(In the last issue we inadvertently failed to mention that the book ‘Persistent Principles Amidst Crisis’ by H. Othman, I Bavu and M Okema (eds) was supplied by and is obtainable from Leishman and Taussig, 28 Westgate, Southwell, Notts NG25 OJH – Editor)

ZANZIBAR UNDER COLONIAL RULE edited by Abdul Sheriff and Ed Ferguson. Historical Association of Tanzania; James Currey; Heinemann, Kenya. 1991. £9.95.

Zanzibar Under Colonial Rule is a major work on this small Sultanate which has played such a pivotal role in the history of East Africa. Its 278 pages include eight studies on various aspects of Zanzibar’s past economic and political development, an introduction and conclusion by Abdul Sherriff, 9 pages of bibliography plus extensive source notes following each chapter, 33 illustrations and a useful 8- page index.

Abdul Sheriff puts the major premise of the book right up front in his introduction, entitled ‘A Materialist Approach to Zanzibar’s History’. He states “As Karl Marx pointed out, history cannot be reduced to the collection of ‘self-explanatory’ facts. To start with, facts are not ‘given’; they are perceptions according to the specific philosophy of the observer, the recorder or the historian who select what each considers significant … The task of the historian is then to interpret t hose truths, and this can be done consistently only through an explicit theory of social development”.

Starting within this framework, the individual studies are : The Transition from Slavery by Jacques Depelchin; The Formation of a Colonial Economy by Ed Ferguson; The Struggle for Independence by B. D. Bowlesj The Peasantry Under Imperialism by Abdul Sheriff; The Dec line of the Landlords by J. R. Mlahagwa and A. J. Tem~ The Contradictions of Merchant Capital by Zinnat Bader; The Development of a Colonial Working Class by George Hadjivayanis and Ed Ferguson, and finally, The 1964 Revolution: Lumpen or Vanguard? by Abdulrahman Babu.

Not all of the writers are equally successful. The first study, Jacques Depelchin’s The Transition from Slavery, places much emphasis on fitting slavery into the context of historical materialism and argues “What is determinant in relations of production is the class position and not the ethnic origin”. Things do get better however. Bowles’ chapter, The Struggle for Independence, is particularly well balanced and informative. Indeed, if the reader can disregard the ideological cant which pervades the opening and closing paragraphs of several of the chapters, there is a wealth of facts and interesting documentation fairly evenly distributed throughout the rest of the book. One needs to be a discerning reader however and alert to the occasions when the conspiratorial theory of history is given undue license. In general, the research based on East African sources is impressive. There are, justifiably, few comments on US relations with Zanzibar during the colonial period but those there are suffer from limited and ideologically selective sourcing.

The final chapter, by Abdulrahman Babu, deserves separate mention. The crucial events surrounding the 1964 revolution, in which Babu was a major participant, merit a much more extensive and detailed accounting. He could, if he wished, offer many more important personal insights than he provides here. Babu’s contribution is noteworthy for the degree to which it remains ideologically consistent with his views of the early 1960’s. The broad range of international experience he has had since that time seems to have changed his thinking surprisingly little. In light of recent events Babu’s paean of praise for the militant socialism typified by the Zanzibar revolution now rings hollow like a voice out of a distant epoch.
Dale M Provenmire

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS, RECOVERY PROGRAMMES AND LABOUR IN TANZANIA. Paschal B. Mhiyo. Labour, Capital and Society 23:1.1990

This 28-page paper is very revealing indeed. It would be better entitled ‘Survival Strategies of Tanzania’s Urban Workers’ in the face of the economic crisis of the 1980’s. It illustrates in down-to-earth language the remarkable degree of initiative shown by Tanzanians in trying to feed their families on wages which were totally inadequate. The survey was conducted among 540 workers in six Dar es Salaam enterprises in 1987-88.

These are some of the survival strategies the paper describes:
a) aggressive search for work; every member of the family was expected to look for something to do in order to earn something;
b) organised afternoon absences from work; ‘job caretakers’ would perform double roles so that one could seek other part-time employment;
c) use of children to sell food to better-off children at school;
d) use of breaks at work for informal work such as hair- dressing, shoe shining; bicycle repairing etc;
e) combining official and private duties; for example, secretaries doing private work during office hours;
f) use by drivers of enterprise cars as ‘pirate taxis’;
g) diversion of the enterprises’ clientele into private contractual arrangements by, for example, those engaged in medical, technical and legal work;
h) dependence on second-hand commodities – a ‘reappreciation’ syndrome under which nothing grows too old to be bought;
i) the ‘costume hire’ phenomenon; as few women could afford to buy expensive clothes they would hire them on a weekly or monthly basis; middle class women ‘can make a fortune on this phenomenon’ the writer reports;
j) acceptance of indeptedness as a way of life;
k) mutual aid through wage pooling and the setting up of hardship funds

Many of the subterfuges referred to above are not confined to Tanzania of course but the paper then goes on further to describe also the changing nutritional, housing and transport patterns and even changes in mannerisms as employers and employees struggle to cope with the economic crisis.

Finally the author discusses the psychological and emotional consequences of all this. 81% of the interviewees said that they were worried about money and food all the time. Hardly surprisingly there was evidence of psychological exhaustion and a great deal of ‘withdrawal’ and apathy both at work and at home the latter being particularly serious.

In his conclusions the writer emphasises the number of external factors (eg: white elephant projects) which had caused the crisis and how the workers, who had worked without complaint during this period and never staged any major protest or strike should not be made to bear the biggest portion of the blame – DRB.

WHOSE TREES? A PEOPLE’S VIEW OF FORESTRY AID. Tanzanian Section – Learning from the Past? Christopher Mwalubandu, Anthony Ngaiza et al. Panos. 1991. £ 7.95.

The first part of this 40-page report, written in a journalistic style, describes a classical sequence of mismanagement in a tropical forest, but with a difference.

In 1977 aid from the Finnish organisation FINNIDA was supplied to the parastatal company Sikh Saw Mills (SSM) for heavy logging equipment and management to exploit a valuable timber resource in the East Usambara Forest Reserves, Although consultants Jaakko Poyry and EKONO were responsible for the inventory of utilisable timber and the monitoring of operations there were no proper controls enforced and no plans for restocking. Encroachment of the forest areas by land-hungry farmers increased as a result, and cultivation of unsuitable s lopes and unsuitable crops (cardamom) together with the construction of logging roads and heavy equipment on them, led to erosion and the silting of streams. All this affected the water supply for populations downstream, including Tanga, and caused irreversible destruction, not only to forest soils, but also to fauna and flora, some of which were unique to the Usambaras.

And the difference? In 1985, as a result of international criticism (the little African Violet played its part), FINNIDA were shamed into funding a survey to establish the exact species distribution in the area. This in turn produced the Amani Forestry Inventory and Management Plan (AFIMP) and in the following year SSM were stopped logging in the Usambara mountains. In 1988 FINNIDA started discussions on the East Usambara Catchment Forest Project (EUCF) which had as its aims: ‘the maintenance of essential ecological processes and biological resources for the people of Tanga region and the international community’ and ‘to allow the utilisation of forest related products by the local communities in a rational and sustainable manner’. FINNIDA was prepared to underwrite the project to the tune of US$23 million, with the Tanzanian Government contributing the salaries of their staff involved.

So far 50 good, but the second half of the report is taken up with describing the ‘can of worms’ that FINNIDA found themselves holding when trying to implement these very commendable objectives. In fact, it is not clear whether the new project had actually started work by the time the report went to press in 1991. The complications are too varied for comprehensive summary here but some of the main ones are:
– the villagers’ dependence on the crops and produce of the forest for their very meagre livelihood, and their demands (with the women’s demands presented separately) to be involved in the detailed planning;,
– the governments’ concern that a valuable timber resource should not be wasted, their need for the revenue and the pit sawers’ need for employment;
– the complications of surveying, demarcating and legislating for the Nature Reserves, Buffer Zones, Forest Reserves, Water Catchment Areas and Public Lands;
– the danger of duplication of effort and rivalry with a pilot project which has already worked with some success. This is the East Usambara Agricultural Development and Conservation Project, but it is generally known as the IUCN project (International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources);
– accusations of lack of communication between the various parties concerned.

This is a very worthwhile report which pulls no punches on either side. The authors recognise the urgent need for a project like EUCF to be started now in order to reverse the deforestation of the Usambaras, but at the same time they ask the question ‘Conservation for Whom?’ with the quote from an old man – “You cannot think about conserving genetic resources when you have an empty stomach”. Though weighted on the side of the aid receiver, this report should be required reading for all those involved in the identification and appraisal of forestry and conservation projects in the Third World.
F. S. Dorward

A HISTORY OF AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY. P Robertshaw (Ed) . James Currey. 1990. £15.95 THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY CARVED DOORS OF THE EAST AFRICAN COAST. Judith Aldrick. Azania. British Institute in Eastern Africa. Vol XXV. 1990. pages 1-20.

This article summarises the findings of research (which included the compilation of a photographic and descriptive catalogue of 100 doors in Zanzibar’s Stone Town) submitted to the University of Durham in 1998 for a M.Litt thesis.

The carved doors along the coast fall into several distinct styles, varying according to regional preferences, stylistic developments, status and prosperity. These doors can be catalogued into a rough dating sequence. Aldrick divides the doors into eight different styles, each clearly showing differences in construction method and in the details of their design and ornamentation.

Her Omani, Unframed, Gujerati and Zanzibar-style doors are found in Tanzania. The earliest dateable Omani style door comes from the gereza at Kilwa Kisiwani, with a date of 1807 or 1815. The doors’ styles develop variations through time which help to create a workable stylistic chronology for the nineteenth century. The stylistic origins of this type of door are found in the Persian Gulf.

Both Gujerati and Zanzibar-style doors are predominantly found in Zanzibar town. Originally imported from India, especially from Bombay, the Zanzibar style seems to have become popular because it was encouraged by the Sultans of Zanzibar in the 1880′ s.

The carved doors of the region also reflect changing trade patterns and prosperity. By the mid-nineteenth century the artistic influence of Yemen and the Red Sea declined as that of the Gulf and India grew. This period of prospering economy along the East African coast was reflected in the investment of the wealthy merchants in elaborate carved doors and new styles.
Alex Vines.

PENETRATION AND PROTEST IN TANZANIA. Isaria N Kimambo. James Currey/Tanzania Publishing House/Heinemann Kenya/Ohio University Press. 1991. £9.95. (Cloth £25.00)

It is convenient to summarise what this book is about. The first chapter ‘The Nature of Penetration: An Overview’ explains that “we know that the penetration of the capitalist trading system … was the main catalyst” and “from the second half of the nineteenth century to the end of the colonial period, the Pare people were in a continuous struggle for survival against the exploitive force of capitalism”.

The author describes Long-distance Trade, Imperialist Penetration, Peripheries of two distinct areas (North and South Pare) 1891-1928, Pare (Same) District 1928-47, including the Protests, Restoration of Production 1948-53 and Planning for Faster Capitalist Development 1953- 60. He concludes that “the colonial system had successfully created a ‘tribal’ unit for its own purpose”.

From the piece on the back cover of t he book you will also read that “These partial changes destroyed the Pare’s balanced subsistence structure” and “The colonial government tried to reverse the effects of the revolt without providing the kind of transformation desired by the peasants”.

As I was partly brought up in the “1066 and All That” historical school, it seems to me that the author clearly believes that Imperialism/Colonialism was BAD. It is not quite as clear whether capitalism was GOOD or BAD or, perhaps like the curate’s egg, good in parts.

This reminds me of Humpty Dumpty – “when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less”. Could the author explain what “peasantisation” means? Does ‘penetration’ mean complete force or only those parts he does not like?

To pursue this Imperialism/Colonialism matter it is useful to look at Paulo Mashambo, a non-violent leader during the MBIRU Popular Protest 1944-47, mainly about tax (a subject not unknown in England in 1991!) On page 102 we read “I memorised a lot of Bible verses which enabled me to find solutions to different problems … The Germans had a just rule. They could not allow loopholes… The Germans would punish the guilty but the British would free the guilty and punish the innocent”. It would have been interesting to get his biblical views on the similarities between the problems of the pre-capitalist Pare people and those of the garden of Eden; also between the Pare tribe and the wretched Ishmaelites who very rarely got anything right.

The whole chapter on Mbiru is import ant whether you agree or not with the authors’ view that “one can consider the action taken by the Pare peasants to have succeeded in achieving the intended results”.

However, some younger Pare people still consider that the tough action taken by the women in Usangi as the most heroic part of the protest. Is this perhaps why most of the illustrations in the book contain women and their traditional pots? (Apparently they did not think much of the modern wheel).

Less contentious are the Restoration Strategies 1947-53 described in chapter seven. They cover Local Government Reforms, Education as a Mobilising Tool including the Literacy Campaign, Community Development, Formal Education, Public Works especially Roads, Women’s Clubs and perhaps most important, Agricultural Production. These are covered in some detail and at least part are described as the Golden Years. But lest some should become too uppity, the author concludes “The colonialists achieved in this short period more than was planned – at minimal cost to themselves. It was a great achievement on the part of the Pare peasants”.

Equally interesting is the chapter dealing with Attempts to Plan for Development 1953-60 which includes the main points of the Smithyman (DC Pare) 5-Year Plan. This contained plans for Social Development, Development of Middle Pare, Road Systems and Surveys particularly irrigation soils, afforestation and the Pare Basin. Not surprisingly this ambitious plan was not entirely successful. For example,’ the local authority ‘ s effort to mechanise agriculture by buying a tractor, was disastrous. Worse still, they had to hire a capitalist contractor to do the job. The plan memorandum however was “a valuable document” says the author, but he adds that attempted implementation illustrates “the nature of peripheral capitalism under imperialism” if you can understand what this means.

There is much more in this book than I have covered in this review. Particularly one should have mentioned the crucial land shortage and over population, the dubious cooperatives, the sisal plantations, labour, the role of the Christian missions (not much is said about Islam) and so on.

The book has reminded me of some correspondence I had with Elspeth Huxley in which she wrote – “The problems of Africa are insoluble. That is why it is so fascinating”. So, although I cannot agree with Professor Kimambo’s opinions nor do I like his repetitive methodology, I admire his diligent research and references and I certainly enjoyed the nostalgia. I hope we will get another astringent book entitled perhaps “Freedom: Fantasy and Fact”.
B.J.J. Stubbings

LINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE NOVEL. S.A.K. Mlacha. Verlag Schreiber Publishers. Berlin. 1991.

This book examines lexical and grammatical patterning in Euphrase Kezilahabi’s 1975 novel Dunia Uwanja wa Fujo and the 1974 Kichwa Maji. In the first three chapters the author interprets frequency counts of various semantically-defined groups of verbs, and discusses how the writer uses these to portray the themes and characters of Dunia Uwanja wa Fujo and how they contribute to the structure of the novel.

The second half of the book explores the functions, both organisational and stylistic, of time and location ‘relaters’ (adverbials with a connective function in the narrative) and conjunctions. As in Chapters 1 – 3, frequency tables provide a point of departure for the analysis of patterns of use of particular linguistic items and the interpretation of their contribution to the novelist’ s purposes and overall style.

Much of the analysis is insightful and thought-provoking, and ought to provide interesting material for students of Swahili language and literature. The discussion raises a number of questions. In discussing the high frequency verb -fanya (‘Verbs of voluntary action’) Mlacha points out its importance in contributing to the theme of action, arising out of individual free will, which changes situations and feelings. He illustrates the latter with ‘Yote haya yalimfanya Anastasia asikitike badala ya furahi’ (‘ All these made Anastasia sorrowful rather than joyful’). Examples of this kind, ie. -fanya+verb, help to account for the relatively high incidence of -fanya, but this structure is only one of the ways in which coercian/causation is expressed in Swahili. Mlacha does not mention causative verbs, nor address the question of Kezilahabi’s choice of – fanya+verb eg. ‘ fanya … asikitike’ rather than verb with causative suffix eg ‘-sikitisha’. If use is made of causative verbs do they not also, like – fanya, contribute to the action and conflict themes discussed on pp 18 – 19?

Another query concerns the second part of the book. In the discussion (pp ’59 – 66 ) of ‘Time Relaters of Subsequence’ e.g. ‘baada’ , ‘halafu’, there is no mention of -ka- in the verb group as a marker of subsequence. Is this because Kezilahabi does not use this structure to mark the chaining of events or because the computer used for the frequency-count is not sensitive to bound morphemes? (It would also account for the lack of attention paid to the causative verb-suffix noted above). If, indeed, Kezilahabi makes little or no use of –ka it would have been useful to have had a comment on this.

It seems a pity to end on a carping note when so much valuable information is presented in this book. It is extremely irritating to read, not only because it is littered with a very large number of typographical errors, but because there are also serious shortcomings in the layout. For example, in Chapter 1, a group of verbs – I Verbs of Intellect’ – is presented and sub-divided into five sub-groups labelled A – E; with no new sub-heading of any kind, the text (p-16) goes from sub-group E to a completely new major verb-group – ‘Verbs of Volition’. Four sub-groups of volition verbs are listed, labelled G – J, at which point the reader turns back to hunt for sub-group F. Most of the Figures (actually frequency tables) are un-numbered, the third one in the book (pp 27-28) does get numbered – but, somewhat mysteriously – as 6.3. The heading for the ‘Place Definers’ frequency table is attached to the wrong table, ie. on p88 instead of p76. It is a great pity that the standard of proof-reading falls far below that of much of the content.
Joan Russell

JUST YOUR CUP OF TEA. BROOKE BOND IN MUFINDI. 1940-1990. Printed by Peramiho Printing Press.

Tom Brazier, Chairman of Brooke Bond Estates Group, expresses the hope in his Foreword that this 50th anniversary collection of stories will ensure that the achievements of all employees will not be forgotten. In fact such interesting technical and social history deserves a more comprehensive coverage than a mere 97-page paperback. Nevertheless, the ten authors involved have contributed 14 very well balanced short chapters which undoubtedly succeed in recreating for the reader a real flavour of the early days at Mufindi when life was both exciting and exacting.

The topics covered include the founding of the Mufindi Club in 1940, the Mufindi Rod and Gun Club in ’62, the building of St John’s Church which was dedicated by Archbishop Leonard Beecher in November ’60 and bird and plant life. In addition there is Colin Congdon’s hilarious ‘Nine Holes in Mufindi’ which he wrote for an earlier issue of this Bulletin.

Quite rightly, the major area covered is the development of 2,388 acres of semi-derelict tea which Brooke Bond took over from the Custodian of Enemy Property after he had confiscated the German-owned tea estates which in total covered 30,000 acres. Bert Dale recalls that in 1940 yields of made tea were as low as 143 Kgs per hectare. Rehabilitation was slow due to the unavailability of fertilisers and to the shortage of labour caused by the competing demands of the sisal barons.

Recruiters went as far afield as Ukinga in the Livingstone Mountains, 150 miles away as the crow flies; this meant that many men were taking six days to walk to Mufindi and for much of their journey their path was through man-eater country. George Rushby, who finally ended the 10-year reign of terror of the Njombe man-eating lions, wrote that the official figure of 800 reported deaths could easily be doubled as many deaths went un-reported!

By 1962, with the heavier use of fertilisers, especially nitrogen, yields had risen to 760 kg/ha. About this time herbicides were introduced enabling the twin problems of couch grass control and a spiralling wages bill to be overcome. The next breakthrough came in ’67 when Mike Carr conducted some very successful research into the water requirements of tea which resulted 1n a very substantial acreage being put under irrigation. This, combined with the use of compound fertilisers, gradually pushed up yields to reach a new peak of 2,500 kg/ha.

