fruits and vegetables are grown in the eastern mountain region for export to the city of Dar es Salaam as well as the town and estate residents.
In the west, mountain streams are used for limited irrigation. Even in the tsetse-free mountains, the Luguru have no cattle, only chickens and a few sheep and goats for livestock nomenclature. Typically, livestock are tethered, and there are too few to herd. Poisons are used to catch fish in streams, but hunting is minimal. In the past, small game like antelope was occasionally hunted, and wood rats and monitor lizards were a critical source of protein.
By the mid-20th century, the biggest sisal estates in East Africa were found in the lower, drier plains that encircle the Uluguru Mountains. The large wage labor force on these estates has created a significant market for many Luguru products, even though Luguru have not entered such labor in significant numbers. Luguru cultivation in these plains areas requires a lot more shifting cultivation than in the mountain regions.
While men create tools, Luguru women create pottery, weave sleeping mats, and weave baskets from wild grass. Building houses is a job that both men and women do. Beer and food are made by women only. Wooden mortars and pestles are used to prepare staple grains. Although many rectangular banda- or tembe-type houses are still constructed in the mountains, the majority of the Luguru live in the traditional round house (msowge), which is shaped like a beehive.
Some people in western Uluguru exchange food for handicrafts. Excellent ceremonial staves, combs, and other tools with significant artistic value were carved by the Luguru in the past, but not much of this type of carving is done now. Hard tools were typically made of bastard ebony because iron appears to have been extremely rare. Pool water was collected and used to make salt.
Members of a local matrilineage are the only ones with inalienable land rights under the land tenure system described. Both men and women have inalienable rights to the land because these rights are individual and gender-neutral within the family. Family members of these people, however, might be allowed to use the land without having official rights. Children born to couples living in a father's matrilineal territory are therefore regarded as lineage children (mwana) rather than members or landowners, and their access to land rights is restricted. In addition to the initial payment known as rubaka, which mainly acknowledges outsider rights rather than making money, outsiders wishing to use such land must also make a ngoto payment, which is a small in-kind contribution to the head of the lineage. The lineage head usually supervises the storage of ngoto grain at a widow's homestead within the lineage.
Individuals in many families obtain land through their respective ancestries, resulting in scattered plots that may be several miles away. By requiring others to get permission before planting permanent crops or trees, the owner of a tree or crop effectively retains complete control over the planting, giving them long-term control. Regardless of a person's gender or marital status, crops grown on personal plots, known as gani, are managed exclusively by the grower and passed down to their descendants. On the other hand, lima, or goods made by joint labour, are managed collectively and split equally in the event of a divorce.
Although colonial authorities did not specify the precise duration of inactivity, long-unused plots typically return to the lineage's common land. Although children of non-ancestral outsiders may inherit crops from their father's land, they must obtain permission from a lineage head to access it. This is in contrast to the matrilineal inheritance of land rights. People from other areas can ask the head of the lineage for more land, but since there is a shortage of land, this is usually discouraged nowadays. Land availability was probably higher in the past when communities were bigger and land was less crowded.
In Uluguru, it was common to blame a woman's difficult childbirth on her adultery or hidden sins, and she was urged to come clean. The mother and child are confined for a week after delivery, and the husband is not permitted to see them during this time. The mother and child are shaved,marked with flour, anointed with oil, and given the child's childhood name during a ceremony known as kulawa kunzi on the seventh day. The duration of the husband's sexual abstinence from his wife, which is frequently associated with the nursing period, ranges from two months to more than a year.
Certain foods, such as certain beans (kunde), eggs, twin bananas, and pregnant animals, are forbidden by expectant mothers. In the past, some twins, albinos, or breech babies were killed as part of playful rituals; some stories say both twins were killed, while others only mention one. Sometimes children who cut their upper teeth first were given to their joking partners. Individuals with abnormalities and twins were disposed of at specific locations known as mahuto, which others avoided.
Although circumcision was not customary among the Luguru, it has gained popularity recently and was probably brought from the Sagara around 1910. Initiation ceremonies were traditionally performed for both boys and girls, though the specifics differed greatly between areas and between communities in the Uluguru mountains and lowlands.
Initiation for boys included shaving, confinement, and teaching on appropriate sexual behaviour and tribal lore by a specialist (muhanga). Known by a number of names, including konghongo, kukula, and lusona, these rituals frequently involved time spent in seclusion indoors, occasionally for as long as it took to transport the boys into the bush for additional training. Boys were given new names, anointed, dressed in new clothes, and celebrated with a feast of emergence (mlao) after the rites.
