Kangas: the Voice of Zanzibari Women? Its Present Importance Among Young Women in Zanzibar Stone Town, Tanzania

9532-06_KHILA_2/2006_01 15-10-2007 15:39 Pagina 1 KHIL{A 2 (2006), pp. 1-22. doi: 10.2143/KH.2.0.2021283 Kangas: the voice of Zanzibari Women? Its present importance among young women in Zanzibar Stone Town, Tanzania Marloes VAN DER BIJL1 Department of African Studies, Leiden University Kangas are found along the East African coast as well as in parts of the eastern Arabian Peninsula. Many are made in East Africa, but a significant number are made in India, specifically for this mar- ket. The kanga provides a fascinating example of how a textile can reflect historical, economic and social changes throughout a region. To date, some scholars have looked at the proverbs on the kangas and written about their lit- erary aspects, while others have taken a more historical approach.6 Few, however, have examined the social implication of the kanga. The focus of this article is the discourses that the kanga itself gener- ates. I have not entered into a detailed debate about the origin of the kanga, rather I have looked at how the cloth itself serves as a point of departure in con- Fig. 1: Zanzibari women dressed in kangas, at a festival. temporary Zanzibar society.7 In particular, I have Photograph by the author. focussed on how the younger generation of women perceive the kanga. During my fieldwork on Throughout the Indian Ocean people have used Zanzibar I discussed the role of the kanga during cloth and clothing to show their social and eco- interviews with approximately thirty women, the nomic status. One of the more intriguing types of majority of whom were young and unmarried. The textiles that fall in this category is the kanga. main themes were the kanga and its contemporary Basically a kanga is a long strip of cotton cloth that is very widely used by women on the East African coast.2 Kangas are normally decorated with bold, 1 colourful printed designs and, more intriguingly, This article is based on my MA thesis, Leiden University (2006). In 2004, I conducted research into the history and messages that were generally in Swahili, but there use of kangas in Zanzibar Stone Town, Zanzibar. During are examples in Arabic and English, which are inte- this period of fieldwork I was able to acquire nearly thirty grated into the border of the design (fig. 1). kangas for the Textile Research Centre (TRC), Leiden, The The term kanga derives from the Swahili word Netherlands. These varied from unique old examples to kangas of the latest fashion. These kangas were later supple- for guinea-fowl. At first, kangas had a spotted mented by eight examples purchased in Muscat, Oman. I design in the colours black and white. According to would like to express my deep gratitude to my host family local oral history, men named this cloth kanga, since in Zanzibar Stone Town, who provided me with valuable they thought that women chattered like the guinea information, took me shopping, subsequently made com- ments on kangas that were purchased and generally helped 3 fowl. This bird is also a symbol of fertility for the me comprehend the kanga sayings and their meanings. inland Bantu societies.4 The social anthropologist, 2 Levtzion and Pouwels 2000:40. Minou Fuglesang, succinctly noted that this noisy, 3 Hilger 1995:44. 4 sociable type of bird with its elegant spotted Strobel 1979, quoted by Fuglesang 1994:137. 5 Fuglesang 1994:137. plumage is the appropriate comparison to the 6 Clarke s.a. kanga.5 7 See for example, Kopytoff 1986. 1 9532-06_KHILA_2/2006_01 15-10-2007 15:39 Pagina 2 popularity, the changes in use and meaning for different generations, and the importance of kangas among the young women. These issues were of rel- evance because of the anxieties expressed by various scholars as to the future of the kanga. THE HISTORICAL TRADE IN CLOTH In order to understand the role of the kanga in modern Zanzibari society it is first necessary to look briefly at the trade in cloth in the Indian Ocean region. For centuries ships packed with trade commodities have sailed on the monsoon winds along the coast of India, the Arabian Peninsula and the African East Coast. In particular the trade in textiles has been very important. Due to the compact nature of textiles, they were a major trade item in this region; compared to other trade items, cloth is not fragile, but relatively light and easy to transport. Originally, the function of cloth may have pri- marily been protection against the elements, but it was not long before a social dimension was added. Cloth was, and still is, used to indicate the status, Map 1 The Swahili coast and the Indian Ocean. wealth and ethnic or gender identity of people living in a society. All along the