JOURNEY TO REPUBLIC. Randal Sadleir. Foreword by Julius Nyerere. The Radcliffe Press. 1999.384 pages. £24.50 (hardback).

Randal Sadleir’s book is neither history, nor politics, nor straight autobiography, although historical and political events and Randal Sadleir himself are the stuff of it. The author refers to it as his memoirs, but it is not spasmodic, nor solemn, nor about earth-shaking events -except perhaps at national or local events. It is really a story -and a narration of intertwined seriousness, hard work, and laughter, with the bulk of the book covering his work for twelve years before Tanganyika’s independence, and twelve years after.

The story is told by an Irish citizen with a deep love for the country where he was born and where his family had lived for 300 years, a loyal British Colonial Civil Servant who in practical terms ignores Tanganyika’s Trusteeship status, and a dependable public servant of Tanganyika after uhuru and later of the United Republic of Tanzania.

The early chapters, about Sadleir’s childhood and life before he began work in Tanzania, are not only interesting in themselves; they also do much to Illustrate his motivations and approach to the opportunities and challenges met in the following twenty-four years. In particular they depict how deeply imbued he was with the principle that ‘privilege entails responsibility’ -or, in army terms, that ‘the first duty of an Officer and a gentleman is concern for the welfare of his men’.

That saying carries shades of feudalism and of the class structured society from which he came, and indeed which he appears to take as natural. But the principle itself is surely valid everywhere; high office is always a privilege -and inevitably gives personal privileges too. Certainly it was valuable for the country when interpreted -as it was by Sadleir and many other District and Provincial Officers -to mean concern both for those working under his leadership and for the people generally.

The accounts of his life and work as a British Colonial Servant from the time he was posted as a ‘Cadet District Officer’ to Western Province are given in some detail in this book. The author clearly kept a precise diary of what he did, and the people met; this makes for easy reading most of the time, but some of the lists of names could, with benefit, have been edited out! There are, however, frequent little comments about the persons (both African and British) with whom he worked or came to know through work; these are never unkind, and often evocative and amusing.

It has to be understood that Sadleir tells the pre-and post­independence story through accounts of his personal experiences; little inaccuracies sometimes creep in when he talks of events in the background of what he was doing -as, for example, when he says that under the 1962 Republic Constitution “the President would rule for seven years”. His activities, however, often serve to explain in an interesting way the workings of the colonial system in practice; they give life to dry analyses of admin structures and political happenings.

Further, the comments in the book (especially around and after independence) show a degree of administrative and political understanding which was not shared by all colonial officers. These could even be helpful now in the face of some current political comments about Africa’s poverty and ‘inefficiency’. Yet some of Randal’s other comments are likely to grate on the sensitivities of those with different cultural backgrounds or ideological convictions!

Among these I would include the practice of almost always referring to the tribe of the Africans he met, and using descriptive words in a way which, in other hands, are the basis for cultural or racial stereotyping. For example, when he refers to someone being one of “the highly intelligent Nyakyusa people” my own reaction is to ask which is the ‘highly unintelligent people?’ something Sadleir is clearly too nice a person ever to say! There are also phrases like (when on the summit of Kilimanjaro) “We were aware of standing literally on the top of the great unknown continent itself’ which reminds my generation at least of being taught about the ‘discovery of the Victoria Falls’.

The kind of work done ‘up-country’ by Randal Sadleir was probably not untypical of the manifold serious responsibilities and challenges faced by the young District Officers and Commissioners all over the country ­and probably in other parts of the British Empire too. It explains much about how successful empires were governed throughout recorded history, and why they ultimately died. However, the chapters on the Handeni famine and an air crash in the Bush, as described here, were more unusual experiences for a young man. And the very personal accounts are compulsive reading.

Sadleir’s later posting to Dar es Salaam to be responsible for ‘Public Relations’ was also unusual, but I suspect not as much so as his decision that it required his attendance at great TANU rallies in the capital (where his excellent Swahili was an immense advantage) as well as visits to TANU HQ to meet Mwalimu Nyerere. It is clear that both enjoyed the acquaintance -and gained from it, although naturally neither converted the other! For the sake of accuracy, however, it is necessary to stress that Mwalimu was not educated in a Roman Catholic school; he attended a Local Authority primary school in Musoma, the Govermnent Tabora Boys Secondary School, Makerere College, and Edinburgh University. His conversion to Christianity arose through the accidental combination of a particular school friend and his own curiosity! After Makerere he did teach in Roman Catholic secondary schools.

After independence, Randal Sadleir was one of the British Colonial civil servants who agreed to continue working in Tanganyika. That required an acceptance of political direction from elected Africans -very few of whom had a formal education comparable to that of the British Officers, and some of whom had experience of racial discrimination under British rule. It is a tribute to both sides that Sadleir continued to work for the post-independence governments for twelve years -for it is clear from this book that he was always frank with his superiors, and never kow-towed to anyone.

He was given some very responsible and challenging as well as new tasks to do. He appears to be particularly proud of his contribution to the success of the Tanzanian pavilion at EXPO 70 in Japan. But most people would judge that, more important even than that, was his valuable role in helping and supporting the expansion of education and training for the Cooperative Movement, with particular reference to the Cooperative College set up in Moshi.

Randal Sadleir was also involved in the training of African Administrative Officers, including some of those scheduled to work overseas. But it is the manner in which he was given full control of dealing with the 1967 famine (mostly in Kilwa District as well as around Handeni) which most clearly indicates both the Government’s high opinion of, and its trust in, Sadleir. And incidentally, the book is one of the few on Tanzania which pays proper tribute to Rashidi Kawawa’s ability and services to the country.

There are many petty ways in which this book can be criticised, and there are sections (e.g. about his home leaves) which could have been severely cut. But it is easy as well as pleasant reading -and the author loves words! True, there are times when the author gets carried away and in his graphic descriptions of places, and slips into ‘fine writing’ which made this reader smile -such as talking of a stream in certain moods as ‘mossily murmuring’. But it is a good change to have a book which errs ­when it errs -on the side of grammatical but not pedantic English, and on a love of language.

For despite all justified criticisms, this book is of greater enjoyment, and is likely to be of wider interest, than the title suggests; titles are always liable to be a problem for books which do not fit easily into any routine classification. Therefore, although in the present publishing environment it might have been quite brave of O.U.P. to publish it, I hope they will follow through by advertising it intelligently so that it attracts buyers without special interest in Tanzania.

This book is basically a story, written by a sympathetic foreign participant, about the peaceful birth of an independent African country, about its early ambitions, and something of its endeavours. It does not replace any other book about the period, but it adds some flesh to bones and helps to emphasise that such political and economic events are by, for, and about People. Among those who were in Tanzania over the relevant period, it might well start some discussions; I can only suggest that it be read first. And in any case -it is a ‘Good Read’!
Joan E Wicken

LIVINGSTONE’S TRIBE: A JOURNEY FROM ZANZIBAR TO THE CAPE. Stephen Taylor. Harper Collins. 260 pages. £17.99.

Born in South Africa of English parentage the author left for Britain at the age of 22 ‘sickened by the malevolence of apartheid and the dour resentful racists and zenophobes.’ When he took his family to live in Harare for four years the idea of an African journey ‘in search of his own tribe’ was conceived. He located many of the few remaining white people still living in Britain’s former territories.

Recounted in a highly readable style with great sympathy and understanding of the strengths and frailties of human nature, his travels through Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia bring to life the history, as well as the beauties of the scenery and wildlife, especially the birds, of the countries through which he passes.

His comments are often challenging in their frankness. He considers, for instance that during colonial times Europeans, exhibiting ‘a vapid smugness’, tended to see Africa as ‘either Elysium or an abyss, bringing out extremes of idealism or cynicism.’ Horrified by the slave trade, he adds: ‘Far more damaging than the physical abuse suffered by Africans at the hands of the odd individual sadist was the system which created the borders of modem Africa’ as they carved it up ‘with set-squares and compasses. ‘

Despite everything Africa’s ‘resourcefulness and humanity’ had endured. Her people were ‘frontiersmen who had colonised an especially hostile region of the world on behalf of the human race’ and while outsiders thought of it as the most fragile continent a case could just as well be made out that it was the most resilient.

By means of the ‘Five-bar test’ he first learned about the Africans’ ‘awesome capacity for detachment’ in a Dar eating-house, after being driven crazy by a faulty CD system which kept slipping back after every five bars of ghetto-blasting music with no-one seeming to take any notice. With many petty irritations lying ahead he realised that ‘for enduring in Africa this was a starter.’ He also concluded that while the Western belief that we can control our destinies might be deluded in Africa acceptance of mortality ‘goes deeper than mere fortitude’ and that Aids may even have compounded the tendency to fatalism.

The courtesy of Tanzanians surprised him most. It was not only ‘the grace of the humble’ that was touching but the politeness and ‘an even rarer quality, kindness’. Many services were all the more unexpected for being offered without any hope of reward.

He met with several celebrated whites including Garfield Todd and his daughter Judith in Zimbabwe and Richard Leakey and Lord Delamere in Kenya and in a small white-washed cottage near Kunduchi beach in Dar es Salaam Daudi Ricardo, descendant of the owners of Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, now living in ‘genteel poverty’, who happily confessed to having learned ‘a new cultural language.’ A Tanzanian taxi­driver fervently referred to him as ‘a good man.’

During a whirlwind tour of Zanzibar on the back of Cannon David’s motorbike he learned about missionaries ‘of the old school’, including Marion Bartlet, a surgeon, who performed the relatively simple operation to release contracted leg tendons on children with polio so that many Tanzanians were only able to walk because of the skills of ‘a small, frail, shy and unassuming woman.’ Caroline Thackeray, East Africa’s first woman missionary and a cousin of William Makepeace Thackeray, went to Zanzibar to teach and stayed there for the rest of her life, while Frank Weston, another missionary, and a ‘lone voice’ recognised that for Africans to benefit from European influence and not be damaged by it, ‘the institutions of tribe, family and custom needed to be nurtured and not destroyed. ‘

Randal Sadleir, a former district officer, told the author how, in the Cosy Cafe in Dar, the youthful Nyerere had declared: “The most important thing in the lives of people in Dar is ‘witchcraft”, and an American pastor also stated: “Our biggest mistake is that we have failed to address the Africans’ terrible fear of being bewitched.”

What the author describes as ‘the worst bit of doggerel I can recall’ nevertheless seems to say something about the cheerfulness and optimism of the Tanzanian character:
Always remember to forget the things that made you sad
But never forget to remember the things that made you glad.

With several interesting photographs this book is a revealing and thoughtful account of contemporary African concerns, many of which readers of Tanzanian Affairs will recognise with nostalgic affection.
John Budge

KAMUSI YA VISAWE. SWAHILI DICTIONARY OF SYNONYMS. Mohamed A Mohamed and Saidi A Mohamed. Obtainable from African Books Collective (Tel: 01865 726686). 1998. 267 pages. £13.95.

The publication last year of the first ever Dictionary of Synonyms is an important milestone in the history of this rich and beautiful language with the finest poetry in Africa.

Great credit is due to the industry and scholarship of the two Zanzibar authors who state in their excellent introduction that ‘they worked day and night for five years to complete their task! Small wonder, since they listed some 14,000 words with 71,000 synonyms.

The dictionary well illustrates the variety and flexibility of Swahili and its constant reinforcement by modem words and expressions often borrowed from other languages.

In a foreword, former President Mwinyi, himself a Zanzibari, points out the great value of this novel dictionary not only to school­children but also to university students, teachers and Swahili scholars as well as to beginners and those who already speak it fluently but wish to broaden their knowledge of its growing vocabulary.

The book is a literary and linguistic delight. Old favourites are there like angalau on p-7 with synonyms walau, ijapokuwa, ingawa, japo, hata kama all roughly meaning ‘although’. SambaSamba on p-198 with no less than 23 synonyms including the magical TangaTanga ­translated in my local dictionary to ‘frig about like a goat’ was popular in the old KAR -yugayuga, chugachuga, hangaika, tapatapa, all meaning ‘screw up’ in the modem idiom. I’m not so keen on sensa = ‘census’ on p -200 and many like it such as sentensi, semina, setla on the same page but, after all, ‘imitation is the sincerest from of flattery!. However, takriban (p-216) an Arabic word, I had never heard before is glorious and means ‘nearly’ or ‘about’. Finally, I have no hesitation in recommending this work as an essential reference book for all lovers of Swahili.
Randal Sadleir

SELECTED CASES AND MATERIALS. Chris Maina Peter. Publisher: Rudiger Koppe Verlage, Cologne. 1997. 893 pages.

Quoting from Justice Roberts Kisanga’s foreword the Dar es Salaam Guardian describes this book as a serious study of the human rights situation in Tanzania and a meticulously written legal masterpiece. The book is said to ‘attack vitriolically’ the Court of Appeal as being insensitive to justice; it also criticises the Chief Justice for issuing a directive during the villagisation process stating that all cases involving ujamaa villages should be sent to him directly and for openly siding with the government on such cases. He writes that in matters of bail persons are treated differently for the same offences depending on the court to which they go. The author, who is Associate Professor of Law in the University of Dar es Salaam, is against the death penalty and corporal punishment considering them to be serious infringements of human rights.

TREVOR HUDDLESTON – A LIFE. Robin Denniston. Macrnillan £20.00

Without question .Trevor Huddleston was one of the great Christian influences on the twentieth century on events, on churchmanship and on people, particularly young people but this is a deeply disappointing book. True, the author inherited the project from Canon Eric James who had for some years painstakingly chronicled the life of Trevor Huddleston, spending regular Friday afternoons interviewing his subject. He had also visited South Africa, Tanzania and the Indian Ocean in search of the ‘real Trevor’ and had done some considerable work on the book before ill­health forced him to give up the project.

Robin Denniston, once an editor at Collins and responsible for the publication of Nought for your Comfort, went on to become one of the most distinguished figures in British publishing as publisher to Oxford University Press which makes the many inaccuracies in this book more curious. Scarcely 200 pages long, Denniston pads his work by a further hundred pages with Nicholas Stebbing’s account of Trevor’s last and unhappy days as an invalid back in Mirfield, and then, what seems to be a random collection of lectures and sermons given by Trevor on various occasions.

Of course the book is an account of Trevor’s life. There is Trevor the undergraduate, the novice, the priest, the activist. There are accounts of his work in South Africa and of his relations with the South African authorities, together with an account of the reasons for his recall to Mirfield. There is some account of his time at Masasi and of the period at Stepney with reference to the accusations of improper conduct, and an analysis of his affection for and relationship with good-looking boys. But the book makes no suggestion that such character assassination remained part of the South African Bureau Of State Security’s agenda until the fall of Apartheid and many honourable Christian and Muslim activists were discredited.

However the whole book is a fish-eye biography. It is as if everything is seen through the South African perspective and, while at one level this is understandable, with Trevor’s lifelong commitment to the fight against the injustice of the apartheid system, at another it is unforgivable. It gives an almost unhealthy perspective, reducing the rest of his life to second best. Trevor was in South Africa for only ten of his 85 years -from 1943 to 1953; he was in Masasi from 1960 to 1968, in Stepney from 1968 to 1978 and Bishop of Mauritius and Archbishop of the Seychelles from 1978 to 1983.

Without wishing to diminish Denniston’s analysis or evaluation of Trevor’s achievements, there are so many inaccuracies in the text which suggest some disturbing proof reading by the editor. The chapter about Trevor’s episcopate in Masasi is disfigured by distortions and inaccuracy.

One of Trevor’s concerns while there had been the so-called poaching of Anglicans by the more affluent Roman missions, but it must be acknowledged that there was, and to some extent still is, exchange between the two Churches. Ndanda, a German Benedictine centre close to Masasi, is described as being staffed by African monks. While there were a few African brothers there in the 1960s, by far the majority of resident brethren were expatriate Ottilian Benedictines, most of whom had been in the country for many years. Their constant generosity to the poorer brethren of UMCA was legendary and good relationships were enjoyed between Masasi and Ndanda despite the theological and social differences.

Denniston writes about ‘the arrival of the Newcastle team of doctors’ inspired by Trevor’s charisma; for the casual reader one could believe that there had been no medical work worth speaking of before their advent. Their expertise developed technologies but they had the pioneering work of C. Frances Taylor and Leader Sterling to build on. The Newcastle team were the first for whom special financial arrangements were made which ruffled the unquestioned acceptance of the traditional poverty by the former UMCA missionary staff! Trevor’s policy of never explaining or apologizing to his staff did nothing to help this.

There is reference to taking ten children to Lulindi for a swim -a somewhat unlikely excursion as Lulindi is a small inland town. Lindi is the seaport where the modest hotel sits on the beach opposite the Anglican church. Kilwara is mentioned up the coast. One assumes the author refers to Kilwa, one of the earliest centres of Swahili culture and the source for the Kilwa Chronicle, a seminal source of utenzi literature.

While the account of Trevor’s concern to reduce the expatriate representation in the church is made, there is no reference to the response to Trevor’s final synod address to the clergy at Mtandi, when at least one clergyman came up to him and told him it was improper of him to tell them there would never be another expatriate Bishop. It was, he was firmly told, the business of the diocese to propose names’ (Indeed Hilary Chisonga’s immediate successor was Richard Norgate, a UMCA missionary who had for years been chaplain at Mkomaindo, and, although a Tanzanian citizen, definitely an expatriate!)

Bishop Chisonga his successor as Bishop of Masasi is curiously mis-spelt twice in the earlier pages of the Masasi section as Kisonga. I worked for him for three years and saw the enormous care he exerted to heal the rift in the diocese caused by Trevor’s appointment of an Assistant Bishop in 1963, who assumed he would naturally succeed Trevor as the next Bishop. So divided was the diocese that when Bishop Hilary set out for confirmations in certain parts of the diocese he was sent death threats. There is little reference to the legacy Trevor bequeathed to his old diocese.

Such inaccuracies in one section undermine confidence in the rest of the text and this writer, at least, hopes that one day there may be a book which reveals the real man behind the various titles he had.
David Craig

Other publications

HARAKA, HARAKA…LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP. Magdalena Rwebangira & Rita Liljestrom. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. 1998. 271 pages. £19.95. A compilation of nine studies from the Reproductive Health Study Group at the University of Dar es Salaam. They highlight the erosion of customary institutions that regulate procreation and express the meaning of gender and marriage. They show that without an understanding of the dynamics of local customs change initiated from without becomes ineffective and unsustainable.

SPREAD OF HIV INFECTION IN A RURAL AREA OF TANZANIA. (Boerrna/Urassa/SenkorolKlokke/Ng’weshemi). AIDS 1999 University of North Carolina. Vol13. No 10. 7 pages. This article is concerned with research assessing the spread of HIV in Kisesa, Mwanza using a ‘Demographic surveillance system’. Data was collected on mobility, bars and commercial sex through confidential interviews and blood tests on a range of individuals. The general conclusion was that HIV was found to be more prevalent around trading centres than in surrounding areas, sometimes 3-4 times higher than in the villages. Most of the article is concerned with explaining methods of data collection and listing data, which makes much of the reading laborious. However, the main point comes through that the trading centre is the major factor in the high levels of HIV in the district. The authors argue this is due to a number of factors including the high incidence of promiscuous sexual behaviour, prostitution, travelling workers and the high consumption of alcohol in ‘pombe’ bars. Furthermore they point out that HIV prevalence is underestimated as many tests are carried out at “Sentinel Antenatal clinics” ~ Roy Wilsoll.

