Edited by John Cooper-Poole (UK) and Marion Doro (USA)

THE GREAT DIAMOND HUNT by James Platt, Creighton Books, 2007. ISBN 978 9080780842

Fifty years ago, James Platt, armed with a degree in Mining Geology from the Royal School of Mines in London and, remarkably, a knowledge of Shelley’s poetry, was employed to traverse MMBA (Miles and Miles of Bloody Africa) collecting soil samples in the search for diamonds. At the time, following the world-class discovery by Dr John Williamson, diamonds were being mined at Mwadui, which is situated roughly midway between Mwanza and Tabora. Mr Platt’s employer was Williamson Diamonds Limited (WDL), a subsidiary of de Beers, which had its headquarters at Mwadui. De Beers was engaged in the search for other deposits of diamonds in north-west Tanzania.

The young geologist was required to follow instructions as set-out in the WDL’s Geologists Field Manual. It is the detail of life in the field, as directed by the GFM, which is so fascinating. Most of us have memories of our first overseas assignment, but few of us manage to write about our experiences. Names are forgotten and incidents only vaguely recalled, often in an alcoholic daze. Not so for James Platt. Each employee, his name, tribe and personality is remembered. Incidents are vividly described: an early experience of the effects of dehydration; his first kill (of an impala for the pot); an ‘investigation’ by the Tanzania Transport and General Workers Union; inevitably, the theft of a cash box.

One forgets how different things were in the early 1960’s. The journey from London to Nairobi was by Vickers Viscount turbo-prop aircraft that took two days to make it from London to Nairobi via Malta, Benghazi, Khartoum and Entebbe. He flew the final leg of the journey by Dakota aircraft from Nairobi to the airstrip at Mwadui. Life in the bush was spartan: no generator; paraffin-fuelled Tilley lamps for lighting; a battery operated radio, and a bath rigged up out of a tin tank. Samples were sent to Johannesburg for analysis, and it took months for the results to be sent back.

Only Land Rovers and tsetse fly and the vagaries of black-cotton soil don’t seem to have changed much. Then, as now, the quality of a town was defined by its bars. At the Diamond Fields Hotel in Shinyanga he bought beers for the local head of police. Despite his taste for cold beer (IPA), Mr Platt never tried pombe, a strange lapse, indicative of the social isolation of Wazungu (Europeans) in the early 1960’s.

The period of Mr Platt’s diamond hunt was immediately before Uhuru. He captures well the spirit of the times in his descriptions of the characters that shaped his experience: WDL’s diverse work-force; the lady from South Africa in the adjacent seat on the way out; the police chief in Shinyanga, who cadged beers and failed to return Mr Platt’s rifles. In common with all young geologists, he shows scant respect for the management skills of his bosses, or the style of the local District Commissioners.

In places, Mr Platt’s language is arcane and the syntax garbled although, after he gets going, the narrative reads fluently. ‘The Great Diamond Hunt’ is an authentic memory of what it felt like to be a young man from Cornwall, living in Africa for the first time. It is an authentic and valuable historical record, and an entertaining memoir.

Tony Marsh

THE LAST BANANA: DANCING WITH THE WATU Shelby Tucker. Stacey International, 2010. ISBN 978 1906768 21 8. H/B, pp373 RRP £17.99

Twenty years ago, when I first went to Tanzania, the community of permanent white residents of Arusha was tiny – a handful of farmers, safari operators and long-term missionaries, with a subpopulation of researchers and aid workers. It was literally possible to know them all, and to recognise them by their vehicles. Conspicuous among them was a Greek, known only as Ghikas, who could be seen around town in a battered Landrover, or occasionally a tractor if he was short of fuel – one of the few old-time ‘characters’ around.

On being asked to review this book it was therefore quite a surprise to find that ostensibly its main protagonist was none other than Marios Ghikas, who had been at Oxford with Tucker and who, shortly before his farms were nationalised, had invited Tucker to come to share the ‘last banana’ of the title. The scion of a wealthy Greek family who owned major coffee plantations on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, and the Livingstone Hotel in Moshi, Ghikas was one of very few Greeks to remain in Tanzania following independence and nationalisation of almost all of their assets. His background and experiences, as documented here, are a valuable record of the important Greek influence on the development of the country (dating back to the German occupation), and the trauma of the nationalisation process on those it affected. As well as the Ghikas family and other Greeks, Tucker also covers the stories of other white settlers similarly affected, including that group of remarkable men who farmed at Ol Molog on the north-western shoulder of Kilimanjaro. The story continues to the present day, revealing that Marios Ghikas is back on some of his ancestral coffee estates, struggling to make them profitable once more.

The sections of the book devoted to Ghikas, his fellow Greeks and other colonists in northern Tanzania will be the most appreciated part of the book for those interested in Tanzanian history. Much of it, however, concentrates on Shelby Tucker himself, and his travels through Africa, more or less en route to Moshi to see Ghikas, but with lengthy diversions through Sudan and Ethiopia, and his marriage in Zanzibar, form a large part of the story. The whole is intermingled with excerpts from the adventures of David Livingstone and Wachagga history. It is well written, however, and its scholarly references and notes are, for once, usefully in their proper place as footnotes.

John Grimshaw

A MEDICAL SAFARI. Richard Evans. Athena Press, 2006. ISBN 1 84401 748 6. About £6 on Amazon.

We missed this is one when it was published. It tells of a “safari” which started at a mission hospital in Uganda in 1969. Then in 1971 Richard joined the medical staff of the newly opened Bugando Hospital as an obstetrician/gynaecologist. Both he and his wife were particularly interested in the development of maternal and child health services in the rural areas. After five years he and his family moved to the New Hebrides before returning to Tanzania as the medical coordinator in the planning stages of ODA’s Southern Regions Health Project, which included the enlargement of the government hospital at Mbeya to become a regional referral hospital, with an extensive outreach programme.

Richard is remembered as a good raconteur whose tales seldom lost anything in the telling, and this is all good vintage stuff. It is necessarily a personal and selective account, but is a good read.

J. C-P.

AFRICA’S LIBERATION; THE LEGACY OF NYERERE. 2010. Pambazuka Press. ISBN 979 906387 71 6. P/B pp195

This new collection of essays is an introduction to the philosophy and politics of Julius K. Nyerere, a tribute to his legacy, and a rumination on the trajectory of Tanzanian politics since his death in 1999. The essays themselves are mostly written by Tanzanian scholars and activists, and all share a desire to cast the legacy of Mwalimu in a positive and developmental light.

The collection is certainly rose-tinted, opening with a poem that asks ‘where do we go from here?’, and reflecting on Mwalimu’s undoubtedly positive achievements in nation-building and education. Later on, it falls to Chris Maina Peter and Marjorie Mbilinyi to sound a note of caution on Tanzania’s human rights and gender equality record. What comes across most consistently – and is also most fun to read – is the spirit of Nyerere: that rare combination of intellectual ferocity and human instinct. During his tangles with the IMF in particular, he combines a robust (although partly flawed) defence of ujamaa socialism, whilst simultaneously admonishing the arrogance and myopia of the Washington development bureaucracy. It is stirring stuff, and fascinating to read post-credit crunch.

Mwalimu Nyerere is central to the narrative and identity of post-colonial Tanzania. And whilst this collection will teach relatively little to those who already know this, it does illustrate just how multi-faceted this narrative and identity is. He would be happy with this. His legacy is not just as a portrait on a government office wall, but as a living, breathing part of everyday life and politics in the country.

Henry Kippin

THE HADZA HUNTER-GATHERERS OF TANZANIA. Prof Frank Marlowe. University of California Press, 1910. ISBN 978 0 520 25342 1. P/B. £19.95.

How cool are the Hadza? Having done a bit of work (i.e. hunting and gathering) you spend time with your family, community, mates, discussing the environment, children, food, decisions – men and women together. You enjoy leisure time with a game, a chat, a snooze or preparing your arrows for the next expedition. Maybe you even contemplate the meaning of life and your world view without dogmatic monotheism or existentialist crisis or fear of eternal damnation. You share stories, ideas, food, laughs, politics, a bit of the local weed and some local history – having hung out in the same place for over 60,000 years you really get to know your community and history. Maybe you worry a little about the rain or your neighbourhood: “the place has gone down hill since those agriculturalists moved in!”

I am not a romantic when it comes to Africa, but the Hadza? I admire them, their values, their minimal ecological footprint, their spirit of equality and egalitarianism, the way they don’t take themselves too seriously.

So Prof Frank Marlowe is one lucky guy to be able to write an ethnography of the Hadza – not least because there are only 1,000 living in a fairly small area. But clearly he is sensitive to the privilege of being able to move with and research the Hadza. The author’s rigorous approach ensures this is not simply an ode to a noble people; while the affection and respect he has for his ‘subject’ shine’s through it, but doesn’t taint the evidence.

Particularly interesting was the equitable role and clear responsibilities women have, compared to most societies, including our own “over developed” countries. Women choose their partner freely, are not cast out or into homes if they are widowed and organised communal childcare gives freedom to participate economically and politically. Sexual relations are negotiated around menstrual cycles, women lactating and a certain amount of choice ensuring good reproductive health and child spacing.

The Hadza, and this ethnography, are a robust example of evolutionary theory and why it is essential to understand humans; how evolution occurs through natural selection which in turn leads to adaptation to changing environments – or extinction. What is remarkable is how little the Hadza have changed, especially given the often negative and increasingly hostile forces that surround them.

And this is my only criticism – apart from the language being a little academic and at times inaccessible. What is lacking is an analysis of the Hadza’s political economy and participatory action-research that could lead to an analysis of the major threats and opportunities the Hadza face at the beginning of the 21st Century. An example would be the opportunity, maybe necessity, of political alliances on land issues with, for example, pastoralists, building on the work of the local social justice organisation, the Ujamaa Community Resource Trust. This would ensure that this extraordinarily rigorous and valuable ethnography is more than a study of what may be the extinction of one of the first of the first peoples.

While Marlowe’s book may not be a clear rallying cry in defence of the Hadza and hunter-gathering as a legitimate and sustainable livelihood, “The Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania” does have the passion, evidence and humility to contribute towards it.

Mike Sansom

PLANTS VISITED BY BEES AND OTHER USEFUL PLANTS OF UMALILA, SOUTHERN TANZANIA. By Paul Latham. ISBN 978 0 9554208 3 2. Availabale from the author at Croft Cottage, Forneth, Blairgowrie, Perthshire PH10 6SW. paul@latham9.fsnet.co.uk price £21.

This most interesting book came out of a project to encourage the conservation and planting of useful plants, including “bee” plants. Other objectives of the author’s initial visits were to assist the local secondary school to set up an agricultural programme and to help school leavers find self-employment especially bee-keeping.

Bees not only provide honey and wax for cash, but are vital for the pollination of food and economic crops as well as indigenous plants. The realisation of this encourages forest conservation.

Beginning with a short introduction to beekeeping in Umalila, the text continues with one page per species illustrated by excellent colour photos These are mainly of the plants mentioned, but also include views of Umalila, pictures of people at work, tools and household objects.

For each of the 188 species discussed, the text is clearly set out with headings such as common names, description, ecology, propagation, management, uses and references to the plant in other African countries.

Most of the plants mentioned are indigenous to the area covered and have traditionally been used for food, medicines, construction or making household utensils. Introduced species, including food crops, are also included. This means that although the book relates to a small part of Tanzania it could be interesting and useful in other countries over sub-Saharan Africa.

The author acknowledges the help of his hosts, botanists who helped with plant identification, and photographers.

Rachel Nicholson

FROM GOATHERD TO GOVERNOR. Edwin Mtei. Mkuki wa Nyota Publishers. Dar es Salaam. 2009. ISBN 978-9987-08 030-4 £19.95 (obtainable from Africa Book Centre Tel: 01273 – 560 – 474)

Tanzania is not blessed with many autobiographies written by Tanzanians of the calibre of this author. The book is also not just an autobiography – it is a contribution to the history of some of the most dramatic years in Tanzania’s post-independence period.

Yes, as the title indicates, Edwin Mtei started life as a goatherd but, in some ways, he was a rather privileged one. He was a Chagga, regarded, at the time when he was boy, as the best educated and most advanced segment of Tanganyikan society, which benefited from an economy supported by good soils, a good climate and a well organised agricultural industry based on coffee. His parents were determined to give him a good education and they did.

He was fortunate also to have been born in 1932 which meant that he became a man just as Tanganyika became a nation. Some of his best descriptive writing reflect his feelings during Independence Day – ‘It was excitement beyond measure.’

Although the civil service was being rapidly Africanised, Mtei’s first objective was to get some money so that he could prepare marriage plans. He became a District Tobacco Sales Representative in Kenya but this job did not satisfy him for long and he soon began his meteoric rise up the promotion ladder in Tanganyika/Tanzania.

He became an Establishment Officer in the Tanganyika Civil Service in Dar. He was soon promoted to Chief Establishment Officer in the Africanisation Department and began to meet many of the people who would soon be running every department of government. His salary jumped from £792 per annum to £1,660 – a respectable salary for someone who was only 29 years old.

His rapid climb continued when he became Deputy to the Secretary General of the East African Common Services Organisation in Nairobi. And then, not long after this, President Nyerere suddenly made him Permanent Secretary in the Treasury in Dar but he was not in this job for long either.

The break-up of the East African Community is covered in fascinating detail in this book and Mtei soon became Governor of the newly established Bank of Tanzania. He recalls in the book how, when the first consignment of new Tanzanian coins arrived in Dar by sea in March 1966 there was nowhere suitable to put them. He writes: ‘The Army agreed to guard them…. We strengthened the doors of the Army’s office building and the army guarded them until we had built our own strong room, three and a half years later!’ He and his new wife were also building a house in Mzinga Way in Dar at the same time.

