ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the history of healers in north-eastern Tanzania. It focuses on the Usambara Mountains of Lushoto District, where people speak the Shambaa language. Research in the late 1970s concentrated on the therapeutic activities of all the households in a single village. All across Africa in the years before colonial conquest healers, and the political leaders with whom they were allied, had a much wider range of control over the social conditions of health than they have had ever since. Within the kingdom healers in co-operation with chiefs and local elders controlled a wide range of basic health conditions. Healers coordinated the cleaning of irrigation ditches and the distribution of water; thousands of hectares were under irrigation. The institutions of local health care and local government have been changing quite rapidly. Most of the literature on popular healing in Africa focuses narrowly on individual therapy. Written historical sources are of course crucial to the interpretation.