BETWEEN THE STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: MEDICAL DISCIPLINE IN TANZANIA. John A Harrington. Journal of African Studies, 37, 2 (1999) pp 32. Cambridge University Press. Despite the drastic changes in the last decade which forced a broad shift in policy from the general provision of services by the state to a mixed system with private providers making up the increasing shortfall in public resources, doctors in Tanzania have maintained a relatively privileged position. The writer, a member of Warwick University’s Law School, discusses in some detail the origins and development of the medical profession, from ‘the capture of the state by African elites’ in the first two decades of independence to the reduction in the state’s size and functions under external pressure in the last 15 years. The colonial medical service, he writes, was by and large aimed at the European population and administered by medical officers and missionaries. With only 14 African doctors at independence the demand for ‘Africanisation’ began with the setting up of a medical faculty in 1963 at Dar es Salaam University. By 1991 the number of doctors had increased to 1,265, still only one per 21,423 people.

As part of the ‘bureaucratic bourgeoisie’ doctors were able to attract a disproportionate degree of overseas aid when compared with non-curative public health programmes aimed at improving the health of the rural majority. The current costs of urban hospitals and clinics are still a major drain upon the health budget and foreign currency reserves. Progress suffered a severe economic setback in the 1980′ s. When, in 1986, the government was forced to accept World Bank and IMF conditionalities on further aid, severe cutbacks led to a collapse in the morale of health care workers and a ‘brain drain’ of Tanzanian-trained physicians, of whom 26 per cent left the country. During the villagisation programme in the 1970’s peasants were urged to leave their existing settlements for ujamaa villages with the promise that improved medical facilities would be available there. According to the writer tIns indicated that ‘health care could be said to have been both an end and a means of development.’ Resources such as water and medicine were directed to ujamaa villages in preference to others ‘as a means of pressurising the population to comply’. One of the features of ujamaa was a more or less complete takeover of non-governmental institutions by TANU in the interests of development, but later, with the backing of international organisations, attempts were made to undo this process. ‘Democratisation’ and broad liberalisation were linked to aid so that sectional interest groups were given a role in the political bargaining process ‘often at the behest of international bodies and foreign NGOs’. Many doctors responded by entering into private practice, while others ‘attempted to position the profession within the notional sphere of a non-market civil society’.

The writer believes that commercialisation, with the introduction of private clinics and ‘the parallel economy of bribery’ undennine the status of medical practice and that the Medical Council of Tanganyika was ‘forced to shore up professional ethics in the face of structural alTangements which tended massively to undennine them’. The writer concludes: ‘If medicine becomes a commodity its producers are forced to compete with purveyors of other substitutable commodities, such as traditional African medicine and the practice of so-called ‘injection doctors.’ As well as professional autonomy all semblance of disinterested service would be lost’. And a leading doctor warned: ‘The imposition of structmal adjustment programmes is having a profound effect on the doctor/patient relationship at the same time as reducing the quality of health services and the access to them by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups’ -John Budge.

INCORPORATING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE INTO AFRICAN URBAN PLANNING: A CASE STUDY WITH CHINESE CONNECTIONS. Garth Myers. Hong Kong Papers in Design and Development. Voll 1998.9 pages. This paper is one of several by Garth Myers on the Kikwajuni neighbourhood of Zanzibar’s Ng’ambo area. East of Stone Town across the former tidal creek, this area (‘the Other Side’) began to be settled in the 1850s, largely by African and Swahili slaves, servants and peasants, on the land of their owners, employers and patrons. The land belonged to the Omani royal clan and its allies and rivals, or to Indian merchants. Most of Kikwajuni belonged to Abdullah bin Sallam al-Shaksi, a wealthy Omani trader and slave holder, and the settlers included both islanders and a number of mainland groups. Development and administration was left in the hands of overseers or locally chosen imams, and an indigenous urban form developed, based on the concepts of uwezo (power), imani (faith) and desturi (custom).

Residents lacked uwezi, in the form of either material wealth or land ownership -even in the 1960s the Shaksi clan controlled most of the land and it was subsequently nationalised. Occupants of the area were and still are almost all Sunni Shafi’i Muslims, a school of Islamic thought which emphasises consensus in religious and social affairs. Organised into areas around mosques, the imams helped to force a sense of belonging and consensus amongst the neighbourhood’s diverse African cultures. Much of the detailed spatial organisation was based on custom, for example, houses were arranged along pathways kept clear of buildings and clean by cooperation between neighbours, and social life focused on spaces where the area’s social cohesiveness was reproduced (maskani, small meeting places for men, and baraza, porches on the front of Swahili houses).

Amongst the many expatriates who produced plans for Zanzibar were planners from the Peoples Republic of China, who produced a Master Plan in 1982. Influenced by Chinese attempts of the time to develop a planning system suitable for the new push for economic growth, the group prepared a master plan (which completely neglected issues of finance and implementation) and detailed area plans, including one for the upgrading of Ng’ambo which entailed the superimposition of a grid road layout, considerable demolition and installation of waterborne sewerage.

Indigenous planners involved in implementation modified the proposals slightly, but still gave priority to improving roads, despite low vehicle ownership, relatively good access to existing houses, and local priorities for lighting along existing paths, drainage and improvements to latrines. The subtext, in the eyes of many residents, had to do with the state using road construction for security purposes. The upgrading plans provided for a few large private houses in each ward. In practice, these were the only physical aspect of the improvement schemes to be carried out and the plots were allocated to members of the CCM-allied political, bureaucratic and business elite, who continued to ignore the needs of most residents. Dependent on their own resources, only the better off house owners, especially those who can call on overseas funds, have been able to make the significant physical renovations the houses need. Collectively consumed goods, such as shared taps, schools and drainage, have continued to deteriorate. Moreover, the transition to multiparty rule has been marked by the politicization of community spaces. The resulting association of particular spaces with rival parties has reduced their function in conflict resolution and enhancing social cohesion. The parallel role of the mosques has also been undermined by increased religious conservatism, following competition between Saudi Arabian and Iranian assistance agencies.

Upgrading sensitive to indigenous physical and social organisation has, therefore, been undermined not only by Chinese planners who considered the area’s physical fabric poor quality and disorderly and provided no framework for dealing with conflictual planning decisions, but also by the technocratic approach and security concerns of the one-party state, the spoils-oriented politics of the Mwinyi regimes, and the political rivalry which has accompanied multiparty politics. Myers concludes that the opportunity for appropriate upgrading has been missed. He asserts, contrary to his own evidence, that the Chinese planners of the early 1980s “began to ‘hear’ the indigenous planning system, but not to listen to it”. He also suggests that the “team took no account of conflictual land rights that have been at the heart of the 1982 plan’s lack of success in implementation”, but does not adequately analyse this issue. Finally, his prognosis for upgrading based on dialogue with residents, managed through forms of social organisation which are able to produce consensus, and resulting in physical improvements appropriate for the poor majority of residents, is gloomy ~ Carole Rakodi

RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND WOMEN: WHAT ARE THE BEST APPROACHES TO COMMUNICATING INFORMATION? Joyce Otsyina & Diana Rosenberg. Gender and Development. Vol 7 No
2. July 1999. 11 pages. This article focuses on research in Shinyanga region from the ‘Hifadhi Ardhi Shinyanga’ project (HASH!) which was aimed at introducing new development ideas into a rural community. The authors cite the ‘lack of effective communication strategies and methods’ in bringing about these technological ideas to rural Tanzania. They suggest that the technologies are available but rather the problem lies with cultural factors preventing women from taking part in awareness of these new technologies. They claim that most development programmes meet with little success because these schemes often neglect the participation of women. For example, timetables for seminars and film shows are arranged at inconvenient times for many women. Cultural seclusion of women can also be another factor, which stops them from contact outside the community. However, many local women were also noted as being suspicious of outsiders such as the UWT (Umoja wa Wanawake wa Tanzania). Conclusions made by the authors include the lack of education among women of their rights, the importance of the initiative and control being in the hands of locals, the information gap between men and women in a community and the fact that women rely more on ‘informal information networks’ for knowledge of what is happening. No attempts have been made to challenge the crucial factor of gender division of labour -Roy Wilson.

BUDGETING WITH A GENDER FOCUS. Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP). 1999. 46pp. The TGNP is an NGO formed in 1993 to facilitate gender equality and women’s empowerment. This book reports on the results of research on macro-level budgetary processes in the ministries of Finance, Education and Health and in the Planning Commission and illustrates in clear and simple terms, with many imaginative drawings, photographs and charts, the theory and practice of budgeting and how it can contribute to the objectives of the NGO. (Thank you Strata Mosha for sending us a copy of this book ­Editor).

A GERMAN GUERILLA CHIEF IN AFRICA. David Rooney. History Today. November 1999. David Rooney has skilfully condensed the story of Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, commander of the German army in German East Africa during the 1914-1918 war, into seven pages, illustrated by a useful map and ten photographs. Von Lettow-Vorbeck realised that he had no chance of beating the British, with their command of the sea, and decided instead to tie down as many British troops as possible in order to prevent them from being used against Germany in other theatres of war. In this he was remarkably successful, and his small army (170 Germans and 1,400 African askaris) was still fighting for some days after the Armistice was signed in Europe on November 11 1918. Rooney gives a graphic account of the various phases of the campaign including his defeat of the British at Tanga and his brilliantly conducted retreat, first to the Rufiji valley, then to Masasi and Mozambique and finally to Northern Rhodesia. Readers will spot one error: C S Forester’s African Queen was not based on the scuttling of the German light cruiser Konigsberg in the Rufiji Delta but on the sinking of the Graf von Goetzen in Lake Tanganyika.
J.A.Sankey

DOORS OF ZANZIBAR A Mwalim Mwalim. 1998. 143 pp. 95 plates. £14.95. A photographic study of the famous decorative doors of Stone Town including a map of door locations and sepia photographs. Obtainable from African Books Centre. TeI: 0171 497 0309.

PASTORALISM, PATRIARCHY AND HISTORY: CHANGING GENDER RELATIONS AMONG MAASAI IN TANGANYIKA 1890 -1940. Dorothy L Hodgson. Rutgers State University of New Jersey. CUP. Journal of African History, 40 (1999). pp 24. This painstaking and careful analysis of the effect of German and British colonialism on the Maasai people, shows how the whole nature of the people’s pastoral life and culture was drastically transformed and well­nigh destroyed. A tolerant and tmly interdependent tribe became an intolerant patriarchal society, in which women were thought of as ‘property’ and ‘possessions’ owned and controlled by men. ‘Commodification’ of livestock, the monetisation of the economy and incorporation into the colonial system reinforced and enhanced male political authority and economic control shifting the contours of male­female power relations. Even after the Second World War the pace and zeal of these interventions only intensified as British and then Tanzanian governments tried to encourage, bribe or force the Maasai to sell their cattle and perceive them as commodities. Men usurped women’s role as traders. The article argues that the new forms of property relations had important consequences for gender relations. Taxation classified women as property to be paid for by men and the incorporation into the colonial state extended the formal political power of men in general and older men in particular. ‘Instead of mutual respect men and women scorn one another’ the writer says. She concludes: ‘Unlike Static a historical analysis of pastoral gender relations that posit women’s subordination as an inherent feature of pastoralism, thereby assuming that Western notions of private property and ownership are culturally and historically universal, my historical analysis demonstrates that patriarchy must be understood as a consequence not of cows but of history’ ­John Budge

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ABDULWAHID SYKES (1924-1968). THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE MUSLIM STRUGGLE AGAINST BRITISH COLONIALISM IN TANGANYIKA. Mohamed Said. Minerva Press. 1998. 358pp.

The key to this complex fascinating and at times infuriating book lies in the first paragraph of the author’s introduction.

‘This work is a product of my own experience and exposure to the memories and recollections of many people, and to events which took place in Dar es Salaam. Being born in Dar es Salaam where the modem politics of Tanganyika, as mainland Tanzania was then known, had its strongest bas~, I have many recollections of personalities and events which took place at that time. Word of mouth from people who saw events take place before their very eyes enriched my knowledge. When I was a student of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam where the research for this book actually began, I found out that what was taught about nationalist politics in Tanganyika did not tally with what I knew. Gradually I came to conclude that there was a deliberate attempt to down play the role of certain personalities in the nation’s political history.’

The ‘personalities’ referred to are revealed in the book to be the Muslim leaders in general, and his hero and subject Abdulwahid Sykes in particular. Note that the author, born in Dar es Salaam in 1952, was a two year old toddler when T ANU was formed, only 9 years old at the time of UHURU, and a 16 year old teenager when his subject died. He had perforce to rely largely on his father, his family and their friends for information, reinforced later by his own extensive and scholarly academic research.

His filial piety is to be commended as is his transparent loyalty to Islam which illuminates his book. The problem for the reader however is that the result of this blend of reminiscence repetition hearsay experience and scholarship is an extraordinary literary maze with paths leading in all directions through time and space, hundreds of characters appearing and re­appearing in bewildering succession, until one hardly knows which way to turn. Although I have the advantage of having known personally many of the leading figures, albeit some 40 years ago, including Abdulwahid Sykes himself and his brothers Ally and Abbas; Ally in particular having been a close friend. The illustrations include an enchanting photograph of the Sykes boys in the 1930s, the youngest Abbas clutching a bunch of flowers and Ally wearing a white pith-helmet! Their father Kleist, a legendary character, died in 1949 before I came to Dar es Salaam, but I knew his kinsman and fellow Zulu Machado Plantan, editor of ZUHRA, quite well. They brought the courage energy and intelligence of the Zulu to the drowsy denizens of Gerezani, ensuring for themselves a secure place in the Muslim elite so often referred to by the author.

Kleist Sykes enlisted in the German Army at the age of 12 and fought in World War I. His eldest son Abdulwahid was conscripted into the K.A.R. aged 17; inspired by this Ally ran away from home aged 15 to volunteer for the War. They served together in Ceylon and Burma, where on Christmas Eve 1945, they made a pact to found a political party after the War. Its’ name was to be ‘Tanganyika African National Union’ (TANU). Ally remembers that Abdulwahid wrote the name of the proposed party in his diary. Later Ally personally designed the TANU membership card (similar to his Tanganyika Legion Card) and chose the national colours. (Black for [text missing in original]

The reader is rewarded for his pains however when he finds some of the precious pearls which Mohamed Said has uncovered in the depths of his research, referred to in Dryden’s couplet at the start of the book:

‘Errors like straws, upon the surface flow.
He who would search for pearls must dive below.’

They include: a tribute to the liberal Governor Sir Donald Cameron who encouraged the founding of the African Association in New Street in 1930; the fact that the colours of the Young Africans’ Football Club, green and black, were the same as TANU’s and their supporters identified with the new party; the strange tale of the banishment by the British of Sheikh Abdallah, the Liwali of Mikindani, the centre of Islamic knowledge, after ‘declining to perform duties not conforming with his status, dignity and respect to Islam .. .’ What were they?! the revelation that there were only 630 registered voters in Muslim Bagamoyo District from a population of 89,000 in the 1958 election; and, in lighter vein, Trevor Griffith-Jones is referred to as the Chief Secretary on page l39 where the then Attorney-General, the late Sir Arthur Grattan-Bellew, is also delightfully described as Gratten Below! Finally, the author’s claim that Nyerere, having been supported for the leadership of TANU in 1954 by Abdulwahid Sykes, then Chairman of the Tanganyika African Association, and the Muslim elite on whose support he also initially relied to gain independence from the British, quietly chose to ‘forget them …’; he goes further still citing a catalogue of alleged arrests, detentions, vote rigging and even cooking the Census and bribery by the independent Government of Tanzania in order to ensure the downgrading of Islam.

Mohamed Said recalls the fact that Muslims had lived on the coast since the 8th Century, whilst the 19th Century Christian Missionaries were relatively recent arrivals in the wake of the Colonial rulers. Eight Christian Ministers of Education held office in succession until the appointment of Professor Kighoma Ali Malima as the first Muslim Minister in 1987. ‘In Islam politics and religion are inseparable … in 1955 we saw how Muslims managed to establish a secularist -nationalist ideology as a means of forging national unity. Separation of religion and politics was therefore one of the sacred and cherished ideals of TANU. It is from this background that we can now understand the contradictions which came to engulf Tanzanian politics soon after Independence.’

Here I must leave it to the readers to make up their own minds since I was not there after 1973. In any event the author, whilst striving to maintain academic detachment, has seen to it that the Muslim case has not gone by default.

I can only close by saying that throughout my own service in East Africa and Tanzania (1943-1973) I never noticed any anti-Muslim bias by the British or the Tanzanian Governments. If anything rather the reverse since the great local rulers revered by the British like the Sultan of Zanzibar, the Liwalis of the Coast, Chief Adam Sapi, Chief Abdallah Fundikira and the merchant princes H.H. The Aga Khan, Abdulkarim Karimjee and V.M. Nazerali were all Muslim. After all, Nyerere’s successor was a Muslim; ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating.’ CASE NOT PROVEN.
Randal Sadleir

IN QUEST OF LIVINGSTONE. A journey to the Four Fountains. Colum Wilson and Aisling Irwin. House of Lochar. 1999.242 pages. £13.99.

In this quite exceptional travel book a man and wife, each with distinctive reactions and intuitions, describe a cycling odyssey through south-western Tanzania, while endeavouring incidentally to inject some meaning into the three most fundamental influences on the lives of African people -colonisation, Christianity and the slave trade.

Considering the immensity of such a task it is unsurprising that the issues are not as comprehensively examined as they obviously need to be, but the findings and observations of the writers provide many fresh insights into them. Unusual also is the fact that sometimes contradictory interpretations of the same scenes and events are freely and candidly expressed by two accomplished writers with excellent powers of description.

Both, like Livingstone, are brave and determined. Whereas most travel writers tend to journey in comparative comfort and spend a lot of time on research and passive observation, Colum and Aisling are under constant attack from the elements and other natural obstacles such as mud and sand as well as occasionally suffering from the limitations of mechanical transport. While expressing astonishment at Livingstone’s stoical fortitude and endurance they unwittingly reveal their own steadfastness and courage, for they were not constantly accompanied, as he was, by a train of devoted servants. Aisling, it would appear, suffered more than her husband.

Explaining the choice of transport Aisling writes: ‘Authenticity is all­important … We had to be free to pass into the depths of the land, not knowing when we would return to a road. Bicycles were the answer; they would be our pack-animals.’
While Colum was intrigued by Livingstone’s exploratory obsession, Aisling was more interested in the seemingly irreconcilable aspects of his character, including the psychological effects of his upbringing in Blantyre, Scotland, as a child worker in a cotton mill, accentuated by his religious convictions and his ‘ascetism’. She writes: “In a sense he sought pain. His was a conscious and deliberate endurance. ”

She compared his impatience with his fellow whites with his sensitive and sympathetic attitude towards Africans, even understanding their resistance to Christianity. Livingstone wrote ‘Africans are not by any means unreasonable. I think unreasonableness is more a hereditary disease in Europe than in this land.’ This seems illogical when one considers Livingstone’s behaviour to his long-suffering wife who died on a previous Zambesi expedition, and his children, for which he later suffered remorse.