Like the line drawings (in Brooke Bond green ), anecdotes have been nicely scattered through the text showing that there was always room 1n a busy life for humour and sport . In the former category I like the extract from the office archives which reads:
1.4.58. The Assistant Company Secretary sent out a circular urging managers to indent for their wild oats immediately. Some responded! In November the Assistant Company Secretary left . On the sporting side I enjoyed picturing Bert Dal e coming down from Nairobi in 1940 already determined to build a golf course, and in anticipation, bearing a precious cargo, 1n those war time days, of s ix boxes of golf balls which he had winkled out of Craigs Sports House in Nairobi. The construction of the golf course was a labour of love with all the earth being moved by the headload. To fertilise the sites of the greens, ox dung was brought from Kinoga, 4 miles away, while t he second green received exceptional treatment; it was ploughed in a bed of bat guano which was carted from caves near Mbeya 180 miles away! All in all a delightful publication. If a pull-out map could have been inserted, so that some of the many place names could be located, this would have been an added bonus.
Geoffrey D. Wilkinson

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

ON SAFARI. IN THE STEPS OF BISHOP TREVOR HUDDLESTON. THE DIARY OF A JOURNEY TO MASASI. August/September 1991 by Eric James. Christian Action. £2.00.
A highly readable, very honest and lavishly illustrated 40- page booklet written by the person who is now preparing a biography of t he Bishop and who was looking for some background on which to base its Masasi chapter (the Bishop was there from 1960 to 1968). Bishop Huddleston has indicated, however, that he does not want his biography to be published while he is still alive.

THE CHURCH IN THE AFRICAN CITY by Aylward Shorter. Geoffrey Chapman. 152p. £9.95.
A useful, readable book, not only for I ts discussion of the church’s urban mission but also for its discussion of urban life. Examples are given from the author’s experiences while living in Tanzania and Kenya.

TANZANIAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES. Chief Editor – J. A.Ngasongwa. Development Studies Institute. Sokoine University of Agriculture. Vol 1. No 1. January 1991. Individuals $10 per copy . Institutions $20 each.
This ambitious first issue of a new publication contains 6 articles (on such subjects as the peasants, the story of community development in Tanzania and its present role, erosion hazard assessment, village afforestation and the psychology of property and work in Tanzania.

MONEY CREATION AND FI NANCIAL LIBERALISATION IN A SOCIALIST BANKING SYSTEM: TANZANIA 1983-88. Paul Collier (Oxford Univ) and Jan Willem Gunning (Free Univ, Amsterdam). World Development. Vol 19. No 5. 1991.
This highly technical 6-page article argues, inter alia that bank money used to finance the recurrent deficits of crop parastatals should properly be incorporated in government accounts and that there is a statistical equivalence between the total recurrent deficit so caused and the increase i n the money supply.

RELIGIOUS CHANGE IN A HAYA VILLAGE, TANZANIA. Journal of Religion in Africa. Vol XX !. Fasc 1. February 199 1.

THE WIDENING GYRE. THE TANZANIAN ONE-PARTY STATE AND POLI CY TOWARDS RURAL COOPERATIVES by Oda van Cranenburgh. Eburon, Delft, Holland, 1990. 245pp. Paperback.

THE EAST AFRICAN EXPERIENCE IN INTEGRATION. Conrad N. Nkut u. African Economic Digest. 12 August 1991, pages 4-5.
This article describes the collapse of the East African Community in 1977 and the reasons behind it. The article provides lessons which are highly topical as the heads of state of the three countries have now begun to talk seriously about reviving the community.

CONTRIBUTORS
Mr ZUL BHATIA was born in Dar es Salaam and currently works for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds at one of its nature reserves in the Scottish Highlands. He regularly visits Tanzania mainly to guide tourists round the National Parks.

Mr J. ROGER CARTER is Vice-Chairman of the UK Chapter of the Britain-Tanzania Society.

Mr FRANK S. DORWOOD OBE retired as Senior Forester with the Commonwealth Development Corporation after 32 years service eight of which were spent in Tanzania, mainly with Tanganyika Wattle Company. He has also visited Tanzania on forestry consultancies. He now lives in the Scottish Borders.

Mr PAUL A. ISBELL is a freelance writer based in Madrid. From 1986 to 1988 he completed a Masters Degree in Literature at the University of Dar es Salaam and is currently writing a book on the intellectual and artistic culture of the city.

Mr DALE POVENMIRE, who was formerly an American foreign affairs specialist, retired in 1986 and now lives in London. He was in Zanzibar in 1961-63.

Dr JOAN RUSSELL worked in Tanzania between 1957 and 1964, teaching at Bwiru, Butimba and Mpapwa. Since 1970 she has been Lecturer in Linguistics and Swahili at the University of York.

Mr B. J. J. STUBBINGS OBE has held many senior positions in Tanzania including District and Provincial Commissioner (in the then Northern Province) and Chairman of the Tanganyika Sisal Growers Association.

Mr ALEX VINES is the Africa Analyst for an international political risk consultancy. He has also worked as an archaeologist in Tanzania.

Mr GEOFFREY WILKINSON is a consultant in agricultural education. He served in the Agricultural Department in Zanzibar and Pemba in 1948-54.

NAKUMBUKA. Frank Burt. Excalibur Press of London £6.95 (+ £l postage).

The author, a typical product of the English public school Oxbridge background, from which many hundreds of colonial civil servants were drawn, saw service in Tanganyika from 1922 to 1946, first briefly, in the surveying department and then in administration, He became a district commissioner and during his long stay in Tanganyika worked in almost every part of that huge land, with all its variety, from the hot humid coast and the island of Mafia to the cool spectacular highlands of Njombe and Mbeya and the wonders of Ngorongoro.

Burt’s reminiscences are eminently readable and, despite the rather flat style and the absence of descriptions of the natural landscape in any colour or detail, do succeed in evoking a past that, although recent, seems now so remote. Those who shared his working life and the older reader will find nostalgia here and perhaps regret the passing of what was in many ways a noble way of life – essentially simple, often hard, occasionally even dangerous.

Unfortunately, for those unfamiliar with the colonial system or ignorant of Swahili, some terms – ‘boma’ ‘baraza’ ‘banda’ ‘fundi’ will be puzzling. There should have been a glossary of such words. Further, since Burt travelled a great deal, both to transfer from one posting to another and about his own area, there ought to be a map.

The book takes time to get under way. The earlier chapters contain too much that is anecdotal and the general reader would need more background fully to appreciate the difficulties of living and travelling for a European at that time in Tanganyika, although it must be said, later in the book, Burt does write well and vividly about safaris. The sheer logistics of moving people and large amounts of luggage around such vast distances were daunting. Add to the vastness the appalling roads – dusty in the dry season, quagmires in the rainy season – and the uncertainties of obtaining food and water, then one appreciates how tough and resourceful the likes of Burt had to be. Sadly, Burt is not adept at portraying his fellow human beings. There are dozens of people – British, Indian, African, German – who figure in the book yet none of them is a three-dimensional character. Burt’s wife is at best a shadowy figure and, at the end of the book, the reader really has no idea about the kind of person Burt was. We must have been conscientious and he must have enjoyed his work but he says almost nothing about himself and the opinions he holds about ‘the natives’ and missions are relegated to appendices tacked on at the end. He devotes a chapter to the colourful dress and customs of the Barabaig tribe, a people he clearly took a liking to, but the local people throughout the book are, as it were, part of the background – there to cook the author’s food, carry his luggage, guard him in moments of danger, act as guides or trackers when he went on a game hunt, never coming through as fully drawn human beings.

However, there are many incidents worthy of recall here; the thrill of the big game hunt, the interesting descriptions of methods to deal with huge swarms of locusts, the celebrations for the coronation of the new King and the many exciting journeys by car – the chapter on travel is one of the best.

The outbreak of war in 1939 involved the author in a truly bizarre episode; the arrest and internment of his German neighbours on the island of Mafia. These Germans, despite their Nazi leanings, had become Burt’s friends but they had to be locked up. It was done in a civilised way, without rancour, however, one of the Germans even inviting in the author for a drink before the arrest was made.

To the general reader who has had no personal contact with the colonial service, this book might seem oddly old-fashioned. Despite Burt’s obvious basic decency, his referring to the Africans as either ‘natives’ or ‘boys’ sets a jarring note but then he was merely reflecting the speech and the attitudes of the times. Burt hoped he always left his district better than he found it – an unexceptionable sentiment. Perhaps many more years must pass before the work of such as Burt and his colleagues can be seen in true perspective.
P.Barrett

RENAMO. TERRORISM IN MOZABIQUE. Alex Vines. Centre for Southern African Studies, University of York/James Currey/Indiana University Press. 1991. £7.95.

Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana RENAMO is a little known fighting force still controlling, after 14 years of fighting, large (but varying) areas of Mozambique. Very much more can be learnt about it by reading this carefully researched, fact-packed and detailed account of its origins (in Rhodesia), rapid growth (by 1982 it had infiltrated nine out of the 10 provinces of the country), its destruction of people and infrastructure (between 1980 and 1988 it had rendered inoperative approximately 1,800 schools, 720 health units, 900 shops and 1,300 trucks and buses), and its international ramifications, which included the involvement of Tanzanian armed forces in action against it.

The references to this Tanzanian involvement are few and far between but they are revealing. Several references are made to the very substantial contribution made by Tanzania in the original freedom struggle of FRELIMO against Portuguese colonialism – not the least of which must have been the patience needed by Mwalimu Nyerere in arbitrating between the unending series of FRELIMO splinter groups and coping with the internal and external intrigues described in the book.

We also learn that Tanzania is believed to have spent some US$ 3.5 million in aid to FRELIMO, that perhaps some 1,000 Tanzanian troops were stationed in Mozambique as long ago as 1983 and that the number increased later to some 5,000 to 7,000. Bulletin No 30 has further information on this. The troops were finally withdrawn in 1988 after a reported loss of some 60 lives.

RENAMO is said to have been active sporadically on Tanzanian soil. The author writes ‘It is thought that there is some sympathy for it amongst Muslims especially in Zanzibar and along the coast due to rumours of Islamic repression by FRELIMO. In 1984 the Tanzanian authorities foiled an attempt by Portuguese sympathisers to construct an airstrip in Southern Tanzania …… Tanzania was harbouring some 60,000 refugees in 1990’.

The author does not take sides and clearly aims, in a situation of continuing obscurity, to discover the truth. For example, in writing about the extent to which RENAMO’s support amongst the peasants might have been increased by the programme of Villagisation forced on them by FRELIMO, he states that this was true in some areas but not in others. “The issue that really lies at the heart of the villagisation policies is that they needed to be implemented with sensitivity especially in respect of geographical, regional and traditional structures….experiments were successful in the south amongst the Gaza-Nguni, who had historical experience of living in larger village units….but this was not the case in other areas. Here Villagisation actively encouraged the peasantry to support RENAMO (against FRELIMO’s over-centralised economy which displayed all the worst features of Portuguese bureaucracy and Eastern European central planning. While the programmes in health and education were dramatically successful the economic policies were ill-suited to a basically peasant society….” Shades of Tanzania perhaps?

Secrecy still prevails about Tanzania’s support of FRELIMO against both the Portuguese and RENAMO. Perhaps, if the negotiations which have taken place recently between FRELIMO and RENAMO, which are described in the book eventually prove successful, the wraps will be lifted and we can have another book like this in which Tanzanians would be able to express the same pride about their support to FRELIMO as they do about their destruction of the Idi Amin regime? – DRB.

LESSONS FROM TANZANIA’S EXPERIENCE OF RURAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM. M. D. Mutizwa-Mangiza. International Journal of Public Sector Management. Vol 3. No 3. 1991.

Nearly thirty years of time and a full swing of the pendulum from conventional local authorities, through a ‘deconcentrated version of decentralisation’ and back to local authorities – such is the story of local government in Tanzania since Independence. And in this article, remarkable for its combination of detail and brevity, we have the whole story in just six pages. Of course, Tanzania is not alone in facing problems in determining the most satisfactory form of local government – the poll tax issue has highlighted the extent of the differences of opinion in Britain. Perhaps we can all learn something from Tanzania’s generally rather unhappy experience.

The author explains that there have been three historical periods in Tanzania: 1961-1972 – the original British system modified after independence by the replacement of generalist officers by political appointees, the abolition of chiefdoms and the setting up of development committees; 1972-1982 – the ‘Decentralisation’ period during which elected district local authorities ware abolished and regional, district and ward development committees were established; and, post-1982, a return to classical local government.

The author mentions some of the lessons to be learnt from these changes. They might be summarised as follows:
– party politics and local government can only work together if they maintain separate identities and legal accountability;
– the financial dependence of local authorities on central government needs to be reduced;
– it is not true that central government knows it all, can do it better and can do everything;
– provision of adequate finance is essential and there is danger in leaving central government to obtain donor assistance for projects which local governments then have to maintain; – the fact that Tanzania has been able to experiment boldly (in an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary way) because of its political strength and stability, its willingness to admit mistakes and to chart new directions when necessary – DRB

LOW COST URBAN RENEWAL IN TANZANIA. COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN DAR ES SALAAM. Sababu Kaitilla. Cities. Vol 7 No. 3. August 1990.

This 11-page paper begins interestingly with the story of the historical growth of Kariakoo (a phonetic Swahili pronunciation derived from the ‘Carrier Corps’ who were stationed in the area during the First World War). Kariakoo is an area of 130 hectares immediately to the west of the Dar es Salaam harbour and the city centre. It developed from what used to be, in the 19th century, one of the coconut plantations of Sultan Seyyid Majid of Zanzibar. After Dar es Salaam became the headquarters of the German East Africa Company the population increased rapidly to 5,000 and Kariakoo was carefully planned on a rigid gridiron street pattern. In subsequent years Kariakoo became more and more densely populated and by the 1980’s the author describes it as having roads and drainage in a very poor state of repair, with erratic and irregular garbage collection, a very old water supply system widespread use of pit latrines, lacking totally in open spaces and suffering from environmental vandalism and the uprooting of any trees that were planted.

The paper then goes on to give the results of an interview survey of a small sample of inhabitants of Kariakoo – l18 owners and 337 tenants – in which, surprisingly, most people seemed to be well satisfied with their housing conditions. Amongst the complaints were of lack of space and privacy (an average of 2.3 persons occupied each room) and the need for repairs and maintenance.

The main object of the survey however, was to find out the extent to which the inhabitants would be willing to participate in urban improvement. 78% of landlords and 65% of tenants were willing and able to make financial improvements to housing conditions but only 30% were willing to contribute financially or through ‘sweat equity’ (an original turn of phrase!) to improvement to the neighbourhood. A quarter of the landlords insisted that the maintenance of urban areas was the sole responsibility of the Dar es Salaam City Council to which they paid monthly charges -DRB.

TANZANIA: DEMORACY IN TRANSITION. H. Othman, I Bavu and M. Okema (eds). Dar es Salaam University Press. 1990.

Readers of the Bulletin will be aware that Tanzania is currently conducting a Presidential Commission into whether it should abandon its one-party system and allow a multiplicity of political parties to operate. Haroub Othman, one of the authors of this book, is a member of that Commission. A long-awaited study of the 1985 elections, it asks on its very first page, ‘Can democracy be defined only as the right to have a vote, or the existence of a multy-party system?’ No answer is forthcoming, but the authors’ position seems to be that, within the one-party system, electoral policy and practice did allow for the exercise of a degree of democratic choice. In 1985 there was a high election turn out, considerable competition for election as candidates, and a choice of candidates for the electorate, even ministers being unable to stand unopposed. In this election 42% of MPs lost their seats, including one minister and several long-standing members. According to two of the contributors to this volume then: ‘the 1985 parliamentary elections must be seen as a serious democratic exercises; elections were not “stage-managed affairs in which the party hierarchy decides who will win”.

What is of especial interest in this set of studies is its focus on the response of the electorate: thwarted in Mbozi when the locally favoured candidate was not allowed to stand, the number of spoilt votes was the highest in the country; brutally frank in Rombo where allegations were made openly about one of the candidates appropriating the school Lorry to ferry his crops illegally across the border to Kenya; more generally cynical, believing that the real motive of candidates was to eat at their expense.

Set against the assertiveness of the electorate there is evidence of the way the electoral system under one-party rule rendered opposition illegitimate, or defused it within the Party embrace. Only 10% of the electorate were members of the Party but its ‘choice’ was limited to candidates chosen by the Party. The electoral process worked effectively to stifle debate on policy issues, with Party control over the questions which could be asked of aspirant MPs, and a ban even on applauding or jeering a candidate. As one study notes: ‘The state expects a docile audience’.

What I found lacking in this book was any attempt to arrive at conclusions in the debate over ‘democracy’, given the initial questions raised, or even to set this debate in a wider theoretical context. If, as many have argued, democracy is more than ideological posturing, if it requires a degree of economic development and relief from grinding poverty to allow the poor to do more than ask unpalatable questions, or sink into the paralysis of cynicism, then searching queries about social inequality and political participation need to be put on the research agenda. These issues are not entirely neglected here – and the evidence in the political domain was contradictory, On the one hand the proportion of peasants, workers and trade unionists amongst MPs was infinitesimal, but businessmen (sic) were also poorly represented; the government had undermined the capacity of MPs to abuse their position for personal enrichment, although this still remained the major complaint of the electorate. Women were guaranteed a proportion of seats, but as candidates they could be subjected to chauvinistic assumptions and ridicule. (In Morogoro Urban where this appears not to have been so, and where an Asian woman candidate won the election, the issue of gender inequality is not even raised). What is missing is an analysis of this data in relation to the question of democracy; will the Commission do better?
Janet Bujra

STATE INTERVENTION, CONTRADICTIONS AND AGRICULTURAL STAGNATION IN TANZANIA – CASHEW NUTS VS CHARCOAL PRODUCTION, B.C. Nindi, Public Administration and Development. Vol 11. 127-134. 1991.

The stagnation which characterised Tanzanian agriculture for many years is not a simple problem nor does it stem from a single cause according to the author of this paper. Prof Nindi describes what happened in Rufiji District when the government tried, on a number of occasions, to arrest the serious decline in cashew production (it fell from 6,500 tons in 1973/4 to 1,276 in 1977/78 – for a variety of reasons which are explained in the paper). In 1975, after the failure of an earlier attempt to increase cashew production, a by-law was passed which prohibited the burning and selling of charcoal to force peasants to concentrate on working on their cashew nut farms. Marrket places were closed down, and restrictions on movement were instituted. 90 peasants were taken to court for not tending their cashew fields. But there was no increase in cashew production. However what happened was that peasants started to produce charcoal for storage until the cashew campaign ended and the ban on sales of charcoal was lifted. Thus, as the author points out, on the surface the peasants seemingly acquiesced but in reality they managed to avoid government directives. There is more in this paper than this particular series of events but this case does illustrate the unwisdom of organising agricultural development through civil service controls – DRB

LANGUAGE PROMOTION FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES: THE EXAMPLE OF TANZANIA.
Casmir Rubagumya. International Review of Education Vol 37 No 1. 1991.

This is a very valuable discussion paper for all those who are interested in the problem of whether to use English as an official language in Africa, or indeed for those who want to consider the use of English as an important second language anywhere. Unfortunately it raises far more questions than it answers, but that in no way invalidates its conclusions.

The historical analysis which the author gives is scholarly and well written. In the last part of British rule Kiswahili was still being devalued; indeed there were still instances of pupils being punished for speaking any language other than English in schools. This of course was by no means confined to the African colonies. In the earlier years of this century Welsh children were regularly beaten or otherwise chastised for the same ‘crime’ of speaking their own native Welsh.

During the 1969’s and 70’s however, under the impulses of a resurgent nationalism in Tanzania, Kiswahili was much improved. Then things changed. Tanzania had run into economic difficulties and the 80’s saw a great boosting of English as the language of economic advancement, even salvation. All this raises fascinating questions. Firstly, it really is essential in any consideration of this entire subject to lay what I would call the colonial myth. It may well be true that the Coloninlists down-graded the native language, in this case Kiswahili. But constant playing on this theme in no way helps towards a solution of present problems. The truth is that many other countries, especially relatively small nations and economies, are in the same difficult boat and they were not Colonial at all. Finland, for example, finds that, with few people outside its own borders speaking Finnish, its professional people literally have to possess a very good working knowledge of English for the country to survive in the modern world.

Secondly, one can’t evade the economic facts of life. The major fact is that for most technological and professional research over two thirds of the world (and that is probably an under-estimate) speaks either English or American English. The vital questions for countries like Tanzania are when you should step up your instruction in English and how many people should be affected. There is clearly no point, for example, in forcing peasant farmers to become fully professional in English if they are never going to need it. The whole question comes down to one of balance – and I freely concede that it is a difficult balance to strike.

