Copyright by Emily Beth Brownell 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Emily Beth Brownell Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Growing: An Environmental History of Urban Expansion in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Committee: Toyin Falola, Supervisor Erika Bsumek Ruramisai Charumbira Catherine Boone Gregory Maddox Growing: An Environmental History of Urban Growth in Dar es Growing: An Environmental History of Urban Expansion in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Tanzania by Emily Beth Brownell, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin Dedication For my grandmothers, Marilyn Folkman Greathouse and Eva Mae Cole Brownell. Acknowledgements I want to thank Toyin Falola for not only guiding me through graduate school and my dissertation but for what I know will be a lifetime long mentorship and friendship. Him and his wife Bisi Falola treated me as part of their family when I arrived in Austin and I will always be grateful for that. Erika Bsumek quickly became, despite her scholarly distance from African subjects, an irreplaceable mentor, guiding me through my own thoughts and reflections of how my project fit into the field of environmental history. I am also eternally grateful for all of her “local knowledge” about the pitfalls and joys of academia that she so graciously passed on to me as I came up against obstacles and frustrations. After meeting Gregory Maddox, he quickly became a crucial source of reflection and feedback for me working both in the fields of environmental history and Tanzanian history. Ruramisai Charumbira and Catherine Boone, as committee members gave me invaluable feedback and critique. In Tanzania, my research was facilitated by a generous group of people including Wolfgang Scholz, Kassim Kindinda my research assistant, The Tanzanian National Archives and their staff, COSTECH, Ardhi University School of Urban and Regional Planning at The University of Dar es Salaam, John Lupala, and my constant friend for venting about the frustrations of research, Roxanne Miller I am grateful for the funding and support over the years The University of Texas at Austin Department of History; I am so happy I came here. In particular, I have asked Marilyn Lehman our graduate coordinator countless questions and she always has the right answer. I would also like to thank the University of Texas Continuing Fellowship Committee, The Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, the LBJ School of Public Policy’s Climate Change and Political Stability v program, the United States Department of Defense Boren Fellowship. Finally, I am thankful to my family for all their support and knowing to not ask too frequently when I will be done with school. My amazing surrogate family of friends in Austin may have not had much to do with this dissertation itself but they certainly make finishing it so bittersweet. vi Growing: An Environmental History of Urban Expansion in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Emily Beth Brownell, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Toyin Falola A study of environment and place, “Growing” is an examination of urban transformation that focuses on Dar es Salaam’s geographical and social fringes. This work examines the physical expansion of Tanzania’s largest city from independence until the implementation of Structural Adjustment Programs in the mid 1980s. The goal of this work is threefold: to examine how new migrants to the city accessed important resources, to analyze how their tactics for survival change the environment and geography of the city and lastly, to consider the political battles that ensued over these resources and the city’s changing landscape. To deconstruct the nature of this geographical expansion, each chapter focuses on a different fundamental element of the city including land use, food scarcity and production, the politics of waste management, how citizens navigated city spaces in the face of dramatic transportation shortages and how national and transnational narratives of development influenced (and neglected) the formation of the city. vii Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Narratives of Development in Tanzania ..........................................25 African Development after World War II .....................................................28 Tanzanian development and the growth of ‘self-help’ .................................33 Imagining urban development ......................................................................55 Dar es Salaam after Arusha ...........................................................................59 Self-help urbanism ........................................................................................66 Fighting urban primacy: creating the non-Dar es Salaam ............................75 Chapter Two: Going to the Ground: Land and Housing in Dar es Salaam ...........78 Informality and urban growth in African cities ............................................79 Land in the Colonial City ..............................................................................83 “Best being the enemy of the good” ...........................................................104 Going to the ground: the hinterlands and mbagala .....................................113 Conclusion ..................................................................................................118 Chapter Three: The Political Ecology of Food Supply in Dar es Salaam ...........121 Colonial Food Supply and Urban Bias .......................................................124 Post-colonial Food Distribution and the Evolution of a Food Crisis ..........131 Dukwallahs and Food Stalls ........................................................................144 Farming for Life on the Fringes ..................................................................152 Conclusion ..................................................................................................157 Chapter Four: Cars, Buses, and the Energy Crisis: The Politics of Mobility in 1970s Dar es Salaam .............................................................................................160 Mobility and the Migrant ............................................................................161 Transportation Infrastructure and the Construction of an arterial City .......167 Roads And The Hinterland Economy .........................................................173 Buses and workers ......................................................................................179 cars 184 viii Conserving oil .............................................................................................189 Chapter Five: Seeing Dirt in Dar es Salaam: Sanitation, Waste and Citizenship in the Post-Colonial City .......................................................................................198 Planning for the city ....................................................................................201 Discipline and Waste: discursive urbanization ...........................................213 Reuse and self-reliance ...............................................................................220 Conclusion ..................................................................................................223 Epilogue ...............................................................................................................228 Bibliography ........................................................................................................230 Vita .....................................................................................................................251 ix Introduction In 1972, reporter Guido Magome, writing in the Tanganyika Standard about Dar es Salaam’s “squatting problem,” argued that “if squatter settlements must continue to be established then Party and Government leaders must adopt a rural development approach rather than an urban attitude. We must cooperate with the squatters by making them feel that the settlements are their responsibility, not of an urban authority.”1 In light of events that unfolded during the next decade, Magome’s article reads like a prescient policy recommendation since citizen-led development was forced to fill the vacuum created by the virtual absence of government-instigated infrastructure development on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. “On the other hand,” Magome quickly added, contradicting his prescription for dealing with growing peri-urban populations, “the Government should as far as possible avoid moving whole multitudes of people from town centres to outlying areas… especially when the replaced population cannot be accommodated in new multi- storey buildings which replace ordinary dwellings.”2 Magome seems unaware of what citizen-led settlement was bound to look like without government support, and, as is often the purview of the state in this story, he was eager that it be controlled while also desiring it to be citizen-motivated and funded. A few months earlier, a newspaper editorial by the Standard’s Jenerali Ulimwengu argued a different position, suggesting that poor living conditions for workers in Dar should be considered a “source of shame” for Tanzanians as they were “the acknowledged creators