There are intriguing accounts of meetings with missionaries, including the White Fathers and the Benedictine monks at Mwimva. Simon and Celia, of the African Inland Mission, told them: “The life of an African fanner is very similar to the life described in the Bible. Their food, their clothes, their houses -it’s much closer to the Bible than our lives in the West. They understand spirituality here.”

On the question of cultural interference, Colum refers to ‘the cold intransigence’ of the missionary movements and believes that many African churches ‘became a vehicle for those attempting to realise a nationalist dream’, leading to the ‘African socialism’ of President Nyerere and the problems of ujamaa and villagisation, with which he deals sympathetically.

About another aspect of Tanzanian life Colum has this to say: ‘As I returned from the market the rain began. Fierce stuff, it thrummed on the dusty ground around me and formed rivulets down the road. I remembered that Livingstone’s equipment for dealing with the rain had included a small segmental boat and paddles. We were bringing nothing but waterproof groundsheets. To succeed in following Livingstone would depend on a long series of triumphs over broken bicycles, swollen rivers, pathless mountains and endless swamps. How could we possibly triumph over such odds?’

Succeed they did, and the story of their pilgrimage through many Tanzanian villages into Zambia, including a number of fascinating photographs, is a riveting one.

John Budge THE BOERS IN EAST AFRICA. ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY. Brian M. du Toit, University of Florida. Bergin and Garvey. 1998.209 pages.

This book provides a fascinating account of Boer Settlement in East Africa. My interests in the Afrikaner began when as a boy in Holland I was gripped by books about the Boer war detailing Boer victories. The book briefly discusses the scramble for Africa, the Boer war, and its aftermath and looks in greater detail into the role ethnicity played in the Boer settlement into East Africa and in its final demise in the early sixties.

The Boer defeat in the Anglo -Boer war in 1902 and the destruction, bitterness, and divisions which it caused among the Afrikaners was the root cause for the Boers arrival in East Africa. Today Field Marshall Lord Kitchener, the British War Hero and victor, would possibly sit in the cells of the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague accused of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. After my own childhood years in Japanese concentration camps I fully understand Boer feelings. My mother cursed the Japanese until the day she died.

The period of active settlement in East Africa was short -1905 to 1908. Neither the British (in Kenya) nor the Germans (in Tanganyika) enjoyed or encouraged the arrival of the Afrikaners, a troublesome lot of suspect loyalty. Their story is one of adventure, hardship, suffering, tenacity, and a brief period of triumph and economic success after World War II, but in the final analysis, one of failure as the Afrikaner returned to his roots in the South and abandoned the land of which he had never become a part.

The scramble for Africa is a story of Europe’s unbridled audacity and arrogance during which it grabbed a continent much larger than itself. A couple of enterprising young Germans and a gunboat off Zanzibar yielded up Tanganyika. By 1913, 79 German officials supported by black Zulu, Sudanese and Somali mercenaries controlled 7.6 million Africans. There was resistance but it was quickly overcome at a time when the country suffered from disastrous rinderpest and an outbreak of smallpox; locust attacks inflicted famine. Afrikaners did not like the German administration in Tanganyika. It was strict and bureaucratic and Germans tended to think of African interests as being paramount. Many settlers soon moved on into the Belgian Congo or into British East Africa. They found life under the Germans too restrictive. One German woman married to an Afrikaner is quoted as having discouraged and warned the Afrikaners on the ship bound for German East Africa, that in German territory the unfettered lifestyle of the Boers would clash with strict German laws. The Afrikaner wanted space and solitude. He was not going to get it.

Du Toit traces Boer ethnicity back to factors, such as race, language, culture and especially to religion and education. I was fascinated to read that in 1873 an Afrikaner had argued that Afrikaners included people of Dutch, French, German, English, Danish, Portuguese, Mozambican and Hottentot extraction. The Afrikaner moved away from this broad concept of Afrikanerdom and turned to the ill-fated concept of pure white, protestant, Afrikaners.

Du Toit discusses what he describes as the Boers ‘trekgees’, a spiritual inability to remain long in one place and the ‘treklus’, the desire for novelty and adventure as part of the Boer spirit. Long before the Boer war, Boers had fanned out far into the African interior, but conditions after the Boer war, rather than “trekgees”, triggered off the exodus to East Africa. Boers moving to Kenya had often stood with the British and were regarded as traitors in the South. Those moving initially to German East Africa, were the so called “Bitter einders” who had fought the British to the bitter end. The journeys of the Boer settlers to East Africa, by ship from Lourenco Marques, to Tanga or Mombasa, from there by train and ox wagon into the interior, are rather sad stories of incredible tenacity, hardship and suffering. Both the British and the Germans found the Afrikaners stubborn, resenting and resisting assimilation, quarrelsome, and suspected them of disloyalty towards their colonial masters.

Du Toit talks about the grinding poverty of the Boer settlers, but at the same time he writes about them as chartering German ships to take them and their oxwagons to Tanga and Mombasa and of buying cattle from the natives, so there must have been some fairly wealthy men among them.

Boer settlement in German East Africa was a failure and by 1964 most Tanganyika Afrikaners had left.

Maintaining church and educational ties with the South the Boer settler never cut the umbilical cords with the fatherland. The enormous influence of Church leaders coming in from South Africa, according to Du Toit, reinforced the isolation of the Afrikaner in the larger community and, although they did much good they can also be largely blamed for the Afrikaner failure to assimilate into East Africa.

Boer -Black relations are briefly touched upon in the book, but I would have loved to see more about them. Du Toit’s statement that changes in attitude that occurred among most East African Afrikaners contrasted with their contemporaries who remained in South Africa, is not backed up with examples.
Willem Bakker

HEROES OF THE FAITH IN TANZANIA. Seven Witnesses from the Central African Mission 1880-1993. Dr Leader Dominic Sterling. Benedictine Publications, Ndanda, Peramiho. 1997. 33 pages. Copies available in UK @ £2.50 from Christine Lawrence, 26 Wordsworth Place, Southampton Road, London NW5 4HG (Tel: 0171 4822088).

Although only a very small book it is good to have this latest ‘story telling’ from Leader Stirling who, according to my calculations, has written it at age 90! His other books known to me: Bush Doctors (1947), Tanzanian Doctor (1977) and Africa My Surgery (1987) have all made compulsive and informative reading. The recent one is not autobiographical as the others are but written as a tribute to record details of the lives of certain UMCA/SPCK missionaries of whom he has some knowledge. He does point out that there were others equally zealous and dedicated but he has no personal knowledge of some and others have been written up elsewhere.

The important introduction is written with Stirling’s characteristic wry humour and I found it (perhaps being a Methodist) really delightful. I quote about the Central African Mission: ‘Born of the Oxford Movement in the Church of England, but brought to birth oddly enough by a dour Presbyterian, David Livingstone, it professed to be bringing the Catholic Faith to Africa, yet had definitely no connection with or submission to the Holy See of Rome. It just went its own unique way, with its own theology in which, admittedly, no major heresy could be demonstrated and in the end subsided rather lamely into the arms of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, where it quietly lost its identity and its own peculiar ecclesiastical position, but left an extensive African church based on the same’. Needless to say Stirling transferred to the Roman Catholic Church in 1949, after going to Tanganyika in 1935 under the CAM (UMCA).

The ‘Heroes’ he writes about are: William C Porter, Frederick W Stokes, Clara Munro, Edith Shelley, Donald Parsons, Robert Neil Russell and Robin Lamburn. All of them died and are buried in Tanzania. Two, at least, are ‘saints’; one a martyr and two pioneers in the treatment of leprosy. ‘Lived very simply and worked tirelessly’ can describe them all but their stories are individual and remarkable.

Stirling is known to us, of course, for his many, many achievements in the medical field in Tanzania from 1935 onwards. In 1958 he became an MP and from 1975-80 was Minister of Health. He was responsible for introducing Scouting to Southern Tanzania and became Chief Scout in 1962. All this can be read about in the books mentioned earlier. After retirement he continued with voluntary activities in the cause of health. But he says, at the end of his 1987 autobiography , You see I am still a missionary after all this’ and that, I guess, is why, ten years later, he has written the latest small valuable book.
Christine Lawrence

CHINESE AID AND AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT. Deborah Brautigam. St. Martins Press, New York. 1998.256 pages. $69.95.

EAST AFRICAN DOCTORS, A HISTORY OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. John Iliffe.
Cambridge University Press. 1998. 336 pages. £40. 00 (hardback).
This book was rather critically reviewed by Eldryd Parry of the Tropical Health and Education Trust in ‘African Affairs’ Vo!. 98. No. 391. April 1999. Extracts from his review:
‘It is a ….. pity that in this absorbing and remarkably researched review of the rise of the medical profession in East Africa, whose pioneers endured cold injustice and antagonistic attitudes, the author should not give reasonable credit to those who were totally committed to training their students and colleagues with disinterested service, as did many of the staff at Makerere …. Professor Iliffe chronicles much that was wrong in the past and describes breathtaking white racial arrogance, notably in Kenya, but his pursuit of his theme, to concentrate solely on indigenous doctors, sometimes presents an unbalanced picture ……… .

As the author contributed so much to Tanzania, it must have been difficult for him to write, as he has certainly succeeded in doing, fairly and objectively, about that country and the impact of ‘villagisation’ on health care. The stampede of its rural dispossessed was catastrophic, so that all indicators of health in Dar es Salaam got worse and there was a sad decline in the medical profession. This alarmed the Minister of Health; he blamed their poor working conditions and salaries, intellectual laziness and a lack of leadership from senior doctors. As a result he could only reverse the socialist health policy; ujamaa was impracticable. He began to reform the service but did not last and was replaced on account of the unfettered corruption in his Ministry, for which he was responsible but to which he was not party.’

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN IN TANZANIA. Robert V Makarimba. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. 1998. Printed by AMREF Tanzania.

This book, written by a law lecturer at Dar es Salaam University, critically examines the legal and constitutional rights of children in Tanzania and the administration of juvenile justice. The author finds much room for improvement in the laws affecting children, the lack of specialised juvenile courts and the child labour regulations and condemns the importation of child pornography.

CULTURE, TRANSNATIONALISM AND CIVIL SOCIETY: Aga Khan Social Service Initiatives in Tanzania. CT: Praeger. 1997. 152 pages. £43.95. COASTAL RESOURCES OF BAGAMOYO DISTRICT. Ed: M Howell and AK Semesi. Faculty of Science. University ofDar es Salaam. 156 pages.

‘What ails Bagamoyo?’ asks Emmanuel Mwera in reviewing this book in the Dar es Salaam ‘Sunday Observer’ on May 9. He points out that 100 years ago Bagamoyo was politically and commercially far superior to Dar es Salaam. The book lists Bagamoyo’s natural resources; the authors are critical about sea weed being a largely untapped source and the mangrove forests not being properly managed; they are concerned about dynamite fishing, and the inability of traditional fishermen to exploit areas away from the shore. They recommend much greater monitoring of the crustacean resource; management of sea cucumber and mollusc shells on a sustainable basis and better facilities for tourists. The book contains a wealth of well researched and well presented data.

GENDER, FAMILY AND WORK IN TANZANIA. Editors: C Creighton, and C K Omari. 1999.310 pages. £42.50.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

POLITICAL ECOLOGY AND URBANISATION: ZANZIBAR’S CONTRUCTION INDUSTRY. Garth Myers (University of Kansas). Journal of Modern African Studies. 37. 1. 1999.25 pages.
Any comment or discussion on Zanzibar usually focuses on the political conflicts or the constitutional set-up for the isles within the United Republic. However this article gives readers an insight into some of the things that have been happening on the ground there in recent years.

The author covers particularly the period since the Revolution of 1964 and has studied the effects of the development of Zanzibar town, with consequent building of housing, and other projects. He says ‘the current intersection of neo-liberal economic growthmanship, political change, environmental sustainability discourse and the marginalised area of the city, are examined’ (p.94). He sees how this development has led, in particular, to substantial demands for supplies of building materials. He surveys the political background, and the local ecology, especially of Zanzibar island (Unguja). He notes that many of the materials needed for construction work must be imported, but shows how large amounts of local stone, gravel, and sand are now being procured from local sources, often very near the town. The suppliers of the materials are typically small-scale operators of the informal sector, most being immigrants to Unguja from the mainland or Pemba. He comments on the conflict of interest between, on the one hand, the suppliers and their customers, and, on the other hand, the national and local government officials and leaders and other elites who are often the customers too.

The reviewer finds the author’s understanding of the political and environmental situation in Unguja to be generally accurate and perceptive. The subject may seem to be obscure and technical, but if a reader can plough through the heavy academic language, he or she can learn much of interest about what has been really happening in Zanzibar since the Revolution.
Canon Paul R Hardy

POWER, SOVEREIGNTY, AND INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVERS. THE CASE OF ZANZIBAR. Paul J Kaiser. Africa Today. Vol 46. No i. 1999. 17 pages. This concise account of the controversial 1995 elections in Zanzibar will not be news to readers of ‘Tanzanian Affairs’ but it does place the matter in the context of the whole international observer process. The author examines the degree to which host nations are dependent on donor countries and hence the freedom which they feel they have to give to observers (something usually welcomed by opposition parties) even though there might be some infringement on their sovereignty.

POPULAR VERSUS LIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN NICARAGUA AND TANZANIA. Robin Luckham. Democratization. Vol5 No. 3. Autumn 1998. 34 pages -An interesting two part analysis -the first part ‘contrasting the narratives of popular and of liberal democracy’ and the second, described as a ‘requiem for the apparent failure of the popular democratic experiments’ ­Nyerere’s African Socialism and the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

EAST AFRICAN EXPRESSIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. Thomas SPEAR and Isaria KIMAMBO Oxford: James Currey 1999. 340pp., ISBN 0-85255­758-2. £40.00 cloth; £14.95 paper.

‘From the perspective of the world system, Tanzania is poor, insignificant and marginal, a fact reinforced daily by the mass media.’ Yet in the eyes of Father Felician Nkwera of the Marian Faith Healing Ministry in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania is a ‘Chosen Nation’, dedicated to the Queen of Peace by Pope John XXIII (on Independence Day 1961, coinciding with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), the ‘Star of Africa’ and the liberator of Southern Africa. So write Christopher Comoro and John Sivalon in this new volume of essays by academics, mainly historians and anthropologists.

Such evidence of spiritual revival, combined with a typically African concern for the physical as much as the spiritual, and for justice as much as piety, pervades this book. It accounts for the confidence of East African Christian leaders today and calls in question the Western secular habit of ignoring the phenomenal growth of Christianity on the African continent. ‘Christianity is no longer an exotic transplant, but is deeply embedded in everyday thoughts and expressions.’ Religion may be regarded as politically incorrect by many who offer their services sacrificially to help Africa, but this view is little understood by Africans.

The essays are divided into seven topical sections, each of which begins with a short analysis of the theses presented. Most essays conclude with a summary of their chief arguments. There is no attempt at a historical coverage, but the sharply localised foci of the essays are dramatic illustrations of the adoption and inculturation of the Christian message by East Africans over the last 120 years.

The most readable contributions come from the pens of Tanzanians. Anza Lema offers a fascinating account of Chaga traditional religion and the Chaga response to the early Lutheran missionaries who showed little interest in their deeply theistic religion. Bruno Gutmann was one of only a few exceptions -the story of his conflict with his colleagues would have made an interesting appendix -but make no mistake, African evangelists are the real heroes of the story, and of this book.

Cuthbert Omari traces the story of the very recent bitter and bloody conflict on Mount Meru within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania -unedifying perhaps, but needing to be heeded by all the Churches if local sectarianism, now appearing disconcertingly often, is not to undermine the universal brotherhood of the gospel. Ecumenical brotherhood is much in evidence in Josiah Mhalagwa’s essay, focussed chiefly on Dar es Salaam, about the spiritual revivals which have been such an East African feature for at least sixty years. They continue today in garb more distinctively African than ever before, tending to be orthodox in doctrine and pentecostal in spirituality.

The growth of the Roman Catholic Church in Ugogo and their relations with CMS Anglicans are traced by Gregory Maddox. Many (but not all) missionaries, Catholic and Protestant alike, ‘did not trust Africans to be true Christians’ -a fault which the famous Anglican missiologist, Roland Allen, tirelessly exposed from 1910 until his death in 1947. The ultimate irony, however, is that those Africans ‘began earnestly to enquire into the Christian Scriptures they had been given to see where the missionaries had misunderstood the gospel … and in turn insisted that missionary attitudes should be scrutinized in its revealing light.’ They still do, as Lambeth and Vatican Conferences have recently shown. Lamin Sanneh, the West African theologian, is frequently quoted to show how throughout Africa it is the Christ of the Scriptures who is the test of faith and practice.

Other essays focus on the origins of Catholic and Lutheran congregations in Ufipa and Uzaramo. These local and particular studies of African reception and reinterpretation of the faith enable us better to appreciate broader, more systematic histories like that of Elizabeth Isichei (SPCK) -and also suggest that it may be high time for the direction of the old missionary traffic to be put into reverse in the interests of the re­evangelisation of Europe.
Roger Bowen

TANZANIA: PORTRAIT OF A NATION. Photographs by Paul Joynson­Hicks. Quiller Press. 1998. (Tel: 4996529) 304 pages. £28.00

This is a beauty. Hundreds of colour photographs from the camera of a 27-year old highly skilled British freelance photographer who spent two years on the job and travelled 25,000 miles throughout the country. This book is unlike other Tanzanian tourist travel books. It is Tanzania as a whole and Tanzania as it is now. The book does not devote itself largely to wildlife as most such books do although there are scores of beautiful pictures from the less well known game parks as well as from the Serengeti. Pictures of the Maasai are few; pictures of other Tanzanians are many. There is little on traditional musical instruments and traditional dancing. But, unlike other such books, this one has pictures from every region of the country. The author is interested in places and people and their way of life. Have you ever seen pictures of the miner in Chunya, Mbeya Region, still panning for gold after 50 years, or the spectacular Kalambo Falls in Rukwa Region, or the mobile music maker in Morogoro, or part of the 1.5 km-long diamond pipe at Mwadui near Shinyanga, or the stone age sites at Iringa, or the rarely visited Katavi Plains National Park in Rukwa or the depth of the dust in the main street of Mwanza or how coffee and cotton and tea and sisal are processed? It is all here in these pages.

The captions and the regional introductions do not quite live up to the high quality of the photographs but you will want to read every one of them. The introduction, which comprises a concise history of Tanzania, is excellent.
Christmas is a long way away but this book would make an ideal birthday present. Or, you could give yourself a treat that you will be able to enjoy over and over again. It can enrich your library or be placed on your coffee table for the benefit of visiting Tanzanophiles (as the late Bishop Huddleston used to call us) -DRB.

MATETEREKA: TANZANIA’S LAST UJAMAA VILLAGE. David Edwards. 1998. Occasional Paper No. 77. Centre of African Studies. Edinburgh University, £4.50 or $9.00.
This writing covers the period from 1960 when Julius Nyerere, soon to become President, with his ujamaa policy, was encouraging the formation of small farming socialist communities up until 1998.