I believe that Mr Rubagumya’s strong plea for secondary education to be conducted in the vernacular is probably sound but I would add a number of important caveats. English instruction should be available even in primary schools wherever possible. At secondary level the quality of English teaching must be enhanced and that does mean including at least one period of English instruction per day for all those pupils likely to pursue a professional career. Moreover, doctors, lawyers, and many businessmen (and all those training for such careers) are going to need more instruction than that, and some scheme should be worked out for such students in the top classes of secondary schools and in higher education. In short, there is no reason why you should not preserve your vernacular and keep it as the first official language, AND also make yourself fairly proficient in English, but if you fail to do the latter, it may well have permanent and damaging effects on your economy and international relations. Its a hard world, but those are the ground rules at the moment.
We mush, be grateful to Mr Rubnaglarnya for opening up such a vital subject with enthusiasm and skill.
N. K. Thomas

THE STATISTICS OF SHAME. Clive Sowden. Geographical. September 1990.

In this highly informative and concisely written 3-page article an analysis is made of some disturbing recent UNICEF statistics, particularly as they apply to Tanzania. The author first contrasts Tanzania” poverty as measured by Gross Domestic Product Par Capita – ‘Tanzania is getting poorer with that of other countries in Southern Africa, GDP in Tanzania in 1988 was S160 per person. In 1987 the figure had been $210. But in ‘Welfare Indices’ (eg: % of adult females literate, % of pregnant women immunised against Tetanus, % of one-year old children immunised against Polio) Tanzania compares well with many of its neighbours. But, the author notes that for one key indicator of development – the under-five mortality rate, the figure is high – l79 per 1,000 Live births compared with 11 in Britain.

UNICEF’s ‘Statistics of shame’ are selected indices of female welfare. Particularly grave is the gap in maternal mortality – Tanzania 370 per 100,000 livebirths, industrialised countries less than 10. The author refers to the contributory factors – the double disadvantage of being female and poor… the placing of women’s nutritional needs second to those of men…the lack of contraception…the burden of food production. Fertility rates are high in Tanzania – an average of 7.1 in 1987 but there are regional differences.

The article goes on to discuss the effects of malaria, marriage custom, religion, education, and population growth. The author points out, however that statistics are often unreliable – for example, many infant deaths and births are not recorded in Tanzania – DRB.

INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS IN TANZANIA. Nigel R Mansfield and Salum Mkulumanya I Sasillo, Project Management. Vol 8 No 2 May 1990.

This 5-page article, which summarises the results of a survey made in 1987 amongst private local contractors/consultants, international consulting engineers and the University of Dar as Salaam, may not contain much which is new to readers of ‘Project Management’ but, for others contemplating investment or construction activities in Tanzania it provides useful check lists of the problems likely to be faced and also some clear recommendations on possible solutions.

Problem are summarised in order of priority as follows:
– lack of funds, local and foreign;
– shortage of building materials, spares and fuel;
– disbursement procedures;
– lack of coordination during execution of the project;
– lack of proper establishment and failure to mobilise equipment at the early stages;
– poor performance by the contractor;
– bureaucracy;
– donor’s policy requirements;
– increased quantity of work.
After a discussion of these issues and the problems connected with currency restriction and joint venture the authors then go on to suggest improvements in which they put particular stress on the need for clear definition of various elements in the “engineering manpower spectrum” and strategies of technology transfer. They recommend inter alia complete package deals, enforcement of contracts, fair financial arrangements, avoidance of the awarding of contracts to contractors and consultants from the same country, greater recognition after on-the – Job training and a more businesslike rather than public service approach – DRB.

IN TELEKI’S FOOTSTEPS. A WALK ACROSS EAST AFRICA. Tom Heston. – Macmillan. London 1989.

This book recounts the remarkable journey of the author, first on a bicycle end then on foot, between February end December 1983, from Pangani in Tanzania to Mombasa in Kenya where he celebrated the end of his journey with a cold Tusker beer on the verandah of the Castle Hotel. Tom Heaton had been working for the BBC in Kenya for 10 years and at the age of fifty, after living a luxurious but boring life in Kenya, decided that the only way for him to unravel some of the mysteries of East Africa was to travel simply. He hoped to replace the envy and suspicion he had previously experienced in travels in Kenya with sympathy and curiosity.

After much deliberation Heaton decided that the route for his journey, some 3,500 miles, would retrace the route taken by two 19th century explorers, Count Samuel Teleki and his travelling companion Ludwig von Hoehnel, the first Europeans to pass through Kikuyuland and penetrate the area North of Lake Baringo. Heaton set out with the support only of his wife Mary. Many of his friends predicted that his fate would be unsavoury, ‘the thugs of Kikuyuland will pounce end strip you naked … you will be speared by the Hamar Kuhe from Ethiopia and your testicles turned into necklace beads’. Heaton, arguing that he was as likely to be run over by a bus in Oxford Street, set off from Pangani with his guide Desmond (a potential troublemaker, partly due to the fact that he regarded every black face with suspicion) heading for Mauia on the left bank of the Ruvu river, where Teleki had made his first camp.

About a quarter of the book deals with the Tanzanian part of the journey. It tends to be rather superficial but good on description.

Heaton writes about the ‘dusty weariness’ of a Church in Mkuzi, the ‘sprawling slum’ Muheza, the never failing generosity of the people, the Usambara mountain range – ‘its stately gazelle-dun buttresses jutting out as though through rents in a vast curtain of gold, blue, orange and green velvet thrown loosely over its mass’; the Butu forest in Same district – ‘some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen’.

A chapter is entitled ‘Marealle’. Heaton talked in Moshi to the son of the famous Chagga Chief Merealle – ‘not only had his father befriended Teleki. but he had also become involved with the notorious German adventurer Carl Peters.’ Heaton refers at each stop to Teleki’s earlier experiences. He also has something to say about present politics. ‘Arriving from socialist Tanzania in capitalist Kenya is like stepping out of Albania into Greece – on one side lies a land of sapped energies and respectful greetings; on the other you crash into a Hogarthian tide of men and women seething all around you … a land where men are judged not by what they are but by what they have.’

His travels are full of incident; losing his bicycle temporarily under a Mango tree, being attacked by a swarm of African bees (‘I was carpeted from head to foot … but ten minutes later I gradually realised that it was not only their feet I could feel, but their tongues; the bees were drinking my sweat’); facing a bush fire and having to pedal away as fast as he could.

The dangers and disasters which are recalled in detail together with his humour and understanding of many of the people he met and situations he found himself in, make this an extremely readable book . Patricia Diop

THE GUNNY SACK by Moez G Vassanji. Heinemann. 1990. F4.95.

BLACK, AMBER, WHITE by J K Williams. Churchman Publishing. 1990. £5.95.

Black, Amber, White is a disappointing book. It promises well, purporting to give an account of Tanzanian legal services in which the author worked from 1951 until his retirement in 1965. It should therefore be packed with incident and excitement. Here was a colonial country looking forward to independence and relying heavily on its courts and justices to steer the way forward. The first years of independence, in particular , must have been full of interest and many new developments in the law.

Unfortunately Williams does not catch the flavour of these years in a meaningful way. He tells us a good deal about himself, his family and his daily travels but rarely looks at the wider scene. When he does so he says very little. Even the accident with his gun in Arusha, when he could have killed his wife, seems somehow undramatic. So often in the book it is because his style is flat and proseic. His book revolves so much around himself and his rather small world that it does not see the huge questions hurtling around him. What is the role of the judiciary in a fast developing, newly independent state? Whet powers should be given to the judiciary and what different powers to government? Should capital punishment still be carried out for the most serious crimes? There is no shortage of questions . The real need is for some stimulating answers, and these we do not get. Those readers who want a plain, unvarnished tale of how Wlll1ems spent his colonial years might find it mildly interesting biography. But if they are more demanding and want the wider picture, they will, alas, be as hungry and unfulfilled at the end as at the beginning.

The Gunny Sack, by contrast, is a marvellous piece of writing. Salim Juma, a Tanzanian Asian, is left a gunny sack by his mystical grand aunt. Nicknamed ‘Shehru’, this gunny pours out for our entertainment, and enlightenment a huge number of characters and incidents which mirror superbly the Asian experience in East Africa over several generations.

The novel has three great qualities which should commend it to readers far and wide. First and foremost it has from the very early chapters the most beautiful word-pictures of life in Tanganyika, especially before the first world war. His description of the two ‘jewels’ – the German farmers Herr Graff and Herr Weiss – are very funny and sad at the same time, and convey with such precision the whole flavour of German rule that we are given a remarkable insight into a world that seems now so far away, and yet shaped the world we have now. And the menace of that German rule is conveyed so swiftly. “Sometimes Guu Refu’s arrival was preceded by news that he was on the lookout for more men for a special project; and as soon as the lanky figure with the sunhat and the rifle was sited, towering over his Askaris, men and boys scurried towards the forest, at which sight the German and his mercenaries stomped after them in their heavy boots, cutting off their paths to safety.”

And in these pictures Vassanji has used caricature, satire, and occasional farce with marvellous effect. This is the hallmark of good, perhaps even great writing.

The second remarkable quality of this novel is its very clear, direct style. Vassanji has such sure mastery of his material, and even moral depth, that he does not need to play tricks. Above all his work has breadth and vision. He knows his people so well that he can glimpse a wider world beyond them and set his memories in such a firm context that they live absolutely, on their own terms. Fine style and extraordinary use of language are the keys to his art in which there is no deception. His publishers seek to spread his fame by subtitling his novel ‘Africa’s answer to ‘Midnight’s Children’. I have news for them; they have undersold him. This novel is considerably more powerful and much more clear in its vision than anything done by Mr Salman Rushdie.

Its final strength is that it tells a great story and holds the reader from first to last. Vassanji is quite simply a fine story teller, in addition to all his other achievements. Even his treatment of Tanzanian independence, and the views of Julius Nyerere, never get bogged down in political sterility. His work has all the integrity of an artist. He never lets his story wait for second hand analysis or sociological dispute. Here is, in essence, a fine vision of four generations of life in this Asian community, and there is very little indeed which compares with it, in depth of thought and the sheer compassion of its colourful prose. Get it – and read it IMMEDIATELY.
N. K. Thomas.

(The author of the Gunny Sack is the recipient of the 1990 Commonwealth Literature First Novel Award. According to Ahmed Rajab writing in AFRICA EVENTS Vassanji now joins Ngugi and Abdirazak Gurnah as the finest East African novelists writing in English at present – Editor).

BED IN THE BUSH by Wllliam Heleane. The Book Guild Ltd. 1991. £12.95

William Heleane, a new Zealand District Commissioner in colonial Tanganyika has written an authentic and amusing novel, based largely on his own up-country experiences in the decade preceding independence. The intriguing title is taken from Robert Louis Stevensons’s romantic poem ‘The Vagabond’ and indeed a golden thread of romanticism runs through the book which vividly portrays the sights, sounds end scent of the African bush.

The precise location of his imaginary Magonda District is anyone’s guess but from various clues tantalisingly scattered through the pages it would appear to be in the old Central Province – an amalgum perhaps of Manyoni and Kondoa Irangi given enough poetic licence to shift the railway a bit!
The day-to-day life in this archetypal ‘one-men station’ is faithfully depicted in a series of exciting scenes set in his hero Stephen Ashton’s time.

The often unconscious strain of being on duty 24 hours a day is well expressed in descriptions of the problems of providing food and accommodation for a variety of visitors appearing at short notice by road, rail or even air in response to constant crises of Mau Mau, leopard men murders, man eating lions and plague, and the more mundane claims of increased cassava and cotton production, fish farming and VIP visits….

The author paints sympathetic portraits of a greet variety of characters ranging from the larger than life European officers, missionaries whose latest eccentricities, here accentuated by their relative isolation in the bush, to Asian merchants and Africans old and new.

Indeed Mr Heleane shows great insight in understanding not only the tribal peasant farmers and their chiefs with whom he mostly has to deal but also with the growing number of educated African administrative officers, nurses and so on who were entrusted to his care for training and guidance.

Despite the obligatory legal disclaimer et the front of the book some of the characters seem vaguely familiar !

A delightfully hopeless love affair runs through the book lending a more precise relevance and poignancy to the excellent title. There are some lovely descriptive passages which evoke dream-like memories. ‘As I gazed at the early evening shadows on the plain I became aware of a blue-tinged veil over the land below me. This phenomenon was visible from high ground in this part of Africa quite often in the dry season. It never failed to stir a shudder of delight and wonder in me. I gloried in this one for a few minutes end the fairy shade slowly dissolved and disappeared and it was dark’.

It may seem churlish to refer to a few proof-reading errors such as ‘Provisional’ for ‘Provincial’, Agriculture end Education Officers, the Swahili ‘Anasemu’ for ‘Anasema’, the German ‘Dectch’ for ‘Deutsch’ and so on. Incidentally, the King’s African Rifles was certainly not the local equivalent of the French Foreign Legion, whilst Tanganyika became independent in 1961 not 1962. These minor errors apart, however, I can safely commend this book to older readers who wish to relive the past and to the younger ones who will read how it was from the ‘horses’ mouth’ . Randal Sadleir

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL POLICY IN TANZANIA. Felician S. K. Tungaraza. Journal of Social Development in Africa. Vol 5. No 2. 1990.

This paper analyses the development of social policy in Tanzania from 1961. From then until 1967 social policy was urban based and aimed to influence economic growth; afterwards it was oriented towards the broader population. Social policy has been determined by economics and politics. Amongst the sub-sectors of social policy throughout the period up to 1983 the health sector had the highest real growth (11. 7%) with education second at 7.4% – DRB.

WALUGURU TRADERS IN DAR ES SALAAM. Paper by Jan Kees van Donge of the Agricultural University, Wageningen, Netherlands presented to the African Studies Conference, Birmingham, 11-13 September 1990.

This paper contains few figures. It concentrates on the business careers and life stories of migrants to Dar es Salaam from the Mgeta division of the Uluguru mountains, south of Morogoro. It is thus both easy to read and fascinating to follow.

It begins by comparing the various other ways 1n which contemporary African society has been studied impersonal economic mechanisms, capitalist development, entrepreneurial behaviour. The paper points out how these various factors work out in practice. Virtually everybody in the area trades from time to time; the backbone of the trade is vegetables grown in the mountains and subsequently sold in Dar es Salaam.

As the story of the various individuals who were studied unfolds certain factors are repeated over and over again; unreliabllty of income; land scarcity in Mgeta; stiff competition; the physical hardship of the life of the traders; the unstable partnerships between new entrants and more established traders even though often framed in kinship terms; the constant threat of bankruptcy; the ambiguous relationship with government authorities and the frequent raids by the police; the widespread ambition to avoid physical wage labour; the aspiration to obtain a legitimate stall from which to sell; and, the totally ingrained value of individualism with, at the same time, a very great need for cooperation to survive.

Some of the traders are successful. Gaudens Thomas is one of the big men at the market. He tried many other things before becoming first an illegal trader and then having his own legal stall. He now has two houses. He is secure! – ORB.

PERSISTENT PRINCIPLES AMIDST CRISIS. C K Omari (Editor). Uzima Press for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. 1989. £8.95 (incl. p&p)

The first major benefit in this study is that it should have been published at all in East Africa, at a price that gives it a chance of being accessible to students and decision makers in Tanzania. The Editor, his contributors and the publishers are to be congratulated on making this possible.

The study is a great deal more than the title implies – in fact a comprehensive, in depth analysis by leading Tanzanian commentators of the economic and structural problems of the Tanzanian economy over the 30 years since Independence. The context is comparative analysis – Tanzania’s ideology and resulting policies against real economic development problems. However, the studies as presented, with the exception of a useful presentation of extracts from Nyerere’s writings on Tanzanian economic development and a less useful theoretical/ideological analysis of agricultural and rural development policy by Maganya, concentrate on a rigorous empirical analysis of structural, economic and financial problems in the economy’s development. The main focus is on agriculture but the logic of comprehensive analysis is followed through in informative chapters on population growth, the balance of trade, industrial development and financial and budgetary policy. Presentations are academic in the best sense of the word – analysed in depth and carefully documented – but intelligible to the lay reader.

The study should become essential reading in all undergraduate courses at the University of Dar es Salaam. It should also concern aid agencies and the officials of the IMF and the World Bank, as an example of a genre all too absent from debate on Structural Adjustment and Transformation Policies – African analysis of African problems. The difficulties created by this lack of input are now gradually being recognised, for example in the recently launched African Capacity Building Initiative, but will take time to work through.

The one major criticism that could be made is of the failure to move from exhaustive analysis of causes and symptoms to prescriptions for reform. For example, on the ‘agricultural/economic crisis’ that has dogged Tanzania for the last 15 years, both Miti and Omad provide excellent and comprehensive analyses of alternative causes drought, collectivisation/villagisation, population growth, inappropriate technology, relative emphasis between cash and food crop production and availability of finance. Hesitation in going on to policy prescription is understandable as the choice and solutions are so difficult. But more effort could hove been made. Even the one article that concentrates on policy – Wagoo’s critique of the IMF package for Tanzania – sticks very much to analysis. Someone, and preferably a Tanzanian expert, has to take the lead in defining reform programmes. Not least of the reasons for policy definition is the psychological need to move beyond the extremely depressing picture presented of current economic reality.

One last small but valuable addition that could be made to any reprint. Some of the authors are well known, some are not; the overall impact would benefit from brief biographical notes on contributors.
Gsrth Glentworth

(The above book is available from Leishman and Taussig, 2b Westgate, Notts, Southwell, Notts – Editor)

TAXING DEVELOPMENT IN TANZANIA: WHY MUST WOMEN PAY? Janet Bujra. Review of African Political Economy. No 47/48. 1990
LIMITATIONS ON WOMEN MANAGERS’ FREEDOM TO NETWORK IN THE TANZANIAN CIVIL SERVICE. Wendy Hollway. University of Bradford. Paper presented at the African Studies Conference, Birmingham. September 1990.

Janet Bujra uses the issue of development tax to examine the role of women in the Tanzanian economy, and particularly in its development. She combines some familiar questions about feminism and development in a fascinating study of the Tanzanian experience. The argument for a feminist perspective is made against a background of ‘Womens Studies’ in Tanzania; she highlights the tensions between the perception that the issue of womens position is a unique factor in society and an analysis which includes it in a broader context of class and national exploitation.

Tanzania’s explicitly socialist development policy implied greater equality for women and Nyerere himself drew attention to this. At first glance the Ujamaa policy of village production provided an opportunity for greater participation by women, but Bujra shows that, in fact, it added to the burden of women, while the policy continued to be dictated by men. Other development policies, too, ignored the particular role of women in Tanzania particularly as primary subsistence providers and fuelwood gatherers. Many of the classic development errors caused by consulting men, when women were the relevant group, were repeated in Tanzania – with adverse consequences for both the development programme and women.

Bujra investigates possible solutions to this problem, including the ‘Women in Development’ Way. However, this concentration on the role of women can be itself divisive, by concentrating on the ‘token’ women involved, without a more holistic approach to the community. Just as the theories of women’s role had concentrated on different aspects, the practical WID approach could be disappointing, and be hijacked by particular groups and classes of women for their own advantage. Bujra shows throughout her article that Tanzanian women have traditionally done more work and exercised less political influence than men. Moves to accelerate development, even when these were overtly socialist or aimed at women, merely exacerbeted this imbalance. Thus Bujra concludes that the inclusion of women in liability for a development tax on grounds of their equality is unconvincing – they already pay a tax in kind through their greater contribution. Indeed a tax would reinforce the iniquities already present in the economy.

The reinforcement of existing power structures is the theme of Wendy Hollway’s paper on networking in the Tanzanian civil service. This details a familiar story of social systems which provide opportunities for advancement for men and from which women are excluded. This exclusion is due partly to domestic responsibilities and partly to inaccessibility because of social custom. Hollway reports on attempts to remedy this through women’s networking within the civil service – where it has had mixed results. However the success of such groups in promoting women’s careers depends in turn on the access which the groups have to those in a position of power and influence.

