The Collapse of a Pastoral Economy
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his research unravels the economic collapse of the Datoga pastoralists of central and 15 Göttingen Series in Tnorthern Tanzania from the 1830s to the beginning of the 21st century. The research builds Social and Cultural Anthropology from the broader literature on continental African pastoralism during the past two centuries. Overall, the literature suggests that African pastoralism is collapsing due to changing political and environmental factors. My dissertation aims to provide a case study adding to the general Samwel Shanga Mhajida trends of African pastoralism, while emphasizing the topic of competition as not only physical, but as something that is ethnically negotiated through historical and collective memories. There are two main questions that have guided this project: 1) How is ethnic space defined by The Collapse of a Pastoral Economy the Datoga and their neighbours across different historical times? And 2) what are the origins of the conflicts and violence and how have they been narrated by the state throughout history? The Datoga of Central and Northern Tanzania Examining archival sources and oral interviews it is clear that the Datoga have struggled from the 1830s to the 2000s through a competitive history of claims on territory against other neighbouring communities. The competitive encounters began with the Maasai entering the Serengeti in the 19th century, and intensified with the introduction of colonialism in Mbulu and Singida in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The fight for control of land and resources resulted in violent clashes with other groups. Often the Datoga were painted as murderers and impediments to development. Policies like the amalgamation measures of the British colonial administration in Mbulu or Ujamaa in post-colonial Tanzania aimed at confronting the “Datoga problem,” but were inadequate in neither addressing the Datoga issues of identity, nor providing a solution to their quest for land ownership and control. Samwel Shanga Mhajida has been working as a lecturer in history at the Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE) since The Collapse of a Pastoral Economy 2017 where he teaches and researches on different historical issues. Together with colleagues at the department of history, the author is currently researching on the youth and the urban spaces in Dar es Salaam. Together with such engagement, the author is also a manuscript editor of the Tanzania Zamani, Journal of the history of Tanzania. Samwel Shanga Mhajida Samwel Shanga ISBN: 978-3-86395-401-7 Göttingen University Press Göttingen University Press ISSN: 2199-5346 Samwel Shanga Mhajida The Collapse of a Pastoral Economy This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Published in 2019 by Göttingen University Press as volume 15 in “Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology” This series is a continuation of “Göttinger Beiträge zur Ethnologie”. Samwel Shanga Mhajida The Collapse of a Pastoral Economy The Datoga of Central and Northern Tanzania from the 1830s to the 2000s Volume 15 Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology Göttingen University Press 2019 Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über <http://dnb.dnb.de> abrufbar. “Göttingen Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology” Editors Prof. Dr. Elfriede Hermann Prof. Dr. Andrea Lauser Prof. Dr. Roman Loimeier Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Schareika Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Theaterplatz 15 D-37073 Göttingen This work is protected by German Intellectual Property Right Law. It is also available as an Open Access version through the publisher’s homepage and the Göttingen University Catalogue (GUK) (http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de). The license terms of the online version apply. Setting and layout: Steffen Herrmann Coverpicture: Datoga Family, Tarangire https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Datoga_Family,_Tarangire.jpg Kathy Gerber (kathleen.gerber) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)] © 2019 Universitätsverlag Göttingen http://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de ISBN: 978-3-86395-401-7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17875/gup2019-1143 eISSN: 2512-6881 Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................... 9 1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 13 1.1 The Architecture of the Thesis .............................................................. 20 1.2 Disclaimer / Clarifier ............................................................................ 23 1.3 Literature Review ................................................................................. 24 Historiographical Background .............................................................. 24 Space as a Perspective in Research ........................................................ 26 African Pastoralists and Pastoralism ...................................................... 27 Contextualizing the Datoga ................................................................. 32 1.4 The Methodological Approaches .......................................................... 34 Archival Sources ................................................................................... 34 The Oral Research Process in Tanzania ................................................. 37 The Challenges to the Research ............................................................ 39 2 The ‘Enlargement of Scale’ and the Datoga Pastoralist Identity Formation 1830s – 1910s .................................................................... 43 2.1 The Geography of the Datoga Settlements ........................................... 44 2.2 Introducing the Pre-Colonial Histories of the People in Singida and Mbulu ........................................................................................... 48 2.3 The Origin of Competition for Space in Central and Northern Tanzania ............................................................................... 50 Reconstructing the Pre-Maasai Datoga Historical Encounter ............... 52 Datoga–Maasai Conflicts: The Creation of Competing Landscape Memories in the Plains ......................................................................... 55 2.4 Shapes and Memories of Landscape: Contested Datoga–Maasai Experiences ................................................ 60 2.5 The Transnational Trade and the Formation of Complex Identities ...... 64 2.6 Transfixation of Spaces and Colonial Tribal Boundaries, 1900 – 1916 ... 67 2.7 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 75 6 Samwel Shanga Mhajida: The Collapse of a Pastoral Economy 3 British Colonial Policies and the Limitation of Datoga Economic Spaces, 1918 – 1950s ............................................. 77 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 77 3.2 Negotiating Access and Resource Use: Ethnic versus Public Definitions .......................................................... 79 The Salt ‘Fracas’ and the Datoga Resistance to Public Land Discourse .. 82 Border Hopping and the Limits of Selective Development ................... 88 3.3 Background of the Datoga–Nyaturu Ethnic Conflicts .......................... 91 The Different Interpretations of Ethnically Motivated Murders at the Singida–Mbulu Border ............................................................... 96 Non-Human Forces Contributing to the Murders ............................... 105 The Colonial State and Strategies against Ethnic Murders .................... 110 The Making of “Aliens” in Singida and Mbulu: The Case of the Datoga ........................................................................ 116 The Datoga-Iraqw Forms of Engagement on Land Issues ..................... 121 3.4 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 128 4 The State, Ujamaa and the Sedentarization of the Datoga, 1966 –1984 ......................................................................................... 131 4.1 Ujamaa, Datoga “Murders” and ‘Operation Vijiji’ ............................... 132 Historical Antecedent: The Datoga “Murders” in the Era of Independence ....................................................................................... 134 Working Solutions against Ethnic Clashes: The Temporary Measures ... 142 4.2 Ujamaa and the Sedentarization of the Datoga: The Long Term Process ........................................................................ 149 The Creation of Datoga Villages ........................................................... 154 The Impact of the Sedentarization Projects on the Datoga ................... 159 4.3 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 164 5 The Orphans of the Plains: Negotiating Livelihood amidst Changing Ethnic Relations at the Singida–Mbulu Border, 1984 – 2012 ......................................................................................... 167 5.1 Understanding the People and the Landscape of the Study Area ........... 168 The Spill out of Food Shortage ............................................................. 170 The Datoga–Sukuma Conflict, 1984 – 1987