The work is built around the history and development of one such ujamaa village. Matetereka, from its formation in 1962, through its time as a member village of the Ruvuma Development Association (RDA) until that organisation’s destruction in 1969; through its growth and struggles with the authorities following this; and to the problems and conflicts brought about by the influx of a large number of newcomers with the implementation of villagisation in 1975, conflicts which continue until this day. There was obviously, at the time of villagisation in 1975, the chance that the whole of the original Matetereka ujamaa group might have been forced to leave all their achievements and move their families elsewhere. This was a fact of life for several of the other RDA villages.

The story of Matetereka was gathered from the ujamaa group in the village where Edwards spent eleven days. It is therefore a story told from their angle. I feel sure that they will have appreciated a sympathetic visitor hearing their story and recording it for outsiders to read. I’m glad that the centre for African Studies at Edinburgh University saw fit to publish it as one of their Occasional Papers.

Together with the Matetereka story, Edwards joins the many writings on the relationship between peasant communities and their governments. In relation to this question in the Tanzania of President Nyerere, the fact that two of his informants, Ntimbanjayo Millinga and Lukas Mayemba were not only involved with the RDA villages but also in local and national politics has provided some interesting details on the lead up to and the banning of the RDA. These largely confirm what I have always believed, that the action of the TANU Central Committee in insisting on the banning of the RDA was in reality moving to put paid to President Nyerere’s concept of ujamaa villages as bodies who took their own decisions on their running and development.

It would be interesting to have the experience of Matetereka from those who were forced into the village through the villagisation programme. Where these newcomers arrived to a village where a group of people had already, through several years hard work, achieved a considerable amount of development, it is easy to see how they might hope to have a share of what was there. Having been uprooted and moved by a government decision, with no consultation, they could hardly be expected to be in co-operative mood. In spite of that it does seem that at Matetereka efforts of the original inhabitants to try and help the newcomers along a similar development road as that along which they had travelled did seem to have a degree of early success. Essential to obtaining the drive for development through communal working that was the hallmark of the RDA villages was the understanding of the members that they were working for their better future and that of their children.
Ralph Ibbott

LIMNOLOGY AND HYDROLGY OF LAKES TANGANYIKA AND MALAWI. Ruud C M Crul. UNESCO Publishing, Paris.

This book is listed as No. 54 in a series by UNESCO on Hydrology but, as its title indicates, it also covers limnology (the study of chemical, physical and biological aspects of freshwater habitats). The book is not intended for the general reader; there is frequent use of technical terms, without any glossary, but it forms a very useful source of a great range of information, published articles and books. There are good accounts of the geography, exploration and European discovery of the lakes, their early scientific investigation, geological and climatic history as well as details of changes in lake levels; the catchment areas are well mapped as are bathymetric details (mapping of the lake bottom). There are accounts of the lake sediments and of their biotic components, especially phytoplankton and zooplankton.

Water balance details show up the limited out flow (about 6% annually) of Lake Tanganyika compared with Lake Malawi (17.6%) ­enough to generate electricity from power stations on the Shire River.

There is a great deal of overlap in the references and a joint bibliography, rather than one for each lake, would have been better. In fact the whole book might have been condensed. It seems that UNESCO could have been a little more painstaking in its editing but, nevertheless it is a most useful publication.
Brian Harris

NOT DEAR TO THEMSELVES. Barbara Wolstenholme. Teamprint. 1994, reprinted 1998. Available from 10 Myrtle Drive, Preston, Lancs. PR4 2Z1 £10.00 incl. p&p. All proceeds to the Methodist Church.

This fascinating account of the severe trials faced by the first missionaries sent by the Methodist Church to East Africa (especially during the long voyage from England, the subject of a major part of the book) has been researched by the great-granddaughter of Rev. Thomas Wakefield who landed at Zanzibar and continued by dhow to Mombasa in 1862. At this time the coast from Lamu to Kilwa, at least, was controlled by the Sultan of Oman and Zanzibar; the British were busy chasing slave ships in the Indian Ocean, and had a Consul in Zanzibar; and, Livingstone had not yet started his last expedition into the interior. Thomas was accompanied by Dr Ludwig Krapf of the C.M.S. and was later joined by Rev. Charles New, the first Europeans to reach the snowline of Kilimanjaro.

I found this ‘look back’ at history extremely readable and even helpful in putting the present into perspective. It is astonishing that the church founded by Thomas Wakefield at Ribe in Kenya is still flourishing. His first wife and baby are buried there.

The book is attractively produced with many line drawings and would make a pleasing gift.
Christine Lawrence

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

WHO ARE TANZANIANS? COMPETING CONCEPTIONS OF TANZANIAN CITIZENSHIP IN THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY. Bruce Heilman. Africa Today. 45, 3-4 (1998) 19 pages.
This article examines the linkage between citizenship and access to political, economic and social opportunities in Tanzania from the colonial to the present time. Heilman rightly notes that during the colonial period, the country’s population was segregated between Europeans who had full access to economic and political opportunities, Asians who occupied an intermediate place with access to commerce and the professions but were essentially excluded from the political life of the country and Mricans who were marginalised in both economic and political spheres. In citizenship terms therefore, Europeans were full members of the society, Asians were a kind of semi-citizens while Africans were simply subjects.

After independence the government adopted a citizenship policy based on the principle of equal rights for all Tanganyikans irrespective of their race but also attempted to redress the under representation of Africans in the civil service, first through Africanisation and later localisation policies. In 1967 the government adopted the socialist path of development, and nationalised the major means of production. With the abolition of private accumulation of private capital and wealth, citizenship as a means of access to resources became largely irrelevant. The policy also created a de facto separation of economic spheres of influence as Africans pursued lucrative careers in the expanding public sector and Asians continued to engage in private sector activities.

The debate over citizenship re-emerged again in the 1990′ s when the transition from a one party socialist state to a multiparty market economy led to a shrinkage of both the civil service and the public economic sector thus undermining the power base of the African bureaucratic bourgeoisie while creating unprecedented opportunities for the Asian commercial bourgeoisie.

The author argues that economic liberalisation in Tanzania has stimulated economic growth, but it has also heightened private sector competition between Africans and Asians resulting in anti-Asian sentiments among African business people. To prove this point, the writer cites a high profile conflict between Reginald Mengi, an African owner of the Independent Television Network (ITV) and two Asians, AI Munir Karim and Shabir Dewji of Coastal Television Network (CTN) and Dar Television (DTV) respectively over the rights to broadcast the World Cup of 1994. As the dispute went on, Mengi claimed that he had received threats against his life and TV station and the two Asians and nine other persons were arrested. Eventually Mengi maintained exclusive rights to broadcast the soccer matches and the charges against the eleven arrested were withdrawn.

The second example is the incident which took place between 1993 and 1994 in which African street vendors attacked Asian owned shops in the Kariakoo area of Dar es Salaam and in Morogoro. These incidents, according to the writer, show that ‘increased economic competition not only created tensions between large-scale African and Asian business but, in some instances, also served as a catalyst for the expression of anti-Asian feelings among participants in the informal sector’. According to the author ‘the actions ofMengi, like those of the Morogoro street vendors, conveyed a similar message to the Asian community: despite their formal legal rights, Asians are still a special group whose status is somewhat like that of guests, their ability to live and prosper in Tanzania depending upon the goodwill of their African hosts’.

While agreeing with the historical review and conclusions on the citizenship debate in Tanzania up to 1990, this reviewer remains doubtful about the conclusion drawn from the two post 1990 episodes noted above. Whatever its prominence, a single incident of the dispute over the rights to broadcast the World Cup, is insufficient to support a general conclusion that there was conflict between large-scale African and Asian businesses. Indeed the author had noted earlier on that even in the post 1990 debates, not all African businessmen supported indigenisation of the economy.

With regard to the shop stoning incidents, it is worthy noting that virtually all the shops on the streets where the riots took place are owned by Asians. Accordingly, it is not entirely certain whether the shops were attacked because they were owned by Asians or simply because they were formal tax-paying businesses preferred by the government against non-tax paying street vendors. If the reason for stoning the shops was because they were owned by Asians, why didn’t this take place until the government sought to bar the petty traders from doing business in the same areas?

Also the reaction of the petty traders after their goods had been destroyed or confiscated is consistent with the response of any aggrieved group of people when the state handles them with strong arm tactics. The victims usually turn to destroying whatever is in their sight.

In my view, the incidents cited by Heilman were primarily economic/class wars between the losers and the gainers in the new economic dispensation and it just happened to be the case that the majority of the gainers were Asians while the losers were Africans. The principle lesson therefore is whether a liberal economic order which enables the few who are already wealthy to prosper even more at the expense of the economically marginalised majority is sustainable.
Bonaventure Rutinwa

DAKA WA DEVELOPMENT CENTRE: AN AFRICAN NATIONAL SETTLEMENT IN TANZANIA. 1982-1992. Sean Morrow. African Affairs. No 97. 1998.24 pages.

When apartheid South Africa banned the African National Congress CANC) in 1960 Tanzania was one of the fIfSt countries to offer asylum and succour to the growing number of refugees. After delving into records deposited in the Liberation Archives at the Fort Hare University, Sean Morrow has been able to present an extremely valuable account of an historic project, enabling him to conclude: ‘It is now possible to aspire to a more subtle and realistic picture of exile as a factor in the history of South Africa’

Now synonymous with the Art and Craft Community Centre in Grahamstown, the name of Dakawa is being preserved ‘to maintain symbolically the memory and spirit of the years of exile’.

The Soloman Mahlangu Freedom College, named after one of the martyrs of the struggle, set up in 1977 on an abandoned sisal estate at Mazimbu, near Morogoro, ultimately housed a population of around 3,500 South Africans and consisted of a large farm, hospital, primary and nursery schools, cultural and sports facilities, a furniture factory and extensive housing. There was however an urgent need for a place where newly-arrived young people might stay until they could be received at the college and the opportunity came in 1982 when the Tanzanian government donated a 2,800 hectare plot at Dakawa, about 55 kms away. The area was undeveloped, isolated, with no electricity or access to sweet water or building stone; it was flat and difficult for the installation of piped water or a sewage system. During the rainy season it turned into a sea of mud. The exiles were badly affected by malaria and other tropical diseases while the experience of exile caused some refugees to take refuge in alcohol and drug abuse.
Ideally, Dakawa was intended as a centre for the orientation of up to 5,000 youths -a model community for a future South Africa. There were plans for agriculture, water reticulation, roads and various welfare facilities. But in 1990 there were only about 1,200 South African workers there. Not all arrivals were students and there was a widespread perception by ANC cadres of Dakawa as a ‘dumping ground’ -the impression could not be avoided that the rehabilitation centre was virtually a penal settlement.

Attempts were made to develop the farm but the land was heavily overgrown with bush and there were drainage and irrigation problems ­three quarters of one sunflower crop was eaten by rats, while roaming Maasai stock, wild pigs and, on one occasion, elephants from the Mikumi Game Reserve devastated crops.

Another issue was the relationship between the ANC and Tanzanian workers. In the context of Tanzania the South Africans were comfortable, even privileged, by comparison with their generally impoverished hosts, on whom they relied for labour. The leadership complained that the South African labour force was ‘very unstable and unreliable’. There were numerous relationships between South African men and Tanzanian women and there are offspring of mixed parentage in the area today. There was also an alleged tendency (,vehemently rejected by the more socially and politically conscious’) for some South Africans to ‘look down’ on Tanzanians as being ‘less sophisticated and poorer than themselves’. As was to be expected amongst a population from a traumatised country, there was also social dislocation and personal maladjustment, leading at times to criminality and violence. Generally speaking the morale was low.

A vocational centre gave instruction in carpentry, plumbing, bricklaying and electrical installation; the leather factory made shoes, belts, and bags and there was a garment factory. Much help was received from Holland, Eastern Europe, the German Democratic Republic and Scandinavia with Western aid arriving much later.

According to Sean Morrow: ‘The spirit of Dakawa is embodied in individuals who moved to Grahamstown. The fact that it was a much wider endeavour than an arts centre alone is not well-known beyond the memories ofthose exiles who were based there.

Now, when the constant flow of refugees is a global reality, it is salutary to obtain an insight such as this into the consequences, so often tragic, of unjust and violent measures imposed by unscrupulous people in authority.

John Budge PROTECTING SCHOOLGIRLS AGAINST SEXUAL EXPLOITATION: A GUARDIAN PROGRAMME IN MWANZA, TANZANIA. Z Magla, D Schapink, J Ties Boerma. Reproductive Health Matters Vol. 6. No. 12. November 1998.11 pages.

This study, carried out in 1996, looked at a protection programme in primary schools in two districts of Mwanza, which had as its aim the protection of adolescent girls against sexual exploitation. The role of the Guardians (walezi), designated female teachers, is to help young women in cases of violence or sexual harassment, and to give advice about problems of sexual health, since the sexual exploitation of female pupils by schoolboys, young men and teachers is common. The programme of protection has already drawn a good deal of attention to this issue among the wider public. One ofits most important initial effects has been to lift the veil of secrecy which hides sexual violence; teachers, among others, have found it more difficult to conceal such abuses than in the past. Even so, the fact that the majority of Guardians and other teachers were opposed to all sexual activity among schoolgirls limited the possibilities of encouraging contraception, and teaching about the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV.
Pat Caplan

PAGAN PRACTICES AND THE DEATH OF CHILDREN: GERMAN COLONIAL MISSIONARIES AND CHILD HEALTH CARE IN SOUTH PARE, TANZANIA. N T Hakansson, Uppsala University. World Development. Vo126. No 9. 1998.9 pages. At the beginning of this century German Lutheran missionaries implemented a successful campaign to lower child mortality without the aid of modem medical technology but through their understanding of indigenous ideas, co-operation with indigenous healers and through co-operation and mutual learning. This paper quotes, from archives, case studies on infant feeding and birth procedures in South Pare 90 years ago.

ACCEPTABILITY AND USE OF CEREAL-BASED FOODS IN REFUGEE CAMPS; CASE STUDIES FROM NEPAL, ETHIOPIA AND TANZANIA. Catherine Mears with Helen Young. Oxfam. 1998. 135p. £12.95

ZANZIBAR AUJOURD’HUI. Jean-Louis Balans. In French. 1998. £25 Obtainable from Africa Book Centre. Tel: 01718363020.

KAULI YA MALALHOI (VOICE OIF THE WRETCHED OF THE WORLD). Mlenge Fanuel. Benediction Publications, Ndanda-Peramiho. 63 pages. 1998. The author of this Swahili book is very angry. He wrote the 25 essays which make up the book to vent his frustration against the establishment for the harsh punishment it meted out to students at the Ardhi Institute after they had been on strike. The East African says that the book has striking similarities to ‘Animal Farm’. It ridicules ‘the political establishment and politicians and their notorious greed and disregard for the public good’.

SWAHILI. ROUGH GUIDE PHRASEBOOK. 179p. 1998. £4.00. Obtainable from the Africa Book Centre.

FOREIGN AID AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE IN TANZANIA. Timothy S Nyoni. World Development. Vol 26. No 7. 5 pages. This highly technical paper uses cointegration technique and an error-correction model to examine the relationship between foreign aid inflows and the real exchange rate and assess the potential for aid-induced ‘Dutch disease’ (defined as the undesirable effects of aid). It found that aid inflows, increased openness of the economy and devaluation of the local currency caused real depreciation while increased government expenditure caused real appreciation. Foreign aid has not caused ‘Dutch disease’.

Readers will be shocked to hear that Michael Wise, our Reviews Editor, died suddenly and unexpectedly on November 11. He brought his considerable experience plus great enthusiasm to his task and his own reviews were always a delight to read. He was in the process of preparing this section of TA when he died but has left his files in good order and it has not been too difficult to complete the work for this issue. Reviewers whose work is not included in this issue can contact me although Michael had intended to hold over some reviews to a later date because of shortage of space. For this reason it has been necessary to abbreviate some of the material he did receive. I am sure that readers will support me in sending our deepest sympathy to his wife on her terrible loss – a loss which we also share – David Brewin.

LETHAL AID -THE ILLUSION OF SOCIALISM AND SELF­RELIANCE IN TANZANIA. Severine Rugumamu. Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, 1999

It was the subtitle which grabbed my attention, but the first sections didn’t keep it -a stodgy literature review discussing concepts of the unequal power relationships between aid donors and recipients.

However, when the author starts writing about Tanzania in Chapter three, it’s much better. There’s an excellent historical survey, and a lot of very helpful economic statistics, not merely about foreign aid, but also about the whole economy. The author has also found a 1968 quote from Nyerere about foreign debt: “To burden the people with big loans, the repayment of which will be beyond their means, is not to help them but to make them suffer”.

He analyses the giving and receiving of aid-the interests of the donor state and those of the ruling class receiving it tend to outweigh “development”. In the longer term, aid has fostered dependence which “forces its victims to lose faith and confidence in their own abilities and paralyses their initiatives”, and has made a mockery of the old slogan of “Self-reliance”.

Tanzania did not have a policy framework for absorbing aid. Also, it was very difficult for Tanzanian civil servants to dispute aid-givers conclusions, however misinformed, or funds would disappear, so projects which any local could tell were misguided went ahead.

To illustrate his more general conclusions, he has three case studies ­a Norwegian fishing project “a classic example of a poorly conceived, designed and executed project”, Danish aid at Sokoine University (lecturers obtained higher degrees in Denmark and studied Danish veterinary issues) and Swedish aid at the bureau of statistics (successful in meeting its objectives, but also responsible for “notorious aid-dependence mentality”). He shows how inherent in much of the project design was the interests of the donors, while Tanzanian interests had to be fitted in as best as possible. Tanzanian institutional weakness also meant that they were often not even able to negotiate well.

In the last few pages the author suggests the solutions of better governance, so that the state acts in the interests of the whole country, and of genuine self-reliance-selective delinking from the world economy. But that would be another book.

It is easy to complain that the book minimises the successful impact of aid. Donors have done a lot of good with Tanzania’s roads and railways, for example, but his conclusion that much aid has not helped is incontrovertible, and his analysis as to why is very thought-provoking. It would have been interesting to compare how NGO aid fares compared with government aid ­this could perhaps have painted a slightly more encouraging picture.
Tim Idle

TANZANIA POLITICAL ECONOMY SERIES, 1 TRANSITIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY AND POLICY OPTIONS IN TANZANIA. Eds: Samuel Wangwe, Haji Semboja and Paula Tibendbage of the Economic and Social Research Foundation. Mkuki wa Nyota. Distributed by African Books Collective, The Jam factory, 27 Park End St. Oxford OXl lHU. 130 pages. £18.00.

Many friends of Tanzania, anxious to see its people prosper, have viewed with sadness the failure of many economic experiments of past decades and look forward eagerly to the success of the new policies of President Mkapa. To us this little book will be an encouragement; and to the powers that be it should be a valuable guide.

The book puts forward a set of economic policy options. They reflect current thinking on the role of the state as liberator of market forces, stimulator of private investment, creator of a competitive commercial environment and provider of efficient health, education and social services.