In contrast, a year or longer after their first menstruation, girls went through a period of seclusion known as kumbi, which was characterised by festivities (ngoma ya tumi or kuvunja ungo) and a second feast (ngoma mwikiro). Girls were fattened, taught sexual lore (sometimes with figurines), and had their genitalia left uncut while in seclusion. The girl was shaved, anointed, decorated, and carried on the shoulders of young men after the ceremonies (mkole or gali-gali) that marked the end of the rites. Traditionally, girls were frequently married soon after their emergence ceremonies and engaged before reaching puberty. Elderly people in the community from various generations gave sexual education.
The preferred mode of marriage was cross-cousin marriage, while still strictly adhering to clan exogamy. This pattern has become outdated with the rapid expansion and revival of both Christianity and Islam, especially during the 1990s. Traditionally, marriage involved the husband leaving his natal community to live with his wife’s lineage. After the birth of the first child, he often preferred to rejoin his own matrilineage, in which he held land. The wife either stayed on her own, or moved to be with her husband. If she chose the latter, she would have yet another decision to make later on, when her son married and moved out to live with her (his mother’s) lineage. All these moves and cycles contribute to the relative instability of marriages.
Usually, a go-between (msenga), the suitor's family chooses, is involved in marriage arrangements. In the past, girls were frequently married right after their debutante ceremony and engaged for several years before they reached puberty. Known as kifungo, ngwale, or vilama, the first bridewealth payment typically consisted of chickens, cloth, ornaments, and small sums of money. Historian Kimmenade claims that the groom performed bride service for the bride's parents and that said amount of money was given to the bride's father (kushika uchumba) and another four to her mother's brother (fupo). Additionally, the groom was given land to use during the marriage, and he would eat dinner with his future father-in-law while giving his mother-in-law a chicken (mbandula).
By the 19th century, the bride's maternal and paternal relatives split the bridewealth equally, with the groom's father providing most of the payment. Cory claims that the total amount varies widely. After the initial payments, the couple's family members meet at the bride's house to determine the final amount (ngwe, mwere, or kitangura), which can be paid in cash, chickens, goats, or cloth. A portion of the payment is typically given to the bride's father (barua or swamu la ndevu) and maternal uncle (gubiko). Kimmenade also reports payments to the bride’s mother (kondavi or mkaju), her maternal grandfather (gweka), and her elder brother (gumbo). The agreed-upon bridewealth may be diminished if the couple will live in an uxorilocal arrangement, and consummation is thought to be necessary for the marriage to be finalised before the full payment is made.
Since it is thought to strengthen land rights, facilitate kin rituals, and avoid disputes, cross-cousin marriage is frequently preferred. These unions, which are regarded as irreversible, are occasionally consummated by blood exchange. Marriages between specific kinship groups are also common, such as a sister's son's daughter and a father's sister's daughter. If the bride chooses not to consummate the marriage, the bridewealth is returned to her. Despite being polygynous, the Luguru have a comparatively low rate of polygamous marriages.
While the most common domestic group is the nuclear family, filial ties between children and their father appear to be very weak. Instead, the mother’s brother was the most important authority figure affecting a person’s wellbeing, including marriage choice and access to land and other economically important lineage resources. In the past, the rights of the mother’s brother reportedly included pawning or selling a disfavored nephew as a slave.
Opportunities to engage in commercial agriculture varies by local agro-climatic zones. Some farmers in the central mountains grow coffee. Households along the main road grow considerable amounts of vegetables and fruits for sale, both in regional market towns and in the distant city of Dar es Salaam. Sisal is extensively cultivated commercially on the lower, drier plains surrounding the Uluguru Mountains.
The Luguru make excellent sleeping mats and baskets. In the past, when traditional religion was widely practiced, the Luguru carved ceremonial staffs, combs, and other utensils of considerable artistic value. Prior to the advent of iron tools, the Luguru used a range of tools made from hard, locally-available ebony.
Some Luguru traded craft products for food and other desired goods. In each village one finds retail shops crammed full with a range of imported goods, including beauty products, canned soda, kerosene, pasta, tea, spices, and condiments.