Both these papers analyse the role of women in Tanzania, and attempt to remedy inequalities of opportunity and contribution. Both show what a slow and painstaking task it is to redress imbalances as deeprooted as these. Those who hold power (in this case men) are unlikely to yield it willingly, and will continue to use existing structures and new developments to reinforce their advantage.
Catherine Price

CHOICE OF TECHNIQUES AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN TANZANIA: THE CASE OF THE SUGAR DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION. Samuel E. Chambua. Canadian Journal of African Studies. Vol 24. No 1. 1990.

This detailed seventeen-page study examines the factors which have influenced the choice of techniques of production in Tanzanian public enterprises with specific examples taken from sugar factory operations. The author begins by describing the conventional way in which managers choose the most appropriate technique. He goes on to describe the history of the sugar industry. The first company – the Danish-owned Tanzanian Planting Company was established in Arusha-Chini in 1930 and its first factory, with a capacity of 350 tons of cane per day, began operations in 1936. Then followed the Madhvani-owned Kagera factory (1958), the Kilombero Sugar Company in Morogoro district (owned by the Colonial Development Corporation from Britain, a Netherlands company and the Standard Bank) in 1962, the Greek owned Mtibwa Estates in 1963. In 1974 the parastatal Sugar Development Corporation took over the whole industry.

The author describes the various efforts made to make Tanzania self sufficient in sugar production and then analyses the two main sugar producing processes. He argues that the technique chosen, which involved heavy capital investment, was not the most appropriate. He describes the problems the industry has faced because of such factors as tied foreign aid, lack of standardisation, under utilisation of plant, low production of cane, shortage of labour and so on – DRB.

RESPONSES FROM BELOW. A TALE OF TWO TANZANIAN VILLAGES. Goren Hyden. Food Policy. August 1990.

Weak institutions are often cited as a major constraint to overcoming hunger in Africa. The author of this too brief six-page aper spent time in 1988 in two Villages – Mung’elenge on the main trunk road in Iringa region and Bulungura in a distant corner of Muleba district, Kagera Region, studying local institutions. He writes of the ‘parental authority’ of the CCM Party, the assumption that a village consists of 250 households organised into cells of ten with a village government or committee of about 25 (with obvious variations between villages) but noted that in his two villages the committees never met. But in Mung’elenge official institutions (including the womens and youth organisations) did play a prominent role in village life, partially because there were revenue earning activities including a sunflower project, beer sales and ox carting. In Bulungura, by contrast, an almost non-existent revenue limited the scope of village government. They tended to rely on ‘home grown’ institutions. Hyden asks who is responsible for food security. Is it a communal responsibility or not? Answer: In Mung’elenge, where weather conditions are good, it is an individual responsibility; in Bulungura which is less favoured climatically it is communal.

The author concludes by noting the disappointing results from the government’s desire to have uniform institutional structures all over the country and the great institutional adaptability that this has brought about in Tanzania. ‘There is much more than meets the eye’ – DRB

DAVID LIVINGSTONE. LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS. 1841-1872. Editor: T Bolmes. The
Livingstone Museum in association with Multimedia, Lusaka, the Indiana University Press and James Currey, London. 1990. f. 30.

This selection of letters and documents, many of them previously unknown or unpublished is without doubt a major contribution to Livingstone scholarship and also an important footnote to the history of African exploration. It covers four areas of Livingstone’s life and travels: the early years (]841-1853), the Zambezi Expedition (1857-1864), the Interlude in Brilain (1864-1865) and finally, the Last Journey of Livingstone (1865-1872).

It is obviously the concluding section which is of most interest to serious students of Tanzanian history and affairs but, unfortunately, though the time-span covered is long the letters during this period are few and far between. There are very many gaps so that we simply do not know what Livingstone was doing or thinking in any detail for much of his time In Tanganyika as it was then called. But one must be grateful for small mercies. There is sadly no letter or document here which describes 1n Livingstone’s own words anything of his famous meeting with Stanley at Ujiji. If there had been it might have thrown a valuable light on an encounter which has probably been seen with at least some distortion, through the eyes of Stanley alone. But there is a lot of detail of the last great journey and one feels something of the strain and loneliness of the explorer’s life in its last phase.

Livingstone’s desperate search for the source of the Nile, which grew more feverish with each passing year, is brilliantly recorded in his own words. ‘I hope’ he writes with eagerness, ‘I am not premature in saying that the sources of the Nile arise from 10 to 12 South – in fact where Ptolemy placed them. The Chambezi is like the Chobe 40 to 50 yards broad … but the country is not like that at all .. it is full of fast-flowing perennial burns .. . we cross several every day … and crossed the Chambeze in 10 34 South”. This was written near Lake Bangweolo on 8th July 1868 and in the same letter he gives vent to some of his frustrations. He complains bitterly of much needless annoyance by two blockheads, the busybodies on the Council writing ‘instructions for my guidance and demanding all my notes – copies if not originals’. This, of course, is only one of many quarrels with his official sponsors in Britain, and there 1s considerable sadness as well as anger in his comment in another letter – ‘all who serve me will have a good lump of wages to show. When I have finished I shall have nothing except empty fame and sit down as a slave and copy my notes for the gaping busybodies of the Council’. How many of the world’s finest composers, artists, writers and creators would echo that comment!

There are marvellous insights into his life and character in these closing years, full of grim humour and superb courage. In a letter of 1872 to W. C. Boswell sent from what he merely describes as ‘Tanganyika’ he wriites, ‘Did I dream that Baker had all his guns taken away from him by niggers of whom he speaks so contemptuously – I could not pitch into even slaves without being certain of finding them all gone through the first night afterwards, but he thrashed them and the Arabs and they carried him meekly while I have to tramp every step I go.’

This is the last letter but one and to some extent the iron has enterred his soul. The accumulated effects of so much labour, hardship and privation, quite apart from the sheer loneliness of this final march, had taken its inevitable toll. And as he makes his way by grim determination from Southern Tanganyika to the borders of the country now known as Zambia, the threads of his life begin to unravel. But they are marvellous letters, full of description of the natural landscape and the African scene he had made so much his own. And we must be very grateful for them and to the editor, Timothy Holmes, for giving us the opportunity to hear Livingstone the man speaking directly of the land he loved and yet sometimes cursed – the land which seemed not to want to let him go.

An excellent book and probably more moving than any mere book ABOUT Livingstone could possibly be.
N.K. Thomas

FOOD INSECURITY AND THE SOCIAL DIVISION OF LABOUR IN TANZANIA 1919-85 by Deborah Fahy Bryceson. Macmillan/St Antony’s College, Basingstoke and London. 1990.

This solid book brings an impressive range of material to bear on the problems of food supply in Tanzania. The author has been writing on related subjects since the mid- 1970’s. As a result the volume has a sense of drawing together many themes: the roles of women in production and reproduction; the nature of patron-client relations in Tanzania; the relationships between peasants, markets and the state.
The many short chapters are gathered into six substantive parts. We start with a statement of the problem ‘Roughly 85% of Tanzania’s population live in rural areas and derive a liveliehood directly from the soil, yet the country has experienced repeated shortfalls of food supplies during this century’ (p 1)

Various theoretical approaches to food supply within historical development are applied to this paradox. Particularly interesting here is the inclusion of Preobrazhensky’s prophetic views on the extraction of surplus from peasants by the state in the Soviet Union, which, as Bryceson notes, became the strategy in the Tanzania of the 1970’s

PROJECTS OF THE PEOPLE OR FOR THE PEOPLE: A LOOK AT VILLAGERS’ PARTICIPATION IN THREE PROJECTS IN TWO VILLAGES IN TANZANIA by J. Mannion and E. Brehony. Public Administration and Development . Vol 10. No 2. 1990

This paper examines the extent to which Villagers participated in three Irish NGO-supported projects (in forestry, agricultural extension and oxen training) at Ismani in Iringa Region. The conclusion of the study was that there was very little involvement of the villagers and that while village government leaders were involved by the project organisers often they did not reflect villagers’ views. Although democratically elected the elections were ‘often shabbily run affairs’ with the first twenty or twenty five names mentioned being elected by a voice vote.

In one case studied there was no great enthusiasm to be a ‘ten-cell’ village leader (these leaders had the main responsibility for implementing the projects but were not part of the decision making process) because the previous ten cell leaders had all been fined for not implementing government policy, a policy which required Villagers to plant two acres of sorghum.

The main factors influencing participation by Villagers were described as the strength of the leadership, the sex (males were more involved), age (older people were more involved), marital status (married people being more involved), literacy and adult education (literate people were more involved). The authors conclude with these words: ‘Perhaps Camus best sums up what participation is attempting to do:

Don’t walk before me I may not follow
Don’t walk behind lie I may not lead
Just walk beside me and be my friend.’

THE SERENGETI. LAND OF ENDLESS SPACE. L. and S. Lindblad. Elm Tree Books. London. £ 25.

This is a coffee table book of many splendid photographs interspersed with four articles by people who are much involved professionally with African wildlife: Alan Earnshaw, Keith Sh8ckleton, Sandy Price and Lisa Lindblad. It is not a book to use in order to obtain details of flora and fauna or statistics 8bout present-day Serengeti but it 1s a pleasure to read and to look through leisurely, and it does convey a lot of information in some depth.

The first article, ‘Ash, Rain, Earth, Fire’ covers the pre-history of the area including the geological formation and how our ancestors lived. It begins, of course, with an imaginative account of how the footprints discovered by Mary Leakey in 1976 came to be made 3.6 million years ago. The fact that the scene has changed little over 4 million years adds to the mystique of the area. ‘Consequently the great web of life on the savannah, the whole intricate network of interrelationships between soil and vegetation, vegetation and herbivore, herbivore and carnivore, has coevolved over an immense span of time.’

The second article, ‘Cycled Rhythms’, deals with animal life. We should remember that in 1890 Rinderpest struck East Africa and in two years about 95% of wildebeest and buffalo died. It was not until the early 1960’s that this disease was eliminated. This makes the great migration of today all the more remarkable. The point is also made that the herds cross the border into Kenya’s Masai Mara and remain there for four months. ‘The Serengeti-Mara cries out for a unified management , with power and courage, a level horizon, sufficient sense of urgency to bury national and tribal prejudice and see the place for what it is – a wild heritage’

The third article, ‘Preserving the Serengeti’ traces the human management of the Park. In 1929 900 square miles were set aside as a lion sanctuary by the colonial government which was somewhat alarmed at the excesses of hunters. All legal hunting was stopped in 1937. In 1940 the Serengeti, including the Ngorongoro Crater Highlands, was made the first National Park in East Africa. In the 1950′ s there followed some debate between government and conservationists culminating in 1957 in the final setting of the Park’s bound8ries. The Ma8s8i were then banned from the Central Highlands. In 1975 they were banned from cultivating in the Crater area and the Olduvai Gorge.

Various names which we need to remember are mentioned such as Professor Grzimek and his son Mich8el; Miles Turner, the first and long-serving Warden of W. Serengeti; and, Dr G. Schaller who writes the Forward to this book. George Schaller is quoted as having introduced ‘conservation biology’ which seems to me what our attitude today should be. He says ‘The biologists collect scientifically precise information about the ecosystem … we take this knowledge to direct conservation of resources, to help human need, to help local people to sustain the environment.’

The fourth article is a brief history of the Maasai connection with the Serengeti, learned through personal friendship with a Maasai elder. There is inevitably a thread of sadness running through: ‘When you take a nomad’s land away you are altering so much more than a pastoralists lifestyle .. . you are erasing his stories, the collective memory of his culture, the map he must give his children so that they can find their way back to themselves.’ But perhaps it is the same for all of us to some extent as we become more and more city folk. It is just that the Maasai, also the Ndorobo and others, are nearer to the event.
George Schaller says: ‘At least once in a lifetime every person should make a pilgrimage into the wilderness to dwell on its wonders and discover the idyll of a past now largely gone … There dwell the fierce ghosts of our human past, there animals seek their destiny, living monuments to a time when we were still wanderers on a prehistoric earth. To witness that calm rhythm of life revives our W8rm souls and recaptures a feeling of belonging to the natural world. No one can return from the Serengeti unchanged, for tawny lions will forever prowl our memory and great herds throng our imagination. ‘

This is a good book to read before making that special visit to the Serengeti, and even if you are unable to go at all.
Christine Lawrence

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY Of AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN KENYA AND TANZANIA. Bruce F Johnston. Food Research Institute Studies. Vol XXI . N03. 1989.
This paper is based on a chapter of a forthcoming book on the political economy of agricultural development and structural transformation by Bruce Johnston and others commissioned by the World Bank’s Economic Development Institute and supported by the Stanford Research Institute. On the basis of this paper the book should be a must for all followers of the effects of political ideology on agricultural and rural development. The paper presents an excellent and comprehensive summary/comparison of the differences in the rate and nature of agricultural development in Kenya and Tanzania over the past three decades, analyses clearly the differences in Government ideology and resultant agricultural sector policies and their effects and discusses why the Governments of Kenya and Tanzania chose such different approaches to development.

There are similarities in their physical and agricultural characteristics, colonial background, dominance of agriculture in their economies, total populations (Tanzania 22 million, Kenya 20 million) and amount of aid received. However, they have important differences, notably the population growth rates (3.8 to 4.0% in Kenya and 3.2 to 3.4% in Tanzania), the degree of colonial commitment to agricultural research and infrastructure (much greater in Kenya) and the transport networks (relatively poor in Tanzania and good in Kenya).

The major difference however has been the in the economic performance. In Tanzania the growth in per capita GNP increased at an annual rate of 0.9% between 1965 and 1984; it was US$ 210 in 1984 but since (and perhaps contrary to the author’s expectations) has declined to USS 120 in 1989. In contrast, Kenya’s per capita GNP increased at an estimated 2.3% between 1965 and 1984; it was US$ 350 in 1984 and US$ 380 in 1989. In short, in Tanzania the economy underwent a worsening crisis in the seventies which, by 1982, brought the economy of the country to the brink of economic collapse, a deteriorating food situation and shortages of all types of goods. By contrast, Kenya achieved considerable economic success over the same period.

The author maintains that internal factors (ie ‘unfortunate government sectoral and macro-economic policies’ would have given rise to the crisis and difficult food situation even without the exacerbating effects of some external factors (ie: the sharp rise in oil prices, the breakdown of the East African Community, the Uganda War and poor weather conditions). These ‘unfortunate’ policies adversely affected the six ‘I s’ necessary to influence agricultural production, namely: incentives, infrastructure, inputs, institutions, initiatives and innovations.
The causes of these adverse effects were, in summary: a) excessive bureaucracy and authoritarian intervention by government officials who lacked confidence in small scale farmers and their decision-making abilities; b) compulsory villagisation (ujamaa); c) disruption of agricultural marketing by government, leading to a deterioration of production incentives; d) a proliferation of parastatals; e) a large budget deficit (due to investment in industry, regional expansion of health, education and water supplies and financial assistance to ailing public corporations /parastatals).

In Kenya the dynamism of the rural economy was a result of the favourable government policies which positively affected the six ‘I s’ referred to above. The main reasons were, in summary: a) the emphasis on small farm production; b) the development of cash crops by smallholders ie: tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, pyrethrum and modern dairying; c) the essential point that the choice of what to grow was left to individual smallholders; d) the continuity of policies and smooth transition from colonial to independent rule (despite the Mau Mau emergency of the 195O’s and independence in 1963) due to the influence of Kenyatta and British civil servants; e) the benefits of greater colonial involvement in agricultural research; f) innovations such as policies for arid and semiarid lands and self-help ‘Harambee’ activities in relation to improvement of rural social services; and, g) greater expansion of secondary education.

The essential differences between the two countries were therefore the greater ability of smallholders to earn cash in Kenya and the lack of government intervention in Kenya as compared with excessive public sector interference and inappropriate and unstable agricultural policies in Tanzania.

The reasons why the respective policy makers chose different approaches clearly lie in ideological differences. In Tanzania the main aim was removal of inequality (through socialism). In Kenya the government favoured accumulation of wealth (through capitalism) rather than its redistribution. In Tanzania the dominance of a bureaucratic class with vested interests in enlarging control over agriculture had a negative effect on small farmers and muzzled local initiatives. In Kenya official government policy was to permit civil servants to engage in private business activities. This capitalist elite has a strong self interest in a prosperous agricultural economy.

As regards the future the author concludes that in Kenya, due to basic problems of high population growth and lack of additional good agricultural land, agricultural growth and the agricultural economy may deteriorate; due to problems of inequity he accepts that political instability may arise. Tanzania’s economy however is likely to improve as a result of macroeconomic policy reforms adopted in 1986, devaluation, and liberalisation of the marketing of agricultural products so as to positively affect producer incentives.

Overall, the paper provides a compelling analysis of the changing patterns and ups and downs of development in which the lessons for emergent agriculturally dependent economies are clear although the whole picture is far from complete.
Ian Talks

UNESCO GENERAL HISTORY OF AFRICA. ABRIDGED EDITION. Volumes I, Il and VII. Editors respectively J. Ki-Zerbo, G. Mokhtar and A. Adu Boahen. Different editors for each volume. James Currey Publishers. May 1990. £4.95 each volume.

This history, which is being undertaken as a result of an instruction given to the Director General of UNESCO at its 16th General Conference, ‘does not seek to be exhaustive and is a work of synthesis avoiding dogmatism’ according to the International Scientific Committee set up in 1970 to organise its production. Two thirds of the thirty nine members of the committee are African. ‘The aim is to show the historic relationships between the various parts of the continent’. The fact that the history seems to achieve this aim means that those interested primarily in Tanzania may be disappointed.

Volume I which covers Prehistory might well prove the most satisfying to a Tanzanian readership. Much prominence, with illustrations, is given to the 1.8 million-year-old fossils of hominid form found in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge. It is useful to have them placed in the context of all the other fossil forms discovered around the world including even older ones in South Africa. At Olduvai, and also in Kenya, Indonesia and China, excavators have discovered what is now known as Homo erectus which were more advanced on the evolutionary scale than any of their forerunners. As this history, in which there is a refreshing absence of the ‘triumphalism’ of which the Leakeys have been accused, puts it, ‘whether Homo erectus was the final stage of development leading to Homo sapiens remains uncertain’.

Tanzania is mentioned as one of the homes of the earliest known humanly fashioned tools – 3 to 1 million years ago – small quartz fragments showing signs of cutting and wear. Tanzania’s well known rock paintings of the Late Stone Age also get a mention as well as do tools of the Acheulian industrial complex 190.000 years B.C.

Volume II – The Ancient Civilisations of Africa – is less informative on Tanzania – if the index is complete! The small separate groups of Sandawe and Hadza peoples of North Central Tanzania are described under the heading ‘The Southern Savannah Hunting Tradition’. There is also extensive coverage of the Kushitic pastoral tradition of Lake Victoria and the crater highlands of Northern Tanzania and what is described as the ‘now rejected Hamitic Myth’ is briefly debated. ‘The point is that, while the more illogical and romantic aspects of the various and vaguely stated Hamitic hypotheses do derive from prejudiced European scholarship and grotesque attitudes towards Africa, the factual bases of these views were not entirely fictitious. Some of the observations were acute and certain of the historical interpretations very judicious’

Readers of the Bulletin are likely to be more familiar with the history of the period covered in Volume VII – Africa Under Colonial Domination 1880- 1935. To them therefore this volume will be less satisfactory. There are however numerous scattered references to ‘Tanganyika’. ‘The methods of European advance varied from place to place … on the whole they were characterised by the use of force combined, where possible, with diplomatic alliances … The response of Tanganyikans also varied. The coastal people clashed with the Germans in 1888, the Hehe in 1891. But the Marealle and the Kibanga near the mountains of Kilimanjaro and Usambara, allied with the Germans in order to defeat their enemies’.