The book was published early last year yet most of the text appears to have been written 2 ‘is years ago; no statistic is given after the Spring of 1966 and frequently the writers indicate that they are putting forward their ideas at the outset of the ‘Third Phase Government’ whose remit runs from 1995 to 2000. I have just one other complaint. The book loses impact by being just a little too academic. The generalisations leave the reader uncertain at times what the authors really want their government to do in a given situation. Just a few comparisons are made with other developing countries; far more would have been helpful. Practical examples of theoretical arguments are rare. We learn of the beneficial privatisation of the Morogoro Shoe Company and the valuable effect on productivity of the Sasakawa Global 2000 Project, but that is about all. Some figures are quoted but the analysis lacks any graphs or charts to clarify movements in the country’s economy during the period under study.

The editors have been very ambitious. They had five objectives: to assess the tentative economic reforms initiated by the ‘Second Phase’ Government of President Mwinyi between 1985 and 1995; to draw lessons from the past; to set out the challenges facing the ‘Third Phase’ Government; to put forward policy options for it to consider when developing its plans; and, to set benchmarks from which future evaluations could be made.

Twenty senior academics and civil servants contributed to the text and the job of the editors cannot have been easy. They provided a good short introduction and a concise summary of the author’s views. In between, one by one, just about all relevant areas of public policy are discussed ­financial, industrial, agricultural, service, the environment, education, women, children, civil service reforms, water, health and so on as well as some ‘cross-cutting’ issues. Each one is reviewed under the headings: ‘current status’, ‘problems and challenges’, ‘short term’ and ‘long term’ policy options’. This rigorous demarcation does not always prevent duplication of ideas but it does help the reader through some fairly complex arguments.

The dryness of some of the text can be an advantage. It has enabled the authors to report the tragic deterioration of conditions in the country in the 70’s and 80’s without comment and without offence. The authors recognise the beginnings of a shift from state control to a more market­oriented economy after 1985, but see reform as far from complete. Their list of policy changes necessary to set Tanzania on the road to prosperity is very, very long.

All the authors are agreed that, the role of the government should be to provide public goods; improve the infrastructure; correct for ‘externalities’; increase the intensity of competition; create an environment suitable for private investment; and, tackle poverty by helping the poor to increase their productivity and incomes. The principle challenge facing the present government is to enhance its ability to manage development through a much stronger legal and institutional framework.

Looking at foreign aid, the authors record that the foreign debt due for repayment in 1995/96 was about 60% of Tanzania’s national debt and 50% of the recurrent budget. We are given three powerful reasons why it must be reduced by attracting private investment and using internal resources. It must come down, not merely to lesson the massive diversion of hard-won taxes, but also to enable the country to stand finally on its own two feet and to continue development from its own efforts when eventual ‘donor fatigue’ leads to the withdrawal of aid.

In sum, if the E&SR Foundation has not succeeded in all it undertook, at least the authors have made an important contribution to the national debate. The Foundation should pursue this exercise. Let them update the economic statistics with graphs to illuminate recent trends, accompany the up-date with a concise list of the policy options and conclude with a set of specific and quantified benchmarks, not merely of GDP, inflation and the like but also of production, productivity, literacy, health, educational attainment and so on. This would surely be helpful as a means of measuring the nation’s progress towards the stated objectives.
Dick Eberlie

TANU WOMEN: GENDER AND CULTURE IN THE MAKING OF TANGANYIKAN NATIONALISM, 1995-1965. Susan Geiger. James Currey, 1997. 217p. £15.95 (paperback) £40.00 (hardback).

This book provides an absorbing and detailed account of the part played by women activists in the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). Their role in the nationalist movement which set out to secure independence for Tanganyika has previously gone mostly unacknowledged. Whilst Susan Geiger carried out her research from written sources both in the UK and Tanzania, much of her book is based on dictated and recorded accounts, the oral life histories, that the women themselves provided in the 1980s. These, whilst given individually, when combined emerge as a collective biography of a larger whole. Paramount place and space is given to Bibi Titi Mohammed, the most prominent women leader in the nationalist phase (1955-65), whose story provides the thread throughout the narrative.

The author sets the scene and describes the social and political conditions that prevailed in the ’50’s and motivated the women to get involved and play an active part. What stands out is that there was the tendency, at least in the early days, for these women to be drawn from the urban Muslim, Swahili coastal community with little formal or western education; often divorced with few or no children. (It was common practice for girls to marry young and divorce early). In contrast in Moshi the women were usually younger than their Dar es Salaam counterparts with more schooling, more children, fewer divorces and with greater religious diversity. It is their influence which has continued to a greater extent into the post-colonial period.

Regardless of the ethnic backgrounds from which they came, common to all these women was an over-riding belief not only in the right of Tanzanians to rule themselves but also in the equality of the sexes ie that their daughters should have the right to education and employment denied or still not widely open to themselves. Women’s then lack of standing in society and considered inferiority was a strong force and motivating factor in their call for change which they felt would only come with independence and its aftermath. This book therefore does not confine itself purely to the struggle for independence but also looks at the continuation of women’s political culture of nationalism in the post-colonial years and with it the disappointments and setbacks that have since been encountered.

Notwithstanding the fact that TANU Women is both a scholarly and methodically researched book aimed primarily at an academic audience it is also of broader appeal to those with a more general interest in Tanzania.
Pru Watts-Russell

THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE A LEADER. ESSAYS ON THE 1995 GENERAL ELECTION. Edited by C K Omari. Dar es Salaam University Press. 1996. 160 pages.
TANZANIA POLITICAL REFORM IN ECLIPSE. CRISES AND CLEAVAGES IN POLITICAL PARTIES. Max Mmuya. Freidrich Ebert Stiftung. PO Box 4472. Dar es Salaam. 1998. 192 pages.

The recent past, the present and, to some extent, the future of political development in Tanzania are covered competently in these two books.

Regular readers of TA will find little new in ‘The Right to Choose a Leader’ but to others, this is probably the most informative account of Tanzania’s 1995 elections yet produced. Editor Omari proved his credentials by accurately forecasting the results ahead of the elections. Factors he describes in detail which influenced the results include the importance of personality rather than policy in voter choice; the religious factor (the efforts of Muslim fundamentalists in Dar es Salaam backfired); ethnicity (still very important) and NGO involvement. Chapter 5, written by the young Dr Festus Limbu, describes politics at the grass roots and how he tried but failed to win the Magu (Mwanza) seat for the NCCR party. The final chapter on Zanzibar explains concisely the complicated historical background to what happened but steers clear, perhaps wisely, of expressing an opinion on whether the results represented the true will of the electorate.

Senior Lecturer in Government and Politics at Dar es Salaam University, Dr Max Mmuya, in his profound and original book, brings us up to date on the way in which the effort to introduce multipartyism to Tanzania has been pervaded by ‘crisis and cleavages’ and is now, in the view of most observers, in eclipse.

In describing the five main parties, the author, who is a member of the committee set up to propose revisions to Tanzania’s constitution, struggles hard to define CCM’s present policy (‘CCM -The Establishment United ­ From Ujamaa to Ruksa’) but states that recent research indicates that most rural poor people still prefer ujamaa to capitalism, something CCM has to take into account as it becomes more and more capitalist in its orientation.

CUF (Utajirisho -Enrichment) which, according to the author, was the only other party which originally had a vision of the kind of society it wanted (what about John Cheyo’s creation, the UDP, and its Margaret Thatcherism?) but, because its only real strength is now in Zanzibar, has had to ‘form into the same rigid ideology as the CCM on the Isles’.

In the heart of the book Mmuya points out that conflict is a necessary aspect of any political party and reveals in detail the internal conflicts in the CCM (eg: between the elders and the youth; between the mainland and Zanzibar parties) and how it has (so far) successfully coped with them. Mmuya wisely rejects the conspiracy theory that the collapse of the other parties has been instigated by CCM. He prefers such causes as their flouting of their own constitutions, personal ambition and ethnic affiliations.

In a fascinating discussion on how the new multiparty parliaments operate, the book reveals that if Tanzania had had proportional representation rather than the ‘first-past-the-post’ system, CCM would now have 137 seats (rather than the actual 186) and NCCR would have 50 compared with its existing 16.
There is an intellectual discussion in Chapter 6 on relations between parties and civil society organisations. He writes: ‘Unfortunately, as though colonialism was not atrocious, post-independence regimes have either attempted to control the single party or, as in the case of the current reform movement, the colonial laws and regulations have been invoked to drive a wedge in the natural and logical process of parties being founded in civil society organisations’. Case studies in Bariadi, Shinyanga (not very successful), and Dar es Salaam showed civil society to be weak and undeveloped. By contrast, in Zanzibar before the revolution, there were 48 registered organisations -religious, social, recreational and charitable.

Mmuya’s rather brief conclusions make sad reading. He writes, with much support from his own research, that Tanzania is ‘lacking in the appropriate infrastructure upon which to build a liberal democratic system ­a vision shared by all the parties …the cOlmtry cannot afford to pay for countrywide elections for local, parliamentary and presidential elections and leave enough funds for other important allocations’. But, as he says correctly, democracy will eventually triumph.

He concludes the book with these questions: ‘Where are the liberals and where is the liberal infrastructure for them?’ I conclude that this well­researched and well-written book is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Tanzanian political development.
David Brewin

TREKKING IN EAST AFRICA. David Else. Lonely Planet Publications. New Edition 1998. 348p. £11.99.

This book is a comprehensive guide to mountain treks throughout the whole of East Africa, Malawi and Ethiopia. It includes the standard Lonely Planet advice about the countries covered, getting there and away, information about health and safety, including a section on mountain sickness and notes on tipping guides and porters.

Tanzania is covered in 69 pages and, as you would expect, Kilimanjaro is given a lot of space with good maps and six routes described. There are diagrams showing the steepness of ascent and there is a full list of trekking companies with appropriate warnings about rogue companies. There is a smaller but useful section on Mount Meru which, as the book says, is frequently overlooked by trekkers, but provides an excellent climb through varied landcapes, culminating in a scramble along an exposed crater rim to the summit. The book provides welcome sections on other mountain areas visited by few tourists which are the hidden jewels of the country. Tanzania’s Five Year Tourism Plan seeks to encourage tourists to spread out from the ‘Northern Circuit’ and Zanzibar and with the assistance of the Dutch aid project (SNV) villagers are being encouraged to provide tourist facilities in these areas.

The areas given good coverage in the book are the Crater Highlands, Mt Hanang and the Western Usambaras. I was particularly pleased to see Hanang included as this is a splendid 11,500 ft. isolated extinct volcano, providing an excellent two days trekking. Short sections devoted to the Monduli Mountains, the Pare Mountains, the Eastern Usambaras and the Southern Highlands centred on Mbeya do not do these areas justice and there is no mention at all of the Uluguru Mountains or of Udzungwa. The Southern Highlands in particular offer a vast range of attractions -high mountains, waterfalls, gorges, volcanic features, pleasant climate and excellent walking country.

This book is an essential guide to planning a trek in the region but Tanzania has enough natural treasures to justify a book for Tanzania alone. !
Tony Janes

A VET ABROAD. Stuart Wilson. The Book Guild, High St. Lewes, Sussex. BN7 2LU. TeI: 01723 472534. £15.95.

Books about travel; memoirs; animal stories; all may be of interest. But when you have a combination, you have a winner!
Stuart Wilson gave up a profitable vet practice in Lincolnshire to spend five years in Tanzania. Part of the time he was involved in research programmes and vet practice, but mostly he was training veterinary assistants to mn the animal health control services. He has either used extensive notes made at the time, or has a remarkable memory for detail and moves from animal stories (wild as well as domestic), descriptions of the country as it was some 30 years ago, amusing characters and incidents, many of them at his own expense, with a skill reminiscent of the vet stories in Yorkshire which have been so popular in book and on TV in the UK.

This book would be fun for anyone to read, but for those who knew some of the characters and who experienced Tanzania at the time, it is fascinating. Stuart spent part of his time at Mpapwa but most at the Ministry of Agriculture Training Institute at Tengeru near Arusha. His obvious enjoyment of the work, his involvement with cattle, sheep, horses and dogs both in the area and as far away as West Kilimanjaro and far into Masailand, illustrate that he was much more than just a teacher. His students obviously recognised this when they said in a speech prior to his departure “your teaching has always been systematic, simple and thought­provoking”. I have visited Tengeru several times recently and it is sad to see that the facilities which Stuart struggled so hard to build up have deteriorated disastrously. Further, the Government has not employed veterinary assistants since 1992, and as there are no job prospects, there are hardly any students. As Stuart was about to leave, Tengeru was to be handed over to the East African Community for a few years. At least it is now back to its earlier function and there is a prospect of major renovation. A further regret is that so many of the well established commercial farms to which the author refers have ceased to function.

There are some endearing features. Stuart starts off with a fairly colonial attitude, as one might expect so soon after the colonial era, but he visibly mellows over the five years and clearly gets on well with his students. He realises his own fiery nature (I should like to see if the door in which he hit a hole is still at Tengeru) and is able to joke about it. He jumps fully clothed into a pool when he sees his daughter apparently in trouble! He gets into trouble with lions, snakes, rabid animals, not to mention senior officers. A few minor criticisms should not detract from a warm recommendation. A Swahili speaking editor would have made many corrections to the spelling; in fact the editing in general leaves something to be desired. I wish he had put the full name of all his colleagues. But these are very small points in what is otherwise an entertaining, amusing and a fascinating story not to be missed.
David Gooday

MEMORY AND MAPS. An exhibition of paintings by Jonathan Kingdom at the Royal Geographical Society. October 16-22, 1998.

The paintings in this exhibition followed an expedition to Mkomazi, Southern Tanzania, in which the well-known naturalist and painter 10nathan Kingdom was involved in 1995/96. His oil paintings blend art, science and memories of a lifetime in East Africa (he was born and brought up in Tanzania). They have an immediacy which gives them vibrant life and his interpretation overlays these with topographical and historical knowledge. His intimate knowledge of the area enables him to paint locales invested with weather, temperature and a shifting light.

The wildlife is predominant in the pictures, the physical elements giving an impressionistic landscape but showing the paths and conditions along which the wildlife travels. Prey is watched by predators, the frail confront the elements, competition is played out. A few of the pictures can be seen as abstracts though the viewer can solve the patterns. They are not drawing room pictures; they need some explanation (which was provided in a booklet at the exhibition) but repay close attention.
Cherridah Coppard

Compiled by John Budge and Michael Wise

T.L. MALIYAMKONO, Tanzania on the move. Dar es Salaam: TEMA Publishers, 1997. xiv, 177p., ISBN 9987 25013 O. No price stated.

The book attempts to evaluate the significant events of 1996, in particular President Mkapa’s performance during the year in which he assumed his responsibilities. There is, understandably, little evidence of information taken from books and published reports, and the main sources of information used are the dailies and weeklies of that period.

The result is a fairly concise catalogue of issues and events, which are assessed by topic: the consolidation of democracy; Zanzibar; the economy; public revenue; foreign aid; corruption and the drug problem; regional integration and the problem of refugees. The book also looks at the choice of cabinet (overloaded with academics), the Temeke by-election and some reasons for the victory of Augustino Mrema, and the mushrooming proliferation of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers.

The author suggests that the economy is improving. However this means little to the mass of people, who endure continuing economic hardship, unemployment and less than adequate social services. Corruption and the illegal drug trade are seen as menacing the Mkapa administration. A few measures, like the Warioba Commission on Corruption were implemented, but its recommendations were not acted upon up to the time of writing, and the President expressed his disappointment over the pace of action against corruption. This raises the interesting supposition that corruption is installed even .in government circles Some issues of national importance, such as the Zanzibar political crisis are not thoroughly analysed. Perhaps a shift from over dependence on local dailies and weeklies, to other sources would have provided a more considered analysis of the issues considered here. Problems associated with religious groups or cults, which started to be apparent prior to Mkapa, and have subsequently grown in extent, are not trivial and should have been included. The book provides snapshots of some events of 1996, and there are a few tables and photographs which help to illuminate some of the issues under consideration. The book has its use for students and others more generally interested in the politics of Tanzania, because the issues covered have not gone away. Alii A.S. Mcharazo

Kevin PATIENCE, Konigsberg: a German East African raider. 118p.
Published by the author (1997), P.O. Box 669, Bahrain, £14 (UK); £16.50 (rest of the World)

The British naval operation against the Imperial German cruiser Konigsberg was the most complex, as well as the most memorable in the long East African campaign of the 1914-1918 War. It justified the view of the German military commander, Col. von Lettow-Vorbeck, that while the outcome of the war would be decided in Europe, he could have some influence on that theatre by drawing away British and Allied forces and inflicting losses on their manpower and resources. He succeeded brilliantly in that objective, causing the British and their allies to commit, by some estimates, about a quarter of a million men in all to chasing him for over four years, without ever capturing or defeating him.

The Konigsberg’s initial victorious actions at sea, first capturing and scuttling the merchant ship City of Winchester in the Gulf of Aden, and then sinking the cruiser HMS Pegasus in Zanzibar harbour, indicated the serious threat posed to British power in the Indian Ocean. The Admiralty ordered the captain of the cruiser HMS Chatham to “seek and destroy the Konigsberg at any cost.” Kevin Patience’s book gives a detailed account of all that followed, with the central focus being on the technical rather than the human aspects. The finding and eventual sinking this one German cruiser, lying in various locations up to 15 miles up-river, surrounded by mangrove swamps, took ten months. It involved more than twenty British naval and civilian vessels, including a battleship, seven cruisers, and three armoured monitors, eleven aircraft (including seven seaplanes) in four separate phases, plus supporting land forces based on Mafia. There was also the audacious personal reconnaissance by the famous South African hunter Pieter Pretorious, who boarded the Konigsberg in disguise to find out the state of the ship’s guns and torpedoes.

The Konigsberg was finally abandoned and scuttled by the Germans in July 1915, after being smashed by heavy British naval shelling, with the assistance of intrepid aircraft spotters. But that was not the end of the ship’s contribution to the German fighting ability, and the surviving crew members were a valuable reinforcement of the German land forces. Perhaps most importantly, the Konigsberg’s ten 4 inch guns were removed from the wreck, repaired, and used in action during the next two years, until all were eventually captured in different locations.

Kevin Patience meticulously records every stage of the campaign, together with full details of the ships and aircraft engaged on each side, giving specifications of their armaments and capabilities, and description of what eventually became of them. He quotes extensively from both British and German official records of the military engagements. There are numerous photographs, many of which I guess have not been published before, and they vividly illustrate the whole story. His account is a valuable complement to the more journalistic one contained in Charles Miller’s book Battle for the Bundu. It should appeal to anyone who has ever been near the Rufiji River, apart from having an interest in wartime history or in events that helped to shape Tanzania of today.
David le Breton

Zaline M. ROY-CAMPBELL, Language crisis in Tanzania: the myth of English versus education, by Zaline M. Roy-Campbell and Martha A.S. Qorro.
Dar es Salaam: Mkuti na Nyota Publishers, 1997. 182p., ISBN 9976 973 39X, £13.95; US$25.

Distributed in the UK by African Books Collective, 27 Park End Street, Oxford OXl 1HU.