This was the time of Ujamaa. He and a group of senior personnel were sent to Kondoa to do some physical work with the villagers. His first project was digging trenches for water pipes and there were the first indications of Mtei’s disillusionment with the way the economy was being run. He comments: ‘The pipes never worked because there had been no proper initial survey….it was such unplanned projects that contributed to the eventual near collapse of the economy and the unmanageable foreign debt’.

Next, he learnt that he had suddenly been appointed Secretary General of the East African Community at a time when President Nyerere was refusing to speak to Ugandan President Iddi Amin! He found a little time to produce hastily some handing-over notes for the new Governor of the Bank in Dar before beginning what he described as the ‘hectic and strenuous’ final days of the East African Community.

But he was on the move again before this death finally took place. As he entered the last three months of his contract he received an urgent call from State House. He was to catch the next plane to Dar. But Kenya had just grounded most East African planes in Nairobi and he had to use a plane on loan from the national airline of Mozambique.

In Dar, Mwalimu Nyerere told him that he was to be nominated as an MP and then be appointed Minister for Planning and Finance. ‘I was stunned’ he writes. When was he to start? The next day! This seemed to be the way in which Mwalimu liked to conduct cabinet reshuffles.

Then began the saga (which finished in 1979) in which Mtei’s relations with the President gradually deteriorated. This, the most revealing part of the book, describes in considerable detail (in Chapters 17 and 18) the other war – between Mwalimu and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). To complicate matters, Mtei had been chosen as Chairman of the Boards of Governors of the IMF and World Bank for part of the same period. As the differences on policy with the IMF worsened it became apparent to Mtei that he would have to resign from his ministerial position. He did so in a short but brief confrontation with the President. Mtei’s analysis of Mwalimu’s economic policies is in Chapter 18.

Within a week he had swapped his house in Dar for a coffee farm in his own region and became a farmer. But this wasn’t enough and he soon took other positions in the private sector. He is clearly a ‘workaholic.’

Then, yet another new phase of his remarkable career began. In July 1992 Tanzania got a new constitution and new political parties were allowed. Mtei then founded the Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA) which is now the main opposition party on the mainland. Those interested in how multi-party politics developed in Tanzania should read chapters 22 to 24.

The author writes well, in a readable style. He shows a prodigious memory for people and events. Unfortunately he said that he found writing the book an ‘arduous task’ which must explain why it seems, at 227 pages, so very short.
Sadly, Mr Mtei’s boss, the late Mwalimu, who met so many distinguished leaders worldwide, and participated prominently in the making of world history, left no written record of his life and work.

This book is not perfect. It is rather expensive in the UK for such a small book and is almost bereft of critical comment on people and places. A few more amusing anecdotes might have added to the attractiveness of the book. Perhaps Mr Mtei does not like to upset people but, as the founding father of what might become the leading party in the country at some future date, he is likely to have to do so.

However, Mzee Mtei is to be congratulated for not leaving a vacuum behind him and for describing these eventful years in such a clear way. Let us hope that some of the other Tanzanian leaders during this period will put pen to paper before it is too late. There must be a fear that they won’t. Mwalimu told Mtei on one occasion, that he was the only one of his ministers who sent him long reports in writing!

David Brewin.

SIR GEORGE. A THEMATIC HISTORY OF TANZANIA THROUGH HIS FIFTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SERVICE. Joseph Kulwa Kahama. Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, China. 182 pages. www.flp.com.cn ISBN 978 7 119 06219 8

This is a very unusual book: a stimulating and interesting account of the life of a key player in his country’s development written by a son whilst his father and subject is still alive. ‘Sir George’ is no less than George Kahama, former General Manager of the Bukoba Co-operative Union, Minister of Commerce and Industry in Nyerere’s first Cabinet, CEO of the National Development Corporation, Director General of the Capital Development Authority, Ambassador at different times to West Germany, China and Zimbabwe, MP for Karagwe and currently Chairman of Seacom (T) Ltd – the undersea fibre optic company which delivers internet services to Tanzania. This is an extraordinary life which has spanned almost every aspect of Tanzania’s development over the last sixty years.

Joseph Kahama writes clearly about all these and related phases of George Kahama’s work. He paints a picture of an extraordinarily energetic individual, able to master very divergent briefs, but to collect many friends and supporters along the way. The book indicates that Kahama Senr regards the work of building the new capital at Dodoma as both his greatest challenge and perhaps greatest failure, in the sense that his vision was never fully realised. His strategy at the NDC, in line with much international thinking at the time, was the promotion of joint venture companies with equity capital supplied both by the overseas investor, local investors and government itself. In principle this was sound, and it is not so different to the new paradigm which has emerged after the global crisis of the last two years, or to the strategy adopted by the east Asian economies since the 1970s. However, his work at the National Development Corporation was to some extent undone as the NDC was first broken into smaller entities and ultimately saw most of its subsidiary companies fully privatised in the 1980s and 90s.

However Kahama never lost his faith in the ability of the co-operative movement to deliver real services and benefits to farmers and was very glad to return to his first Cabinet brief as Minister of Co-operatives under President Mwinyi, investing his energies in seeking to re-invigorate a movement which had lost so much strength during the late and post ujamaa period.

The book succeeds in throwing some light on Kahama’s real social and political beliefs during the various phases of Tanzania’s political development in which he has been so closely involved. Whilst on the one hand he has been consistent in trying to ensure that small farmers and households received a better deal through co-operatives and through the educational system in general, he has also had a vision of a successful middle class of investors who would be the backbone of the country’s economic development. It seems that, at least until the last few years, this has been at odds with the CCM vision and that Kahama has to be regarded as an odd man out, pushing his own vision against the odds but never taking it so far as to be fully alienated from the mainstream of the party.

The author makes it clear that the Catholic faith has been central to Kahama’s personal strength which was formally bolstered by the award to him of a papal knighthood (Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great) as early as 1962. His own family, and particularly his wife Janet (currently an MP), have also been critical to his ability to work in so many different spheres. Kahama must be the only senior figure in Africa today to have both presided over a late colonial (and very successful) farmers’ co-operative and the principal internet distribution service for his country towards the end of the first decade of the twenty first century.

His son has done an excellent job in capturing this rich life and much of the modern history of Tanzania in the process.

Lawrence Cockcroft

TINGA TINGA – UNIQUE, KITSCH OR QUALITY ?

This summer the Tinga Tinga art movement was the focus of several unrelated cultural events, bringing an opportunity to see and consider the continuity and new directions of this popular genre of Tanzanian art. The brightly-coloured and uncomplicated style of narrative painting on square board was invented by Tinga Tinga aka Edward Saidi in 1968. Most accounts relate how he, then a labourer in Dar es Salaam, was inspired by colourful Congolese paintings on paper which were sold in the open air by vendors in the capital.

The events included two exhibitions: ‘TINGATINGA – Unique Paintings from
Tanzania’ (Croydon Clocktower Gallery with some 25 works), and ‘TINGA TINGA KITSCH or QUALITY – Bicycle enamel on board and canvas’ (Round Tower Gallery, Copenhagen, with some 100 works) and also an animated Childrens BBC television series ‘TINGA TINGA TALES’.

The latter, a totally new departure if remarkable appropriation generated in Nairobi, indicates the continuing and general appeal of the Tanzanian style, though the initiative is beyond the scope of this account.
The two exhibitions were the results of enthusiasts wanting to share their personal involvements with the Tanzanian artists and their own painting collections. While the Croydon show was organised solely by amateurs Stef and Maggie Van der Heuvel, the Danish effort of ThorupART (a family art consultancy) had considerable professional input, including some photographs by anthropologist Jesper Kerknaes who has been involved with the Tinga Tinga movement since its beginning. The Copenhagen exhibition included loans (13 by Tinga Tinga himself and many sculptures by Lilanga) and published an attractive and comprehensive catalogue, the best to date.

Comparison may seem unfair, but van der Heuvel’s modest collection stood up well, offering an overview of the movement’s history through selected paintings and a good range of contemporary practice including a painting by Lilanga and several by Charinda. His work is interesting because he tackles different subject matter, whether shetani, slave trade or daily life (one on display in the British Museum) in the same graphic style.

Other current artists use different graphic styles but keep the characteristic colour palette. To its credit, the movement has been able to accommodate differing approaches while some artists maintain the classic repertoire, especially those related to the first generation (one of whom is a woman: Agnes Mpata). Van der Heuvel also displayed contextual material, for example two Chagga bowls decorated in Tinga Tinga style, greeting cards and other ephemera as well as relevant books.

Overall, ‘TINGATINGA – UNIQUE PAINTINGS’ provided an excellent introduction, even if some of us query the organizer’s use of descriptors like ‘unique’ and ‘exotic’ for what is a national style. I found a bit of a mismatch between the works and the rhetoric (and wanted documentation) but these matters seemed not to bother the Tanzanians at the Preview. Indeed, in his opening speech Deputy High Commissioner Chabaka Kilumanga reiterated that he had bestowed Stef Van der Heuvel with the honorary title ‘Tinga Tinga Ambassador to the UK’ and congratulated him warmly for rekindling interest in Tinga Tinga including his own.

Catalogue: Thorup, Tine & Sam, Cuong (2010) TINGA TINGA 2010 KITSCH or QUALITY – Bicycle enamel on board & canvas. Copenhagen: torupARt.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/tingatingatales/watch/tingatingatalesclips

Examples of two relevant books: Yves Gosginny’s Tinga Tinga Popular Painting from Tanzania and Chris Spring’s Angaza Afrika. African Art Now.

Elsbeth Joyce Court

Edited by John Cooper-Poole (UK) and Marion Doro (USA)

THE KARIMJEE JIVANJEE FAMILY : MERCHANT PRINCES OF EAST AFRICA 1800-2000. Gijsbert Oonk, Pallas Publications, Amsterdam University Press 2009. ISBN 978 90 8555 0273. Distributed in the UK by Africa Book Centre Ltd, Brighton [e-mail orders : orders@africabookcentre.com] £45

In many ways the modern economy of Tanzania was built by the Asian immigrants who arrived from the west coast of India over a period of four hundred years, albeit with a huge influx from the late 19th century. There are only a very limited number of accounts of this story, and even fewer which focus on the history of one successful extended family. Dr GijsbertGristant Oonk of Erasmus the University, of Rotterdam has told the story of the Karimjee Jivanjee family of Zanzibar and Tanzania , in an intriguing book (which a fascinating array of photographs from the mid nineteenth century onwards) published by Amsterdamhis University Press. .Oonk is a broader historian of Indian migration to Africa and so is able to place this remarkable saga in context.

Buddhaboy Noormuhamed of Mandvi, GujaratGujaratManvi, Gujurat sent his son Jivanjee to Zanzibar where he opened his first shop in 1818, initiating a series of businesses in Zanzibar and the mainland based on the export of commodities and the import of key industrial and consumer goods. These were extremely productive and profitable and are unique in having survived in various forms to this day. Critical forward looking decisions included the acquisition in the early twentieth century of agencies from all over the then industrialised world, an early investment in the sisal industry, followed by tea and coffee and then tea, the establishment of a motor car distribution business by 1927, and in a new tourist camp in the Serengeti in the late 1990s. The leading members of the family played business, political and charitable roles throughput the twentieth century and continue to do so.

There are some important special characteristics of this saga. First, the Karimjees emanate from the close knit GuajaratiGujurati speaking Bhora community, a Shiashia group with intense community supporting bonds – a critical factor when the founder’s younger brother lost a whole cargo en route from India in the 1860s. Second, by the early twentieth century, the leading family members were unusually internationalist in their perspective, travelling regularly to Europe and in the case of Sir Yusufali Karimjee to Japan where in the 1930s he married Katsuko Enomoto. Thirdly, whilst the majority of new initiatives have been successful, they have been entered more on the basis of intuition than detailed planning. For instance, the move into sisal was triggered by a walk shared by Sir Yusufali Karimjee and a Greek plantation owner in Dar es Salaam in 1921. Fourthly, neither the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, nor the property nationalisations on the mainland in 1971 persuaded the family to abandon Tanzania. Although many members left at that time, three remained to husband the motor business and the agricultural estates. This placed the family in a strong position when the Tanzanian economy was liberalised in the late 1980s.

Alongside this commercial success several family members have contributed both to political progress and to major charitable projects. In the colonial politics of Zanzibar, Tayabali Karimjee and Yusufali Karimjee fought very effectively against commercial decisions which negatively affected the Indian community, particularly in relation to the cloves business. Later they werehe was the main donorsdonor to the Tanzania National Library and to the Faculty of Arts at the new University of Dar es salaam. In the 1950s, AbdulkarimAbdul Karim Karimjee played a significant part in early nationalist politics and organised the huge donation by the family of the Karimjee Hall [where Tanzania’s National Assembly met recurrently until the early 21st century], and a major donation to the University of Dar es Salaam in its earliest years. Tayabali Karimjee funded Zanzibar’s main hospital [ironically renamed the V.I. Lenin hospital for more than thirty years] which continues to be the main medical facility on the island.

In a conversation with this reviewer President Nyerere opined that the Karimjees would never leave Tanzania. This book explains just why that may be true, and at the same time will be a valuable resource to any student of Tanzanian economic and social history.
Laurence Cockroft

THE CRITICAL PHASE IN TANZANIA 1945-1968, by Cranford Pratt, Cambridge University Press, digitally printed version 2009 (originally published 1976), Cambridge ISBN 978-0-521-11072-3. £24.99.

When Tanzania is rife with accounts of corruption in high places, it is not surprising that there has been a revival of interest in the incorruptible first President, Julius Nyerere, especially amongst young political activists in Tanzania. One such described Nyerere’s legacy as “generating passionate public debate aimed at bringing positive social and economic change” (Chambi Chachage in Pambazuka 452, 2009). A newly founded Chair – the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorship of Pan-African Studies has been awarded to Issa Shivji, author of the critical account, Class Struggles in Tanzania in the 1970s. The Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation’s tenth anniversary of Nyerere’s death, held in Dar es Salaam last year, was an enormous success in attracting a large and lively audience and many young people.