This volume treats issues of interest to Tanzanians with extreme brevity. The ‘Missionary Factor’ in Southern Africa is covered in half a page and the Tanganyika African Association, which was founded as long ago as 1929, gets a paragraph. The whole area of ‘Politics and Nationalism in East Africa 1919-35’ is covered in nine pages and most of these concentrate on the situation in Kenya. There are scattered items here and there which may be debatable such as that ‘the Africans in several highland areas of Tanganyika won against the colonial authorities (in the planting of coffee) faster than the administration could destroy the trees’.

To sum up, these volumes are highly readable and contain a vast amount (1,106 pages) of interest to historians, professional and amateur alike. The volumes are also quite remarkably good value for money – DRB.

FAMINE IN EAST AFRICA: FOOD PRODUCTION AND FOOD POLICIES. Ronald E Seavoy. Greenwood Press, New York. 1989. £ 38.70.
(This review appeared first in the International Journal of African Historical Studies’ – Editor)

The intention of this book is to provide new insights into the centuries old problem of famine in East Africa. The reader is informed in the Preface that the author has already established the ‘revolutionary distinction between subsistence and commercial social values’ in a previous book. Bracing oneself for further mind-expanding revelations, one is not left in suspense for very long. In Chapter 1 the differences between peasants and the rest of the world are outlined. According to the author, the view that peasants are poor, lack income and employment, and are dominated by non-peasant classes, is thoroughly false. This view overlooks the essential truth, namely, that peasants are ‘indolent’. The rest of the book is primarily an exercise in citing literature to illustrate this point. Dr Seavoy has a fairly large bibliography and there are many authors who would cringe to see their work interpreted in this way. Because the boundaries of East Africa are never clearly established, the reader is bombarded with citations from all directions. Looking at the maps, however, one assumes that the book’s focus is Tanzania. Indeed the argument centers on Tanzania.

One important qualification to the argument relates to gender. Dr Seavoy equates ‘peasants’ with male peasants. Wives and children of ‘peasants’ are extremely hard working. High fertility is a clever strategy on the part of the peasants to avoid more work. It is never explained why wives and children are not gripped by a commercial weltanschauung despite their successful triumph over indolence.

The author seems unaware that he 1s not the first to rail against ‘lazy natives’. The theory of backward sloping labour supply curves and target workers is portrayed as a reality of the present day. The author bemoans the fact that development economists, marxist social scientists and senior political leaders of East African nations have all overlooked the essential truth. Both Nyerere (p. 178) and McNamara (p. 225) lack understanding of the fundamental indolence of peasants. As far as the author is concerned, Nyerere’s villagisation programe did not go far enough and the World Bank is completely wrong to suggest that peasants should receive higher producer prices since they are, after all, target earners. It seems that the only way that peasants are going to experience a ‘commercial revenue’ is through more forceful coercion. In the author’s words: ‘A policy of creating and rewarding commercial cultivators thus requires large investments In full-time police, paramilitary units, and an army …. Contrary to what most development economists believe, investment in armed force (sic) is one of the most productive investments that can be made by the governments of peasant nations …. All armed forces must be prepared to enforce commercial policies on peasants with maximum amounts of violence if necessary (p. 26).

One has visions of Dr Seavoy in a tank mowing down all those misguided development economists and Marxist social scientists who are ‘devotees of the cult of the peasant’ (p. 221), clearing the way for his single-handed conquest of peasantdom.
Deborah Fahy Bryceson

TANZANIA: AN AFRICAN EXPERIMENT. Rodger Yeager. Second edition, revised and updated. Dartmouth publishing Co. Aldershot. 1989.

The first edition of this book, published in 1982, received warm praise; this present second edition is no less meritorious. Dr Yeager’s ability to write clearly and with the minimum of technical jargon will recommend this text to the general reader, while the African specialist will find a great deal of well-researched and -referenced material for study.

As the author points out in his preface, much has happened since the first edition went to press. He singles out two events in particular, the ‘near collapse’ of the Tanzanian economy find the retirement of Mwalimu Nyerere from the Presidency. ‘These turning points have caused me to re-examine the Tanzanian experiment and to record the result in this new edition’ he explains (p. xi).

The substantial part of the revised text deals with the economic crisis resulting from Tanzania’s balance of payments difficulties in 1979 which led to the country’s approach to the IMF the following year. Dr Yeager reviews the debate that opened up in the ‘party government’ between the pragmatists and the idealists, between those prepared to accept elements of the IMF’s free market/private enterprise medicine, and t hose who remained committed to the principles of Ujamaa socialism even when they involved considerable material sacrifice.

While the author has presented both sides of the debate with a measure of objectivity, his own preference for a pragmatic solution, ‘without sacrificing the larger goal of an equitable and democratically integrated social order’ (p. 150), emerges strongly in the concluding chapter, where he rejects ideologically-motivated social engineering projects such as the villagisation scheme of the mid- 1970’s and ‘resource draining benefits’ such as the subsidisation of urban food prices (pp 150-51).

However, Dr Yeager does not show how the politics of pragmatism will make Tanzania less dependent on developed countries, and in on earlier chapter devoted to its international position, sets out the goal of ‘interdependence (between Tanzania and its trade/aid partners) under acceptable terms’ (p 141) without indicating how this can be achieved. As his book demonstrates, Tanzania has become more dependent on outside aid and investment throughout the 1980’s, with loans from the international agencies like the IMF, further aid from donor nations, the return of transnationals like Lonrho and a series of currency devaluations to assist exports. Events since this text went to press, such as the December 1989 $1.3 billion international aid package, provide further evidence of this trend.

Of course, one must appreciate the fact that Tanzania’s options are severely circumscribed, as event s before the 1980’s crisis – dealt with fully in this revised edition – indicate.

The Tanzanian experiment, launched by the Arusha Declaration (1967), had won the sympathy of many doctrinaire leftists (and moderates too) in the West, who hoped that ‘self reliance’ would enable Tanzania to lessen, possibly end, its dependence on the developed world. Its highly publicised shortcomings have been explained in terms of (inter alia) climatic and environmental problems, policy and planning mistakes and an excess of zeal by party activists associated with villagisation. All of these factors are discussed in some detail by Dr Yeager.

His book is less successful when it comes to the macroeconomic factors responsible for the country’s poor performance in the 1970’s and 80’s: the ‘scissors effect’, the steady deterioration in its terms of trade with the ‘North’ – expressed in Mwalimu Nyerere’s reference to the increasing quantity of sisal the nation had to sell to keep up with the rising prices of Western tractors; the widening economic gap between North and South highlighted in the Brandt Report; a continuing crisis in the global financial system following the breakdown of fixed exchange rate mechanisms in the early 70’s; and the international debt crisis of the 1960′ s.

It is true that these global factors – mentioned for the most part only cursorily in this book – cast a different light on the mistakes made in the past by the Tanzanian Government. But it is also true that resolution of these structural problems in the world economy is beyond the ability of anyone government (whether in the North or South).

In the meantime, immediate and pressing economic problems demand immediate solutions. Whether or not President Mwinyi and his colleagues will discard the Tanzanian experiment along the way only time will tell, but few readers will dissent from Dr Yeager’s conclusion that so long as advances continue to be made in health, education and other social services, roads and marketing facilities, agricultural credit and cooperat1ves, and local government institutions, the nation and community-building core of the Tanzanian experiment will remain intact.
Murray Steele

SUPPORT OR SUBVERSION: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FARMING SYSTEMS RESEARCH AND TANZANIA’S RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY OBJECTIVES. Larry S. Lev and Ann L Shriver. Journal of Rural Studies. Vol 6. No 1. 1990. 12 pages.

This paper states that its aim is to facilitate improved communication between Farming Systems Research personnel and national policy makers; it points out that the long-term success of any farming systems approach is dependent upon effective cooperation with government. The paper then compares and contrasts the two different approaches in a Tanzanian context during recent years.

It writes that since independence Tanzania has embarked upon a wide variety of rural development initiatives including the introduction of communal production systems, the massive resettlement programmes, price controls and the establishment of parastatal marketing agencies. These policies were formulated to achieve specific societal goals such as greater equity, the provision of social services and the feeding of the urban population. In contrast, the Farming Systems Approach focuses on understanding the problems and opportunities of individual family units and on setting in motion a process of technology generation that will increase the productivity of these families.

In the early years these approaches were far apart. Recently, however, although Tanzania has been adopting a variety of new more liberal agricultural policies it is still not clear whether the state’s involvement in the country’s economic life will change since no clear commitment to a change in the overall ideology of state control has yet been articulated. The current phase may represent an attempt to maintain donor financing by acceding to external demands for reform rather than through a fundamental reduction of the role of government.

Because the current era is more friendly to the farming systems approach, policy makers are displaying a growing acceptance of the wisdom and rationality of farmers and hence an interest in the collection of data that can assist in determining farmer reactions to infrastructure investments and policy actions. The government’s decision to rely increasingly on the carrot rather than the stick meshes closely With the farming systems approach philosophy.

WAGON OF SMOKE. AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE EAST AFRICAN RAILWAYS AND HARBOURS ADMINISTRATION. Arthur F. Beckenham. Cadogan Books Ltd. 1989. £16.00.

According to a review in the ‘Overseas Pensioner’ this 200,OOO-word 400-page book covers the period between 1948, when the largest public transport under taking in the whole of the British colonial administration was inaugurated, through the merger of the Kenya and Uganda Railways and Harbours and the Tanganyika Railways and Port Services into a single organisation, and 1961 when the inter-territorial East African High Commission underwent its metamorphosis into the East African Common Services Organisation. For the rail way buff the book is said (in the review) to represent a veritable encyclopaedia of professional details, technical data and the minutiae of institutional history. There are three dozen illustrations and numerous maps, diagrams, tables and the names of over 150 locomotives – Editor.

TANZANIA: SURVIVING AGAINST THE ODDS. A CAFOD Report by Seamus Cleary. 1990. £1. 0
This is a 36-page booklet of seven chapters in which the author writes concisely about the geography, the history and the people of Tanzania as well as its relations with Southern Africa and the current state of its economy.

HERE BE DRAGONS. A TV Channel 4 ‘Survival’ Film June 6 1990.
A young piano pupil played a gentle pastoral piece with brisk determination until her interpretation became tender at the thought of eating lemon ice cream in the bath. I wonder if a Grumeti crocodile has tender thoughts. He probably thinks of his last banquet which may have been months ago. He and his companions seem too large and too many for the meagre reserves of fish, frogs, nestlings or small mammals that they can catch, scavenge or steal.

The first part of this film concentrated on these crocodiles. The tiny Grumeti river flows westward through the Serengeti to Lake Victoria. By the end of the dry season it has shrunk to 8 series of pools. Before that an army of wildebeest thunder towards it during their migration. They stop to drink. The nearly submerged predators are waiting. All is quiet until a thrashing crocodile leaps up and drags a wildebeest into the water. Other crocodiles join in and the carcass is torn to pieces. Of the thousands of wildebeest, the crocodiles kill a few dozen. The rest continue their journey. The crocodiles are satiated and live off this banquet until the same time the following year.

The next part of the film takes us across Lake Victoria, over the tumultuous Murchison Falls to the waters of the Nile below. Beyond the torrents crocodile mothers come to land to lay their eggs. In so doing they not only provide for the future of their race but for the future of many other creatures. They are unwilling providers of food. Predators wait until the dangerous mothers are away to steal and eat some of the eggs. When the mothers are present they have no chance. In fact the monitor lizard lives dangerously and is so nervous that he can be scared by the aggressive display of a dikkup. The dikkop chooses the crocodile beach because of the unwitting protection the crocodile can give, and she can deceive her by feigning injury and luring her away from her nest if the crocodile shows interest in it. Weaver birds live overhead protected from snakes by the presence of the crocodiles. The mother crocodile digs to free her babies when she hears them chirping and, as soon as they are hatched, carries mouthfuls of them down to the river. Equal numbers are snapped up at the nest by eagles, monitor lizards, the marsh mongoose and others. When the mother crocodile has rescued all she can she stays with them in the river. They often rest on her back and are utterly charming, but, in spite of all her efforts, only one or two will survive into adulthood.

The team of Alan Root, Mark Deeble, Victoria Stone and the officers and scientists of the National Parks of Tanzania and Uganda deserve our thanks.
Shirin Spencer

FILOSOFA’S REPUBLIC. Thursday Msigwa. Pickwick Books. PO Box 925. London W2 IFA. Hardback £11.95. Paperback £5.95.

The flyleaf of this book begins: ‘Every African country needs its founding genius. The Republic of Ngombia is fortunate to have Cicero B Nyayaya, President For As Long As He Likes and originator of the brilliant doctrine of Human Mutualism. Known to million disciples throughout Africa and Scandinavian universities as ‘Fi1isofa’, his world famous Harisha Declaration set forth the principles of Human Mutualism in plain, straightforward language that a child could understand and inspired generations of aid-workers and Dutch volunteers. In this book, Thursday Msigwa, writing through the eyes of a white visitor to Ngombia, shows us the enormous difference that Human Mutualism has made to life in an Ngombian village ….’ Each chapter is headed by a quotation from the writings of the Filosofa. Paul Marchant has written the following review – Editor.

Any worthwhile book prompts the question’ whom is this Intended for? I say ‘book’ advisedly, because it leaves open the further question ‘what sort of book is it?, A novel, I suppose. Or, at least a novella: just 120 pages divided into some dozen un-numbered chapters.

It is essentially a polemic. It paints an exaggerated picture of good intentions at the top and hard and corrupt reality at the bottom. Written in the first person, it is an entertaining account of the experiences of a European expatriate in a recently independent African country. There are no prizes for guessing which country. The style is smooth and attractive and the pseudonymous author has an occasional quite original turn of phrase.

However, it has a number of defects and that raises the question of who the likely readers are, because the value and enjoyment of the book are directly proportionate to the knowledge the reader has of the country in question. This is especially so because of the way in which the author subtly – and not so subtly – is set throughout on demeaning ‘Filosofa’. The tone is set as early as page 4- ‘Filisofa was not against modern inventions like the wheelbarrow’ and quoting as one of his favourite sayings ‘anyone who possessed more than the average man must have stolen it’ not to mention his use of the provocative word ‘masses’ in the Marxist sense.

Comparisons inevitably come to mind: Evelyn Waugh, Chinua Achebe, Joyce Carey, not to mention Candide and the ‘Notes from Overground’ published a few years ago by ‘Tiresias’.

But in comparison with eg ‘Candide’ Msigwa lacks the light touch and is too relentlessly downbeat, sour and sarcastic. He is lacking in both understanding and sympathy. For the former one need only consider his attitude to Father Ordonez, a Spanish missionary with a rather dictatorial approach (‘he had been born in the wrong century; he should have been one of those priests who went to America with the conquistadors to supervise forced conversions’) and remember while doing so the long-term, slowly-slowly-catchee-monkey approach which Cardinal Tan set for the White Fathers a century ago – one should live one’s life by one’s own lights and there is no need to thump the desk and judge success only by the number of people converted to the faith. Expressions of sympathy are rare and grudging in this book as on page 62 where the author ‘revised somewhat’ his opinion of the villagers’ laziness. Self-reliance, a major element in Filosofa’s philosophy, gets its first, (and almost only) mention, over two thirds of the way through the book.

The author occasionally seems to show some slight reservations about what he all too often asserts as incontrovertible, as on page 95 when, stating that the villagers resented being charged by the Mission, he has the grace to add in parenthesis ‘so I am told’. Any of us who have lived any length of time in such a country know only too well how Mission dispensaries were preferred to the government variety precisely because they made a charge.

Msigwa covers his traces well but very occasionally his position (and origins ?) show all too blatantly: ‘rage inwardly as we might’ he writes about some further ‘unjust’ imposition on the poor plantation of which he was an employee, they gave in because they ‘knew it was a condition of permission to trade in Ngombia at all’. So why not go elsewhere to trade? Equally revealing is his use of ‘loyal’ as meaning apparently, ‘useful’ or ‘reliable’. And having said that ‘there was no justice in Ngombia to subvert’, nevertheless, only a page later he has a momentary twinge for the wretched Henry Muhema who, although an upright and Christian long-serving foreman in the company, had been found guilty after a conspiracy by his deputy.

I suppose my reservations about ‘Filosofa’s Republic’ are due to its author’s apparent lack of interest in probing beneath the surface, except when events hit him so squarely between the eyes that even he (like the anti-hero in Stoppard’s ‘Professional Foul’) is forced to question his self righteous assumptions.

A HISTORY OF LEPROSY IN TANZANIA. African Medical and Research Foundation. P. O. Box 30125. Nairobi. 1989.

Leprosy is a chronic inflammatory disease caused by microbacteria and it is a major cause of disability throughout the tropics and subtropics with an estimated 15 million people affected. Despite its feared reputation it is one of the least contagious of the communicable diseases. It has a long incubation period and the disease has an extremely prolonged course.

Knud Balsev in this booklet provides a fascinating insight into the disease in Tanzania and the approach to its treatment and management. In the 1860’s Livingstone and Stanley both reported leprosy as a common disease. Fear of infection led to epilepsy being sufficient grounds for divorce for both husband and wife in the Bahaya tribe of West Lake Region and in Zanzibar. The attitude towards leprosy by the general population in the late nineteenth century was similar to that described in the bible and characterised by fear. Often it was ascribed to sorcery or to the breaking of certain taboos and, although in some places, leprosy was considered as a disgrace, in others there was no stigmatisation. Early missions in Tanzania found that they were caring for many leprosy patients and leprosy camps developed around these missions. The French Holy Ghost Mission in Bagamoyo was founded in 1863 as an orphanage for freed slave children. From 1888 the mission took responsibility for young women with leprosy and the merchant Sewa Haji supported the project financially. With the period of German rule treatment of leprosy became the responsibility of the German colonial government and was carried out in collaboration with missions. The Bethal mission established itself in the Usambaras in 1891. In 1904 the construction of a hospital in Dar es Salaam provided palm thatched wards for the treatment of leprosy patients until 1961.

After the First World War when the British took over the German administered leprosy camps and settlements policy on management changed. Whereas the German administration introduced compulsory segregation the British preferred voluntary segregation. In 1923 an estimated 3,299 patients were in segregated camps. Just before the Second World War the Medical Secretariat of the British Empire Leprosy Relief Organisation visited the country and at that time there were 31 leprosy settlements with a total of 3,400 patients. The war years led to a deterioration in services for leprosy sufferers due to shortage of staff and funds.
However, after the war, an Inter-Territorial Leprosy Specialist was appointed and Dr James Ross-Innes laid the foundation for all later leprosy work on a national scale in Tanganyika. His successor, Dr Harold Wheate, built on this firm foundation and it was during the mid-fifties that ‘Dapsone’ became generally available and the number of patients treated increased dramatically.

When Tanganyika became independent in 1961 the government policy for leprosy control and treatment was pursued with increased activity in a number of areas, including the regional scheme of domiciliary treatment in Kagera Region with the assistance of the Swedish/Norwegian Save the Children organisation and in Geita with input from German and Dutch Leprosy Relief associations. Collaboration between Government and Voluntary agencies proved extremely successful. The Tanzania Leprosy Association was formed in 1978 and came to work closely with the Central Unit of the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Programme in the Ministry of Health.

Knud Balsev worked in Tanzania between 1970 and 1986 treating patients with leprosy and during that time he collected a wealth of information on the subject and this booklet is the result. It is published one hundred years after the establishment of the first leprosy programme at the Holy Ghost Mission in Bagamoyo. It contains useful statistics and epidemiological data and a very helpful list of references. I recommend it as a fascinating historical document which provides an excellent insight into the development of services to treat this ancient and devastating disease.
Peter Christie

POPULAR INITIATIVES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN TANZANIA. Joel Samoff. The Journal of Developing Areas. October 1989.

In this article Joel Samoff seeks to describe the resurgence of some form of autonomy in local affairs in Tanzania some years after the abolition of District Councils in the mid-1970’s.

It would have been helpful to have been given the background to events leading to the abolition of District Councils in the 1970′ s. These, open to all races, had been in operation for a number of years, even before independence in 1961, and some senior officials were being trained to quite high professional standards, but the overall concept of local government was a British one. This perhaps, combined with the fact that real power at local level was increasingly concentrated in the ruling party committee, undermined the credibility of local councils and their ability to collect their local rate, and so led to bankruptcy. But Mr Samoff thinks that the local party organisation was reinvigorated following the elimination of councils.