This book delivers a damning verdict on the use of English as a medium of instruction in Tanzania’s secondary schools, showing not only that pupils are failing to attain adequate levels of English, but that their entire education is seriously affected by this, leading to the “denial of education to the majority of Tanzanian students, even though they are in school” (p.72). The authors point out the anomaly of continuing to promote a language in schools that has an ever decreasing role in Tanzanian society (with 90% of secondary leavers having no use for English in their jobs once they leave school). Government policy states that the purpose of secondary education in Tanzania is to prepare students to fulfil their role within Tanzanian society, in which Kiswahili has been actively promoted. By insisting on English-medium instruction, the status of Kiswahili is downgraded and the system acts to prepare “a nation of ‘servers’ and ‘waiters’ for the outside world” (p.91) rather than citizens capable of contributing to local and national development.

An estimated 95% of secondary school students in Tanzania lack the necessary skills in English to read and communicate effectively. The reasons for this include the poor command of English on the part of many teachers, lack of motivation for learning English, and the scarcity of suitable textbooks and other reading material. Teachers compensate for these problems by teaching largely through Kiswahili, even though this goes against government policy. Exams, however, are still set in English and, not surprisingly, students who have been taught through Kiswahili fail to perform well. For example, in the 1992 National Form Two exams, the results were so poor that the pass mark had to be reduced to 14%!

The perceived solution to this crisis has been to attempt to improve levels of competence in English, notably through the English Language Teaching Support Project (EL TSP) which was funded by the British government. The main condition of funding for this project was that English was to continue as the medium of instruction. However, the evidence suggests that EL TSP has failed to improve competence in English sufficiently to make any real difference to educational standards. Rather than continue with this policy, the authors suggest switching to Kiswahili-medium instruction and teaching English as a foreign language. They argue that not only would educational standards as a whole improve, but that the standards of written Kiswahili and of English would also rise, with better targeting of resources and specialist knowledge. The authors claim that the need for Kiswahili teaching materials which their proposals would require should be viewed as an opportunity rather than a problem. They point out that most of the English books available at present are inappropriate and have to be explained to pupils in Kiswahili anyway, and that, in the long term, there will be economic benefits because low-cost Kiswahili text-books can be produced locally, whereas the ELTSP project is tied in with exclusive deals with U.K. publishers (p.123). One minor criticism would be that the authors use arguments in favour of ‘mother tongue’ education to support the use of Kiswahili, while glossing over the fact that 10% of the population do not speak Kiswahili and many of the remaining 90% do not speak it as their mother tongue.

Many of the claims made in this thoroughly readable book are not new, neither is the major piece of research into secondary school students’ reading competence in English, presented in chapters 2 to 4. However, the fact that the situation regarding language policy in secondary schools has yet to change, indicates the need for this book to be read by policy makers in Tanzania and Britain.
Alison Nicolle

TANGANYIKA rifles mutiny, .January 1964, by N.N. Luanda and others. Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Peoples Defence Forces/ Dar es Salaam University Press, 1993 (but actually published 1997). 177p., Tsh 5,000.

Most people are said to be able to remember where they were when President Kennedy died. In January 1964 army mutinies in Africa were not as commonplace as they became later and I (and many others) remember exactly where I was when the newly created Tanganyika Rifles (formerly King’s African Rifles) suddenly rose up against authority. I had placed my car in a garage for servicing in Mwanza, and gone to do some shopping. Suddenly the shops closed and people rushed home. Rumour said that troops based in Tabora were ‘marching’ (that was the word used) on Mwanza. I rushed back to collect my car, with thoughts of a quick exit towards Uganda – but then the Ugandan army also mutinied.

This book succeeds admirably in answering almost all the questions that came up at the time, and later. Was it a mutiny or a coup? Was it just a workers’ strike? Who were the real instigators? Who ruled Tanganyika during that turbulent week? Where did President Nyerere go? Who called in the British commandos, and how was the mutiny quelled so quickly? In finding answers the authors, from the Directorate of History, Research and the Museum of the Army and the University of Dar es Salaam have done some solid research and have managed to contact most of the key players. The result is a fine piece of investigative journalism, to which is added more than a touch of controversial academic analysis.

Chapter 1 gives a detailed outline of the army’s history. It is critical of the slowness in Africanisation of the officer cadre in the early 60’s, but observes that most of the manpower of the army came from tribes who lagged behind in education. It explains how the newly elected T ANU Party had treated the army with ‘benign neglect’ since independence, while attending to other priorities. Confident in the leadership of the army by Brigadier Sholto Douglas, his position must have been made uncomfortable by the country’s increasing involvement, by late 1963, in the African Liberation Movement. On January 12 1964 there had been a revolution in Zanzibar. The Dar es Salaam police force had been depleted by the need to support the new government of Zanzibar. The Tanganyika mutiny followed eight days later, that of Uganda on January 23, and in Kenya the next day. Those governments called for British help immediately and the mutinies were quickly negated, but in Tanganyika it took almost a week before a very reluctant Julius Nyerere felt that he had to call for help to his country’s fanner rulers.

In chapter 2, M.L. Baregu tries, but fails, to find any linkage between the three mutinies. In a well argued analysis, however, he comes to the controversial conclusion that, because of the tense situation in Zanzibar and the radical policy pursued by Nyerere at that time ‘Tanganyika had to be taught a lesson’, and that it was the British, through various actions they had taken beforehand, who ‘may not have instigated the mutiny but did precipitate it’.

In chapters 3 and 4, Professor Luanda describes the sequence of events from the moment shortly after midnight on January 19, when the duty officer was woken by three soldiers who ordered him to keep quiet under pain of death by strangulation, until the close of the eventful week when the British Royal Marine Band, in ceremonial uniform was playing to crowds celebrating the termination of the mutiny in the centre of Dar es Salaam.

The story is full of drama and features widely differing personalities who give their version of aspects of events. These include David Kimble, then at the University, who thought that it was a coup d’etat rather than a mutiny; the late Oscar Kambona, described by some as the ‘strong man who saved Nyerere’s government from collapse’ and by others as an ‘obstinate blunderer’; Sergeant Francis Hingo Ilogi, an ambitious young man who played a key role in planning the mutiny, and became for a very short time a Lieutenant Colonel; Captain S.M.A. Kashmir who was told he would be packed off to Bombay if he didn’t behave, and was later seriously wounded; the Brigadier, who escaped from the barracks on the night the mutiny began and took charge, with the then High Commissioner, of the British troop operation, the Yugoslav Ambassador, who rashly brandished a revolver at the mutineers and received a severe blow from a rifle butt; Mikidadi Mdoe, Director of the Tanganyika Broadcasting corporation, who flaty refused to broadcast a statement that the government had asked Britain to send in troops; and President Nyerere who refused to sign the request and got vice-president Kawawa to do it instead.

The mutineers’ objectives had been relatively limited – to get rid of their British officers and to get more pay. The ringleaders were imprisoned and most of the soldiers dismissed from the Army. The president began to create a new politicised army starting with the members of the TANU Youth League, under the control of African officers of the former Tanganyika Rifles – many of whom had been detained by the mutineers. He was successful. The new army proved to be up to the mark in the war with Uganda and has never since any serious trouble.

Where was President Nyerere for the first two days of the Mutiny ? Read the book and you will find out on page 117.

David Brewin

Articles in Journals

Malongo R.S. MLOZI, Urban agriculture: ethnicity, cattle raiSing and some environmental implications in the city of Dar es Salaam. African studies review, 40 (3) December 1997, p.1-28.

The oil crisis, political strife, economic mismanagement, drought, increased population, distorted industrialisation and the lack of job creation. These are, without doubt, some of the main reasons for the worsening of Third World economies, and in this interesting study, Malongo Mlozi blames them for “the attrition of civil servants’ efficiency, a decline in real incomes, increased balance of payment problems and low productivity”, all of which encouraged African governments, including Tanzania’s, to “involve the labour force in informal sector economic activities such as urban agriculture”. He also stresses, however, the extent to which this has led to “widespread environmental degradation.”

The practice of raising cattle among members of the 33 ethnic groups in the city is no longer the exclusive preserve of the poor. It is the second largest source of employment, after petty trade and labour, and 74 per cent of urban farmers, many of them quite wealthy, keep livestock.

The author describes quite dramatically the degrading effect on the environment. Animal dung acts as a breeding ground for harmful bacteria, flies and the mosquito, causing malaria, yellow fever, tetanus and elephantiasis, and giving great concern to a city council already struggling with the impact of poor refuse collection facilities and malfunctioning drainage systems. The resultant poor air quality causes breathing difficulties for the elderly, the very young and asthma sufferers. Add to these the risks of water pollution, especially of shallow wells, while nitrates in water are especially harmful to babies. Antibiotics used in the unsupervised treatment of cows can cause disease in humans, because of bacteria resistance, and people may drink contaminated milk because of the absence of testing procedures. Milk from these sources is sold to schools, hospitals, bars, restaurants and army barracks. “The economic propensity to get money from milk sales takes precedence over the need to heed and cater adequately for the health and safety of customers”, says the author.

Livestock in the city destroy ornamental plants, roads, lawns, water channels, telephone lines, parks, fences and traffic signs. They obstruct pedestrians and motorists alike, and sometimes cause accidents, as well adding to soil erosion and damage to buildings, contributing to “urban desertification.”

From 900 inhabitants in 1891, the city now has an estimated population of 2.2 million, with more than 18,000 cattle. Evidence suggests that the wealthier residents, able to buy cows more easily, raise them in “islands of affluence”, where they have considerable administrative, economic and economic power.

The author believes that Tanzania’s “inability to adequately remunerate the elite, bureaucrats and other workers” lies in part on its past dependence on the main export crops – coffee, cotton, tea and sisal – and its subsequent decline. They started to raise cattle to solve their money problems and were encouraged by a government faced with a poor economic outlook and “a particular culture of status and rewards among senior officials, public institutions, the ruling party and private companies” who had political clout and enjoyed privileges which could be used in furtherance of their cattle-raising.

Educational attainment also accounted for the predominance of the elite. In colonial times, for instance, the Chagga group, who raised 40 per cent of the cattle in the city, were quick to show interest in western education, primarily as a way to strengthen their own political and economic well-being. It occurs to me, however, that in the course of this admirable sturdy, Mr. Mlozi may have overlooked a very useful source of research material – the essential involvement of the women, and especially the Chaggas, renowned for their enterprise culture, and self-help for themselves and their families.
JB

TROPHY hunting as a sustainable use of Wildlife resources in southern and eastern Africa Journal of sustainable tourism, 5 (4) 1997.

Tanzania had three National Parks at Independence; today, to its credit, there are thirteen. In June 1997 Newsweek reported that a World Bank representative said of Tanzania’s National Parks, “To my mind the tourism is the best in Africa. Nothing touches it. Nothing.”

Tourism in Tanzania, from a base of $10 million in 1987, brought in $300 million in 1996. The next year visitors increased by 59,000 to 359,000, while Kenya’s increase that year was only 11,000. Tanzania expects half a million visitors by the year 2000, who will bring in $500 million.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature warned in October 1996 that one quarter of the world’s mammals are faced with extinction. The Journal of sustainable tourism states that “Preserving wildlife in a pristine state on a large scale is no longer feasible in view of continued human population increases, economic development”, etc. But the Serengeti Park, and others in the country might, at the present time, qualify for large scale pristine state status.

Indigenous people are an integral part of the ecosystem. In Nyaminyami, Zimbabwe, there was a typical African cattle overgrazing problem. The game had, as a result, left the area. When it was proposed the cattle should be fenced off from the spoiled, wild bush, but that the local people would benefit, they set to and built the fences themselves. In time the land recovered, the game returned, overseas hunters were admitted to the area, and fees paid to the local people, who at the same time could keep meat and skins, or sell them, as an efficient mobile processing plant followed the hunt to maximise these products quickly. Game farming the bush, for income, with wildlife numbers carefully monitored and the cattle controlled, paid off, and the people of Nyaminyami saw this as something worth preserving for themselves.

Sustainable hunting must he based on quotas, but quotas can rarely be set on sustainable levels as population estimates are known to be unreliable. But it is argued that hunting is less ecologically damaging than tourism, and that it needs fewer services, and also that it takes place in areas tourism could not easily access. Hunting revenue may amount to each hunter paying $1,000 a day, which may amount to $30,000 per person for a safari, with government charges for each animal killed rising, in the case of elephant, to $7.500.

Tourism in Tanzania looks set to boom, so long as the tourist enjoys vast wilderness with magnificent scenery, and packed with wildlife. In 1967 the Serengeti boasted 180,000 zebra, 700,000 gazelle and 340,000 wildebeeste – all attended by several hundred lion. Today the wildebeeste total 1.8 million. But what might happen if the Serengeti borders were extensively hunted?

Is it possible that so many lions might be shot just outside the Park, that the populations of zebra, gazelle and wildebeeste could rise uncontrolled into chaos and self-destruction from overgrazing? How many National Parks are bordered by hunting areas? Is there a risk that ‘fast buck’ hunting fees and inaccurate quotas may start to bite at the stuff that tourism is made of? Government officials in tourism, an industry set fair for many years to come, might be well advised to watch over their colleagues responsible for hunting whose golden goose may become caught in the crossfire of overhunting. For unless quotas are scientifically sound, ‘controlled’ hunting may become, in fact, the end of the game, and indeed, theirs.
Grahame Dangerfield

Publications Noted

Abdin CHANDE, Islam, ulamaa and community development. Austin & Winfield, 1997. 277p., ISBN 1-57292-016-5, £41.50 (paperback)
Distributed in the u.K. by Eurospan, 3 Henrietta Street, London WC2E 8LU. A study, based on a small Muslim village in Tanzania, of the conflicting impact of Islam and secular western social influences.

FOREIGN aid in Africa: learning from country experiences; edited by J. Carlsson, G. Somolekae and N. van de Walle. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1998. 224p., ISBN 91-7106-415-X, SEK200; £18.95.
The East African content is two chapters dealing with Kenya and Tanzania. That on Tanzania is entitled: Aid effectiveness in Tanzania with special reference to Danish aid.

Deepa NARA YAN, Voices of the poor: poverty and social capital in Tanzania. Washington, D.e.: World Bank, 1997. 96p., ISBN 0-8213-4061-1, price uncertain. (Environmentally and socially sustainable development studies and monographs series; no.20)

Moving Image and Performance

AFRICA close-up; produced by Joseph Towle. 1997. Videocasstte, 28 minutes. Distributed by Maryknoll World Productions, P.O. Box 308, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0308, U.SA US$16.95. (Children of the Earth series)

This two part video introduces school-age children to their counterparts in two different African settings: the inner city of Cairo, and the town of Bariadi in rural northern Tanzania.

The first part looks at the life of a 15 year old girl, Samah Ibrahim, whose father is an immigrant worker in Kuwait, and has spent seventeen years there, leaving the close-knit family to oversee the upbringing of his children in a public housing settlement.

The second 14 minute segment focuses on 15 year old Bernard Bulemela and his family in a rural settlement in Shinyanga Province. Environmental problems and the struggles of day-to-day existence in a resource-poor region are at the heart of this short study. The video illustrates the hardships that rural families face in acquiring the everyday necessities of water and firewood, and also shows what achievements are being made in environmental conservation and sustainable development.

Each section shows children coping with challenges that are far removed from those of a typical western oriented viewer. But the video doesn’t dwell on deprivations, and to its credit it highlights the strength and resourcefulness of each child and their families, while suggesting the road out of poverty that can lie before them.

The closing image of the Tanzanian section captures this spirit: Bernard’s father gathers his family around the radio each night to listen to the BBC World News, so that they will be knowledgeable about world events. Extracted from World Views Oct.-Dec.- 1997

Hukwe ZAWOSE, one of Tanzania’s leading traditional musicians enchanted a capacity audience at London’s famous Globe Theatre on June 19. Dressed in the traditional costume of his Wagogo people, he played a variety of instruments, sang and danced, accompanied by a young assistant. With deft humour and subtle variations of pace and word and without the aid of a microphone, Hukwe established an immediate rapport with his audience.

This performance was part of a WOMAD concert which included musicians from Madagascar, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Among all these very gifted artists he shone as the evening’s star. David Somers

Compiled by John Budge and Michael Wzse

Helena JERMAN, Between Jive lines: the development of ethnicity in Tanzania, with special reference to the western Bagamoyo District Uppsala: Finnish Anthropological Society; Nordic Africa Institute, 1997. 360p. (Transactions of the Finnish Anthropological Society; no.38) ISBN 952-9573- 16-2, SEK 110.

This study is based on the area that lies inland from Bagamoyo. It forms the section of the greater Bagamoyo district that, more than the sea coast town itself, was subjected to and influenced by, the passage of representatives of differing cultures through the centuries. Not all of the slavers, propagators of religious belief, traders, and politicians merely passed through, leaving a detritus of ideas and physical tokens of their passage. Some, for whatever reason, tarried or settled, administered from distant urban centres; all had some significant impact. It is their successive impacts that are the subject of this interesting book.

It originated as the author’s thesis for her doctorate, and was based on oral as well as documentary evidence. The investigation dates from more than twenty years ago, and as such is to some extent a valuable historical record, pictorially and in the interviews with old people, of a society that has subsequently undergone further radical change; such has been the impact of the late twentieth century even on rural communities.

The five lines of the title were drawn in the sand by an elder in the course of describing his country’s development though many centuries. They symbolised, for him, the peoples who have confronted each other in the region. The author’s text is divided into sections that consider the pre-colonial period, which included most notably the islamisation of the coast, the development of the Waswahili ethnic identity, and powerful invasions such as the Ngoni and the Kamba. Then came the German period, and the widespread repercussions of the Maji Maji movement. The British period included the emergence of political associations, while the post-independence era has seen attempts at the integration of a national culture and controversial attitudes regarding the positiveness or otherwise of ethnic/tribal thinking.

The author’s list of sources used, or consulted in personal contacts is impressive. This is the outcome of systematic investigation over a period of years, and deserves consideration. It is also very readable.

MW

John MILLARD, Never a dull moment: the autobiography of John Millard -administrator, soldier and farmer. Silent Books [1997?] 226p., ISBN 1 85183 096 0, 217.50. Obtainable from: Philippa Millard, 29 Gorst Road, London SW1l 6JB. U.K.

This is an apt title for the story of an all-rounder who enjoyed life to the full. A more sententious critic might categorise the book as a smug saga, but although a degree of self-satisfaction does emerge in its pages (as happens with many autobiographies) this would be far too harsh a verdict to make in this case.

The author writes from experience in many fields and countries and he must have taken great pains over the years to chronicle the incidents that provide the material for his narrative. In doing this he has achieved his aim of portraying both the highs and lows in various situations and careers. He describes these lucidly and entertainingly and with an easy style in which, inter alia, he makes light of adversity.

John’s account compares favourably, in my view, with several others I have read written by persons who served and farmed in the colonies, and he certainly captures the atmosphere of Africa. Although not a scholarly dissertation, he writes expansively and diversely, not confined only to African matters. His encounters during World War I1 in many theatres receive due comment and are interesting, as also his amusing description of his time in Whitehall at the Colonial Office, where he worked with the late Sir Ralph Furse (the renowned Director of Recruitment) on the selection of key personnel for the Post-war Colonial Service. Never a dull moment is not penned in official Government-type language nor is it weighed down by numerous appendices. Another plus, and so essential in a non-fiction book, is the efficient index of names and places.