Hence the publication of what seemed like a new study of crucial years in Nyerere’s life as President – those immediately preceding and following independence, seemed promising. Sadly Pratt’s book is a reprint from 1976 which seems to have been reproduced by Cambridge University Press as a “digitally printed version” (complete with American spellings and occasional errors) simply because it could be done. It is disconcerting to find the present tense being used to reflect on the potential of a leader dead for a decade. Whilst it is instructive to look at Pratt’s views of this period, this book demanded an introduction, framing the debate about the events of the time and their aftermath and explaining why it is pertinent to re-issue it now.

In view of the above it is unfair to point out that Pratt has not responded to later work, such as that of Susan Geiger on the emergence of TANU as a political party, or critical or more measured accounts such as those of Yeager or Coulson, and the vast output of reflection on Nyerere’s leadership, which continues. What is amazing is the sheer ferment of analysis and critique that did go on in the decade following Tanzania’s independence which is covered here. Pratt refers to work by Cliffe, Saul, Arrighi, Ngombale-Mwiru, Shivji, Rweyemamu and many others published in the early seventies, though he distances himself from what he calls ‘Marxian scholarship’.

Pratt is clearly a fan of Nyerere’s and sometimes eulogises his contribution. He also describes him throughout as a ‘socialist’ and sees Tanzania as heading in a socialist direction, though frequently having to qualify that label. At the heart of Nyerere’s conception of socialism was a deep commitment to equality and to a form of African communitarianism; he was no Marxist. What is exceptional about this book and makes it well-worth reading even now, is the spotlight it puts on the struggle between vision and reality in the struggle to establish a nation state. We talk glibly of independence, and yet Tanzania came to this momentous moment with hardly any personnel capable of running a country or delivering public services, still reliant on colonial civil servants, with minimal industrial development and the mass of the population dependent on subsistence agriculture. As Pratt shows, in the first few years the government’s hold on power was precarious, with very little capacity to enact change. At one point Nyerere had to be rescued by the British from a coup attempt by army discontents.

Expectations were also impossibly high, though Nyerere always had a groundswell of popular support from which he was able to pull off quite audacious political acts. One of these was his welcome to African liberation movements (especially the ANC) to locate themselves in Tanzania and his active advocacy of pan-Africanism. Another was his willingness to forgo foreign aid on matters of principle, despite Tanzania’s dependence, and to accept aid from China and East European socialist countries. He intervened in the revolutionary turmoil of the newly independent Zanzibar and manoeuvred a union of the two countries which has continued to cause difficulties. But he also took a constitutional stand on ensuring that racial minorities in Tanzania enjoyed equality with African citizens – a position that was understandably unpopular, given the privileged socioeconomic position which these minorities had enjoyed in the past. Conversely he inveighed from the beginning against class privilege, ‘parasitism’ and the danger of entrenched income and wealth differentials; as well as for self-reliance and open debate. He brought the party (the Tanganyikan African National Union, TANU) very centrally into the decision making and policy formulation process and shifted within a few years to espousing a one-party state, whilst establishing democratic safeguards and a functioning National Assembly. Pratt’s account of the process whereby democratic freedoms were defined as incorporating one-party rule but the exclusion of other organised political elements (the unions and the cooperative movement were soon incorporated into the state) is an instructive one. Pratt shows how this culminated in the promulgation of the Arusha Declaration of 1967 (only six tumultuous years after independence) in which a socialism of self-reliance and planned transformation of rural production was combined with a nationalisation of the commanding heights of Tanzania’s economy (a few foreign-owned banks and processing industries).

The focus of this book is on Nyerere, but Pratt is aware that, to adapt Marx, leaders ‘make history, but not under conditions of their own choosing’. Nyerere was a remarkable, even a unique leader, a man of vision and restless intelligence, an exceptional communicator with ordinary people, fired by an optimism of the will, constantly seeking to solve problems. This is well-illustrated here. But he was faced by a universe of enormous challenges and difficulties which could not be moved by one man alone or simply through exhortation. Nyerere could not have achieved what he did without popular and party support, or expedient alliances abroad, though there is no denying the effort and intelligence he put into manoeuvring and sustaining these relationships. Pratt’s focus on the leader leads him to be fairly vague about rural transformation or the problems entailing in transforming a dependent economy at the mercy of the world’s markets. And the book comes to an end just as the scene is set for the contradictions and dilemmas to test Nyerere’s vision of Tanzanian socialism to its limit.

Janet Bujra

“BIOFUELS, LAND ACCESS, AND RURAL LIVELIHOODS IN TANZANIA”, Emmanuele Sulle and Fred Nelson
International Institute for Environment & Development. ISBN 978 1 843 69 749 7.
In Africa, many non-food crops are grown on agricultural land, but rarely has there been the opposition that we see for biofuels. If you want to understand why biofuels in Africa is such a difficult area, why opinions run strong on both sides of the debate, this book offers a well-balanced perspective and is a good place to start. As the book makes clear, biofuels in Tanzania are complicated because land is complicated. Customary laws and state centralized land administration overlap, secondary rights of pastoralists and women often disappear as property rights are formalized or transferred. When the pace of change is slow institutions may adapt, but in Tanzania 4 million hectares of land have already been requested for biofuel investment (though in reality little has been granted yet), with individual requests as large as 400,000 hectares. This book covers much ground in just 64 pages of text, and so must by definition cover some areas in less detail than the reader might want. But into this small book the authors have packed rigorous research and useful and detailed information on the current state of investments in biofuels in Tanzania, the different modalities of biofuel production, and very detailed and nuanced chapters on land access and acquisition. As is the case for many agro-processing industries, the choice is often between large plantations which allow companies more control over quantity, quality, and price of inputs; and outgrower and contract farming which offer less control but more opportunities for rural communities. In Tanzania, added complications of possible permanent loss of village customary land rights, loss of access to forest resources and grazing lands, and loss of miombo woodlands, make the authors, with good reason, wary of large-scale transfers of land for biofuels. Although I prefer not to read private sector investments described as “projects”, or of villagers “giving” land to biofuel companies, such linguistic differences do not detract from an important book in a fast-moving and still under-documented area.
Elizabeth J. Z. Robinson

Edited by John Cooper-Poole

WIELDING THE AX: STATE FORESTRY AND SOCIAL CONFLICT IN TANZANIA, 1820-2000. Thaddeus Sunseri Ohio University Press, 2009. ISBN 978 0 8214 1865 9. P/B. £22.95.

This is very well researched work on a topic of considerable contemporary importance in relation to forest utilisation and conservation. It is especially good on the wide range of historic use of the coastal forests in particular, not just for material resources, but also for social and ritual purposes by local people. It is also valuable in tracing the development of forest products such as copal and rubber in the 19th century and the subsequent transformation in wealth and status of those who controlled this trade, especially led by the Germans, who introduced scientific forestry to the management of the mangroves, for example.

The writer claims with justification that it was the latter which played a fundamental role in the subsequent Maj-Maji rebellion in the early years of the 20th century, while the post WWI years saw the replacement of the authority of the chiefs by an organised state forest service, followed by an attempt to move people out of the forests and into more controllable villages elsewhere This background work is therefore impressive and forms a unique assemblage of material.
The main thesis and conclusions are more questionable. A hint is given by the constant misuse of the word ‘colonial’ applied to the period of British administration, not over a ‘colony’ but what was a Trusteeship Territory. This is not semantic nit-picking, since there is much castigation of the governing authority (not excluding the post-independence government) for ignoring the rights of local people to the forest; latterly, the targets become international conservationists with their biodiversity agendas, in which the Tanzanian state has been complicit.

While there is good evidence that in recent years both international organisations and state government have all too frequently sidelined the interests of local people, there is insufficient recognition of the need for some degree of control over peasant exploitation (not least with modern equipment) for the long term benefit of all. The question revolves around who should have ultimate power over the allocation of land for forestry and forest reserves, but this work does not address that most intractable of issues.
James McCarthy

BECOMING MUSLIM IN MAINLAND TANZANIA, 1890-2000 by Felicitas Becker. Oxford: OUP for the British Academy, 2008, 364 pp. ISBN 978 0 19 726427 0. £50.

Dr Becker has followed up her doctoral research on S-E Tanzania with a magisterial treatment of the spread of Islam in the Lindi region. Starting from the pre-colonial period, a time of raiding, migration and slave-trading, she shows how ‘big men’, well-armed and involved in coastal trade, controlled and exploited the local people. Few people converted to Islam until after the Maji-Maji war, not because of Arab influence but because they sought protection and social progress during the disruption which lasted until Indirect Rule in 1927. Islam brought a new egalitarianism in place of the exploitation of earlier times.

People could become Muslim without abandoning traditional practices. Some were attracted by the social festivals introduced by the Sufi tarika. Becker traces the foundation of mosques, followed by madrasas, staffed by village waalimu who taught their followers to recite the infallible Qur’an. They and the missions respected one another because both promoted dini, more progressive and authoritative than anything jadi (tradition) could offer. Islam was more accommodating to local tradition than Catholic missions which, unlike the Masasi Anglicans, made few advances in this region. At any rate, Islam became numerically dominant by the 1950s and was instrumental in modifying the region’s matrilineal customs. Chapter 4 throws light on the common complaint that Muslims are educationally disadvantaged compared with Christians.

Muslims often took leading roles in the independence struggle, but afterwards lost influence, being regarded as ‘provincial’ or uneducated compared with the new political leadership. Their inability to influence the ujamaa movement was a symptom of this. In the last twenty years they have felt even more marginalized, partly due to the rise of the Ansar, young Muslim reformists, some of whom have returned from Arabic studies in Saudi to preach a strict Islam modeled on the ways of the Prophet. They are impatient both with government and with the relaxed syncretism and popular sufism of mainstream Muslims – yet (just like fundamentalist Christians returning from studies in USA) fail to understand the need for religion to be contextualized to African needs and culture. There are however indications that the two sides will reach compromise as the Ansar mellow and the mainstream understand the Qur’an better.

The many transcripts of interviews with locals are likely to appeal to readers of TA, so is the account of Muslim and Christian education, and of the growing self-confidence of today’s post-Iranian revolution Muslim youth. Briefer reflections on the Maji-Maji war and the Groundnut Scheme will also interest the non-specialist. But do not expect any simple theories – Becker is scrupulous in deducing no more than the evidence will allow. This does not make for light reading, and some specialist knowledge of anthropology and Islam is required of the reader. The content belies the title – this volume covers only one very limited region of Tanzania. Both Muslim and Christian phenomena are different in other regions.
Roger Bowen

G. THOMAS BURGESS, ‘RACE REVOLUTION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN ZANZIBAR: THE MEMOIRS OF ALI SULTAN ISSA AND SEIF SHARIF HAMAD, Ohio University Press, 2009. 978 0 8214 1852 9 p/b
ISBN 978 0 8214 1852 9 Distributed by Eurospan Group 01767 604972 www.eurospanbookstore.com

This extraordinary book is not yet available in Tanzania, nor in Swahili, but requests are beginning to trickle in for copies to be shipped, photocopied, begged and borrowed by those who have heard of its explosive contents. I bet it won’t be long before an enterprising newspaper serializes the two life stories it chronicles.

Professor Burgess of the United States Naval Academy presents the authorized biographies of two leading Zanzibari figures both of whom have had a front row seat at the tumultuous political events of the last half century on the Isles. Ali Sultan Issa, a key figure in the revolution and in Amani Karume’s revolutionary government, and Seif Shariff Hamad, Minister of Education, Chief Minister, political prisoner and now Presidential candidate of the Civic United Front (CUF), Tanzania’s largest opposition party. But it is the first account that will cause the most controversy.

Hamad recounts with authority and balance his years in the Zanzibar government of Aboud Jumbe and Ali Hassan Mwinyi. The details of his arrest, detention, and the power struggles within the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (party of the revolution) will be of real interest to historians and political pundits. However, parts of the later chapters sound more like a CUF manifesto.

Issa, on the other hand, a self confessed drunkard and philanderer, seems to relish the telling of all the sordid details of his outlandish life story without regard for the reputation of his former colleagues, the revolution or even himself and his family. The blisteringly honest account is liberally peppered with the phrase ‘may Allah forgive me,’ and with good reason. Issa’s racy life: multiple marriages; pot-smoking while Minister of Education then Health and his encounters with key figures of the twentieth century such as Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse Tung, Che Guevara, and Nikita Khruschev make his account highly readable. But the picture that emerges of the revolution and the post-revolutionary government is truly compelling. He describes houses being nationalized on his personal whim, policies such as forcing the youth to join work camps and nationalizing imports cooked up overnight while the completely inexperienced ministers had the power to imprison and kill, at will. These young revolutionaries appear drinking and dancing while the rest of the population survives on rations and forced labor. According to Issa, it seems they tried to govern according to socialist principles but really had no idea what they were doing at all.

Prefaced by an excellent introduction that demonstrates mastery of Zanzibar’s tangled history, this book will be a key text in Tanzanian history for many years to come.
Ben Rawlence

WHERE HUMANS AND SPIRITS MEET: THE POLITICS OF RITUALS AND IDENTIFIED SPIRITS IN ZANZIBAR. Kjersti Larsen. Social Identities series, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2008. x + 173pp (hardback). ISBN 978-1-84545-055-7. £37.50.