Indian Ocean, societies traded textiles, often decorated, with each other; from Arabia to Madagascar and from Indonesia to East Africa, so sharing ideas as well as actual objects.8 There is very limited actual information about the production and trade of textiles along the Swahili coast, for the period prior to the nineteenth century.9 It is known, however, that textiles were traded between India and the East African coast as part of the Indian Ocean commerce. They were the most important commodities, which were used in exchange for ivory, rubber, bee-wax, food and slaves.10 For centuries cotton and silk cloths of India have played a major role in this trade, due to their lightness and the high quality of Indian dyes.11 From the 1700s onwards, for example, a multi- coloured cloth called the kaniki was brought from Kutch on the west coast of India to East Africa. These cloths were used by Asian Muslims, especially from the Indian sub-continent. The kaniki soon 8 Barnes 2005:1-4. 9 Hirji 2005:68. 10 Linnebuhr 1992:86. 11 ibid. Map 2 Zanzibar archipelago. 2 9532-06_KHILA_2/2006_01 15-10-2007 15:39 Pagina 3 replaced the traditional East African bark cloth and land. Symbolized by clothes covering the body and eventually came to dominate the production and raising the person’s status and prestige, participation distribution of decorative textiles throughout the in a ‘modern’ civilization went together with the region. In its turn the kaniki was later replaced by collapse of traditional, social and economic relation- a stronger, North American fabric that was locally ships.14 The presence of the Arabs in East Africa and called merikani, Shortly afterwards merikani was the adoption of Islam by the Swahili had, and still copied by British manufacturers in Manchester.12 has, an enormous influence on the way Africans It was in the nineteenth century that English dress. Islamic clothing was first adopted by the machine produced textiles undercut Indian produc- Swahili and later by other ethnic groups, mainly tion rates and a major imbalance developed in the because this type of clothing gave and still gives Indian trade. This lasted well into the twentieth prestige. At the same time, although the Arabs wore century. By the second half of the twentieth century the same type of clothing as the Swahili, the cloth the production and trade in textiles had again used for their clothing was of a better quality and reverted to the control of countries from Asia, seen as being more exclusive.15 notably India, Korea and Japan, not to mention the ever increasing Chinese production and trade in THE SOCIAL ROLE OF WOMEN IN EAST AFRICAN cloth. These were later to compete with the textile SOCIETY mills in Kenya and Tanzania, which were set up in 1970s and in 1985 respectively.13 In the Swahili world various contradictions and ambiguities resist changes that might take place over THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF CLOTH time, and the role of women is one of these. Frequently, women are placed on the margins and In almost all societies, textiles and dress are used to are generally considered inferior to men. However, symbolise social status. Along the East African coast “in another dimension, women are placed at the in the nineteenth century, for example, a cotton center as holders of the moral purity on which cloth called pamba, rather than local bark cloth, was depends the perpetuation of the society.”16 In East regarded as a marker of the wealthy elite and dis- African Muslim societies those verses in the Quran, tinguished the poor from the people with a high which emphasise the weakness of women, are status who could afford the imported textiles stressed rather than those that refer to their spiri- (fig. 2). tual equality. As a result there is a general emphasis Wearing a cotton cloth meant that one possessed on the subordinate position of women in Swahili a status symbol formerly reserved for the elites of society. the East African Coast, the Swahilis, Arabs and the The status of Swahili women depends on certain chiefs, plus other honourable persons of the hinter- factors, such as descent, marriage and residence forms, the woman’s ability to acquire her own wealth, inheritance rules and rights of property, as well as forms of hierarchical differentiation. These can be divided into three forms: (a) the different roles of men and women, in particular in stone- towns along the Islamic Swahili Coast (the focus group for this paper), (b) the differences between country and urban living, and (c) in the past between the roles of slave and free women. Modern 12 Probably named Buchuru in Kiswahili, which was a thicker cloth in the colour white with black decoration.

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