Both sexes performed agricultural activities, although women tended to spend more time in cultivation than men. Tasks specifically defined as women’s work included brewing beer, preparing food, and making sleeping mats and baskets. Both sexes participated in building houses. Men tended to spend more time in activities outside the household, like attending local meetings, engaging with government representatives, wage labor, and organizing seasonal rituals.
Each lineage collectively owned the land on which its matrilineally-related members lived, often together with their spouses and children. Only members of a local matrilineage enjoyed inalienable rights to access and use specific plots of lineage land. The periodic distribution and transfer of land rights required the approval of the lineage head.
Children of lineage members residing with their father’s clan and other “outsiders” may be allowed to use some plots in the lineage landholdings. However, such rights were perceived as temporary, and involved a token annual payment (ngoto, as well as a one-time initial payment (rubaka) to the head of the land-owning matrilineage.
In the 1990s, both spouses of many households held plots through membership in their respective lineages. As a consequence, each household’s lands were often widely scattered across different communities.
Luguru society in 1934 was divided into 50 exogamous matriclans and about 800 sub-clans or localized matrilineages. Clan members claimed to have descended from the same apical ancestress for which the clan was named, but clans lacked common totems or dietary prohibitions. In addition to avoiding intra-marriage, clan membership was expressed in organized ceremonials, such honoring deceased ancestors and pooling resources and labor for the proper burial of deceased clan members.
It was not the clan but the sub-clan or lineage that functioned as a corporate kinship group. The lineage consisted of people who acknowledged actual descent, traced through the female line from a common ancestress. Unlike clan members, lineages members lived in the same area belonging exclusively to their lineage. Each lineage had a head, often a male, selected from the family of the most senior high-ranking women. Prior to the establishment of the current Tanzanian system of local government, the lineage functioned as the basic political unit of Luguru society. In addition to owning land, each lineage possessed its own sacred insignia, often consisting of a stool, an axe, and a staff.
As early as 1934, many of the kinship terms that the Luguru used to refer to different categories of persons were borrowed from Swahili language, which has a strongly patrilineal orientation. For the matrilineal Luguru, this has created ambiguities and inconstancies in differentiating between maternal and paternal relatives.
The house and movable wealth (including stored foods) were kept intact so long as a parent and children survive. This rule meant that the husband of a deceased woman, although not a lineage member, would take control of her land until their children matured. When the children became adults, they would divide the property (land and economically useful trees) among themselves equitably, regardless of gender or birth order. The wealth of a person who died with no children to inherit was distributed to close relatives. Land held by deceased slaves and non-lineage members (aliens) reverted to the land-owning matrilineage, not to their heirs.
Children learn about basic domestic and farming skills by accompanying adults performing routine chores and seasonal activities. Girls learn skills such as cooking, hoeing, and basket-making by observing and imitating their mothers and to other women in the household. Similarly, boys acquire economically important skills and social etiquette by accompanying adults both at work and in other settings, such as lineage meetings, informal dispute management proceedings, religious celebrations, and funerals.
A series of rites served as opportunities to inculcate desired values and skills in children. Boys’ initiation into adulthood involved extended isolation as a group in a remote forest, with rituals conveying secret instructions on a range of issues, such as sexual intercourse, personal hygiene, knowledge of deceased ancestors, courtesy to elders, etc. For girls, in contrast, initiation required living in isolation in a dark room inside the home that, in the past, could last as long as two years, but by the 1990s had been reduced to several weeks. While in seclusion, girls received life lessons that prepared them to perform expected gender roles as wives, mothers and caretakers of the ancestors.
Luguru society was organized into localized lineages that, in turn, belonged to exogamous clans.
Prior to colonial rule, Luguru society was politically decentralized. Each local matrilineage functioned as a largely autonomous political unit. Occasionally, however, an outstanding lineage leader or a powerful rainmaker in a particular clan wielded power beyond their lineage and received tribute from other lineages.
Early in the colonial period, German officials coopted selected rainmakers, making them local administrators. Beginning in the 1920s, the British gradually merged some of the previous autonomous local administrative units to create a larger Luguru district. For administering the new district, colonial officials strategically selected the most prominent traditional authority from among the leaders of the resident lineages. By 1936, British officials had consolidated the power of the district administrator by recognizing him as the Sultan (Paramount Chief) of all Luguru-speaking peoples and other minority communities living among them. The Sultan was aided by a British-educated Luguru who held the title of Deputy Sultan.