Spirit possession is a fascinating cultural phenomenon, and has understandably attracted a lot of attention from ethnographers and others entranced by its beguiling blend of the spiritual and the exotic. Approaches to the study of possession vary along a continuum from the theory that it provides (mostly) women with a crafty means of ensuring that their menfolk pay them greater attention (not least by having to pay for expensive treatments), to the belief that spirits are real and that understanding of possession is only possible through personal experience of it. Most contemporary anthropologists take a middle course by arguing that there’s more to possession than cynical manipulation, and that description and analysis must start from an acknowledgement of the raw reality of spirit possession to those involved. This may seem like a fudge to sceptics who don’t believe in spirits, but it preserves respect for the beliefs of others and allows for careful exegesis.

The islands of the Western Indian Ocean and the countries around its rim are home to a spirit possession complex that coexists with Islam (and other religions) and has spawned its own minor academic industry. Kjersti Larsen’s book is a welcome addition to this burgeoning literature. It is based largely on her doctoral dissertation (Where Humans and Spirits Meet: Incorporating Difference and Experiencing Otherness in Zanzibar Town, University of Oslo, 1995) and provides a detailed account of spirit possession and its rituals in Zanzibar town, focusing in particular on the significance of the gendered nature of spirits and their self-identification as members of different ‘tribes’ (Swahili makabila) or racial and ethnic groups. When men and women are possessed, the possessory spirit (sheitani) typically identifies itself by name and ‘tribe’ to those present, often in response to interrogation by a local doctor or medium (mganga). The tribal affiliation of the spirit determines the type of treatment and actions appropriate to it, and draws together people who have been inhabited by spirits belonging to the same category.

Drawing on her extensive experience of possession rituals in urban Zanzibar, Larsen describes these and related practices at length. She provides a sensitive account of people’s experiences of possession and the ways in which they relate to their spirits. It is refreshing to read an account like this in which some of the uncertainties and differences of opinion about spirit possession are highlighted: indeed many Zanzibaris are themselves deeply sceptical about this phenomenon and question the sincerity of fellow townspeople and villagers who claim to host spirits and in some cases (involving masheitani ya ruhani, Arab and Muslim spirits) have regular sexual relations with them. Some readers will find the theoretical sections of this book, and the introductory chapter in particular, heavy going. But stripped of anthrospeak, the author’s view of possession as the dramatization of other identities, enacted through mimesis (imitation) and at times lightened by parody, seems eminently reasonable. There may be a lot more to spirit possession than role playing, but acting up is certainly a large part of it.

Where Humans and Spirits Meet does not claim to be comprehensive or definitive, but it complements other accounts of possession in Zanzibar (notably Tapio Nisula’s Everyday Spirits and Medical Interventions: Ethnographic and Historical Notes on Therapeutic Conventions in Zanzibar Town, Saarijärvi, 1999) and draws attention to important aspects of this complex phenomenon. A fuller analysis, including a deeper understanding of the particular ‘tribal’ identities ascribed to spirits, can arguably only be undertaken in the context of a historical and comparative study of possession in the wider region. Larsen’s book lacks this broader perspective, but in company with other monographs and articles on spirit possession in this part of the world provides important ethnographic evidence for the larger task. Perhaps more surprisingly it also lacks reference to the most extraordinary set of encounters between Zanzibaris and spirits in recent years: the modern Popobawa panics that began with a vengeance in 1995 (see Tanzanian Affairs 53, 1996). This is perhaps explained in part by the timing of the fieldwork for this book (1991-92 and 1997). But there is no excuse for the multiple misspellings of Swahili in the text and glossary of what is otherwise an attractively produced volume.
Martin Walsh

Edited by John Cooper-Poole (UK) and Marion Doro (USA)

SURROGATES OF THE STATE: NGOS, DEVELOPMENT, AND UJAMAA IN TANZANIA, by Michael Jennings. Kumarian Press, Danvers MA, 2007. xxi + 243. $50.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-56549-243-1.

In this most readable book, Michael Jennings offers an important case study of Oxfam in Tanzania during the two decades following independence. His method is not to recreate policy debates and shifts, but rather to examine ‘how NGOs were shaped by the periphery: from the projects and programs they ran in the field; and through interaction with Southern governments, citizens, and partners’ (p. 3). This book also offers a study of the development industry and its ideals during the 1960s and 1970s. While not prescriptive in its conclusions, Jennings does offer a number of insights that the NGO sector – notorious for its chronic failures of institutional memory – may find useful.
The book begins with an overview of NGOs and a history of charitable institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. Jennings stresses the historical role of informal networks to Africans’ welfare and survival, as well as the dual origins of NGOs in both nineteenth-century missionary organizations and the larger ‘development’ projects of the post-Second World War period. The book’s first full chapter examines Tanzania’s post-colonial rural development policy. Although it makes strangely little reference to the preceding colonial period, this chapter does show how resettlement and agricultural transformation policies consistently guided state intervention throughout the 1960s and 1970s, rather than emerging only with Nyerere’s dramatic pronouncements on the subject. There is also a useful, if not definitive, account of villagization in these pages, as well as a narrative of increasing ‘statism’ on the part of the Tanzanian government into the lives of its citizens and civil society.
The following five chapters, the core of the book, demonstrate how the Tanzanian state created ‘willing surrogates’ among NGOs and local agencies, acting not as independent actors but ‘as another phalanx in the development front’ (p. 92) during the 1960s and 1970s. The state had come to fully exercise this domination by the late 1960s, most plainly in seizing control of the actions of faith-based organizations. Jennings shows how the Christian Council of Tanzania (CCT), a Protestant umbrella group, came to embrace villagization with its ‘lure of increased control over its flock’ (p. 86). Churches uncomfortable with socialism simply defined ujamaa in Christian terms. The book’s centrepiece is its analysis of the activities of one key NGO, Oxfam, during the 1960s and 1970s. Oxfam was then and remains today the UK’s largest NGO; it found in ujamaa all of the ideals – community participation, poverty alleviation, and struggle against inequality – that it valued most. Yet while Tanzania came superficially to resemble many Oxfam ideals, it was ‘in reality implementing a system of rural control that deliberately sought to undermine local, grassroots control’ (p. 122). Using Oxfam archival sources, Jennings paints a picture of an institution that frankly should have known better, as it followed the state down the path of villagization during the 1970s with little critical reflection. Yet while managing to show Oxfam’s complicity in these developments, Jennings does not make clear the scale and scope of the ‘atrocities’ (p. 135) carried out during villagization – a subject of great and unsettled debate. He does, however, demonstrate Oxfam’s central role in many ujamaa dramas, such as the life and death of the Ruvuma Development Association, which revealed the limits of Oxfam’s lobbying powers as well as its subsequent capacity for self-deception. By the end of the 1970s, Oxfam had finally abandoned ujamaa principles in its project evaluations. Instead it adopted economic terms and professionalized its planning and assessments, foreshadowing the logic and methods of liberalization-era NGO activity.
While Jennings is under no illusions about the ‘distinctly darker reality’ (p. 33) that lay behind ujamaa rhetoric, his critical focus is reserved primarily for institutions. In those rare moments when the activities, strategies, and desires of farmers themselves are raised, the author invokes Goran Hyden’s moral and affective peasant economy as an explanation for people’s uncooperative behaviour. This is a study of institutions and the dangers they may face in embracing projects covered in the ideological wrappings most attractive to them. It shows the limits of NGOs to shape the political environments in which they operate. Yet Jennings is not dismissive of Oxfam or the role of NGOs in general, and goes to considerable lengths to demonstrate the good work as well as good intentions that most NGOs bring to Tanzania and elsewhere. Marked by crisp prose and solid judgment throughout Surrogates of the State makes an important contribution to both the history of post-colonial Tanzania as well as the historical study of NGOs generally.
James R. Brennan
The above review originally appeared in African Affairs and is reproduced with permission.

AFRICA’S FREEDOM RAILWAY: How a Chinese development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania. Jamie Monson. Indiana University Press 2009. ISBN 978-0-253-35271-3. H/B pp1pp. £30.99.

The “Freedom Railway”, officially the Tanzania/Zambia Railway (TAZARA), is one of Africa’s best known and most controversial development projects. The visionary idea of a rail link between the Indian Ocean and Central Africa suddenly became an urgent priority in November 1965, when Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) cut Zambia’s rail routes to the south. While the West hesitated, china stepped in, offering to provide the necessary finance and technical expertise, and a formal agreement was signed with Tanzania and Zambia in 1967.

The railway was built in an astonishingly short five years (1970-75). It was a formidable task. More than 1100 miles of track were laid over intimidating terrain. Eighteen tunnels were blasted by dynamite (in the absence of sophisticated tunneling equipment) and local spirits had to be appeased by the offering (tambiko) of a black ox. The Tanzanian workers respected the Chinese technicians for their dedication and their willingness to accept basic living conditions. However, differences in language, culture and diet, and the fact that the Chinese were not allowed to visit local villages, meant that the two groups worked together but ate, slept and relaxed separately. Western fears that the Tanzanians would be indoctrinated with Maoist propaganda proved unfounded.

After describing TAZARA’S construction, Professor Monson examines its impact on five villages between Ifakara and Makambako, basing her research on interviews with villagers and on receipts for local produce carried on the “Ordinary” (as distinct from the “Express”) train. The railway undoubtedly stimulated population growth, farm production and local trade in this rather limited area, but the author only touches briefly on how far it has achieved its primary aim of moving minerals and freight between Zambia’s Copperbelt and the Indian Ocean.

In this respect the railway has had its “ups and downs”. Its heyday was probably the period 1985-90, when western donors provided new engines, and 988,000 passengers were carried in one year.. The ending of apartheid and the reopening of Zambia’s routes to the south in the 1990’s led to a drastic drop in freight and revenue and by 2008 TAZARA was deep in debt. In her concluding remarks Professor Monson notes “By the time this book is published, it is possible that privatisation of the railway will be underway”.
In fact, something unexpected happened. In April 2009 a British Government Minister (Mr Gareth Thomas of DFID) proposed a £100 million project to improve transport links in the “North-South corridor” linking Dar with Zambia, Zaire and southern Africa. The project would include upgrading TAZARA and talks are being held with China. Whether these will succeed, only time will tell. Meanwhile Professor Monson’s book is an interesting account of a remarkable chapter in the chequered history of Tanzania’s development.
John Sankey

THE HUMANITARIAN HANGOVER: DISPLACEMENT, AID AND TRANSFORMATION IN WESTERN TANZANIA by Loren B. Landau. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008. Pages: 182. ISBN: 9781868144556. p/b £20.95

This book explores the impact on the lives of people in Western Tanzania of the influx of refugees and the associated humanitarian interventions in the area. He particularly focuses on the extent to which the arrival of refugees has transformed residents’ relationships with the Tanzanian state. Drawing on Foucault, Landau’s study analyses changes in three dimensions, or ‘regimes of practice’: material, coercive and normative practices or ‘disciplines’. These provide the themes for the three analytical chapters of the book which follow two chapters outlining the theoretical framework and the background to the humanitarian crisis.
Given such postmodernist leanings, it seems curious that the author then introduces a hypothesis for state formation based on modernist teleology. This seemed somewhat unnecessary and set up a straw man, which was inevitably pulled down by his findings that reveal a much more complicated and nuanced picture.
With regard to material practices, the intrusion of international organisations and expansion of local commodity and labour markets, far from drawing the residents of Kasulu into commoditisation and incorporation into the global economy had a very limited impact on local modes of production. For coercive practices, the arrival of refugees was related to an increase in crime but did not result in the expansion and consolidation of state security mechanism into this territorial periphery. Despite investment in policing by the international community, local residents’ experience and expectations of security being provided by the state have diminished. In the dimension of normative practices, this has not been accompanied by a commensurate decline in identification with Tanzania or support for the governing political party. To the contrary, Landau argues that the refugee crisis and humanitarian intervention has enabled politicians to escape responsibility for the problems of the district and, paradoxically, helped to strengthen people’s links with the Tanzanian state.
The challenge in any such studies is how to establish the counter factual – what would have happened in the absence of the refugees? Landau gets round this problem by comparing change in Kasulu District (Kigoma Region), which has hosted thousands of Burundian refugees, with contemporaneous changes in Mpwapwa District in Dodoma Region. As the author points out such a comparison is not ideal but it does highlight interesting contrasts. For example, among Landau’s interviewees in Kasulu less than a third said they would go to the police in response to a theft and a similar proportion would do nothing. In Mpwapwa, nearly half the respondents said they would call the police. By themselves, such figures may be unconvincing, but they provide some support for Landau’s broader argument that the residents of Kasulu appear to becoming less connected to the nation state in terms of expectations of state services, in particular security. Of course, we are not privileged to know if there are also less convenient figures that may have failed to make it into the final text.
The focus of the text is on Kasulu and material from Mpwapwa is only introduced as required to serve the main story. This seems quite reasonable, but at times it is frustrating as the reader is offered only a very superficial sense of the context from which the contrast is being drawn. This is most evident in the discussion on identity where Landau contrasts the relationship between the Hutu and the Ha in Kasulu, with the Gogo and the Hehe in Mpwapwa (p. 133). I imagine such passages may really grate with anthropologists, historians and others with an intimate knowledge of the societies in question.
Despite such flaws, there is a wealth of empirical material here which supports the author’s overall argument. The study of refugee movements, humanitarian responses and their impact on the societies affected is often relegated to the margins of disciplines such as political science, history and anthropology. Landau’s volume offers a valuable corrective as it convincingly demonstrates that humanitarian response is embedded in and contributes to broader processes of economic, political and social change. Its hangover reaches beyond the temporal and geographic boundaries of the crisis; therefore, this book should be of wider interest to those engaged in the study of Tanzania.
Oliver Bakewell

WILD HEART OF AFRICA. The Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania. Rolf Baldus, editor. Paintings by Bodo Meir. Rowland Ward Publications, Johannesburg, 2009. ISBN 978 0 9802626 7 4.