Affection for his family is apparent throughout, and this is well illustrated by his sensitive handling of the effects of the serious and tragic riding accident sustained by his wife; Corinne. His love of the countryside, and for South Africa (where he was born), the United Kingdom and especially his wife’s homeland, Ireland, all figure prominently in his thoughts. His final philosophical words, written no doubt from his contented retirement base in Kenya state: “I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday, and I love today”.

N. O. Durdant Hollamby

Aili Maria TRIPP, Changing the rules: the politics of liberalisation and the urban informal economy in Tanzania. Berkeley: University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997. 289p., ISBN 0-520-20278-3, £13.95; US$ 18 (paperback)

It is the early 1980s. Forty passengers board a privately operated bus leaving Dar es Salaam. A police officer stops the bus because, although public transport is woefully inadequate, only government-owned buses are legal. The passengers, strangers to one-another, spontaneously become one big happy family, singing and ululating as though on the way to a wedding. The police give up; they cannot charge the driver of a wedding party.

That is but one of the many examples Aili Maria Tripp offers to convince the reader that the civil society – persons pursuing livelihood outside wage employment – strongly influenced government policies. Tripp’s approach is refreshing because the ordinary citizen is often seen as victim of inept or immoral government and/or international banking policies. The tale is too seldom told of collective survival skills -families getting roofs over their heads, beans on the table and shoes on the children.

The author of this book, the daughter of Lloyd and Marja-Liisa Swantz, did her schooling in Tanzania (1960-1974) and often accompanied her mother on research interviews. Between 1987 and 1994 she and a Tanzanian research assistant interviewed (in Kiswahili) nearly 300 residents of Manzese and Buguruni districts of Dar who were engaged in informal sector activities. They also interviewed ten-house cell leaders, party secretaries and chairmen and legal counsellors. The objective of the study was ‘to document the growth of new dimensions in Tanzania’s urban and informal economy in response to the economic crisis of the late 1970s and 1980’.

Tripp traces the employment-related history of Dar es Salaam, including the split between CCM and government in the mid-1980s. In 1970 just 4 per cent of wives living there were self-employed, but by the end of the 1980s, 69 per cent of women were self-employed. Because real wages fell by 83 per cent between 1974 and 1988, more than 90 per cent of household income came from the informal sector of the economy, where women, children and the elderly dominated. Most of them operated from their homes, a fact that leads Tripp to a strong condemnation of the oversight of the household economy in national accounts that intensifies the formidable nature of market restraints for the poor.

The survival strategies of women, children and the elderly form an innovative array. They sell maandazi and other pastries, fish, cassava, soup, rice, beer and soft drinks; they are tailors, and the better educated export horticultural products and organise secretarial services; they own shipping and receiving companies, private schools, flour mills. In Zanzibar alone, since the late 1980s, an estimated 10,000 women produce seaweed as a cash crop.

Some husbands -but not many -fear that their wives ‘will do well and leave me’, others simply say that their wives ‘make a few cents’ with their projects. But most men keep quiet after providing starting capital for their wives. Indeed! The average monthly income from making maandazi is 4.5 times the minimum salary in Dar.

Women have a good deal of autonomy today, and at least half of those interviewed by Tripp participate in savings societies (upato). Whether barely getting by or earning high incomes, they save money to pay for their children’s education, clothe them and build family houses. They are central to the family economy. In the words of the author: ‘People have drawn on their own resources and have come up with creative, flexible and viable solutions to the problem of survival under extreme duress’. In the process, they have often quietly defied the law, and government gradually gave in – often quietly as well – by easing restrictions and legalising informal economic activities.
Margaret Snyder

Articles in Journals

Rita ABRAHAMSEN, The victory of popular forces or passive revolution7 A neo-Gramscian perspective on democratisation. Journal of modern African studies, 35 (1) 1997, p. 129-152.

Most scholars acknowledge the connection between the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the subsequent “democratic wave” in sub- Saharan Africa. This paper, by a journalist and PhD. candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Swansea, is primarily a perceptive study of overseas aid and its ramifications.

Aid policy during the Cold War was shaped by strategic-political considerations, and African leaders did not hesitate to play the two sides off against each other in order to attract foreign support. When it ended there was a substantive reduction of aid to Africa, especially for authoritarian regimes -as witnessed most recently in Zaire. The end of the cold war has been portrayed as a ‘moral release’ for the West because it allowed for the formulation of policies along more principled ethical lines, and resulted in the emergence of the ‘good governance’ agenda, and political conditionality.

While former communist states became successful competitors for Western aid, presenting new and lucrative investment opportunities, Africa’s share of economic assistance declined. At the same time the idea of one-pasty states was discredited and democratic thinking was encouraged – even Julius Nyerere was said to have conceded that Africa could learn “a lesson or two” from Eastern Europe.

Africa’s prolonged economic crisis also undermined the developmental ideology which underpinned the one-party state, as the capacity of states to meet the welfare needs of their citizens steadily deteriorated or collapsed altogether. At the same time corruption, mismanagement and human rights abuses persisted in what have been called ‘states without citizens’ – which exist only for themselves and their own beneficiaries, excluding the vast majority of the population. Popular protests became common among wide sections of the population, especially urban workers, trade unions and the middle classes, including students, teachers and civil servants.

Maintaining that countries do not exist in isolation, the author sees that in a world increasingly dominated by a global capitalist system, more and more decisions lie outside the control of the individual state. African regimes, increasingly reliant on overseas aid, consequent on poor credit ratings, had no alternative to dealing with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, described as “a de fact receiver to African governments”, and the effective governance of Africa was “gradually transferred from its official political leaders and former political organs to international financial institutions”.

Structural Adjustment policies, with their emphasis on privatisation, market efficiency, proper pricing policies, and so on, invariably lead to a dismantling or radical reduction of the economic and welfare role of the state. But so far, the author continues, “the miracle of the market” has failed to materialise, while the negative effects continue to mount. “Those few countries which have achieved some macro-economic stability have done so at the expense of growth, investment and human welfare”.

The emergence of pro-democracy movements could not be explained without reference to the widespread feeling of disillusionment and discontent arising from externally imposed austerity measures.

The author expresses the view that a liberal market democracy merely becomes complementary and supportive of goals aimed at expansion of the capitalist world economy. Some gains are achieved in terms of civil and human rights, “but the same elites are still in power and the same socio-economic arrangements persist”.

She concludes: “For those committed to change the message is perhaps that, in order to succeed, counter-hegemonic struggles must take place, not only at the national but also at the international level.”

JB

Stein Sundstol ERIKSEN, Between a rock and a hardplace? Development planning in Tanzanian local governments. Third world planning review, 19(3) August 1997.

Laura FAIR, Clothing, class and gender in post-abolition Zanzibar. Journal of African history, 39, 1998, p.68-94.

From the dawn of civilisation – if not before – what people wore and how they wore it has been significant for the identification of class, status and power. In this interesting and detailed study Laura Fair shows that in Africa, and especially in Zanzibar, this subject is particularly meaningful because of the legacy of slavery and of the area’s specific geography.

She observes that with the abolition of slavery in 1897, former slaves began a “protracted multi-generational process of redefining their positions”. In the early part of this century they accounted for roughly three-fourths of the island’s population, and began identifying themselves as freeborn coastal Swahilis. “They had spent the greater part of their adult lives there, built their homes, planted their farms and watched both their children and their trees grow to maturity on Zanzibar’s rich soil.”

They abandoned clothing associated with their mainland heritage and adopted fashions which identified them first as Swahili and later as Zanzibar-is. As smallholders they became the main producers of the island’s two main exports -cloves and coconuts. Their increasing economic advance often came at the expense of the Omani aristocracy.

Clothing fashions and styles, as well as class and ethnic identities were dramatically remade. Freeborn children began adopting elements of free dress, particularly head coverings and shoes, which they had formerly been forbidden to wear, as well as creating new forms of dress. New markets for imported cloth were opened up, especially in towns, as consumerism was seized upon by former slaves “as a means of articulating their aspirations of upwards social mobility.” The makers and sellers of kangas were making a fortune from women who were said by many to be busily transforming their identities from those of slaves into “slaves of fashion”!

The adoption of Arab clothing was a common strategy, for the association of veiling and purdah with status and property was widespread in pre-colonial Muslim Africa.. After the First World War, women who covered themselves from head to foot with a buibui were publicly demonstrating that they were worthy of respect. Asked why women began to wear the buibui instead of a kanga, a respondent suggested : “It covered you completely, rather than simply covering your head, and was therefore a sign of respect for yourself, your parents and Islam.” It signified that they were “women of dignity and rank and more worthy of respect.”

The author adds significantly: “While the buibui reflected a growing ideology of spiritual equality among East African Muslims, it nonetheless allowed Zanzibari women a freedom to express and debate hierarchicies rooted in more material bases.”

She concludes: “Throughout history and across the globe, men and women have consciously manipulated their material world in order to fabricate their identities physically, and differentiate themselves from others… Covering their heads and bodies was one of the first public demonstrations that formerly servile men and women made of their freedom.” Intrigued by the power of drawings and photographs to act as historical sources, the author effectively utilises such evidence as an integral part of the discussion and text.

JB

Susan GEIGER, Tanganyika nationalism as ‘Women’s Work’; life histories, collective biography and changing historiography. Journal of African history, 37(3) 1996, p.465-479.

Outstanding and exceptional personalities, almost invariably male, are all too often assumed to be the prime instigators and leaders of revolutionary and anti-colonial movements.

After independence, for example, Nyerere was known as “Father of the People”, and the inspiration provided by the masses was generally ignored by historians. These unchronicled individuals were generally presumed to be men, but in this study Susan Geiger, of the University of Missesota, claims that nationalism in Tanzania was largely the creation of women.

Bibi Titi Mohammed, the only TANU leader besides Nyerere whose name was known throughout the country at the time of independence, went from being the lead singer in a popular Dar es Salaam group called ‘Bomba’ to being head of the women’s section of TANU in 1955, and was responsible for enrolling 5,000 women members in a period of three months.

Susan Geiger suggests that the women activists, who constituted a substantial majority of TANU’s card-carrying members, did not learn nationalism from Nyerere or TANU; rather they brought to TANU and to political party activism an ethos of nationalism already present as a “trans- ethnic trans-tribal social and cultural identity”, expressed collectively in their dance and other organisations, and reflected in their families of origin as well as in marriages that frequently crossed ethnic lines. They “evoked, created and performed the nationalism that Nyerere needed to make TANU a credible and successful nationalist movement.”

Open to all who wished to join them, urban women’s dance groups provided newcomers to urban life with entry into “a social and cultural world in which Swahili was the language of song and conversation.”

TANU also benefited from the appeal of uniformed members of the party’s women’s section and of the choirs and youth league, with their many women members, chiefly constituting the party faithful. “Performance and signification produced nationalism in Tanzania as surely as Nyerere’s speeches.”

The writer concludes that nationalism was significantly the work of thousands of women whose lives and associations reflected trans-tribal ties and affiliations, and who thought of Nyerere not so much as father of the people as the son of the people!

JB

Bruce HEILMAN, A social movement for African capitalism? A comparison of business associations in two African cities, by Bruce Heilman and John Lucas. African studies review 40 (2) September 1997, p. 141-17 1.

A comparative study of Kano, in Northern Nigeria, and Dar es Salaam.

Publications Noted

FAREWELL to farms: de-agrarianisation and employment in Africa; edited by Deborah Fahy Bryceson and Vali Jamal. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1997. 277p., ISBN 18014 193 X, 516.50.

This collection of essays by various authors is a continent wide survey, which considers the topic of whether Africa’s future is necessarily rooted in peasant agriculture. The term ‘de-agrarianisation’ embraces the actuality of urban migration, and the expansion into rural areas of non-agricultural activities which provide income for those who live there; thus accelerating a move away from reliance on agriculture by rural people.

The name Bryceson is familiar to many Tanzania-philes, and the book includes a study of the rural informal sector in Tanzania, as well as several chapters of general scope, such as rural industries, and labour diversification in rural areas, which take into consideration the Tanzanian factor,

K. GUILANPOUR, A systematic review of Tanzanian environmental impact statements, by K. Guilanpour and W.R. Sheate. Project apppraisal, 12 (3) September 1997, p. 138-150.

Daniel KOBB, Measuring informal sector incomes in Tanzania: some constraints to cost-benefit analysis. Small enterprise development, 8 (4) December 1997, p.40-48.

LAND degradation in Tanzania: perception from the village, by Alemneh Dejene and others. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1997. 92p. (World Bank Technical paper; no.370) ISBN 0-8213-3993-1) US$20.

Charles LANE, Tanzania – uncertain future for the Maasai of Ngorongoro. Indigenous affairs, no.314, July-December 1997, p.4-7.
Garth MYERS, Localising Agenda 21: environmental sustainability and Zanzibari urbanisation, by Garth A. Myers and Makarne A.H. Muhajir. Third world planning review, 19 (4) 1997, p.367-384.

P.K.G.M. NDYETABULA, The use of soil information in Tanzania. PhD.
thesis, University of East Anglia, 1995.
Stephen J. NORTH, Europeans in British administered East Africa: a provisional list 1889 to 1903. Wantage: The Author (22 Belmont, Wantage, OX12 9AS, U.K.), 1995. ISBN 0-9524754-0-5, £37.

A loose-leaf compilation of information which the author has already supplemented, and intends to continue as more information comes to light. This useful and unusual handbook follows work previously undertaken by Donald Simpson at the Royal Commonwealth Society, Mary Gillet of Kenya, and others. The informative entries aim to provide for each individual: full name, dates of birth and death, date of arrival in East Africa, nationality, profession, and chronological account of the person’s career in East Africa.

Robert PINKNEY, Democracy and dictatorship in Ghana and Tanzania. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. 240p., ISBN 0-333-63 175-7, £40.

In examination of the evolution of democracy in the two countries, the author looks at the balance of forces between governments and campaigners for pluralist democracy, and at the outcomes that emerged.

Severine M. RUGUMANU, Lethal aid: the illusion of socialism and self- reliance in Tanzania. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, [1997?] 256p., ISBN 0-86543-513-8, US$21.95 (paperback)

Peter R. SCHMIDT, Iron technology in East Africa: symbolism, science and archaeology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, [1997?] 400p. US$19.95.

Peter R. Schmidt, The tree of iron. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
[1997?] US$39.95

A 60 minute video. Has been welcomed for being one of the few films which document archaeological work in sub-Saharan Africa. In dealing with African iron smelting it presents convincing evidence of early indigenous technologies far more sophisticated than anyone had previously suspected. The video is described as being skilfully crafted and often beautiful to watch.

SUPPORTING women groups in Tanzania through credit: is this a strategy for empowerment? By Dorthe von Bulow and others. Copenhagen: Centre for Development Research, 1995. 14p. (CDR working paper; no.95.10)
Corinne Natalie Cox WHITAKER, The Impact of women’s participation in an income-generation program in south-western Tanzania. PhD. thesis, Johns Hopkins University (USA), 1996.

Editor’s Recommendation

In issue no.58, September -December 1997 we published an enthusiastic review of Laura Sykes’ attractive guide, Dar es Salaam: a dozen drives around the city. It went with us when I revisited Dar with my wife earlier this year. As former residents we felt it would probably be useful in locating areas and buildings of interest after an interval of almost thirty years. We used it as a point of reference as we moved around once familiar districts, and explored new sectors of the huge conurbation that has developed since we lived there. This is a strong commendation of the work of Mrs. Sykes and her co-author, Uma Waide. They have produced a guide that need not be followed faithfully, but can add a great deal to any visitor’s enjoyment of Dar, which is such an interesting, lively and relaxing city -by contrast to the rough hustle into which Nairobi has descended.

From time to time we publish reviews of more general guides. Let me recommend, for the same reason of having actually used it, Michael HODD, East Africa handbook, with Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia. 4th ed. Bath: Footprint Handbooks, 1997. 864p., TSBN l 900949 06 7, 214.99. It provides, as far as we needed, accurate and up to date information about what the average traveller requires: what to see, where to stay and eat; how to move around each locality; and most important, provides unexpected sections of relevant and very interesting background information when appropriate. We travelled very happily, following our own instincts and with reference when necessary to this guidebook, through Eritrea, Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. Full marks to Footprint!

MW

Compiled by John Budge and Michael Wise

Readers who do not have the good fortune to live near a specialist African studies library are reminded that many items reviewed may be obtainable through the national interlibrary loan service. Please enquire at your local public library.

Pat CAPLAN, African voices, African lives: personal narratives from a Swahili village. London: Routledge, 1997. 267p., ISBN 0-415-13724- 1. No price stated.

Caplan’s book is in the form of a personal narrative and is based on thirty years of fieldwork in a village in Mafia Island. We hear the story of Mohammed’s life, both through his own words, those of his wife, Mwahadia and daughter, Subira as well as Caplan’s own observations of him over this period. His life is revealed in conversations between Caplan and Mohammed, as well as excerpts from the diary he kept for her. These document personal matters as well as village gossip and other daily events of “Minazini” village. The author sees the work as a humanistic enterprise and aims to “explore the universal human condition, and in so doing cross, or bridge the gap between oneself as ethnographer and the subject of the life history”.

The book is divided into four main sections, each with an introduction by Caplan. It is interspersed with photographs which help to give the flavour of daily life in the village. The first section focuses on Mohammed’s life history and the second contains excerpts from his diary describing marriages, divorces, quarrels, ways of making a living by farming or fishing – all concerns which had touched closely on his own life. In the third section we hear other voices as well – those of Mwahadia and Subira. We see how their lives changed from 1965-1985 and how they suffered from increasing poverty and hardship. “The Search for Knowledge” is the final section, which deals with explanation for the afflictions which affect all the characters’ lives, such as witchcraft and spirits.

Caplan is concerned to break with the anthropological tradition of focusing on difference and “otherness” and instead shows how Mohammed’s and his family’s struggle to make sense of daily events has wider relevance. She has succeeded in her aim of producing a text to interest both anthropologists and non-anthropologists. It offers a fascinating glimpse of life in Mafia, and into the lives of three people who have concerns shared by us all.
Bethan Rees Jones

Tijs GOLDSCHMIDT, Darwin’s dreampond: drama in Lake Victoria. London: MIT Press, 1996. 274p., ISBN 0 262 07178 9, £17.50.

This is really several books within one. Firstly we have an account of the fish of Lake Victoria, especially those known to scientists as cichlids (species of Haplochromis) and to local fishermen as furu. The story begins in 1985 when fishing nets came up almost empty; where were all the small fish (furu) that usually filled the nets? Recently the fishermen’s gill nets had been full of big holes due to a predatory (carnivorous) fish – the Nile Perch (lates nilotica) or sangara, known elsewhere as ‘Elephant of the water’, that can weigh more than 70 kilos. Where had this fish come from? Why was it never caught by fishermen when the author first came to Mwanza in 1981? The answers are all here – they make fascinating reading.