A main theme of the article is to discuss whether the abolition of local government and cooperatives was a • mistake’ as Julius Nyerere 1s often reported to have said and to examine what has begun to develop in the meantime. The ‘popular initiatives’ referred to in the title describe movements in the Kilimanjaro District, or region perhaps, to start privately funded secondary schools. This was because government policy for new secondary schools was to favour the less prosperous areas, of which Kilimanjaro is not one. Mr Samoff claims that ‘this effort to expand secondary education – a powerful local initiative – led to the recreation of local government’ .. His article does not however refer in any detail to any other district than Kilimanjaro. Perhaps the strongest claim of this initiative to local legitimacy is that local school committees are reported to level taxes and cesses in their areas to build and run these schools and to have been ‘recognised as legitimate taxing authorities. . . . . by central government and parastatals’.

The article concludes that, in the perspective of the need for the central bureaucratic governing class to consolidate its power, the abolition of local government and cooperatives , and their more recent resurrection, was not a ‘mistake’. The idea that local government could be a strong middle tier of government does not seem to be contemplated. Perhaps that only operates efficiently in a multi-party stat e. Perhaps also the development of effective local institutions at district level was ‘seen as inimical to the functioning of village socialism (Ujamaa). In the 1980’s, we are told, central government began to resurrect local government and cooperatives but no description is given of the form they are now taking. One would have had greater confidence had the article’s information been ostensibly based on more widely drawn information. There are only references to one district and that hardly representative of a highly varied country. Perhaps other writers can widen the perspective, and even report on what forms the supposed revival of local government is taking.
Simon Hardwick

ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF IMPROVED MANAGEMENT FOR ZEBU CATTLE IN NORTHERN TANZANIA. Peter K. Ngategize. Agricultural Systems No 31. 1989.

Peter Ngategize has undertaken to evaluate the potential, in economic terms, of improving the indigenous cattle population in smallholder units, instead of the more popular research target of imported cattle species or cross-bred animals.

He assesses their worth in terms of tried and trusted production parameters, with results establishing frequently reported traits for Zebu cattle such as long calving interval, lengthy returns to oestrus and high age at first calving.
This information acts as the baseline for a hypothetical herd consisting of a collection of smallholder units. The herd model undergoes a simulated growth over 15 years under two systems; the first, with no input improvements and utilising an estimated offtake rate (defined as the number of animals sold as a proportion of the average herd size) of 5%; the second, with minimal input improvements achieved through a farmer training programme and improved effectiveness of dipping and vaccination programmes.

Not surprisingly, Ngategize’s results suggest that the offtake rate could be increased to 7.5% and still allow a stable herd size (with no improvements) and up to 9.3% under the improved system. He also carries out a partial budget analysis of the improved system, revealing a positive net present value and a high internal rate of return; in essence a financial justification for the improvement policy.

Whilst I would strongly support Ngategize for his advocacy of gradual improvement of indigenous livestock with a farming systems approach and minimal injection of capital, his use of simulations and models could be criticised as lacking any foundation in reality.
Offtake rates are commonly used as a measure of efficacy within cattle production systems. The use of this parameter in the analysis should be seen as a guideline only and, as such, it would have been useful to include more comparative values. To put them into perspective, the offtake rate for the world as a whole is 19%, for developed countries 33%, for developing countries 10% and for Africa 12%.

The author himself doubts the validity of aggregating a collection of smallholder units into one herd and realises that the dependancy upon farmer recall for data must introduce significant error.

The utilisation of cost-benefit analysis and economic evaluation is central to project appraisal, but, whilst the results appear encouraging, the limitations of this method are well known and the use of sensitivity analysis at this stage would probably be justified.

The paper is economic in title and content and the author well versed in the manipulation of data. However, the conclusions are very general, and I would welcome a further paper that outlines the specific strategies to increase calving percentage and reduce calf mortality,
which Ngategize says are economically feasible.
Nick Clinch

THE SECOND ECONOMY IN TANZANIA. T. L. Maliyamkono and M. S. D. Bagachwa. ESAURP – Heinemann Kenya. James Currey Ltd. 1990. £ 9.95.

It is estimated that the second economy in Tanzania probably accounts for 30-40% of the GDP. This book sets out to provide reasons for its existence and to analyse its various components. It can be said that it is successful in both these tasks. In fact, the authors are to be congratulated for the comprehensive nature of the evidence they have amassed, and this work can be regarded as an authoritative description, or as near authoritative as one is likely to get, of the overall economic situation in Tanzania in 1988.

The book first outlines Tanzania’s economic history since independence. For the first fifteen years or so after independence in 1961 the economy seemed to be progressing. Growth in per capita GDP was positive. In the period 1970-76 the average net growth was 1.5% per annum. In the latter half of the seventies and the early eighties, the situation turned sour with a vengeance, and per capita income fell by 15% over the period 1976-86. A number of reasons for this are adduced by the authors.

They explain in some detail about the exogenous factors involved including the sharp rise in the oil price, a general deterioration in the terms of trade for agricultural commodities, poor harvests find Tanzania’s successful effort to depose Idi Amin of Uganda. However, the decline in Tanzania’s economic situation was considerably exacerbated by the internal consequences of social and economic management policies pursued since independence; for instance the Ujamaa village collectivisation policy which became compulsory in 1973 and led to a large initial decline in agricultural production. This was compounded by the abolition of private trade for food crops and replacement by trading through cooperatives which proved unable to cope due to lack of suitable management. This system was subsequently revised, but the creation of a regional buying and crop processing parastatal, the National Milling Corporation, ensured, at least in theory, t hat the grain market remained under centralised control . The middle seventies also proved to be a dividing line in the effectiveness and scope of government price control policies. Price controls on cert ain important consumer products instituted in 1967 remained effective until the 1973 oil price shock and the 1973-74 drought resulting in a large rise in the cost of imports which caused the government to form the National Price Commission. By 1978 some 3000 different items were subject to price control. Of course, the administrative resources to tackle this mammoth task were totally inadequate.

This is the background against which the second economy in Tanzania has grown. At the time of writing it accounted for a major part of food crop trading in certain parts of the country and also the trade in small scale export agricultural products such as cardamoms and animal hides and skins. (Trading in food crops has since been thrown open to the private sector). Moreover, the expansion of the administrative apparatus required to run a centralised economy, together with the adverse economic circumstances, has led to a drastic decline in the real value of public sector salaries and the formal wage sector as a whole. An I LO study showed Tanzania experienced a drop of 65% in real wages between 1979 and 1984. Another study shows that in 1985 top level public employees only received salaries in real terms equivalent to one third the 1980 level. The situation has not improved significantly since and means that officials and others remain under compulsive pressure to have other sources of income in order to maintain themselves and their families.

To some extent the authors approach the second economy with mixed sentiments. They are influenced by the pejorative official concept of ‘Ulanguzi’ implying illegality of all unauthorised economic activities outside official control. Of course, the distinction is made between economic gains from anti-social activities such as poaching and corruption and genuine, but unrecorded, economic activities such as small scale market gardening or part-time hairdressing. Unofficial trading, a major economic activity, tends to be regarded as a borderline case. Overall however, the authors accept a positive view of the second economy as a necessary adjunct of the centrally controlled economy. As the private sector increases and the trend towards the relaxation of central economic control continues the definition of the second economy will be increasingly one of the difference between those a activities recorded in official statistics and those which are not. On this basis the World Bank’s latest figure of $180 per capita GNP (i n 1987) should probably be adjusted to a real figure of $240-60 and even higher if the monetary value of the substantial subsistence economy were taken into account.

‘The Second Economy in Tanzania’ must be regarded as essential reading for all those interested in the state of the Tanzanian economy. The wealth of information including 62 statistical tables and graphs represent a commendable effort of compilation. This, together with the accompanying detailed analysis, guided by a high standard of objectivity, represents a considerable achievement in economic exposition.
R. Allen

GRASSROOTS STRATEGIES AND DIRECTED DEVELOPMEMNT IN TANZANIA: THE CASE OF THE FISHING SECTOR. Morja-Liisa Swantz. World Institute for Development and Economics Research. UN University. Helsinki.

This paper, which was presented at a meeting of the African Studies Association in Chicago is concerned with a critical examination of the general direction of development policies and strategies adopted by Tanzania during the 1970’s and the way in which such policies affected the poorest sections of the community. The paper strongly criticises the centralised planning methods used by the government which often ignored the detailed needs, aspirations and capabilities of the artisanal population. The author terms this process’ directed development’ based on ‘planning-from-the-top’ rather than starting the planning process at grasssroots level using background socio-economic surveys and gradually working upwards through district and regional government organisations. Although the fisheries sector is used as an example to describe development trends, In fact, only about 50% of the report deals specifically with fisheries.

The author suggests that the centralised planning process resulted in a major emphasis being placed on modernisation and industrial development which had a detrimental effect on the productivity and standard of living of rural communities.

Within the fisheries sector the discussion is largely restricted to the role of the Mbegani Fisheries Development Centre (MFDC) which was established at a reported cost of US$ 22 million using support from Norway, and the effects of the centre on adjacent fishing communities between Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam. The main objectives were to increase fish production using new techniques, improve the catch and earning capacity of fishermen, supply trained manpower to the fisheries sector and earn foreign exchange by the sale of surplus fish and luxury marine foods. In reality the over-riding function of the centre was to earn foreign currency by encouraging the development of industrial trawling for prawns for export. This meant that almost all training in fishing techniques was focussed on commercial trawling using a large stern trawler as a training vessel. Clearly the method was totally inappropriate to meet the needs of artisanal fishermen who.se main problems stemmed from the lack of basic fishing gears. Consequently, the centre had little or no positive impact on small-scale fisheries; indeed the author provides evidence of a negative impact on those fishing communities situated close to the centre through loss of access to certain fishing grounds.

A further valid criticism raised by the author concerned the inappropriate training of fisheries extension workers by the centre, again resulting from the bias towards high-technology methods with little regard for the real needs of artisanal fishermen who catch over 90% of the total marine fish production of Tanzania.

The paper goes on to describe the effects of the recent ‘liberalisation’ programme which resulted in an easing of restrictions on imports and encouragement of exports. The main impact on the fisheries sector was an increase in availability of certain gears and out board engines. However, the latter were expensive and unaffordable for the vast majority of fishermen.

From about 1986 important policy changes were made by the government and MFDC resulting in a change in direction of training programmes by increasing their relevance to small-scale fishermen and women and, perhaps more importantly, by the introduction of sales of fishing gears and engines.

The sale of gears proved very successful and had a major positive impact on local fishing communities by increasing the numbers of fishermen and their catches and by the stimulation of greater trade, much of which was undertaken by women. However, the author fails to point out that gears were sold at very low subsidised prices which undoubtedly had an adverse effect on the sale of locally made nets at the factory in Dar es Salaam.

The author concludes that had investment gone into t artisanal sector in the first place rather than into modern high technology fishing and training programmes, then the nation would have been provided not only with sufficient fish to meet its own food requirements but also with surplus for export. This statement is optimistic to say the least, and shows a lack of detailed understanding of the marine fish resource potential of Tanzania. However, a fisheries development project supported by Britain (ODA) in the Southern coast al regions clearly demonstrated that between 1983 and 1987 supply of gears for sale to local fishermen resulted in increased effort and catches.

Important issues not raised in this paper concern the lack of support given to the government fisheries department which has been unable to effectively carry out its recognised duties in collection of statistics, extension, development and research. In the absence of basic fisheries statistics it is not possible to formulate rational development and management programmes. The ODA has attempted to improve the situation in the South by carrying out various resource evaluation studies which form the basis of extension and development programmes. Unfortunately, in the North such programmes are s till lacking.

The author made brief mention of another major problem facing the marine fisheries sector: the widespread illegal use of dynamite to catch fish. The very damaging effects of this method on the coral reef structure which forms the foundation of many fish resources is not disputed. Past attempts to control this irresponsible activity have failed and until firm measures are introduced development will be greatly hindered.

Finally, the author stressed the need for future planning and development processes to start at the grassroots level. Undoubtedly. this would result in improvements in identification of the most appropriate technologies to meet the needs and be within the capability of artisanal fishing communities. James Scullion

POPULATION PRESSURE. THE ENVIRONMENT AND AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION: VARIATIONS ON THE BOSERUP HYPOTHESIS. Urna Lele and Steven W Stone.

ISSUES IN FERTILISER POLICY IN AFRICA. LESSONS FROM DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES AND ADJUSTMENT LENDING. 1970-87. Urna Lele, R. E. Christiansen and K Kadiresan.

These two documents cover part of a major World Bank research project conducted under the heading ‘MANAGING AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA’ (MADIA) which has involved detailed analysis of six East and West African countries including Tanzania. USAID, UKODA, DANIDA, SIDA, the French and German governments and the EC participated. The following review draws out key implications of these studies as they refer to Tanzania – Editor.

This series of studies makes compelling reading for those concerned with agricultural development in Southern Africa.

The overall findings cover such areas as crop yield, biological and chemical inputs, farmers incomes, population density, incentives, land and labour productivity and the increasing scarcity of forest resources. The experience in Tanzania illustrates the benefits foregone of a set of policies that did not stimulate growth in areas of high potential whilst emphasising consumption and welfare oriented efforts in areas of lower productive potential.

In Tanzania about 60% of the population lives on 20% of the land and to remedy this regional imbalance the government has opened up new areas of high potential in the Southern Highlands (Iringa, Mbeya, Ruvuma and Rukwa). Population is concentrated around the Lake Victoria Basin and coffee producing Northeastern Highlands (Arusha, Mara, Mwanza, Shinyanga and Kigoma, both areas of traditionally higher value and higher yielding crops. The attempt to open up the Southern Highlands makes sense in the longer term. In the shod run it has had high opportunity costs. Tanzania has differed from Kenya in not encouraging regional economic growth in line with comparative advantage. Pricing policies did not provide incentives for further intensification, a shift to higher value crops and use of modern inputs in the North. Smallholders, for instance, receive only one third to one half of the world price for dark-fired and sun/air cured tobacco.

Data on fertiliser consumption, regional expenditure pattern and marketed surpluses of maize, tobacco, tea and coffee suggest a clear shift away from the Northeastern and Lake Victoria areas towards the South. Use of inputs follows regional planning more closely than it does population density. Fertiliser consumption in the land abundant South rose from 35,000 tons in 1975 to 91,500 tons in 1987 – representing not less than 70-75% of total fertiliser use even though only 18% of the population lives in these four regions. In the North, where the majority of food and export crops were traditionally grown there was a decline in fertiliser consumption from 22% in 1975 to less than 10% in 1986-87 even though one third of the population resides there.

Production increased in the South but at the cost of declining marketed production in the North. The Southern Highlands doubled its share of total coffee production to 25% in 1981-85 and increased its share of tobacco production from 18% in 1970-74 to 60% in 1982-86. But this was not associated with substantial growth in overall output due to a decline in traditional areas. For instance, coffee production in Arusha/Kilimanjaro regions fell from 26 million tons in 1975 to 20 million tons in 1985.
The fiscal resource constraints encountered by Tanzania illustrate the dilemma of giving regional equity a higher national priority than growth in overall production. Continued growth in the Northeastern Highlands could have financed development in other regions. Recently the macro economic environment has improved. Cooperative and private institutions have begun to make a come back, Production is gradually picking up in the Northeastern Highlands.

Lele et al indicate in their fertiliser paper that use of fertiliser, priced at full cost, is not economic for farmers in Tanzania. Benefit-cost ratios calculated for fertiliser use in 1988 comparing input and output price data
SARUFI MPYA (New Grammar). Mohamed A Mohamed. Press and Publicity Centre. Dar es Salaam. 1990.

This new book is an advanced study of the intricacies of Swahili grammar. Different chapters deal with such subjects as tense patterns, tense affixes, clauses and sentence construction. A reviewer in the ‘Daily News’ writes: ‘Most educated people in Tanzania easily recognise grammatical terms in English eg noun, subject, predicate, pronoun, subject etc. But they will be baffled by such terms as nomina, kitenzi, kiwakilishi, kiima, kishazi etc’ .. The reviewer indicates that that is the reason why this book should be read! – DRB.

DOTTIE. Abdul-Razak Gurnah. Jonathan Cape. £13.95.

The author of this book was born in Zanzibar and educated in Tanzania and the UK. He now works in the University of Kent. The novel is set in England in the 50’s and 60’s and involves Dottie’s efforts to find a confident path through her difficulties. She is isolated from her own culture but not yet part of a new one. She is in some ways a paradigm for most immigrant people. What history can they recall? What history should they recall? She suffers as a member of a subject race coming from a colony to the motherland. What carries her through is her individual fortitude from the BBC programme ‘Bookshelf’ reported by P.J.C. Marchant.

MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON. A new film directed by Bob Rafelson.

Tanzanophiles will hardly be able to resist going to see this film which describes the story of the epic 1854 journeys of Sir Richard Burton, the 19th century explorer and John Hanning Speke to the shores of Lake Tanganyika – the first white men to see the Lake – and the subsequent Journey of Speke to Lake Victoria which he correctly identified as the source of the River Nile. The film has received mixed reviews in the British press. The Bulletin decided to ask for an African point of view. Mr Badou Diop has written as follows – Editor

The history of Western exploration and discoveries, whatever one might think, is inextricable linked with the phenomenon of imperialism and hence colonialism. Therefore the ‘Mountains of the Moon’ will have to be seen in this light.

Whether intentionally or deliberately, the Director Bob Rafelson touches on several familiar problems. Burton and Speke have completely diverse conceptions on what exploration is all about. Burton, we are told to believe, thinks that exploration is not only about teaching the main goal, in this case the Nile, but also having an intense interest in the local people concerned. Speke has the typical view of the majority in Britain at the time that one should not become emotionally involved with the natives.

Back in England after the visit the two explorers were involved in rivalry mainly created by the Royal Geographic Societys to who of the two had the most accurate scientific explanation about the source of the Nile. John Speke is the epitome of the kind of modern British tourist whose aims on holiday include sun and sex.

The film, which is shot in Kenya, is a visual delight even though not in the same league as the other famous Kenyan film ‘Out of Africa’. However, one comes out of ‘Mountains of the Moon’ feeling that a film blessed with such exciting subject matter should have been better. Rafelson seems to lack the authority and erudition to undertake such a heavy enterprise. But Tanzanians should go and see it because it shows an important and historic period in African history.

EDUCATION AND CULTURE OF TANZANIAN TEACHERS: RE-DEFINING EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL MILIEU. B. Lindsay. Comparative Education. Vol 25. No. 1. 1989.

This article is an outline review of the attempts by American educators to influence the Tanzanian system of education since independence. It pretends, in its introduction, to be a deep and searching investigation into all sorts of socio-cultural questions affecting education in Africa, but when the writer drops most of the sociological jargon (which really gets us nowhere very fast) her case is essentially fairly basic.

In 1968 Julius maintained that ‘the purpose of education is to transmit wisdom and knowledge of the society from one generation to the next, and to prepare young people for their future membership in the society by active participation in its maintenance and development’. From the early seventies therefore, the Americans were denied access to Tanzanian education. The national language, Kiswahili, was used within schools and tertiary education mainly to foster cultural and national identity and unification. In addition, Kiswahili became the only language of instruction for all primary schools. American Peace Corps teachers and various Agency for International Development programmes were dropped, because they did not seem to foster indigenous educational and cultural development.

In the nineteen-eighties, however, things changed fairly dramatically. Tanzanians recognised that secondary school students no longer had enough grasp of English to make sense of the various subjects (including technical subjects) they had to handle. One would not have thought this very surprising in view of the fact that they had received virtually no English at primary level. But the Americans, at the direct invitation of their Tanzanian hosts, set up courses for the training of staff from the Dar es Salaam College by educationalists from the Universit y of Massachussets, and indeed, some of the Dar staff took Masters degrees in Massachussets. Workshops followed, great success was encountered, and, the writer concludes, in very verbose and highsounding paragraphs (and at considerable length) that this proves that ‘if a sense of identity with specific policies is maintained, then external influences need not threaten the original cultural ideology’.