In 1987, three rubber rafts set off from above Shuguli Falls on the Kilomobero to paddle for 10 days down the Rufiji River through the heart of the Selous. In those days, we were rafting through the largest so-called “protected area” in Africa, but it was in the throws of a poaching epidemic; now the Selous is a revived World Heritage Site but in need of further recognition and protection. This book is a poetic and artistic journey through the history and ecology of the Selous over the last 150 years, the story of how the most recent transitions came about, and the many individuals and institutions that have acted together with the Government of Tanzania to try to give the Selous a future.

My first experience of the region was living along the Ruaha River for a year in the mid 1970s, when Tanzania had few friends and the country’s development aims revolved around Ujamaa or villagisation. I have yet to see, in the 40 years since that first stay, an area of Africa as beautiful as this ecosystem. And every day on the Ruaha, we dreamt of following its course to the sea. The rafting trip was an opportunity to live part of that dream, even though many changes had taken place in the intervening years, changes which are documented in this book.

The authors are a talented group – Oxbridge ecologists, Scottish cartographers and explorers, German scientists, Tanzanian wardens, rangers and scouts. Since the time of Uhuru, the German connection – which originated in Wilhelm I’s day – has actively but quietly operated via the GTZ to support and sustain Tanzania’s aims for its reserves and parks. The British connection, dating from the days of slavery and expanded after World War I, is also strong in here.

The book is illustrated with beautiful water colour sketches of animals and scenery which, at least for me, capture the clarity, light, and animals of the Selous with vivid accuracy. It is worth buying and owning for these alone! But these glorious paintings do not diminish the quality of the writing and the sense of commitment and passion that each author brought to his subject.

The Selous is in some ways a contradiction in conservation. It “pays its way” by licensed hunting, and it is argued here that hunting preserves the Selous’ wildlife and is both ethically conducted and sustainable. This is the government’s attitude, and whether it is ethical, acceptable or indeed justifiable in terms of carbon footprints traded against other non-consumptive uses will be argued long into the future. The new threats of mineral exploitation may spell the approaching end of this largest of protected areas and of all its resident species – which are now found in few places elsewhere in Africa.

The proceeds of this book go to protect the Selous – if the excellent writing and superb paintings are not enough of an inducement to buy it, then the thought that you can contribute to the future of the ecosystem in an entirely ethical and non-consumptive way should be enough to make everyone purchase it!
Phyllis Lee

BEYOND BODIES: RAINMAKING AND SENSE MAKING IN TANZANIA by Todd Sanders. University of Toronto Press 2008. ISBN 0802091490 £42, cloth; ISBN 0802095828 £20, p/b.

How can rainmaking, including its epistemological and social dimensions, be understood in contemporary Tanzania and more widely? This central question informs Todd Sander’s book ‘Beyond Bodies’ and raises more about the nature and purpose of rainmaking activities, about the implicated constructions and interpretations of gender identity and relations, and about ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ or specifically ‘African’ epistemologies of meaning-making among many.

Sander’s central proposition which is asserted, explored and defended throughout the book is that while Ihanzu rainmaking is gendered in critical ways, that we risk imposing universalist frames of reference and analysis onto it, when we seek to read its gendered forms exclusively or predominantly via the lens of the body and the symbolism of sexuality. Rather than symbolizing gender and sexual relations and the physical forms associated with them, the rainmaking rituals and activities of the Ihanzu of north-central Tanzania are ‘concerned, above all, with the practical management of the social, cosmic, and natural worlds.’ (p.23) From a theoretical point of view, his insistence on an ‘alternative metaphysics’ (p.20) is what drives the analysis, which rejects an academic approach which co-opts and explains away difference rather than acknowledging and problematizing it.

The book is based on what appears to have been an impressive amount of field research, Sanders having spent two full years gathering data in the first instance, with numerous further shorter field trips allowing the possibility of following up people, themes and issues. Perhaps surprisingly, then, the early section on the colonial history of the Ihanzu area, which draws on archival material as well as the oral historical reports of informants in the 1990s, comes alive most compellingly in the written account. The book’s central chapters which describe rain making rituals and their significance contain analysis which is recounted by the author mainly without reference to first hand accounts or ethnographic examples. Not until the penultimate, fascinating chapter on ‘Witchcraft, Gender and Inversion’ do we really start to get a sense of the individuals and characters involved, not to say the impact that the presence of the ethnographer himself had on proceedings.

This is a rich and carefully constructed book, of interest to those concerned with the history, politics and social worlds of northern Singida District, but also an invaluable resource – due partly to its extensive use of the earlier literature on rain making – to those interested in the sociology of knowledge and in the rituals, beliefs and practices associated with this intriguing and fascinating theme more widely.
Tania Kaiser

Edited by John Cooper-Poole (UK) and Marion Doro (USA)

TANGANYIKA DIAMOND PRESENTED TO PRINCESS ELIZABETH, Jarat Chopra, Old Africa, No. 21, February/March 2009, pp. 16-17. The Old Africa website, which describes the journal, is: http://oldafricamagazine.com/

A recent article in Old Africa by Jarat Chopra will be of interest to our readers. Jarat is the grandson of The Hon Iqbal Chopra K.C., Member of the Legislative Assembly, who was the partner of J.T.Williamson in the Mwadui diamond mine. The two men were very different in character; Williamson the self-effacing geologist who made the crucial discovery, and Chopra the extrovert man of affairs who arranged the finance, kept officialdom and potential rivals at bay and ensured that control remained with the two partners.

This short but very interesting article tells the story of the partnership, and also of the legendary pink diamond which the partners gave to the then Princess Elizabeth as a wedding present, on behalf of the people of Tanganyika. Characteristically the actual presentation was made by Chopra who always revelled in the limelight, rather than by Williamson who preferred to remain behind the scenes. It all seems so long ago, and yet Chopra tells me that his family’s two Rolls Royce’s, which were a feature of the Mwanza scene in the 1970’s are still around. As, of course, is the former Princess Elizabeth!
J.C-P.

THE POVERTY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2007
A FRAMEWORK FOR A TANZANIAN GROWTH STRATEGY
VIEWS OF THE PEOPLE 2007
THE IMPACT OF REFORMS ON THE QUALITY OF PRIMARY EDUCATION IN TANZANIA
THE ROLE OF SMALL BUSINESS IN POVERTY ALLEVIATION: THE CASE OF DAR ES SALAAM
REALISING WATER POTENTIAL TO SUPPORT GROWTH IN TANZANIA
All available from Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA) P.O. Box 33223, Dar es Salaam. www.repoa.or.tz. repoa@repoa.or.tz

Although it is hard to pick out a number of clear and concise themes from such a wide ranging series of documents, it is possible to perhaps draw out a few strands about what they imply for modern day Tanzania. The starting point seems to be that although there has been a sharp pick up in the overall growth rate since the mid-1990s, results of the 2007 Household Budget Survey (HBS), which provides the majority of the hard data for the Poverty and Human Development Report 2007, show the impact of this on the average person has been limited. In fact, this is the fourth country specific Human Development Report and the third HBS, and all tend to confirm that despite the pick up in the GDP growth rate there has still only been a marginal impact in reducing poverty.

But they also show that it is not all bad news. There has been significant progress by thousands of individuals in improving the quality of housing for example, with sharp increases in the use of metal roofs, non-earth floors and more durable walls. There has also been a sharp increase in the ownership of various consumer goods, led by mobile phones, in all parts of the country, but also bicycles and mosquito nets in rural areas. However, the overall implication still seems to be that the growth rate is not high enough to have a sustained and deep impact on poverty.

Another important theme of the research seems to be how mixed the impact of rising government spending has been in terms of delivering government services to poor households. In particular, although the number of children attending school has increased there are still deep concerns about the quality of the education provided. Perhaps even more worrying, there has been virtually no change in access to health care, while access to water supplies has worsened in the last decade. This latter statistic is particularly worrying, as it comes at a time when a number of other studies have shown the huge potential impact of improving water and sanitation. Apparently simple measures such as installing toilets and providing safe water supplies have the potential to do more to end poverty and improve health than any other intervention.

The neglect of water and sanitation also highlights another theme across the documents. While donors can have a positive impact, they tend to focus on a limited number of areas at one time. In recent years this has been the provision of free education because this provides an easy to achieve target – hence progress on this front, if not on the quality of what is being taught.

But they back away from other issues such as water sector reform once they seem too complex. This certainly seems to be the case in Tanzania, where donors supported the award of a ten year management contract for the Dar es Salaam Water and Sewage Authority (DAWASA), but when this fell apart in 2005 did not seem to have a back-up plan to support investment in the sector in a rapidly growing city, other than to re-establish what was arguably a failing parastatal, but with the new name, the Dar es Salaam Water and Sewage Corporation, and to engage in prolonged legal action with the consortium that had been awarded the management contract – City Water.

The other theme is that when governments and donors fail to provide services, or if the business environment is too bureaucratic as is the case in Tanzania, informal small scale businesses step into this vacuum. As the HBS data shows, although the number of households with access to piped water in Dar es Salaam fell from 86% in 2000/01 to only 58% in 2007, there has been an increase in access to “other protected sources”. But in an unregulated environment this can have a major cost. The rise of unregulated providers of “non-protected sources” has led to scandals about the quality of water supplies, with some private sector suppliers claiming they are providing clean water, when tests show this is clearly not the case. Moreover, the city’s traffic problem is clearly compounded by the growth in privately owned tanker lorries which ferry water into the city from the surrounding regions.

How are these trends viewed by the average Tanzanian? In the Views of the People the surveyors asked 7,879 Tanzanians aged between 7 and 90 years old in ten provinces around the country their views on a wide range of economic and governance issues. The broad finding was that 24% argued that their economic situation had improved; 26% reported no change, while the other half estimated that their living standards had deteriorated. The main economic concerns of those questioned related to the poor state of infrastructure, especially roads if they lived outside of Dar-es-Salaam. But as with the HBS the findings were not all negative. For example, although the rising cost of food was said to be a problem by 67% of adults surveyed, the survey also found that 47% also claimed they had not had a problem with eating enough food in the last year, while 63% stated they ate three meals a day (this proportion rose to 78% in Dar es Salaam).

Where does this leave the government? From their end it does seem that there is a need to really join up the dots and develop a coherent framework on what needs to be done to drive growth and to get donors to fit into this. All parties would probably claim they are committed to this. In fact, this is the point of the Growth Strategy which seeks measures along these lines to try and push the growth rate up to 8-10%. But the reality is that progress has been slow and that talk of cooperation is greater than actual cooperation. Meanwhile, the rate of improvement is very slow, while expectations amongst the general population that their lives should be improving are rising more quickly. It is this gap that needs to be closed, and closed quickly.
David Cowan

IMAGINING SERENGETI: A HISTORY OF LANDSCAPE MEMORY IN TANZANIA FROM EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT. Jan Bender Shetler. New African Histories series, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio, 2007. xiv + 378pp. ISBN-10 0-8214-1750-9, ISBN-13 978-0-8214-1750-8. (paperback) £25.50

As my copy of a popular guide book says, the Serengeti needs little introduction. It is “one of the world’s most famous wildlife areas” and, thanks to “the largest mammalian migration on earth”, occupies a “hallowed place in our imagination”. What The Rough Guide doesn’t say is that the landscape of the Serengeti plays a very different role in the historical imagination of the people who live around it, but whose access to Serengeti National Park and associated protected areas is now severely limited. As consumers of wildlife and wildlife documentaries it is easy for us to forget that the “natural zoos” that we or the cameras are travelling through were once lived in and used by local people, many of whom have been removed or excluded against their will from the landscapes that still bear the names of their ancestors.

Jan Bender Shetler’s Imagining Serengeti is an ambitious attempt to restore local voices to their proper place in regional history, a study of the peoples of the western Serengeti and their narratives about the past from the “earliest times to the present”. It is based on the long-term research among the Bantu-speaking Ikoma, Nata, Ishenyi, Ikizu and Ngoreme of Serengeti and Bunda Districts in the south-eastern corner of Mara Region, and also draws in the history of other past and present users of the Serengeti, including the Kuria and Sonjo, and the Nilotic-speaking Tatoga and Maasai. In addition to material collected in the field the author has made extensive use of the available archives and published literature, and a full third of the book is taken up with the scholarly apparatus of glossary, notes, bibliography and index. It is also well illustrated, with a number of well-drawn maps and black and white photos.

Following a lucid introduction to “Landscapes of Memory” and the approach to social history which frames the book, the rest of the main text is divided into two parts, the first about historical memory before the 19th century, the second about the period after. Part I, “Past Ways of Seeing and Using the Landscape”, comprises separate chapters on “Ecological”, “Social” and “Sacred Landscapes”, focusing respectively on traditions of origin, clan histories, and histories of ritual and sacred sites. Part II, “Landscape Memory and Historical Challenges”, opens with a chapter on “The Time of Disasters” and includes an account of the ecological “collapse” that came in the wake of Maasai raiding and the penetration of global trade networks. This is followed by chapters on “Resistance to Colonial Incorporation” and the “Creation of Serengeti National Park”, describing how the peoples of the western Serengeti were excluded from the park and labelled as “poachers”, and concluding – as other critics have done – that recent community-based conservation initiatives have led to greater state control and provided limited benefits to the local population.

The book’s conclusions, “Imagining Serengeti History”, are squeezed into four pages at the end of the final chapter. To me this hurried ending is a bit of a let-down after being told in the introductory chapter that Imagining Serengeti “adds both a rich, new dimension to existing conversations about preserving African environments and a new methodological approach to precolonial African history.” There are a number of immodest statements of this kind at the beginning of the book, and they only serve to highlight the weakness of its theoretical pretensions. Although the author strives to link each chapter and each period of western Serengeti historical imagining to the use of different “core spatial images” (in the second half of the book these are “loss and dispersal”, “hiding and subterfuge”, and “constriction and restriction”), a less charitable view would see these as narrative tropes of her own invention that have been tacked onto the study in a misguided attempt to give it an analytic structure and added intellectual weight.