In the late ’70s there was a project of the Tanzanian and Dutch governments to set up a fish-processing factory near Mwanza, which would process 60 tons of furu a day into fish-meal. Could Lake Victoria provide that much fish for an indefinite period? Scientists from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands set up a team (H.E.S.T. – the Haplochromis Ecology Survey Team) to study the ecosystem of the Mwanza Gulf and to identify the species of cichlid involved. As time went by, the nature of the diet of 302 species of cichlid became evident – with more than twelve different types of food ranging from detritus (mud), snails, smaller fish, to insects. These furu show a great range of morphology, especially in their jaw structure, which is related to their diet. No need for powerful jaws for eating mud! The big question is – were all the juru derived from one single riverine ancestor?

Secondly, there is frequent reference to Darwin and his theory of natural selection, and speciation, to aspects of camouflage, and selection pressure, to reproduction strategies, extinction … all part of the discussion of how species originate and change, not just in fish, but in birds, insects, and mammals. Throughout the book (originally written in Dutch and beautifully translated by Sherry Mm-Macdonald), there is an interesting use of words and language: the wanderers (Swahili mzungu), a kiss on the hand (from a female chimp), the battlefield (the lake, between Lates and furu), the savior (Sw. sangara), the Nile Perch, which has enriched some fishermen and traders), masabethi (aluminium dishes) … and so on.

Thirdly, there is an in-depth description of DNA and its variation, and its application to the identification of fish species and their origins. Fourthly, there are plenty of comments on social conditions, and life among the local residents; plus a six page glossary, 168 references, and a very complete index. What more could one want?
Brian J. Harris

Julie JARMAN, WAMMA: empowerment in practice, by Julie Jarman and Catherine Johnson. London: WATERAID (27-29 Albert Embankment, SE1 7UB), 1997. 20p.

WATERAID have produced an attractive 20 page booklet about their water development programme in four districts of the Dodoma Region between 1991 and 1996. WAMMA derives its acronym from the partnership between WATERAID and the Ministries of Maji (Water), Maendeleo ya Jamii (Community Development) and Afia (Health), but a key feature is the full involvement of the local community from the outset. Villagers have to establish a water fund, open a bank account and make a one-off contribution before implementation starts. They must also gather any local materials required, such as rocks, sand and gravel. The village Water Committee sets the price for water and encourages participation in a hygiene education programme.

The report suggests six preconditions for a successful programme of the WAMMA type: the right policy climate (a national water policy); the willingness of government to make suitable fieldworkers available; the continuous backing and support of a senior official (e.g. the Regional Development Director); readiness of the donor (in this case WATERAID) to sustain the partnership over a long period and at an adequate level; high priority for village-level participation at all stages; and above all, patience, flexibility and being prepared NOT to push for quick results.
John Sankey

Omar R. MAPURI, Zanzibar, the 1964 revolution achievements und prospects. Dar es Salaam: TEMA (P.O. Box 63 115, DSM), 1996. 120p No price stated.

This book represents a disturbing, even tragic sign of the times. Mr. Mapuri is a minister in the CCM government of Zanzibar, and his book is a call for the intensification of racial politics.

The author starts by identifying the ‘Arabs’ as oppressors who were overthrown by the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution. Now, he says, they have edged back into positions of power. It is a situation where ‘Zanzibari Africans’ – (not all Zanzibaris) must unite. But unite against what or whom? The answer is powerfully implicit throughout the book.

Mr. Mapuri bends over backwards to see everything in purely racial terms. For example, the Union of Zanzibar and Tanganyika, which was engineered by the United States, happened according to him simply as the logical conclusion of the close relationship between African Associations in Zanzibar and Tanganyika – and to say anything else is somehow anti-African. The suggestion that the Umma Party, which had African, Arab and Asian members, had any role to play in the 1964 revolution is seen as an attempt to belittle Africans – since it detracts from what the author regards as purely African ‘achievement’.

What makes all this particularly strange, of course, is the fact that most Zanzibaris are not pure Arab or even pure African but a mixture of many different groups. Even stranger to anyone who has been to Zanzibar in recent years is Mr. Rampuri’s assertion that the last 33 years have been a continuation of the Glorious Revolution which brought justice and prosperity to the people.

One of the aims of the books seems to be to glorify the Afro-Shirazi Party, ASP (which was a key player in the 1964 revolution) and through it the CCM Zanzibar, which is seen as its successor with the same interests and support base. With this in mind the author praises the ‘Committee of Fourteen’, who were considered by many to have been responsible, in the period after the revolution, for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Zanzibaris. These included well-known progressive leaders of the ASP itself, including Abdala Kassim Hanga, Abdul Aziz Twala and Saleh Saadala.

The Civic United Front (CUF) is attacked as a representative of Arab interests, and a successor in this and other ways, of the Zanzibar National Party (ZNP) of 1964. It is also regarded by the author as the villain of the 1995 election. In a Kafkaesque scenario, it is declared that CUF rigged the elections, intimidated voters and manipulated the (African) people of Pemba to turn against the Africans of Unguja. He sees the international and national observers as stooges of the CUF – did they not, after all, complain that it was the CCM which had been engaged in rigging; that they were biased in favour of the CUF because the Arabs always had western support!

What then is the solution to Zanzibar’s problems? What does the author have to say to the youth for whom he declares he has written this book? The answer seems to be out and out confrontation – he urges ‘Zanzibari Africans’ and particularly the youth to save the gains of the Great Revolution.

Reading this book will bring for many of us a sense of deja vu and disappointment. Less than two years ago, in April 1996, the late Abdulrahman Babu predicted just such a polarisation and suggested a solution. In his last pamphlet Wanted: a Third Force In Zanzibar politics, written soon after the 1995 elections he wrote:
the ruling party has ‘won’ the election but not the country The country is at a standstill waiting for a political solution …’ The balance of political power has hardly altered since the 1950s struggle for independence which led to the 1964 Revolution. The political rivalry that has followed the advent of the multi-party electoral process has exacerbated rather than healed the great political divisions of the pre-independence era. And the political leadership cannot … find a way out of this deadlock.

What then is the way forward? In Babu’s view (which has been proved right), a government of national unity is not possible because the conflict now is primarily between leaders with past grudges, and not between parties. He advocated the creation of an independent Third Force in Zanzibar politics, whose task would be to alert the country to the reality of the current state of affairs. If this did not happen soon, he declared, there was a very real danger of fragmentation in Zanzibari society. Unfortunately, if Rampuri’s book is any indicator, the leaders are pushing Zanzibar towards just such a fragmentation.
Amrit Wilson

Thomas SPEAR, Mountain Farmers: moral economies of land & agricultural development in Arusha & Meru. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota; Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press; Oxford: James Currey, 1997. X, 262p., ISRN 0-85255-737-X, £14.9533.

This study traces the history of the Meru and Arusha peoples during the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the fist half of the twentieth; the period when they found themselves, and their economic and social systems in conflict with incomers, whose interests were varied, and by and large became focused upon making use, in various ways, of their productive lands. The limited extent of these lands, and population increase led to strong resistance against incoming governments, settlers and religious bodies.

The Meru and Arusha peoples endured more than a customary share of tribulation during the period under consideration. Their traumas have included epidemic diseases, civil war, drought and famine. All these posed severe threats to the established social order, and more or less coincided with the arrival of Christian missionaries, who were killed in accordance with customary practise directed at individuals seen as introducing undesirable witchcraft, and undermining social order. The establishment of foreign rule, first by the Germans and later the British, bore especially heavily on the area under consideration in this book, by reason of the attractions of the lands for European farmers.

This situation was recognised, and criticised by administrators from the early years of British administration after the first World War. The two tribes were relatively small units when the German Government entered their lives … secure from molestation by other tribes. They occupied land almost unexampled by its fertility … Immense plains were at the disposal of their cattle and there was an abundance of agricultural land available for further expansion. These fair prospects were quickly brought to nought by the German Government. An extensive system of land alienation to non-natives was inaugurated and proceeded in the most reckless manner. Two large mission stations … and two small farms were alienated in the heart of the native area and a belt of farms was carried right around the mountain.. .and entailed the expropriation of many.. . when British officers took over the district they found the Arusha and Meru cramped within an area which was barely adequate for their immediate needs and practically incapable of extension to meet future requirements In every quarter, normal tribal expansion … had been hopelessly compromised.

The author’s prolonged investigation of source materials, ranging from verbal information to archives in Tanzania, Europe and North America, traces the attempts of the peoples concerned and their British administrators on the spot, to check the continued degradation of their society by incomers. This culminated, for the purpose of the book, in the internationally renowned Meru Land case, whose disputants went to the United Nations Trusteeship Council.

It is a record, not only of dispute about possession, but also about the actual use of land and resources by the people concerned, who rapidly, and fairly successfully adapted their methods in order to continue to produce and survive economically within a reduced allocation of land. Professor Spear has provided a highly readable, balanced and most informative history of a segment of Tanzanian society in the earlier twentieth century.

MW

TUKI English-Swahili dictionary. Kamusi ya Kiingereza-Kiswahili. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota for Institute of Kiswahili Research, University of Dar es Salaam, 1996. xx, 883p. ISBN 9976 911 29 7. Distributed in the U.K. by African Books Collective, 27 Park End Street, Oxford OX1 IIIU. Price £60; US$108.

The TUKI English-Swahili dictionary is the culmination of fourteen years’ work by the Institute of Kiswahili Research at the University of Dar es Salaam. Given the difficult conditions under which the TUKI staff worked (at which the Foreword only hints) and the quality of the final product, this dictionary is a remarkable achievement. There is no doubting the need for a new English-Swahili dictionary; the English language has outgrown Johnson’s dictionary of 1939, and none of the more recent dictionaries provides such comprehensive coverage. This one contains over 50,000 entries, including many new words and meanings, along with lexicographic information such as word class, alternative spellings, status (whether formal, slang, vulgar, etc.) and collocations. The most significant drawback, given the erratic nature of English spelling, is the lack of a pronunciation guide. This omission is attributed to technical reasons.

The dictionary begins with a series of diagrams explaining the various types of information included in a dictionary entry, followed by instructions (in English only) on how to use the dictionary. Both these sections are clear and informative, but should perhaps be given in Swahili also. The quality of entries is high; words and their derivatives arc easy to find, and the translations and accompanying information are generally accurate. Many colloquial and figurative expressions arc also included, as are a number of illustrative examples.

The work is not without its problems, of course. A significant problem is a lack of consistency within and between entries. Information about the status of a word or its regional variations appears sometimes before and sometimes after the word, which occasionally causes confusion. Such information can also be inconsistent between entries. Thus, the entry for bell includes the following illustrative example: (colloq) ring a – kumbusha. Under ring, the same expression is treated as a ‘run on’ (a sub-headword, in bold type) but without the information that this is a colloquial usage. – a bell leta kumbukumbu kwa mbali. Some inconsistency is also found in the regional information; although the dictionary indicates usage specific to Britain, America, Australia/New Zealand and Scotland, at times British usage is used as a default. For example, the entry for mad does not indicate that ‘angry’ is the most common American usage of this word; similarly, although the sub-heading of sidewalk gets the label (US) the sub-heading pavement is unmarked, and neither of these entries is cross-referenced to the other. There are also a few mistakes, but these arc rare.

Aside from these minor problems, I found this authoritative dictionary informative and easy to use. It will, I am sure, soon become established as a standard reference work. Steve Nicolle

Articles in Journals

Thadeus SUNSERI, Famine and wild pigs: gender struggles and the outbreak of the Majimaji war in Uzaramo Journal of African History, 38, 1997, p.235-259

Catherin BAROIN, Religious conflict in 1990-93 among the Rwa: secession in a Lutheran diocese in Northern Tanzania. African affairs: the journal of the Royal African Society, 95 (381) Oct 1996, p.529-554

There may not appear to be much connection between wild pigs and banana beer, but these apparently irrelevant details sparked off two rebellions, harking back directly and indirectly to the period of German rule in Tanganyika at the beginning of the century. These two admirable and interesting studies show how religious beliefs and practices become linked to radical social change and how authoritarian obstinacy can tear societies apart.

Sunseri, maintaining that the prevailing conception of the Majimaji war needs to be re-examined, acknowledges that a good deal of historical research was directed to this end at the University of Dar es Salaam in the 1970s.

The Germans, attempting to regiment Tanzanian peasants, succeeded only in destroying the historic structure of rural society – the delicate balance between the distinctive practices of men and women essential to social cohesion, health and the well-being of the soil and the environment. They forbade bush-burning, hunting, the felling of forest trees and forced men to work on communal cotton farms and railway construction. Men, robbed of their traditional tasks, were forced to leave their homes for long periods with the result that women had to assume their roles, ushering in vital “shifts in gendered spheres of power”. The 1905 revolt, Sunseri claims, was not so much a fight for independence as a ‘symptom of household struggles’ to overcome these problems. Headmen lost authority and when severe famine struck women practised ritual pagan remedies by using dawa (medicine) based on maji (water) to protect crops, and appealed to agricultural deities.

Sunseri claims that these rituals were appropriated by nationalist historians and ‘transformed into a proto-nationalist ideology of resistance’ which became established as the Majimaji tradition. In fact, he says, it was a subtle protest against the assault by the colonial power on the peasant economy and their ‘loss of environmental control’. The wild pigs became a symbol of the policy, exacerbated by the increasing number of Moslems with their aversion to eating pig flesh. Women became hunters – the protectors of the fields.

Whereas Sunseri shows how authoritarianism directly created social problems, Catherine Baroin demonstrates how social conditions drove a religious organisation into an ideological corner. Ever since Tanganyika fell under German domination in 1886, as a result of an agreement between Germany and Britain, the supreme cultural and social influence in the Kilimanjaro region has remained that of the Lutheran Church, which controls nearly all the infrastructure of social life, owning churches, fields, coffee plantations, schools and hospitals, and drawing upon external aid that enables it to finance development programmes.

The Rwa, who occupy the slopes of Mount Meru, are Bantu-speaking farmers, numbering about 150,000, working the rich volcanic soil of the rain-soaked mountain, which is favourable to intensive farming, mainly of coffee and bananas. The Kilimanjaro Chaga outnumber the Rwa nine times over and are “reputed for their business sense and on average more cosmopolitan, more educated and richer”.

Baroin claims that the ‘inferiority complex’ of the Rwa was one cause of conflict, although a large majority are practising Lutherans who read, write and speak Swahili. The 18 patriarchal clans are modelled on the Masai system, divided into ‘generations’, but they accused the Chaga (Northern) branch of the church of discriminating against them, especially in the financing of health and education.

The issue was exacerbated by the uncompromising attitude of many of the clergy and even the Bishop, who blamed the main instigator of the rebellion, Jackson Kaaya, describing him as “an agitator thirsty for power”. Aged over 70, he gained notoriety during the Meru Land Case, when the Rwa eventually took their case to the United Nations, in defiance of Britain, and their action was a prelude to founding the Tanganyika African National Union. A sore point with the church was the Rwan habit of indulging in long drinking sessions of banana beer, while other conflicts arose from their practice of polygamy and the generation system.

When the situation became tense the government strove to maintain order, eventually calling in the army. The rebels tried to take over church institutions in their area, the leaders were imprisoned, and after further serious rioting the Rwa eventually sought a compromise, as a result of which the hegemony of the church was ended. It is noted that bitterness still persists, especially between the Meru Educational and Social Development organisation (MESODET) and the church. As coffee producers the Rwa rely mainly on coffee sales for development funds, and the control of coffee co-operatives is a key issue. In Rwan consciousness, economics and politics are inextricably linked.
JB

Publications Noted

Hector BLACKHURST, East and Northeast Africa bibliography.. Lanham, Md.; London: Scarecrow Press, 1996. xiv, 299p. (Scarecrow area bibliographies; no.7) ISBN 0-8108-3090-6, US$62.50.

Compiled by the founder editor of the well known and much regarded Africa bibliography, this is a handy and very immediately usable gathering of references to books about the area published from 1960 to date. That alone is a form of recommendation, because of the greater likelihood of being able to find items in libraries, and even still in print and available for purchase.

Very precise subject headings allow immediate access to, or indication of non-existence of the user’s chosen approach Thus, more general items in our selected area of interest can be traced under Tanzania – Handicrafts; – Health and Medicine; – History and so on. Quite specifically, Chaga; Dar es Salaam; Olduvai Gorge; Zinza, etc. This is one of the most usable bibliographies I have come across for some time. Not exhaustive, but highly recommended for the sensible selection of entries included.

Erik 0. GILBERT, The Zanzibar dho [dhow?] trade: an informal economy of the East African coast, 1860-1963. Ph.D. thesis, Boston University, 1997. Obtainable from University Microfilms International, PO Box 1346, Ann Arbor, M1 48106-1346, U.S.A. quoting order number 9713661.

Abacleti K. KASHULIZA, Determinants of bank credit access for smallholder farmers in Tanzania: a discriminant anlysis appreciation, by Anacleti K Kashiliza and Jonathan G. Kydd. Savings and development, no.3, 1996, p.285-304

Nasor MALIK, Extension of Kiswahili during the German colonial administration in continental Tanzania (former Tanganyika), 1885-1917

Originally published in Swahili forum III, Sept., 1996, p. 155- 160, this article of approximately 2,000 words has been revised by the author, and a copy of the typescript can be seen by contacting the editor of Tanzanian affairs.

Fenella MUKANGARA, Women and gender studies in Tanzania: an annotated bibliography(1982-94). Dar es Salaam: The University Press, 1995. 245p., ISBN 967 6602 782. Distributed in the U.K. by African Books Collective, 27 Park End Street, Oxford OX1 IHU, Pricc 514.95, US$27.

Roger PFISTER, Bibliography of Swiss doctoral dissertations on sub-Saharan Africa, 1897-1996 Bern SWISS Society of African Studies,( P 0 Box 8212, CH- 3001 Bern), 1997 76p No price stated

A useful list, which draws upon diverse sources to present a comprehensive and well indexed list of Swiss dissertations on African topics. The high degree of interest in Tanzania over the period is shown by the proportion which concentrate on the country (almost ten percent out of some 400). The bibliography includes helpful advice on how to obtain copies of dissertations listed.

PLUNDERING Africa’s past; edited by Peter R. Schmidt & Roderick J. Mclntosh. Oxford: James Currey Publishers, 1996. 296p., ISBN 0 85255 738 8, 514.95.

Described by the publisher as being a frank indictment of African contributions to the problem, and discussion of specific steps that could halt the disappearance of Africa’s art. In addition to several overview chapters looking at aspects of art theft continent-wide, there are two chapters devoted to aspects of the destruction and looting of archaeological sites in Tanzania, another on Kenya, and one on the East African coast.

Detlef H. SCHMIDT, Measuring participation: its use as a managerial tool for district health planners based on a case study in Tanzania, by Detlef H Schmidt and Susan B Refkin International Journal of health planning and management, 11, 1996, p.245-358

E.H. SILAYO, Cadastral surveying practice In Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: The University Press, 1997. 163p.

A discourse on why cadastral surveying “is much more than merely solving boundary disputes between neighbours”.

The reviews editors thank contributors for their reviews, especially those that come unsolicited and often draw attention to publications that might have been overlooked. Anyone offering a review should please contact Michael Wise.