In fact the writer ducks the two absolutely basic educational points which stand out from the Tanzanian experience in the last twenty five years. The first is that the so-called Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange which the Americans set up in the sixties (the Fulbright-Hayes Act) quite unashamedly saw education and culture as directly related and looked upon American help for education as enhancing U. S. foreign policy. In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the Tanzanians turned i down and wanted none of it. Nor would any self-respecting nation.

But the second point of enormous importance is surely this. The whole concept of education at depth is that it is a sharing of ideas, a mingling of cultures, a constant borrowing from traditions in one’s own country and many other countries. The finest education systems in the world have never been afraid or ashamed to borrow from other countries.
The recent American programme in Tanzania has doubtless given much practical help to Tanzanians, but it is only the beginning of a road which Tanzanians should be encouraged to walk – with many other systems and nations, not just one, and as free as possible from all political dogma and dictation.
Noel K. Thomas

APARTHEID TERRORISM. The Destabilisation Report. A Report on the Devastation of the Front Line States prepared by Phyllis Johnson and David Martin for the Commonwealth Committee of Foreign Ministers on Southern Africa. James Currey Publishers. November 1989. Hardback £19.95. Paperback £5.95

This book of 163 pages contains only nine pages on the way in which Tanzania has been affected in recent years by what it describes as the ‘consistent and continuous economic and military pressure to which the Frontline States have been subjected’ by South Africa (and its regional surrogates) during the long anti-apartheid struggle.

But this limited coverage is of considerable historical interest. The authors recall that Mozambique’s liberation movement, Frelimo, was first established in Dar es Salaam on 25th June 1962 and that the actual liberation struggle began on 25th September 1964, So Tanzania became the first of the Frontline States to be subjected to destabilisation, albeit on a much lesser scale than the other Frontline Stales. For example, the Portuguese authorities set up in the 1960’s an intelligence network in Tanzania in which Major Vitor Alves, subsequently a key figure in the Portuguese coup d’etat, was involved together with a Portuguese lieutenant-colonel whose cover was assistant manager on a tea estate in southern Tanzania, not far from Frelimo’s main training base at Nachingwea.

The book also reports that Tanzania’s former Foreign Minister, Oscar Kambona, was at one time in Lisbon at the side of Jorge Jardim, a godson of the then Poduguese dictator, Antonio Salazar. In December 1971 and July 1972 pamphlets were dropped from a Portuguese aircraft over Dar es Salaam in support of Kambona, The Portuguese apparently also set up a military training base for Kambona in north-western Mozambique. On February 3rd 1969 Frelimo’s first President, Eduardo Mondlane was killed by a Portuguese book bomb at a beach house where he was working just outside Dar es Salaam.

Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) is described in the book as ‘of massive consequence for Tanzania’. Zambia became reliant on it for desperately needed lifelines to the sea. Most of the emerging liberation movements and the OAU’s Liberation Committee were based in Dar es Salaam, The cost of all this to Tanzania has never been quantified but has amounted to several million dollars a year for over 25 years – ‘a remarkable sum for a nation of such modest means’.

The authors go on to describe the effect on Tanzania of the more recent activities in Mozambique of the dissident movement MNR. Tanzania had sent 4,000 troops to help the Mozambican authorities to combat the MNR in 1986. They stayed until November 1988, The cost of this has been estimated at some US$120 million, but, more importantly, 60 of the 4,000 Tanzanian soldiers are now buried in Mozambique. Between late 1987 and April 1989 there have been five cross border MNR incursions into Tanzania in which one Tanzanian was killed, 68 were abducted and large amounts of property, food and money were stolen from poor border area villages.

The book finally quotes Mwalimu Nyerere – described as the chair and driving force of the informal grouping Frontline States – as having congratulated the people and governments of the victim states ‘who have kept the beacon of freedom alight by their endurance, their courage and their absolute commitment to Africa’s liberation’- DRB.

BARABAIG LAND TENURE; RISKS, RIGHTS AND WRITS, Review of talk given by Dr Charles Lane to the Royal African Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies on November 20th 1989,

Dr Lane has been a volunteer in VSO and also Director of OXFAM in Tanzania, He has lived with the Barabaig people for some eighteen months in total, Some 30,000 – 50,000 Barabaig people now live in Hanang district south of Arusha. They are a Nilotic race and a pastoral people living, for the most part, as nomads. They have some thirty herds of cattle in which the mortality rate is as much as 40% largely from tick-borne diseases. Local dips have not operated for ten years.

The Barabaig are a marginal group leading a tough life where cattle theft and ritual murder have been common. Infant mortality is as high as one in five – twice that pertaining in other communities. The rate of literacy is less than 2%,

Development has largely passed them by and Tanzanian agricultural policy has tended to emphasise crop production rather than pastoralism and dairy production for which the cattle are most suited. It is unfortunate that there has been a gradual invasion of Barabaig territory from the north resulting in there being driven out of some of the best grazing land. Crops such as wheat are now being grown in the area.

In 1970 the Canadian aid agency CIDA, encouraged by the Government, took over an area for wheat production which has now grown to 100,000 acres. This is a highly mechanised scheme involving much sophisticated machinery such as combine harvesters. It has gone a long way to satisfy the aim of the Tanzanian Government self-sufficiency in wheat production.

But the development of this programme has had very serious implications for the Barabaig people since the area under wheat cultivation probably represents as much as half of the total grazing land in the district. Tanzanian policy is not to provide compensation for non-cultivated land; payment has been made only for the house areas and no allowance has been made for the private land around the house, cattle compounds, wells, burial mounds etc. Sacred trees such as Acacia and Ficus species have been cut down to make way for further cultivation. Cattle have been confiscated and the Barabaig denied rights of way on areas which were previously theirs. Land has become increasingly eroded, fertility has declined and more productive grass species have been replaced by less productive types and weeds.

CIDA and the Government have now been challenged on the basis that the total of one hundred thousand acres is thirty thousand more than the originally agreed 70,000, However, the Prime Minister’s Office, has recently decreed that these areas are not held by customary rights. It has stated that it is now recognised that all customary rights to land should be extinguished.

The present situation is that this is being contested with the help of the Legal Aid Committee of the University of es Salaam.
Basil Hoare

URBAN PRIMACY IN TANZANIA. Larry Sawyers. Economic Development and Cultural Change. Vol 37. No 4. July 1989. Pages 841-859.

This article explains how Tanzania has been one of the few countries to take steps to resist the dominance (primacy) of its largest city. The article evaluates urban and regional planning aimed at reducing the dominance of Dar es Salaam. It begins with a historical survey of the extent and causes of primacy; next is a review of the components of Tanzania’s spatial programme. Various measures of urban primacy are used to judge the effectiveness of anti-primacy policies. The conclusion is that Tanzania has been largely unsuccessful in preventing or even slowing the growth of the city this for reasons not ostensibly spatial in nature but which have overwhelmed the Government’s efforts.

SMALL TOWNS AND DEVELOPMENT: A TALE FROM TWO COUNTRIES. Charles Choguill. Urban Studies. Vol 26. 1989. Pages 267-274.

This paper is summarised as follows: Urban centralisation within the developing world has created problems such as congestion, migration, poor housing, unemployment and environmental deterioration. Urban analysts have therefore directed attention to the development of small and intermediate cities as one means of providing the necessary counterbalance. This paper analyses the economic potential of small town development through a study of the regional development programmes in Malaysia and the Ujamaa village development programme in Tanzania. The study concludes that necessary ingredients for a small town development programme include an appropriate agricultural policy, adequate consideration of the economic base of the small town and some element of self-reliance in the provision of local urban services. Without these components such programmes are unlikely to have any significant effect on rural to urban migration flows.

POLICY REFORM AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE. L. Kleemeir. Public Administration and Development. Vol 9. No. 4. September-October 1989.

In this ten-page article the author explains that for a long time Tanzania refused to reform its economic policies along the lines recommended by the World Bank and the IMF. Eventually the foreign exchange crisis forced the Government to make changes. The reforms were necessary but not a panacea for all the problems which had plagued rural development programmes over the past decade ie: the limited capacity of the Government administration to manage or back-up programmes; shortage of funds; and, the failure of rural residents to compensate for these deficiencies through their own participation and contributions. The article looks at two basic-needs programmes in the rural water supply sector to illustrate how these long-standing problems continue to affect implementation. Both programmes are funded and implemented by donors. The conclusion is that donors have not been self-conscious and innovative in grappling with the more intractable problems facing rural programme assistance in Tanzania.

THE CRUNCH – A FABLE ABOUT THE DEBT CRISIS
The Tanzania ‘Theatre In Education’ Project (first referred to in Bulletin No. 34) is based on a play (“The Crunch”) specially devised by a cast of Tanzanian and British actors brought together by the Commonwealth Institute in London. It links strongly with GCSE and ‘ A’ level Drama and Humanities syllabuses. The play, which uses both fable and metaphor to get its message across, focuses on the situation facing developing countries today and the role of ‘developed’ countries, banks and international companies in the independence and governing of ex-colonies. Through the lives and experiences of four bridge builders and the people they encounter in their work, “The Crunch” explores the factors affecting development past present and future. The play subsequently toured nationally and for performances in schools and colleges there was an accompanying workshop.

The play’s script was formed during rehearsal and at the time of the first performance was unavailable in print.

The central character is Monya, a bridge builder who has been killed while making repairs to the all important bridge which links countries to the North across a wide river with his own poor country in the South. Monya’s three colleagues, also from the South, are desperate to keep the bridge open for trade in order that their country does not suffer substantial hardship. Monya’s ghost keeps interrupting proceedings and making comments about his own feelings – mostly feelings of joy at having been liberated from the arduous repair work which appears to him to be fruitless. The bridge really needs to be pulled down as, according to Monya’s work-mates, it is totally unsafe. The trouble is that the link with the North will be broken for some considerable time until a replacement is built. There have previously been plans for a replacement (the Uhuru Bridge) but this is only a quarter complete and now there is no money to sort out the mess. The three workers decide to continue repairing the unsafe bridge as best they can and hope for the best. Unfortunately the state of the bridge suddenly deteriorates when its foundations shift and the workers are faced yet again with an insuperable problem.

After much argument they agree to go to Mr Boyle, the banker in the North, to ask for a massive loan to start again and build a completely new bridge. Other than suggesting that they rely on the setting up of a disaster fund to get them out of their difficulties, Boyle does not offer any help, the workers having previously rejected his idea that they start from scratch with a few boats to maintain the lifeline.

Unknown to the bridge workers, Boyle himself has financial problems and needs a substantial loan to keep his own head above water. When Boyle is refused this loan, he is so eager to clinch a deal with the Southerners that he sets off for the bridge and the South with his vehicle laden with steel bottomed boats – but the bridge cannot support him and as he crosses it, encouraged by the mischievous, laughing ghost of Monya, bridge, boats, vehicle, Boyle and original old bridge take a tumble into the waters below – and everybody loses.

Credit has been seen to turn into debt, hope into despair and partial success into total failure. Monya is well out of it all.

The performance was imaginative and required little in the way of scenery and props. The change from narrative to reflection and the commentary by Monya was most effective with the characters of the narrative freezing while Monya made his comments. Perhaps the play could have produced more laughs (important for secondary schools) if the actors had been more confident in their roles but overall this was an enjoyable performance with much to recommend it to schools. Hugh Jones

As the play had been designed for schools we asked a school student to let us have an additional review from her point of view. Aldyth Thompson and her mother attended a ‘Focus on Tanzania’ day session designed for teachers (with others welcome to join them) at which the play was per formed and then discussed together with the actors. Aldyth Thompson wrote as follows – Editor

On October 27th my Mum and I went to see ‘The Crunch’ at the Commonwealth Institute in London. The play was introduced to us by the director who said that normally a workshop would take place before watching the play. This would be to see how much people already knew about Tanzania, its problems as well as its geography.

The actors put over a lot of points through the play that I hadn’t actually thought of before, such as the fact that everybody is in debt to someone higher up the scale.

We were given a handbook for teachers which gave a lot of very interesting background information both about the play and about Tanzania. In our discussion we covered a lot of points we had wanted to ask. We discussed how the play related to the real life situation in Tanzania today. The way in which the white people depend on the black, as well as the black people on the white is portrayed in the play as both South and North depending on each other. This discussion also brought out people’s views, such as “Well, people aren’t going to give up their profit are they?” – meaning that we all look after Number One. I was sorry that the role of non-government aid agencies was not brought out. I found the discussion very interesting and it made me think about the different views people have of all subjects. As a student I would like to get my school to see this play in the near future.

THE LIGHTNING BIRD
On March 17th 1989 Channel 4 produced an extraordinary film in its ‘ Survival’ series about lions in the Serengeti (Bulletin No 33). In the same series and shown on June 24th was another film about Tanzanian wild-life. This was made with the cooperation of the National Parks and the Ngorongoro Conservation Authority. It is the work of Joan and Ann Root and its title is ‘The Legend of the Lightning Bird’. As Andrew Sachs started his commentary we saw what we have learnt to expect from wild-life films of Africa South of the Sahara Kilimanjaro, elephants in the forest, lions on the savannah, herds of wildebeest and fantastic, glorious birds.

Who is the King of the Birds? Is it the huge ostrich, the powerful eagle, the handsome superb starling or the regal crested crane?

Legend says it is none of these. It is the hammerhead or hammerkopf. He is related to herons and storks, stands a foot high, is uniform brown with a tuft of feathers at the back of his head and looks like a kindly dunpy pteradactyl. The hammerheads spend most of their lives fishing. This they do effectively but without display. When they are excited they jump on each others backs, flap their wings and squawk.
According to legend these dowdy avian monarchs receive homage from subjects who bring contributions to the palatial nest, help build it and even guard it. The hammerheads are also credited with magical power over rain and floods. None of this is true. They cannot swim and have no special weather sense.

Visitors to the big nest come for their own purposes. A silver bird takes what she needs to build her own nest; an Egyptian goose tries to take over the penthouse until thrown out by the owners; she then finds a disused nest downstream. A grey kestrel is small enough to use the old nursery but finds her way barred by a family of acacia rats and a large African owl nest on the summit, ostensibly on guard.
The hammerheads, far from being feudal lords, act more like the local housing aid centre because they re-use an old nest. At the beginning of the rainy season they start to build in the fork of a tree overlooking a river. For nearly three months they each make journeys totalling about three hundred miles to build a nest four feet high and weighing two hundred pounds. It is so strongly woven that it can bear the weight of a man jumping on it. The entrance is sensibly kept away from the tree trunk and the roof is decorated with feathers, shed snake skins, little bones and porcupine quills. This nest even had a wildebeest tail.

Most of the film was concerned with the building of this nest and the mating of the hammerhead, kestrel and goose families. I particularly enjoyed the emergence from the nest of the two-day-old goslings who plopped in the water below one after the other like children going down a chute. One gosling had unfortunately fallen out a day earlier and had had a Disneyesque adventure with hippos and a crocodile. He found a diminutive island for the night and miraculously met up with his family again the next day.

There seems to be no scientific explanation for the hammmerhead’s extravagant use of energy. We are told the species is the only member of its family. I wonder if there were others now extinct who decided to build Hiltons and died in the attempt.

Anyway, Good Luck to the eccentric loveable bird. Long may he reign! Congratulations too to all concerned with the production of this delightful, tantalising film. Shirin Spencer

TANZANIA: COUNTRY STUDY AND NORWEGIAN AID REVIEW. Kjell J. Havnevik and
Others. Centre for Development Studies. University of Bergen. 1988.

There was a time when it seemed as though almost everyone wanted to write a book about Tanzania. The early years after independence are well documented in several comprehensive studies. Nowadays, this is no longer true. As far as the Bulletin has been able to determine there are no recent comprehensive studies covering all sectors of Tanzania’s economy other than those provided from time to time by the World Bank. It is for this reason that this Norwegian book is so useful. It is useful primarily for those wishing to up-date their knowledge (references and statistics go up to 1988) and those who do not know Tanzania and do not have the time or the opportunity to study the innumerable short papers available in the better libraries. It is concise (the whole country is covered in 193 pages), clear and, as they say nowadays, ‘reader friendly’; it does not appear to be over afflicted, as so many papers on Tanzania are, by ideological bias. It contains a useful up to date bibliography but, surprisingly, no index. It has particularly strong sections on women (for example, the effect of villagisation on them) and reveals much cause for alarm in its section on AIDS.

The second part of the book critically analyses Norwegian aid programmes. Although the authors state that Norwegian aid does not differ from that of other countries (Norway comes second only to Sweden in the ‘league table’) those interested in sea fisheries, coastal transport (in both cases associated companies went bankrupt!) sawmilling, hydropower and the maintenance of rural roads can learn much from this book.

One interesting item (Page 13) states that after the First World War the idea was considered of giving Norway the task of ruling Tanganyika Territory – DRB.

(We are indebted to Mr. Karl Aartun for sending us a copy of this book – Editor).

TANZANIA AND THE WORLD BANK’S URBAN SHELTER PROJECT: IDEOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCE by Horace Campbell. The Review of African Political Economy. No. 42, 1988, pp 5-18.

John (not Horace) Campbell sets out to examine a major World Bank funded urban project in the context of Tanzania’s relationship with the Bank and its attempts to influence domestic policy as a condition of further lending. Bank ideology has determined its actions, he argues, not the realities of Tanzania’s situation or the priorities of its government.

In the 1960’s urban areas grew rapidly and programmes of slum clearance and public housing failed to meet housing needs. Much development was unplanned, with half or more of the population living in squatter areas and dependent on incomes below the poverty line. The Second Plan (1969-74) included a commitment (although few funds) to provide infrastructure and housing suitable for the needs of the urban poor. In 1971 rental housing was nationalised, with the effect that the (primarily Asian) landlord class was pushed temporarily out of the housing market and no new housing was built for more than a decade.

Although the intention of providing serviced plots on a large scale to accommodate poorer families had been stated in 1969, it was not until 1972 that a decision was taken to proceed (partly, Campbell speculates, in response to worker unrest) and 1974 that World Bank funding was secured.

Phase I (1974-78) was intended to benefit c. 160,000 low income people by providing 10,600 serviced plots in Dar, Mwanza and Mbeya and upgrading squatter areas in Dar and Mbeya. In Phase II (1978-83) an additional 315,000 residents were to benefit from similar schemes in five urban areas. Campbell suggests that the Bank insistence on tendering contracts to the private sector was contrary to national policies which aimed at expanding the role of the public sector, although it is questionable whether the latter would have had the capacity to take on large contracts. The serviced plots provided were in relatively low density suburban areas and the Bank insisted on full cost recovery. Although construction for subletting was allowed, the provision of loans by the newly established Tanzania Housing Bank (THB) and its insistence on the use of ‘modern’ building materials, made the plots too costly for most poor families. The World Bank’s pressure to reduce standards of construction was not heeded until 1981.

By that time, Phase II was under way, despite the cost overruns of Phase I, the failure of the THB to account for funds and corruption in the allocation of plots. Shortages of housing for middle income families, due partly to policy neglect, encouraged them to obtain serviced plots, pushing out the poor to unauthorised and unserviced areas. Failure to consult residents gave rise to initial suspicion of upgrading, but this later proceeded with fewer problems. Following mounting cost overruns, project components were cut and the standard of services reduced. Responsibility for project management was devolved to local government, despite its lack of expertise and finance. As a result, services and infrastructure deteriorated rapidly and residents’ understandable reluctance to pay for them increased.

Campbell is correct in emphasising the dominance of project planning and implementation by the World Bank; pointing out that the serviced plots met the needs of the middle income rather than poor households; stressing the burden of infrastructure in need of maintenance; and accusing the World Bank of attributing Tanzania’s problems solely to economic mismanagement rather than external shocks. He may well be right that the Bank, despite its involvement with the country’s economic problems, was taken by surprise by the huge cost overruns that its attempt to devolve responsibility for project administration on to ill-prepared local government structures was an attempt to wash its hands of responsibility; and that its concern for the poor was jettisoned when cost recovery was threatened by rising costs. However, by succumbing to the temptation to treat the Bank as a scapegoat, he has oversimplified the explanations for what occurred in Tanzania between the mid-1970’s and mid-80’s. To apportion blame solely to the Bank is to ignore both the mismanagement which undoubtedly occurred, in, for example, the abolition of urban local government between 1973 and 1978; and the class interests within the indigenous (and not just Asian) Tanzanian population which have sought to utilise power and the spoils of public sector activities to advance their own interests.
Carole Rakodi

VILLAGES, VILLAGERS AND THE STATE IN MODERN TANZANIA. Edited by R. G. Abrahams. Cambridge African Monograph 4. Cambridge University Press.