This is unnecessary. Imagining Serengeti is based on an impressive amount of scholarship and represents an important contribution to the social and environmental history of northern Tanzania. While reading it I wanted more: in the first half, for example, the further use of historical linguistic data to build upon and perhaps challenge general conclusions borrowed from Ehret, Schoenbrun and others; in the second half more detail about ongoing struggles over access to protected areas and the utilisation of natural resources, a subject which deserves its own full-length study.

But other than imagining a different book, I spotted relatively few mistakes in this one. The botanical name of the tree which provided arrow poison (obosongo) is misspelt in both the text and index, and should be updated to Acokanthera schimperi (A.DC.) Schweinf. (syn. A. friesiorum Markgr.). The standard abbreviation for Tanzania National Parks is TANAPA, not TNP. And something is missing from the first sentence of the second paragraph on page 31.
Martin Walsh

A PARLIAMENT WITH TEETH by Samuel Sitta, Willbrod Slaa and John Cheyo with an introduction by Mark Ashurst. Africa Research Institute. 43 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9JA. ISBN 978 1 906329 02 0

To paraphrase President Obama – Yes it has. Tanzania’s parliament has got teeth, and, as explained succinctly by House of Assembly Speaker Samuel Sitta, in this short, very readable, 88 – page book, the teeth have grown or been implanted largely within the last two years. He writes ‘For the first decade after independence, Parliament was quite robust. People who came from areas where there were strong chieftains tended to be ‘rightists’. The younger generation, who studied in Cuba, tended to be ‘leftists’.

People stood for issues. During the 1980s and 1990s party loyalty became more important. If you had different ideas you were looked upon us unpatriotic. Nothing really changed when the multi-party constitution was first introduced in 1992. The CCM, the majority party, still acted as if Tanzania was a one-party state.

However, the most recent changes include much greater independence for parliament. It no longer acts as an appendage of the Prime Ministers Office. It also has financial independence for the first time and is now able to receive money direct from external donors. The World Bank has provided $19 million. More importantly, the House Standing Orders have been revised and the Prime Minister now has to come to Parliament to answer questions. Sitta writes that there is a new mood in parliament, an appetite to get things done in a different way. It is now possible for the first time to appoint select committees to investigate controversial issues such as the Richmond corruption case (see above).

The second contributor is the opposition’s Dr Wilbrod Slaa, who must be becoming Tanzanian’s most well known legislator as he tirelessly pursues more and more cases of alleged corruption. He discusses how he thinks there will be, eventually, a change in the power structure in parliament and how the all powerful CCM party might eventually be defeated in elections to parliament. He also writes about foreign donors: ‘70% of government purchases are financed almost entirely by donors. Donors pay our salaries as MP’s.’ He suggests ways of improving relations between parliament and donors.

John Cheyo MP, who is Chairman of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, explains the changes brought about by the Public Audit Act of 2008 and how its first report was longer (450 pages) than usual, produced on time and was taken much more seriously by the President and others. MP’s were beginning to ‘clean up the old system.’

In its final recommendations the authors seem to agree on the fundamentals about what needs to be done in future but differ on some of the details. The longest single section of the book is an excellent introduction, full of insight, by Mark Ashurst, Director of the Africa Research Institute which should be compulsory reading for those new to politics in Tanzania and also to those who already know a lot but need to up-date themselves. He is right in concluding that ‘a strong executive needs a vigilant parliament. The best prospect of a strong leader is a parliament with teeth.’ D.R.B

Edited by John Cooper-Poole (UK) and Marion Doro (USA)
Suggestions from readers about items for future review are always welcome.

ENDING AID DEPENDENCE. Yash Tandon, Fahamu Books, 2008
133 pages, ISBN978-1-906387-29-7. £7.99. paperback.

The global financial crisis and predictions of imminent capitalist collapse possibly brought a smile to the face of Yash Tandon, director of leftist think-tank, South Centre, and author of this book.

In ‘Ending Aid Dependence’ Dr. Tandon develops his well-rehearsed arguments from earlier works and continues his tirade against the West, IMF, World Bank and various UN agencies perceiving them as neo-colonialist and neo-imperialist bent on perpetuating economic dependence and perverting the political independence of the developing nations of ‘the South’.

In wishing to provoke a global dialogue whose laudable purpose would be to work towards an end to the unsatisfactory reliance on aid of so many impoverished nations of the South, it is a pity that for half the length of his book Dr. Tandon bites the (only) hand that feeds them.

He does make reasonable points – for example it is unconscionable that after nearly half a century of independence and despite billions of dollars of investment by the West and the institutions reviled by Dr. Tandon, many nations remain underdeveloped and penurious; true too that promises made by donors at high-profile international conferences are often diluted or put aside. He observes that much aid seems primarily to serve the ‘charity industry’ for its own benefit and continuing survival.

Unfortunately, he glosses over the endemic corruption and disreputable governance affecting nearly two-thirds of the South countries today, and unrealistically suggests as alternatives the immediate post-independence policies of Nkrumah’s Ghana or Nyerere’s Tanzania whose failed socio-economic experiments inflicted so much misery. Such naivety is apparent too in that despite past chronic misuse, Dr. Tandon feels that aid, unlike most lender/borrower relationships, should be donated without terms and conditions.

In this ultimately unsatisfactory book, Dr. Tandon offers few if any practical solutions, only discussion and the development of (yet more) strategy. The South nations can only become free of aid if and when they offer their peoples conditions for economic, social and financial progress backed by incorrupt institutions and the rule of law. Until then, with unconditional assistance unlikely to emanate from any other source, the West and its institutions, however imperfect or self-serving, remain the South’s only source of succour without which the situation would be even worse. The end to aid reliance unfortunately remains a distant dream and any smile can be only fleeting.

Roger Payne 2008.

The two following abstracts of papers likely to be of interest to readers were kindly sent by Professor Pat Caplan:

‘BETWEEN SOCIALISM AND NEO-LIBERALISM: MAFIA ISLAND, TANZANIA, 1965-2004’. Review of African Political Economy, special issue on ‘Class, Resistance and Social Transformation’, no. 114, 2007, pp. 679-694 By Pat Caplan, Goldsmiths College, London

This paper considers issues of equality and inequality in Tanzania with particular reference to Mafia Island over a period of forty years. It begins by examining an apparently paradoxical situation: in the recent period of neo-liberal economics, during which Tanzania has won plaudits from multilateral agencies for its economic policies, many ordinary people on Mafia consider that their well-being has actually decreased and that
social differentials have vastly increased: wengine wanapata, wengine hawapati (some get, others don’t).

The paper seeks to consider some reasons for this situation by considering the relation between state (and local state), political party(ies) and citizens, and the changes and continuities in these relations over four
decades. This also involves an examination of the role of donors (wafadhili) and NGOs, on the one hand, and developers (wawekezaji) on the other. It is shown that the discourse in which issues of development are
discussed contains both continuities with earlier periods, as well as changes.

The paper also examines people’s perceptions of equality, inequality and poverty, with particular emphasis on the comparisons made between their own lot and that of others, as well as their views of their entitlements.
It concludes with case studies of two villages on Mafia: Kanga in the north, which has remained relatively isolated and poor, and Chole in the south, where tourist development has taken place.

‘BUT THE COAST, OF COURSE, IS QUITE DIFFERENT’: ACADEMIC AND LOCAL: IDEAS ABOUT THE EAST AFRICA LITTORAL. Journal of Eastern African Studies vol.1 no. 2. 305-320. July. 2007 by Pat Caplan, Goldsmiths College London

This paper examines identity and history on the coast of East Africa, an area long thought to be different from its hinterland in many respects, including the absence of ‘tribes’. It discusses the apparent paradox of
recent calls by intellectuals of East Africa coastal origin for the Waswahili to be termed a ‘tribe’. In the first section, I consider the arguments of those who have maintained that the Waswahili are not a single people, and in the second discuss those who have argued the opposite. The third section considers some of the reasons for the differences, including historiography, identity politics, and the positionality of both authors and informants.

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA: A COUNTRY STUDY. Mandy Siebold, Saarbrücken, VDM Verlag Dr Müller, 2008. pp.101. ISBN 978-3-8364-6308-9. Received as a pdf document.

This book explores the current and potential impact of HIV and AIDS on the economy in Tanzania. Based on a review of existing literature, it argues that the disease represents an economic crisis because it targets the economically-productive groups in society. The first section of the book provides a general survey of HIV and AIDS, and Tanzania. The second part takes a more detailed look at the impact on key areas of the economy: the workforce; the macro-economy; particular sectors such as the formal, education, agricultural and public sectors; and how the disease affects households, women and children.

Whilst the book does provide a wide-ranging survey, its main weakness is reliance on data that is already out of date. This reduces the usefulness of the book, as the data cannot be relied upon to reflect the current situation. For example, on page 19, the book asserts that there are 42 million people globally living with HIV and AIDS. However, the latest estimate from UNAIDS is that there are 32.5 million people living with HIV and AIDS. Similarly, estimates of the number of children orphaned are out of date (and the assertion that a large proportion live without family support of any kind is not supported by current research). Numbers currently receiving anti-retroviral treatment have expanded dramatically over the past two-three years with the implementation of programmes by the Global Fund, the Gates and Clinton Foundations and US funding. Ultimately, these weaknesses undermine the usefulness of the book as a key text in understanding how HIV and AIDS is affecting Tanzania’s economy, society and politics.

Michael Jennings

MIOMBO, Newsletters of the Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania, Numbers 31 and 32. The Society, Dar es Salaam, 2008. 20 pages each issue. Free to members of WCST.

Quite apart from the knowledge that one’s subscription is helping the WCST’s admirable cause, one splendid advantage of membership of the body is to receive two issues of the Society’s Newsletter each year. The issues for 2008 were, as usual, excellent.

Number 31, datelined April, contained, as major features, a summary of WCST’s conservation projects under implementation; a survey of the rare warbler, Karamoja Apalis, in the Serengeti ecosystem; an article querying whether the water flow from the Eastern Arc Mountains is declining; an excellent piece on Tanzania’s endangered marine turtles; the discovery of a new Shrew species in the south centre of the country; and pictures of a Parliamentary Committee visit to Lake Natron. Natron is the lake, north-west of Arusha that is the subject of heated debate: bird conservation vs soda ash extraction on an industrial scale.

Number 32, datelined November, continues the Lake Natron theme with a detailed update on that ongoing saga as well as offering a well-researched article on Peafowls in Dar; a fascinating piece on the threat to Tanzania’s biodiversity from invasive alien trees and plants; and features on the distribution of the wild dog, climate change and environmental education.

The WCST is a wonderful organisation and always needs new members. They can be contacted at wcst@africaonline.co.tz. The newsletters on a whole range of flora and fauna topics are worth the annual cost of membership alone!

David Kelly

WORLD LEAGUE GUIDE, covering the ICC World Cricket League Division 4 tournament, held in Tanzania 4-11 October, 2008. 4-page leaflet, published by ICC (International Cricket Council).

A small, but unusual, literary offering, essentially a souvenir programme for the matches held in Dar es Salaam, a significant landmark in the history of Tanzanian cricket. The tournament involved teams from Afghanistan (the eventual winners), Fiji, Hong Kong, Italy, Jersey and Tanzania. There are welcome messages from the President of the ICC and from Zully Rehemtulla, the Chairman of the Tanzania Cricket Association; some useful facts about all the contesting countries; the tournament programme itself; a summary of the global structure of the ICC World League (for countries outside the Test arena); and a picture of the Tanzania squad.

David Kelly

KEEPING SOMETHING ALIVE. Glyn Roberts and Mark Smith. ISBN 978-1-906274-07-8. Brill Books 2008. paperback. 128 pages. £7.50 inc. p & p. Available from Tools for Self reliance, Netley Marsh, Southampton SO40 7GY. Tel: 023 8086 9697. Email: info@tfsr.org.

This is the story, written by two of its founding members, of Tools for Self Reliance from its start in 1978 up to 1995. The idea of collecting unwanted tools and refurbishing them for the use of craftsmen in Tanzania, was one which quickly caught on, with over sixty support groups in Britain, and tools being sent to a number of countries. As well as providing much needed tools, the organisation seems to have served as a conduit for the enthusiasm of many supporters of Mwalimu’s policy of African Socialism and radical movements generally.

In its early days the organisation worked as a cooperative, everything being decided democratically, but it soon became apparent that a more structured arrangement was needed to meet the needs of a rapidly growing organisation. Clearer lines of authority, formal links between support groups, headquarters, and distributors had to be devised, not without much soul searching. There is surely the basis here for several worthwhile business school dissertations on organisational development.

There is useful information about the number of tools supplied, but more about finance and personnel numbers would enable the reader better to compare inputs with outputs, which on the basis of the information given appear to have been rather poorly related.

The shortcomings of the organisation are fairly discussed, particularly the difficulty, shared by many (most?) donors, of assessing their effectiveness.

Small though it is, this book is thought provoking and likely to interest anyone who is, or has been, involved in aid projects of whatever size. Given the ethos of the organisation it is no surprise that profits from the book will go to the organisation, rather than the authors. Very good value, and much to interest, at the price, particularly as a DVD is included.