As part of this program of modernizing local administration, British colonial officials also formally recognized selected lineage leaders as sub-chiefs and village headmen. One of the lasting legacies of this cooptation was the emergence and consolidation of multi-lineage (and in some cases multi-ethnic) administrative units by merging adjacent territories previously associated with single, dominant lineages.
As recently as the 1990s lineage heads continued to have a role in managing minor disputes over the inheritance and transfer of lineage lands. This is noteworthy considering that decades of policy reform in Tanzania, as in many African countries, sought to replace traditional authorities through increased local presence of elements of the national bureaucracy, including the judiciary system.
By custom, a murderer's matrilineage paid the victim's kin some compensation. In pre-colonial times, the murder’s matri-kin also were required to hand over two persons to the victim's kin, who could then pawn or sell them as slaves. Serious theft was punished by cutting off the hands of offenders. Adultery was atoned for with monetary compensation paid to the husband by the offender.
In pre-colonial times, the Luguru were reportedly raided by the Kamba of Kenya to the north, and by the Ngoni who were expanding outward from the south. Luguru traditions also refer to past wars and minor feuds that occasionally occurred among local lineages. However, we lack detailed historical accounts of the dynamics of both external and internal conflicts.
Prior to conversion to Christianity and Islam, the Luguru believed in a supreme being called Mulungu. Most religious rituals were devoted to managing relations with ancestral ghosts. Ambitious clan members seeking good fortune could invite the ghost of one to dwell within their bodies by ritually naming themselves after a favorite ancestor. Having as many ancestral names as possible advanced the social standing of a person by making them an important medium between the living and the dead. It was generally believed that the ancestors would protect their namesake from all evil forces, so long as the host individual continued to regularly organize the required feasts and offerings. Independently of the living, ancestral ghosts ostensibly controlled local rainfall patterns critical to agriculture. By the 1990s a majority of the Luguru were either Muslim or Christian, with Roman Catholicism dominant thanks to its control of most of the formal education and its pervasive influence on most aspects of local life.
The Luguru recognized certain traditional practitioners who were believed to possess special spiritual powers as rainmakers and diviners, and who exerted control over spirit forces, ancestral ghosts, and witches.
In addition to life cycle events like initiation rites, traditional Luguru culture included a series of naming rituals, the goal of which was to invite the ghosts of favorite lineage ancestors to inhabit their namesakes.
In addition to the performing arts such as traditional music, dance and storytelling, the Luguru made ornaments and ceremonial objects of considerable artistic value, including figurines, staffs, and combs.
Traditional Luguru medicine includes amulets obtained from diviners for protection against witchcraft and misfortune. Some Luguru also place medicine-bundles in their fields to prevent outsiders from stealing crops. Trespassers are believed to become ill from these bundles.
In the pre-contact period most deaths and many illnesses were attributed to witchcraft. Suspected witches were detected through divination and were subjected to various ordeals. Each clan had a joking partner from another clan who would be called to conduct certain mortuary rites, usually involving sweeping the floor of the deceased’s hut, washing the corpse and wrapping it in a burial shroud (sanda), and proclaiming the circumstances of death; additional tasks could include shaving mourners, performing sacrifices at the graveside, and rekindling household fires at the end of mourning. Each lineage owned a designated burial site marked by a sacred grove of trees. Corpses of men were laid on their right sides, those of women on their left sides. Each grave was marked with stones. The deceased's kin mourned for a week, during which they observed a number of restrictions, such as work and cooking, ending with feasts and rites held at the grave.
Clan joking partners (watani) conduct the Luguru's funeral and mortuary rites. They are in charge of several ceremonial duties, including cleaning the hut, cleaning and wrapping the body in burial cloth (sanda), and declaring the cause of death. After mourning, they rekindle home fires, perform sacrifices at the grave, and shave mourners. According to some sources, the deceased's head should be facing uphill, with men on their right side and women on their left. However, other sources, such as McVicar and Kimmenade, disagree about whether the body should be flexed. Stones are used to mark graves, which are occasionally found in sacred groves or lineage areas.
For seven days, mourners put out the fires in their huts and refrain from working or cooking. After seven days, fires are relighted, daily tasks are resumed, and a small feast known as pombe ya tanga signifies the end of mourning on the eighth day. The mortuary rites are completed a week later when the clan's joking partners perform libations at the graves during pombe ya kihanza. In order to ascertain the circumstances and causes of the death, family members may later seek the advice of diviners.
Sources: