[1] Before the arrival of the Ngoni ethic group, the coastal regions, the Southern Highlands had no political unit larger than clans and chiefdoms.

The Sangu sent slaves and ivory to representatives of the coastal regions and were the first to adopt the weapons, tactics, and followed the organization of the Ngoni who dominated the highlands until civil war broke out .

The father of Chief Mkwawa of the Muyinga family of the Hehe people began to form a unified state to be called Uhehe.

Sangu, Bena and Kinga are part of the Niger-Congo-Bantu people who lived in Iringa province before ivory and slave hunters Ngazija (Shia Iranian) from Comoro came.

Merere II, having lost his homeland to the Hehe, wrote to the German Governor Julius von Soden in January 1892: "I ask you to come quickly.

He was reduced to waging guerrilla war, and finally fled south and died years later (Mkwawa did not commit suicide as many scholars report.

It took until December 10, 1896, to re-install Merere III of Usangu, back in his capital of Utengule, which his father had lost 22 years earlier to the Wahehe.