J. C-P.

RAISE YOUR VOICES AND KILL YOUR ANIMALS. Islamic Discourses on the Idd el-Haj and sacrifices in Tanga, Tanzania. Authoritative Texts, Ritual Practices and Social Identities. Gerard Cornelius van de Bruinhorst, 2007. Doctoral thesis, Utrecht University.
The book text can be downloaded at http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2007-0907-200459/index.htm

The Islamic Sacrificial Feast, one of the two major Muslim annual festivals and coinciding with the pilgrimage to Mecca, has long been neglected as a static, canonical ritual determined by centuries old, Arabic texts. This study based on extensive fieldwork and many written documents illustrates how the ‘orthodox’ Idd el-Hajj (as the feast is called in Tanzania) shows many different faces. The basic elements of the ritual shared by all Muslims and corroborated by authoritative texts are a communal prayer, a sermon and an animal sacrifice. The ritual reflects the influence of these authoritative texts but the interpretations of these scriptures are continuously reworked in order to reconceptualise Muslim identity in a changing social and political context. Although all Muslim groups in Tanzania accept the idea that Islam is embodied in a set of basic texts, the legitimacy of these texts and their applicability to particular situations is continually challenged and contested.

The discussions on the correct ritual practice are influenced by new developments like the vernacularisation of Islamic key texts and an exceptionally high literacy in Swahili which enables a large part of urban Muslim population to participate in these discourses on Islam and Islamic ritual. This study especially illustrates the ideas on time and place of the Idd el-Hajj. Differences in the date of the festival are connected to the problems of moonsighting: the lunar month only starts with the first sighting of the crescent but the validity of a sighting is not accepted by all Tanzanian Muslims. The personal authority of a religious leader, the loyalty to a local madrasa (Qur’an school) or the desire to synchronise the Idd with the ritual performance of the whole nation or with the activities of the pilgrims at Mecca results in different holidays.

Secondly, the notion of place in the Idd el-Hajj performance is very important because of the link with the hajj: the annual pilgrimage to the sacred heart of Islam. Different conceptions of the religious and social importance of the hajj are reflected in the way Tanzanian Muslims perceive the role of Islam in their society. This is furthermore reflected in the place where each community performs its Idd prayers: inside the mosque or on public prayerfields. Also the significance of animal sacrifice changes according to the place where it is performed: in the private sphere of the house, on the public field in the centre of the town or in the state controlled abattoir.

The major point of this study is that in the particular forms of the Idd el-Hajj Muslim groups redefine their position within a field of different loyalties and identities and in this process continually reconstruct a Muslim moral community. These different identities are not necessarily contradictory or mutually exclusive. Sometimes the social significance of the ritual is primarily that of a family happening, sometimes the ritual is important to express the identity of a particular madrasa or mosque. But the two most important moral communities visible in the discourses and practices of the Idd el-Hajj are the Tanzanian nation state and the global Muslim community. Tensions between the daily reality of a Muslim minority living in a secular state and the ideal image of a unified Muslim community exemplified by the hajj are at the heart of these discourses.

Edited by John Cooper-Poole (UK) and Marion Doro (USA)

WAR IN PRE-COLONIAL EASTERN AFRICA. Richard Reid, (London: British Institute in Eastern Africa/Oxford: James Currey, 2007). Pp. xvi+256, ISBN 978-1-84701-604-1. £55.00 cloth. £16.95 paper.

This is an illuminating study that seeks to put African warfare in a more objective context than that which has prevailed since the colonial period and, to a significant degree, persists to this day. According to these dated, yet hardy, models, African warfare was usually ‘barbarous’ and had little to do with ‘civilized’ motives but everything to do with cattle-rustling and slave-raiding. ‘This was combat that lacked the soul, the aims and the complexity of ‘civilized war’ as Richard Reid puts it; ‘these were parochial and decidedly low-calibre struggles’. Furthermore, the nineteenth century European-promulgated stereotype – still with us today, as those familiar with reportage on African violence will know – portrayed these struggles as ‘irrational’ and ‘interminable’, suggesting that all Africans did was fight each other and, of course, providing one of the bedrock justifications of European rule and pax colonia. ‘The aim of this book, put simply, is to contribute to the growing refutation of these notions. The history of African warfare is perhaps the last bastion of the kind of distorted Eurocentric scholarship that characterized African studies before the 1960’s. Continue reading →

Edited by John Cooper-Poole (UK) and Marion Doro (USA)

WHY PLANNING DOES NOT WORK: LAND USE PLANNING AND RESIDENTS’ RIGHTS IN TANZANIA. Tumsifu, Jonas and Nnkya. Mkuki na Nyota Dar es Salaam. 2007. ISBN 978 9987 449 682. pp360. p/b £29.95. Available through African Books Collective, P.O. Box 721 Oxford, OX1 9EN. www.africanbookscollective.com.

Town planning is struggling back into vogue after three decades of discredit. The World Planning Congress published a ten-point declaration ‘Reinventing Planning: a New Governance Paradigm for Managing Human Settlements’ in June 2006 that it took to the United Nations Third World Urban Forum in Vancouver for endorsement. The theme of UN Global Report on Human Settlements 2009 will be on ‘Revisiting Urban Planning‘. This return to planning is well overdue – but what sort of planning?

Physical planning in the rapidly growing urban areas of the developing countries of the South lost the plot in the 1970s when it became evident that the processes for determining and controlling land use by the public sector (local government) were being overtaken by the magnitude and speed of urban population growth and economic and social change. Private sector investors could not wait for, or be bothered with, the seemingly tortuous bureaucratic procedures entailed in obtaining planning permission. New migrants in search of urban opportunities could not wait for nor afford officially approved housing or licences to start enterprises. In short, planning and building standards could not be afforded, building permit procedures were too slow, town plans bore no relation to municipal budgets so they were rarely implemented, and there were not enough planning officers and building inspectors to ‘police’ new developments. As a result people, rich and poor alike, did their own thing and the authorities could not control them.

On the other hand, professional town planners saw themselves as the upholders of planning standards, procedures and legislation (that were largely inherited from former colonial administrations) that would ensure efficient, livable and beautiful towns to be proud of. They worked in ‘administrative black boxes’ that were secretive and exclusive and did not engage those who were ‘being planned’. Planning was seen as a technical process that ordinary people would not understand.

So, if there is to be a return to planning, what should the new planning be like? What should be its aims: control, promotion or both? Who should do it: planners, investors, citizens or all three? What is the interface between planning and plan implementation, or should there be no need for one? There are many glib and seemingly obvious answers to such questions, but in the real world of the cut-and-thrust politics of urban development they are far from easy to put into practice.

This is borne out by Tumsifu Jonas Nnkya’s new book ‘Why Planning Does Not Work? Land Use Planning and Residents’ Rights in Tanzania’, which is a fascinating and detailed analysis of planning, power and land rights in Moshi over the last thirty-years.

The story starts with a brief overview of Tanzania’s colonial planning inheritance, providing a lead up to the heady post-Arusha-Declaration times of “building a socialist and self-reliant egalitarian society” in Tanzania that characterised the late 1960s and early ‘70s. It saw the adoption of a national ‘growth-pole’ policy aimed at stimulating more “balanced development” away from the economic dominance of Dar-es-Salaam. Moshi was to be one of the nine regional growth-poles, for which it needed a new town plan that included significant extensions to the town boundaries, incorporating villages, previously under rural district administration. After two years of deliberation and dispute, the plan, which had been drawn up by “two non-resident planners and an engineer from the Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development in Dar-es-Salaam”, was approved in 1975, setting the scene for the rest of this often disturbing but at times encouraging account of “government versus the people”.

Dr Nnkya probes, recounts and analyses the interests and strategies of the wide range of different interest groups and actors engaged in the processes of planning in Moshi and its implementation through a series of captivating case studies, starting with the new town boundary. He digs deep into the political interests of the town council; describes the dismay of villagers at finding themselves liable to pay new urban licence fees; reports on how the Ministry of Works discovered that the airport, for which it was responsible, had been turned over to housing, requiring the construction of a new one; and tells how a group of villagers charged the Town Council with trespass in the High Court in a case that took ten years to resolve.

Building upon these and other examples of the lack of consultation and transparency by those in authority, the book examines a range of different issues such as how the planners and public sector developers faced civil disobedience that prevented the demarcation of new housing plots; the official appropriation of land that was deemed to be “inefficiently used” by a psychiatric hospital for therapeutic farming, which ended up as luxury housing for senior officers of the administration, despite widespread media coverage and public protest; and how even when the Planning Department was requested to plan a neighbourhood by its residents, who had themselves paid for its survey, they were not involved or consulted about the new layout, which bore little relationship to what was on the ground or what they needed and was therefore ignored.

Despite all of this, the book is not just a catalogue of horror stories or an account of conservative resistance to change. A picture of slowly evolving institutional change and effective public participation in Moshi’s planning and development is built up throughout the middle section of the book. This is largely achieved by the insightful and analytical introductions and closing summaries to each chapter and the reflective commentary that binds together the myriad of quotations from letters, minutes, judgements and the author’s his own discussions with those who had been involved. In the penultimate chapter Moshi rides gloriously into the sunset of the United Nations sponsored Sustainable Moshi Programme, hand-in-hand with citizen consultations and participatory decision-making in the planning and management of the town.

Throughout the book Dr Nnkya draws on the work of contemporary planning theorists and international experience to provide a coherent basis for his commentary and analysis, thus drawing out lessons for urban governance, management and planning of relevance to many African towns and cities, beyond the borders of Moshi and Tanzania.

The book is beautifully written in the fast-moving, easy-flowing traditions of the best of analytical investigative journalism, making it an exciting read for all those interested in the complexities of local politics and the creation of sustainable and just urban environments in Africa. We eagerly await Dr Nnkya’s next book, in which he promises to provide “an account of the changes that have taken … place in planning practice under political pluralism and a liberal economy”. This, we hope, will give a similarly exhaustive treatment to the first ten years of the Sustainable Moshi Programme – an example of the new urban planning.

Patrick Wakely

MEMOIRS OF AN INTERNATIONAL TANZANIAN. Al Noor Kassum. L B Tauris and Co. Ltd, London and New York 2007 Distributed by Macmillan Distribution Ltd, £24.50. p/p. 158 pages, including 12 of b/w photos and letter reproductions. ISBN 978 1 84511 583 8).

By current political memoir standards, this fascinating book is remarkably short considering that it covers a long and impressive career at the top of politics in pre- and post-independent Tanzania, with the (first) East African Community in Arusha and at the United Nations in Paris and New York – as well as doing much else besides.

Yet, this work by Al Noor Kassum – ‘Nick’, to those who know him – is a major contribution to 20th century East African history, the more so given the real scarcity of African political memoirs . There is something here for everyone. The book should be of special interest, though, to the modern generation of Tanzanians (who did not know Mwalimu Nyerere), and to all who have an interest in the decolonisation period in Tanzania and the country’s relationship with its East African neighbours.

Nick starts with his father’s migration from India to Tanganyika in 1896, and describes the development of his family’s businesses in colonial Dar es Salaam – including the grocery store that served the British Governor and which first brought the author into contact in the early 1940s with Julius Nyerere who, as a teacher at Pugu, used to shop there. He then describes his schooling in England before the outbreak of WWII, and in India during the war, how he qualified as a lawyer in London and subsequently established a legal practice in Dar. Nick’s increasingly close relationship with the Aga Khan and the leading role he played in the Ismaili communities in London and Tanzania are evidenced. He then documents his growing interest in educational reform – in 1954 the Aga Khan appointed him Administrator of the Aga Khan schools in Tanganyika – and his involvement in pre-independence Tanganyikan politics (first as a Town Councillor, then a Member of the Legislative Assembly, and from 1959 MP for Dodoma and Chief Whip of the TANU parliamentary party).

Continuing the catalogue of impressive public service, Nick then sets out his time as: Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Information (1961); Parliamentary Secretary of Industries, Mineral Resources and Power (1964); posts with UNESCO (1965) in Paris and New York, and then Secretary of ECOSOC (1967) in New York; Deputy General Manager of Williamson Diamonds (1970); EAC Minister of Finance and Administration (1972); and, for thirteen years, Minister for Water, Energy and Minerals (1977).

After leaving formal Government service in 1990, Nick has continued to serve Tanzania – as Chairman of the Dar es Salaam University Council, Chairman of the National Development Corporation, Chancellor of the Sokoine University of Agriculture (succeeding Mwalimu in that role in 1993), Trustee and Interim Chairman of the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation, and as the Personal Representative of the Aga Khan in Tanzania.

Much in this book is politically engaging. I was especially fascinated by Nick’s accounts of: Nyerere’s forthright defence of the 1967 Arusha Declaration (responding to the big unease it caused many leaders, who lost their privileges) and the Ujamaa villages programme; of the suspicions Tanzania generated regionally and internationally during the Cold War by its growing relationship with China (especially with the construction of TAZARA); of his analysis of the multiple reasons for the break-up of the first East African Community and how the lessons learnt have been applied in the construction of the new EAC; and of the way he helped develop Tanzania’s mineral and Songo Songo gas resources, kept the country supplied with essential oil imports at a time when Tanzania could not afford them, and spear-headed the most rapid expansion of the national electricity grid that the country has ever seen.

Nick’s description of more personal happenings are equally engrossing – such as: the attitude in pre-WWII England to an East African Asian schoolboy (a rare sight in those days); of his eight-day journey home on the last flying boat to Tanganyika after the declaration of war, meeting the founder of the Boy Scouts, Baden Powell, on the way; of how he nearly joined the British Royal Air Force in India; of the colourful Independence Day celebrations in Tanzania in 1961; of the Zanzibar revolution, the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, and other aspects of the Mainland’s relationship with Zanzibar; of how he rose to senior positions within the UN, and the ‘tussle’ between UN Secretary General U-Thant and Nyerere in 1970 over whom Nick should next serve; of his family’s reaction in 1971 to the nationalisation of their properties; of how he out-manoeuvred the secretive management of Williamson Diamonds (then dominated by De Beers) to get Tanzania a better long-term deal in the diamond industry; of his conversations with Mwalimu each time the President appointed him to the various senior public positions he held; of his meetings (as EAC Finance Minister) with Idi Amin, at the time the Ugandan dictator was expelling the Asians; of Mwalimu’s anger when Amin’s troops invaded Tanzania in November 1978 and of the President’s bitterness at Kenya’s stance; of the protracted saga over the Sunday driving ban (but no mention of the equally dubious fuel ration card system!); of how he performed an informal intermediation role in the 1980s between the Government and the World Bank/IMF when they were at logger-heads with each other; of the stressful months at the end of 1983 when a British newspaper alleged he was complicit in secret and corrupt oil deals with apartheid South Africa (wholly untrue allegations that were eventually fully retracted and compensated); and of his astonishment at not being re-appointed a minister in President Mwinyi’s drastic cabinet changes in 1990.