These five papers which are based mainly on field work carried out in Tanzania in the seventies and early eighties, were first published in 1985. They give an insight into the situation pertaining in a number of rural communities at that time and the changes which came about during the post-independence era.

Developments in five disparate areas of the country during and after the villagisation programme known as Ujamaa are detailed. The impact of state intervention in village life has been considerable, and sadly, as is well known, much of the programme has been marred by failure. Poor management, mishandled funds and corruption were features highlighted in this paper.

The field work carried out by Thiele in villages close to Dodoma illustrates, as do other papers, the reluctance of villagers to engage in communal farming activities on collective plots. Priority was always given to their own areas and labour allocation to other work was given a distinctly low priority. The fact that communal farms have been frequently sited on the poorest and most inaccessible land does not also contribute to good production as is evidenced by the poor yields achieved in a number of villages which were listed.

The paper by Lwoga, the only contribution by a Tanzanian, based on work in the vicinity of Morogoro, shows how the State imposed its will and disregarded the views of villagers until the Prime Minister’s Office was able to make a second intervention.

In his paper Walsh outlines the problems associated with traditional leadership, both before and after independence, and how the influence of traditional authority lingered to the detriment of the community as a whole, in spite of the fact that the role of chieftancy had been abolished at the time of independence. The complicated and interweaving relationships within a community were further illustrated by Thompson who related the unsuccessful efforts of a well educated young leader from the town when pitted against the traditional beliefs of the villagers.

These various papers show that the aim of Julius Nyerere, widespread socialism has not been achieved in Tanzania. Reluctance on the part of rural communities to take part in communal activities has been clearly shown and the original aspirations of the State that each village would have a collective farm of a significant area have not been met. Merchant enterprises, such as the village lorry and shop, have often been more successful, but the examples shown indicate that such success was generally limited. Lack of spare parts for vehicles and the frequent absence of basic supplies, poor accounting and corruption, have all contributed to poor results. However, examples in two papers show what can be achieved by good leadership. The resilience and organisation of the local schoolmaster in one instance and the village chairman in the other, were largely responsible for the success achieved. The value of education was also evident in some cases and, more particularly, when this applied to a Village Manager. Thompson also illustrates the extent to which education and urban background undoubtedly contributed to the failure of one politician.

These papers are valuable contributions to the story of rural development in Tanzania during a particular post-independence period. It is to be hoped that later field work by the authors will give a further insight into more recent programmes and achievements.
Basil Hoare

ZANZIBAR TO TIMBUKTUU by Anthony Daniels. J. Murray. 1988.

The first two chapters of this book are devoted to Tanzania, and it is important in the sense that, as there is not a vast library of literature (either non-fiction or intelligent fiction) which deals with contemporary Tanzania, anything in print is liable to be seized upon as some sort of guide to the country, past as well as present.

Despite the fact that it has already had some good reviews, it is not an impressive offering. The trouble is that Daniels really wants sensation at every turn, and in Tanzania he reckons that the best way to obtain this effect is to highlight the misery and wretchedness and the way society has deteriorated in the past quarter century. So we are given a seemingly endless list of iniquities. In Dar es Salaam, for example, we are told that Africans neglect their gardens, the telephones don’t work, the potholes on the road are so bad that you need a four-wheel drive vehicle and the thieving is such a problem that you have to have locked doors, barred windows and even ‘steel gates constructed across windows.

To be fair to the writer he does try occasionally to even up the picture. He admits that ‘this violence is un-characteristic of Tanzanians’ and that ‘I knew them as gentle and forgiving people’. The problem is that he is keen to rush through Africa, from one country to another, hardly pausing to take breath, that he never stops long enough to analyse either people or social situations. Daniels is plainly aware of the ambivalence in many of the scenes he describes. The Tanzanians, though gentle, he declares, can behave extremely badly, even dishonestly to one another ‘no real trust existed between them’. ‘This is Tanzania, this is Tanzania.’

But with full respect to his lively and often amusing style and picturesque phrase, this simply will not do. If there are contradictions in people’s characters then the good writer explores them and helps us to understand the ambivalence. If he had ever done this, or even attempted it, this book would be ten times more worthwhile. The sad truth is that there is nothing in this hasty tour of Africa that is really substantial. Daniels has clutched at straws, many of them brightly coloured and diverting, but straws just the same, and blown away by the wind as they should be.

There is undoubtedly a fashion for travel books which titillate the palate with the slightly grotesque, and invite us to look with our comfortable western eyes at various morsels of Third World decay. But in these pictures there is scant truth to life. It is a pity that Daniels’ undoubted descriptive talents have not been used to produce a book of greater balance and some real depth.
Noel K. Thomas

AGRICULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: THE CASE OF TANZANIA by Goram Hyden, Universities Field Staff Report 1988/89 No. 5. pp 10. $4. 00
This report was written following a short visit to Tanzania in June 1988 funded by USAID. It is in two parts. The first is an analysis of Tanzania’s predicament. It can be summarised by a table and two quotations.

Graph of table data (not in original publication)

Gross Domestic Product by Kind of Economic Activity at 1976 Prices (in Tz. Sha. Million)

Economic Activity 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986

1. Agriculture, Forestry,Fishing & Hunting 9,046 8,998 9,418 9,639 9,453 10,045
2. Mining & Quarrying 214 189 189 193 176 160
3. Manufacturing 2,811 2,730 2,683 2,304 2,159 1,935
4. Electricity & Water 220 286 400 420 439 523
5. Construction 884 783 932 930 629 572
6. Wholeseale & Retail Trade, Hotels & Restaurants 2,839 2,797 2,839 2,668 2,640 2,669
7. Transport & Communication 1,685 1,699 1,818 1,694 1,703 1,887
8. Finance, Insurance, Real Estate & Business Serv. 2,036 2,208 2,483 2,702 2,920 3,073
9. Public Administration & Other Services 2,342 2,937 3,657 4,221 4,555 5,394

Total Industries 22,077 22,627 24,419 24,771 24,664 26,258

10. Imputed Bank Service Charge (DEDUCT) 424 485 531 667 754 772

11. Gross Domestic Product at f.c. 21,653 22,142 23,888 24,104 23,930 25,486

Source: Bureau of Statistics

The table shows GDP growing less than 20% in 10 years – but three quarters of that growth comes from ‘public administration and other services’. Agriculture has apparently grown (but can we believe the statistics?), as has ‘finance, insurance, real estate and business services ‘; manufacturing has clearly declined.

The two quotes are the following:

In brief, the decline of the Tanzanian economy between 1973 and 1985 must be ascribed to a widespread decline in production beginning in the agricultural sector; it spread to manufacturing because imports to keep the industries going became more and more difficult to purchase with falling agricultural revenues. This situation was aggravated by the adherence to the Basic Industry Strategy which encouraged capital investments in new, often expensive and ill-conceived plants. This limited the scope for allocating scarce foreign exchange in existing industries which were often forced to operate at very low levels of available operational capacity.

It is paradoxical that Tanzania, a large country with low population densities, poor initial infrastructure, and population concentrations mostly in the areas bordering on other countries, should have devoted a smaller share (averaging about 7% between 1970 and 1985) of its resources to transport and communications compared to Kenya (12%).

The second part of the report, under the heading ‘Tanzanian Agriculture since Liberalisation’, consists of thinly disguised prescription. Priority No. 1 is maintenance of the road and rail networks. The second priority is to cope with ‘institutional shortcomings’, notably the failures of the marketing authorities and the National milling Corporation. However, ‘this must be accompanied by a strengthening of other institutions, including the co-operatives’ (how?), and Hyden also advocates ‘district based development trusts’ such as the Njombe District Development Trust. The third priority is more investment in agricultural research, but also more effort to ensure that the results of this research are used. This leads him to conclude that ‘agricultural production in the years ahead will increasingly be led by large-scale farmers’ who will be mainly ‘retired party and government officials …. cultivating 10-50 acres … in the vicinity of large urban centres’! In this way Hyden repeats his distrust of ordinary Tanzanian farmers. A similar mistake characterised his 1980 book, when, using unhelpfully aggressive language, he wrote of the ‘uncaptured’ peasantry and the need to ‘capture’ them. Somehow Hyden’s belief in market forces deserts him when it comes to small farmers. Yet his own analysis provides the clues to an alternative. If the district and trunk roads are maintained and the railways do the work they were built for and if basic consumer goods are available up-country, then Tanzanian farmers, just like those everywhere else in the world, will produce and sell.
Andrew Coulson

QUEEN OF THE BEASTS. An ITV ‘Survival Special’ broadcast on March 17th 1989.

The lion has always been a potent symbol. The European hunter who came to the area in 1913 is shown in photos with his foot on a lion’s mane. He seems to think of himself as a ‘Super lion’. By 1921 most of the lions had been shot and the scarcity of lions was the stimulus for making Serengeti, the size of Northern Ireland, a National Park. Since then fortunate visitors have seen the magnificent scenery and the vast herds of grazing animals and have got close to prides of resting lions.

I remember seeing such a pride. There were so many friendly exchanges, lickings and head rubbings that I was tempted to get out of the car and join in, especially as one lioness was lying on her back asking to be stroked!

Visitors accept lion society without questioning, but scientists, comparing it with the life style of more solitary cats have been puzzled. This ‘Survival Special’ film is the result of a recent two year project by Richard Mathews and Samantha Purdy. This involved them in danger, considerable discomfort and a great deal of drudgery but it was well worthwhile.

We saw the Serengeti at all times and all seasons; the migration of the huge herds of wildebeest and the animals left behind, especially the lions driven to tackling ostrich eggs, unsuccessfully and robbing cheetah of their prey, successfully.
One of the most exciting sequences was taken during a four day and night trek. With the aid of binoculars, cameras and film adapted for night viewing they showed us a pride at its most active. For their study the scientists kept records of individual lions. They noted and drew the nicks in their ears and the spots on their muzzles; and they listened to bleeps from electronic collars fitted to some of the lions. All this was shown with an enthralling sound track and traditional African music in the background.

The picture emerged of two groups of lion society; one being the small group of unrelated males who live together temporarily and the larger matriarchal group with only one or two adult males. By hunting strategically, large prey can be brought down, but there are other reasons for grouping. The females of the matriarchal pride are all related; they will feed one another’s cubs, and we even saw one wounded lioness who could not share the hunt share the kill.

While he is in residence the adult male is a protector, an amiable consort and a tolerant father, but about two years later he is ousted by a mature younger male or males. We saw two, who had been members of a ‘bachelor’ group, drive away the resident male. Although he put up a token fight at the edge of his territory little harm was done, The newcomers entered the new pride and drove out all the nearly mature males, again without bloodshed.

After that a vague menace became a horrifying reality. The newcomers, finding the resident lionesses unwilling to accept them, killed all the cubs they could find. Two days later the bereft lionesses came into season and after a while accepted the newcomers.

This apparent descent from nobility to savagery is disturbing but all lion behaviour has a purpose. Their usual corporate care of the cubs and even a wounded lioness is not as consciously generous, nor is the slaughter of the innocents as casually cruel as we might imagine from an anthropomorphic viewpoint.

As for us?
It is only thanks to some far seeing and caring members of our species who made the area a national park, to the scientists and film makers of today, and to the people of Tanzania who are responsible for the region that we can enjoy watching ‘The Queen of Beasts’ in her natural setting and reflect on how the ‘super lions’ can be reconciled among themselves and with nature. I am now going to ask ITV for a repeat!
Shirin Spencer

MAKONDE: WOODEN SCULPTURE FROM EAST AFRICA. From the Malde Collection. An Exhibition (April 2 – May 21. 1989) and Seminar (April 15, 1989) at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.

The exhibits are separate pieces about 18 inches or more high, mostly columnar, worked to a smooth finish in black hardwood, mainly bearing individual artists’ names, and dated between around 1940-1970.

At first I was somewhat baffled, attracted and repelled. The often twisting, intertwining elongated figures variously distorted and even abstract yet disturbingly realistic fell into no category I was familiar with. But I was fascinated. Gradually I began to see meaning in the strangeness. The postures and activities portrayed found an echo in my own experience. There was common ground.

Then I was lucky enough to talk to Mott Malde, the collector of the pieces (We hope to publish an article on the way in which the collection was made in our next issue – Editor), and I began, after he had helped me with some stylistic puzzles, a little to enter the world of the Makonde and to identify with the themes which preoccupied them. The ‘big-headed teacher’ talks animatedly to the eager and respectful ‘little’ students who cluster round him; (size expressing importance is a familiar concept in art); a woman gives birth; a mischievous ‘spirit’ taunts and upsets two human figures; the ‘spirit’ meant to be protecting the fruit crop yields to the temptation of the succulent fruit and opens his (huge) mouth, greedily eating whilst a large turd falls from his anus (he is punished by diarrhoea ?!); ‘He who would not listen’ portrays a young man mournfully surveying his limp, ineffective penis, and ‘She who would not listen’ shows a woman whose flat, hollowed stomach suggests infertility. For the moment I am leaving out the few masks which are displayed. They come into rather a different category, I think , and require a more strictly anthropological approach than the one I am taking in these few notes.

During the last century the impact of Europeans (missionaries, traders, etc.) stimulated the Makonde to develop further their traditional wood carving. In response to direct requests they made small pieces, usually port raying ordinary everyday domestic activities. But from the 1940’s onwards they developed a more liberated, independent and individual style, using their own imagination and corporate myths to express their own unique from of life. They felt free to express fun and ribaldry, the seriousness of teaching the young the pain and joy of sexuality and reproduction, and the vulnerability of humans to the caprice of the ‘Spirits’. Different styles emerged, but most seem to be based on the tree trunk, a column of wood with the figures either carved in relief leaving the solid wood intact, or – quite breathtakingly – hollowing out the wood leaving sinuous intertwining figures of immense delicacy and inventiveness, resulting in a most satisfying filigree design. Sometimes the abstraction is so extreme one responds entirely to the aesthetic pleasure of the flowing lines weaving wonderfully balanced shapes, using both external and internal surfaces. But (almost) always, on close inspection, one realises that limbs, faces, hands and feet are intricately carved and the whole is alive with the active human or animal form.

Not surprisingly this work became popular with visitors who wanted to buy it. Various outlets were used, including of course, airports, and this has given rise to what seems to be a misconception. Because the pieces are readily saleable at airports, which therefore stimulates further production, the derogatory term ‘airport art’ has been in this case misapplied. Mr. Malde was very insistent that all his pieces are carved by genuine artists, who decide the subject themselves and who, like most practising artists, are pleased to have their work bought.

The SEMINAR was held to discuss ‘Issues of Colonialism, Primitivism, Exoticism and Western Attitudes Towards Indigenous Art’. The well-qualified speakers talked learnedly and fairly about primitive art (is it art ?) but, I felt, from a purely detached Western perspective. As I listened I became increasingly uncomfortable. These were people of meticulous scholarship, who clearly respected indigenous art and judged it worthy of study on its own terms, but whose emotional distancing, their retreat almost into academic concepts gave the implicit message that of course a direct and instinctive response to the sculptures themselves was for a European impossible. I profoundly disagree. Undoubtedly the more one knows of the background and life of the Makonde the more one’s understanding and appreciation of the sculptures increases. And certainly we delude ourselves if we claim, arrogantly, completely to understand what we are seeing. But having said that, I feel if we lay aside (as far as we ever can) our own cultural conditioning, and humbly allow ourselves to respond naturally and simply to the carvings, a great deal of their fundamental meaning is communicated to us. I am sure that our common humanity, our shared hopes, fears, joys and longings provides a common ground from which we can enter into the spirit of the work of art. If it is passionately and honestly made, we can have a passionate and honest response to it. Then it becomes both ‘other’ and ‘familiar’.

This is an excellent exhibition, and large and varied enough to give one a rich experience of a modern art form of culture different from our own, engrossing in its own unfolding into a new form of an old society. We must thank the Oxford Museum for mounting it.

(The exhibition will be in Preston in July and August, Southampton in September and October, Bristol in December and January, Glasgow in January and February and Leicester from February to April 1990 – Editor)
Kathleen Marriott

THE SNAKEMAN by Margaret Lane. Hamish Hamilton. 1988. £ 6.95 This is a paperback edition of a book which was originally published in 1963 under the title ‘Life With Ionides’.

C.J.P. Ionides was undoubtedly one of the great characters of East Africa; one of those singularly original people who escaped from the restrictions of a more ordinary life to find fulfilment in his own way. After a rebellious childhood, Rugby, Sandhurst, the army in India, he landed in Dar es Salaam in 1925 in pursuit of the love of his life, wild animals. He did two years with the Kings African Rifles before taking up ‘professional’ ivory poaching and finally managed to join the Tanganyika Game Department in 1933 where he made a name for himself as a disciplinarian and a great naturalist. His autobiography was published under the title “A Hunter’s Story” by W.H. Allen in 1965.

The author of this book is Margaret Lane whose most well-known book is an outstanding biography, “The Tale of Beatrix Potter” (F. Warne 1946 and 1985 ) – not at all the same subject as Ionides, one would think, but I am not so sure.

Miss Lane was intrigued by the character of Ionides when she first met him in London after he had retired and went there for medical treatment. He was ‘shocked’ by London and persuaded her to visit him in idyllic Newala where he lived in ‘a tin-roofed bungalow plastered like a swallow’s nest on the edge of an escarpment, looking towards Mozambique.’ Here there was an abundance of snakes and he was able to carry on his retirement trade with the zoos of the world without a lot of trouble.

It is not necessary to be a snake lover to read this book and possibly one can learn to appreciate snakes from reading it. Miss Lane even learned to handle them. Incidents with other animals and insects are also described attractively.

The book is primarily a character study of Ionides during the few months that Miss Lane spent with him in 1962. She found him something of an ascetic but not averse to enjoying himself in the right company. One was able to ‘sit with him in his uninhabited-looking room and at a glance to see nearly everything that he would call his own’. He had, as he said, escaped from ‘the tyranny of possessions’. He spent much time apparently meditating in a cloud of tobacco smoke with his feet on the tablecloth while he waited for news of snakes to be relayed to him through an elaborate system of messengers.

He employed eight servants ‘for the comfortable running of his household’ which of course included the snake-catching business. The servants, however, were certainly not overworked: all they had to do was to obey orders when summoned in a fearsome voice. (“Excuse me I am going to ring my bell!”). His diet was frugal and identical every day – a sausage for breakfast, rubber-like goat for lunch, melted cheese on bread for supper – and the minimum of housework was done. Miss Lane had to introduce her own diet in order to survive and to suggest a few household jobs for the sake of hygiene. Once this was done, the two of them appear to have got along together very well.

Ionides had charm, was always courteous to Miss Lane, and ready for any amount of deep, original conversation. He was widely read, though somewhat behind the times. His heroes all had ‘a streak of violence in their nature’ as he had himself. Chaka, King of the Zulus; Tippu Tib; Hannibal; Genghis Khan. “Jezebel now, I always liked her; a great woman who died so bravely, with much dignity”. “It is the same feeling that he has for all wild animals” says Miss lane. In Shakespeare, which he read often, he would always quote the references to animals.

The book contains interesting descriptions of life in and around Newala at the time together with Ionides’ comments on it. Since he had ‘an instinctive disapproval of anything called progress’ there was much he did not like. Nevertheless he was very tolerant of people because he saw them as part of the animal kingdom and accepted them as they were.

Finally there is an enjoyable visit to Mafia, followed by a few days in Dar es Salaam where Ionides was greeted ‘on every hand as a rare and auspicious migrant’ his nickname being revealed as ‘Iodine’!

I am glad that this charming classic has brought the Snake Man to our notice once more.
Christine Lawrence