Nick documents his friendship over the years with Benjamin Mkapa – who wrote him a sympathetic letter in 1990 after he was dropped from the Cabinet and who, in the Foreword to the book, describes Nick as a ‘towering figure in the Asian community’ who ‘has made a contribution to the building of the nation of Tanzania that should speak volumes’.

In the moving and more personal final chapter, Nick reflects on the character and legacy of Mwalimu Nyerere (whom he admired greatly and quotes extensively throughout the book), and on Tanzania’s future. He concludes with paragraphs about his family and his association with current President Kikwete.

I happily declare an interest, and also make a suggestion. As he kindly acknowledges in the book, I worked closely with the author throughout the 1980s when he had ministerial responsibility for Water, Energy and Minerals. He was a dynamic, able and likeable minister, who performed well on both the domestic and international stages. It was a challenging and exciting period, bridging the Nyerere-Mwinyi Presidencies. Had space permitted, there is much more that he could have written.

My suggestion is that the author should consider having his book translated into Kiswahili, so that its contents can become more accessible to all Tanzanians.

My only disappointment with the book (apart from several unexpected typographical errors) is that it is too short! Nevertheless, I hope it will encourage others in similar leadership positions, in Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa, to record for posterity their own personal experiences of the Independence era.

Roger Nellist

INDEPENDENT? TANZANIA’S CHALLENGES SINCE UHURU: A SECOND-GENERATION NATION IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD. Knud Vilby, Uppsala, Nordiska Africainsitutet, 2007. Pp.213. ISBN 978-91-7106-590-2.

Based on a series of interviews with former and current political and party leaders, community leaders and ordinary citizens, this book seeks to re-assess the Nyerere legacy from the perspective of those who were there at the time. It also seeks to examine how Tanzania’s past interacts with current structures of globalisation in shaping the country’s current and future prospects.

The interviews highlight official (and especially Mwalimu Nyerere’s) thinking behind key policies, most notably: Ujamaa; nationalisation policies; universal primary education in the 1970s; the decision to abolish cooperatives; and the economic reforms began after Nyerere’s departure in 1985. In relying on key players in these decisions – figures such as former Vice-President Rashid Kawawa, Nyerere’s former private secretary Joseph Butiku – Vilby offers an interesting account of how policy was formulated, debated and contested within government and party. In listening to the voices of farmers, religious leaders, and former regional officers, the book explores the impact and contradictions in the implementation of those policies. There are also interesting chapters on corruption, HIV and AIDS, and agricultural development in Tanzanian policy.

The absence of Zanzibar from the story is a serious gap, ignoring some serious political fractures which are crucial to Tanzania’s story today. The narrative can at times feel disjointed, and too much emphasis is perhaps placed upon the issue of population growth. But ultimately this book is a satisfying first-person account of Tanzania’s post-colonial history.

Michael Jennings

EAST AFRICA ART BIENNALE EASTAFAB 2007:
Exhibition catalogue prepared by Yves Goscinny, 2007. Dar es Salaam. ISBN 9987–8975-5–X. p/b pp 216 with many colour images; cost: £20 plus postage (in EU: £10). In East Africa, available at La Petite Gallery and Novel Idea Bookshop, Dar es Salaam; Tulifanya Gallery, Kampala, Uganda and RaMoMA (Rahimtullah Museum of Modern Art), Nairobi. Overseas, available directly from the author or PO Box 23165, Oyster Bay, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Related publications: ‘Tinga Tinga, Popular paintings from Tanzania’ ‘2003 East African Art Biennale’ and ‘2005 East African Art Biennale’, each at £20 plus postage.

Back story. In 1998 Yves Goscinny initiated a project ‘Art in Tanzania’ whose primary purpose is to hold a bi-annual exhibition which showcases and documents contemporary art in Tanzania. For example, in 1999/2000 it featured the works of 36 local artists including established movements of Makonde sculpture and ‘Tinga Tinga’ painting. This marked a fresh start in strengthening the local infrastructure for development in and through the visual arts. ‘Fresh’ because public art in Tanzania has had little strength, nguvu since the golden years of Professor/Artist Sam Ntiro, Commissioner of Culture (1962-72) and the inclusive Society of East African Artists.

2007 East Africa Art Biennale: EASTAFAB. Since 1998, the platform for visual art has expanded considerably due to overall betterment in East Africa and, in Tanzania, and specifically, to the energy and focus of Mr Goscinny. Now, he is Executive Director of the Biennale Association which held its third international exhibition in November 2007, in Dar es Salaam. The organizers selected more than 100 artists from 26 countries, while concentrating on five: Uganda, Tanzania, Cuba, Kenya, Mauritius. The resulting, very interesting range of regional and international art works offers stimulating comparisons for art-making as well as for the conditions for art in the global South. The especial focus on art from Cuba is a fruitful product of cultural exchange.

The Catalogue. Like an album of snapshots and ephemera this attractive publication for the 2007 EASTAFAB conveys the sensibility of a purposive selection, herein, for modern art practices relevant to Tanzania. While the bulk of the catalogue is visual material, it is more than a book of pictures. Its contents generously reach out to the viewer-reader: visually and verbally.

Visually, there is a wonderful variety of images across the range of two-dimensional mediums, techniques and styles of representation by more than a hundred makers, most of whom live in the global South, while those from Europe tend to be ‘intimate outsiders’– who have long-term commitments to Tanzania. While some works employ ‘African’ clichés such as a market or hunting scene painted boldly in bright colours, the majority of entries are individualized, imaginative and well-composed works that have the capacity to engage the beholder’s gaze.

Verbally, there is a peppy introduction, basic information in alphabetical lists by artist and country, two large sections which present the individual artists and several short essays. Two sections, one for seasoned artists and the other for emerging artists, consist of information about each artist. Overall, the text inputs are uneven, which I appreciate is part of the story, but sometimes, they are not translated (which is more tantalizing due to use of penmanship, below). In a few cases there is no text, apart from an image of a work. Many artists (40) wrote their statements by hand. As an aesthetic device, handwriting links artists to each other with the effect of lessening differences in their backgrounds while it also creates warmth between the artist and the reader.

The short essays concern socially- and politically-implicated art: art for society’s well-being and share the specific innovations of three projects taking place in East Africa. EASTAFAB’s guest artist Bruce Clarke discusses the relationship between political commitment and art making, based upon wide concepts of art and his own reality of political violence in South Africa and Rwanda. He pursues his own practice of mixed media and collective endeavors like the Garden of Memory in Rwanda for which each victim of genocide is being symbolized by incised stone (query absence of an image of the Garden). The two other projects use painting and drawing therapeutically to assist people who have crises to handle: ‘Positive Bodies’ involves the painting of ‘body maps’ as part of a process to assist people in coming to terms with HIV-AIDS in Kenya and ‘Childsoldiers’ similarly uses drawing with teenagers who have experienced violence related to child soldiers in northern Uganda.

This cornucopia of evidence is vast and raw, being neither homogenized, nor perfectly edited, nor uniformly anglophonie. Its shortcomings and mild unruliness are part of its charm which, involve rather than annoy the viewer-reader. In fact, the criteria for good practice differ between catalogues and books. For art catalogues, the basic criteria are coherent and comprehensive coverage for the artists with clear reproduction of their work; on these terms, EAST AFRICA ART BIENNALE EASTAFAB 2007is close to exemplary.

The book itself is a pleasant object and has delighted colleagues (at SOAS and the BM) who have said “what a beautiful cover”, “how apt an image for a biennale in Dar”, “how well it is produced”, “a big book from Tanzania”, “is it for sale in London?”!! The front and back cover display a panorama landscape photograph of a tranquil beach scene with the title handwritten in the foreground sand EAST AFRICA ART 2007 BIENNALE. This image immediately conveys the character of EASTAFAB: (i) its locality in the tropics that in turn reinforces its perspective from the South; (ii) its topicality — sand letters are like a snapshot, indicating its ‘moment’ in time, (iii) its openness — an expansive view of art practices in the region and toward those which have resonance with Tanzania. Overall, this catalogue is of better quality than the art books produced by art organizations in Nairobi and Kampala.

May this review raise an issue for the Britain-Tanzania Society. If the membership would like to advance awareness of art in Tanzania, here is a small suggestion. Could we use the platform of the Society’s annual Christmas card to share an apt image by a local artist, possibly via the Biennale Association?

*Readers are welcome to the exhibition “Positive Bodies” 17 April – 21st June 2008 at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Russell Square. Also, nearby, the British Museum’s permanent display kanga includes works by veteran painters Mohamed Charinda and Robino Ntila, Sainsbury Africa Gallery (Rm 25).

UTENZI, WAR POEMS, AND THE GERMAN CONQUEST OF EAST
AFRICA Swahili Poetry as Historical Source. Jose Arturo Saavedra Casco.
2007. $29.95
This book examines Swahili narrative poetry that in spite of being available in published editions for many years, has not previously been studied from an historical perspective. The poems were written on the eve of the First World War by the authors who were all residents of the Swahili coastal towns of mainland Tanzaniaformerly Tanganyika Territory. This poetry narrates the stories of episodes in the wars of conquest, fought between the German colonial forces and indigenous Africans. Most of the poems belong to a literary genre known in Swahili as utenzi, whose oldest preserved samples date from the eighteenth century. This genre originally depicted epic themes linked with the prophet Mohammed and the heroes and martyrs of the Muslim faith. The poems were first preserved only by oral means, being subsequently recorded in manuscript form in the Arabic script. This poetry was recited in public during local religious festivities, or on other civic occasions. During the nineteenth century this poetic style was increasingly applied to philosophical and didactical subjects, and by the second half of the nineteenth century the first historical poem was written in Mombasa. The German conquest of East Africa is the event that has inspired more poetic works of this kind than any other event in the modern history of the region.
Among the poets were those who depicted the horrors of the war, but others were enthusiastic in their praise for the establishment of the German rule.

The book includes a study of the historical context in which the poems were produced, and the social origins of the poets who composed these works. This enables the reader to understand better the opinions and views expressed in the poems. The study proposes that this kind of historical poetry represented a unique, indigenous manner for the transmission of historical accounts of the conquest from the perspective of the Swahili, and not simply a repository of facts already registered and discussed by Western scholarship.

Illustration from the cover of the “Dogodogo” book

“It left a deep impression on me” said Cherie Blair, the wife of the former British Prime Minister, in a Foreword she has written to a new 50-page book published by UNICEF, Macmillan Aidan and others entitled ‘Dogodogo – Tanzanian street children tell their stories’. “I was lucky when Kasia Parham, the wife of the British High Commissioner, took me along to see the remarkable care and support being provided to those who had nothing. I was struck by the dedication and warmth of the American Sister Jean Pruitt, who established the Dogodogo Centre in Dar es Salaam which provides a haven for boys rescued from the street” Cherie Blair said.

The book, which is edited by Kasia Parham, a volunteer teacher at the Centre, contains a large number of illustrations painted by some of the boys, and describes the experiences of eight of them – how and why they came to leave home, how they found refuge, how they survived in incredibly difficult circumstances, and how they still loved their families.

High Commissioner Philip Parham said that he hoped the book would be seen as a good teaching resource in schools in the UK, US and elsewhere to raise awareness.
Kasia Parham described how the boys told her their stories over a period of four months as part of their English language programme. As they learned to express themselves in English, they also learned to speak individually about their past. “Often they told me the factual events of their lives rather than their emotional responses to them. I believe their stories are more powerful for that” she said. “In subsequent more lighthearted group discussions they corroborated each others’ stories.”

The result of all this work is a highly readable book which explains in moving language the extraordinary and often very sad stories of their lives so far. During the past fifteen years some 1,500 children have benefited from the services of the Centre operated by the ‘Dogodogo Street Children Trust’ which also runs a programmes on HIV/AIDS and a successful anti-drugs programme.

With the encouragement of First Lady Mama Kikwete a USAID-financed edition is being produced in Swahili.

The book is being sold in TZ at Novel Idea and Art n Frame (Dar-es-Salaam). Schools in UK wanting copies should contact Ellie Wilson at Macmillan UK: e.wilson@macmillan.com.
See http://www.dogodogocentre.org for more information about the project. Those wishing to contribute to the Trust should contact Sister Jean at dogodogo@bol.co.tz.
David Miliband’s comments on the book can be seen at: http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/blogs/david_miliband

Edited by John Cooper-Poole (UK) and Marion Doro (USA)

LAW AND JUSTICE IN TANZANIA: A QUARTER OF A CENTURY OF THE COURT OF APPEAL EDITED BY Chris Maina Peter and Helen Kijo-Bisimba. Dar-es-Salaam: Legal and Human Rights Centre and Mkuki na Nyota Publishers. 2007. xx plus 382 pages. ISBN 9987 449 43 3. £29.95.

The Court of Appeal of Tanzania was established in August 1979, after the demise of the respected Court of Appeal for East Africa. Approximately twenty-five years later the Court celebrated its Silver Jubilee in style, with speeches by leading figures (including the Presidents of Tanzania and Zanzibar), a procession, dancing, and a seminar on the Court’s performance. This substantial volume includes photographs of the celebration and of almost all of the judges in the history of the Court, but the bulk of it is devoted to sixteen thoughtful papers on the history, achievements, and challenges of this admirable institution. Continue reading →