about such activities. The Comptroller informed the Chief Secretary in January 1935 that it was his opinion
that the general dissemination among Coast natives o f the know ledge that substantial rewards should be paid for information leading to the detection o f smuggling is the most valuable, and probably the only practicable, means o f checking the smuggling which is undoubtedly endemic on the whole littoral between Dar es Salaam and Tanga.72
Precious little intelligence was forthcoming. £[L]ocal opinion5, as an official had observed a few years earlier, ‘being usually on the side of the smuggler will not as a rule bring the facts to official notice.573 Even within the port of Dar es Salaam, the ability of the police and the customs department to control smuggling was limited. Here, the harbour front was policed by patrols day and night which entered dhows and other small craft looking for contraband. The foreshore along Azania Front -where there was ‘danger of shore boats landing goods under cover of darkness5- was also subject to nightly patrols. The Comptroller acknowledged, however, that in conditions such as existed in Dar es Salaam eradication of smuggling was unrealistic. ‘With the harbour full of pulling boats, motor boats and sailing craft, all mobile in the highest degree,5 he informed the secretariat, ‘complete security against smuggling can only be realised with a small preventive army.574 The position in the town, though, was significantly better than that which prevailed north of the capital and further along the coast. The coastline between Dar es Salaam and Tanganyika’s northern border was under no effective control whatsoever. The prevalence of smuggling there ‘by Swahili and Arab dhows' coming from the islands of Zanzibar resulted in the introduction of bicycle patrols in 1938 covering the whole three hundred miles of vulnerable coastline from Moa to Msasani.75 Whilst this may have had some effect in checking such activities, the smuggling continued and arrests were periodically made. In 1945 reports were received of khangas being smuggled via Kunduchi. Five years later a gang of smugglers from Zanzibar were reported to be landing goods to the north of Dar es Salaam and running them into town by car.76 In 1953 a Dar es Salaam man was arrested after being found in possession of Shs.3,363/- worth o f tobacco and other contraband goods.77 Unfortunately, though, thanks to both the scarcity of surviving data relating to smuggling, and to the implicitly
72 Comptroller o f customs to CS, 10th January 1935, TN A /12402/V ol.l. 73 N ote on smuggling in Ruflji (1932), TNA/61/454.
74 Comptroller o f customs to Asst. Sec., 9th March 1938, TNA/12402/Vol. 1. 75 Comptroller to PCs, EP and Tanga, 3 rd May 1938, TN A /12402/V ol.l. 76 TS, 6th May 1950, p.24.
‘shady’ nature of the trade in contraband, it is difficult to gain much idea of its prevalence in the later colonial period. It is likely that smugglers remained at least as active in Dar es Salaam and its environs as they were before WWII. Indeed the rapidly growing urban population would have provided an ever more attractive market for the dealers in illegally imported goods, and judging by the post-war escalation in other forms of crime it is probable that the incidence of smuggling also grew. Leslie recollects the smuggling of goods to have been relatively common at the time of his survey, and whilst officials were aware of what was going on in Msasani and Kunduchi, it was not considered important enough to devote many scarce resources to its control.78
Links between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar were also apparent in the disposal of stolen goods. According to Baker, the steamer service to Zanzibar formed ‘an ideal outlet
7 0
for stolen property.’ The Commissioner of Police bemoaned the difficulty of dealing with theft cases resulting from ‘the proximity of Zanzibar and the facilities which are offered for transporting the proceeds of thefts and burglaries for disposal in that island, often before the theft has been reported.’80 A more common means of disposal, however, was through receivers in Dar es Salaam itself. Receivers were considered to play an important role in the incidence of thefts and burglaries. In the 1927 police report it was observed that they were ‘undoubtedly the instigators of a large proportion of the thefts of property by old offenders among the natives in the townships... [who] turn their attention to such articles as are likely to obtain a ready sale with the receivers.’81 Three decades later, the Standard was attaching ‘still more blame to those dregs of human society who go by the name of receivers, without whom the disposal of stolen property would be a difficult and most hazardous process for thieves.’82 ‘Irreparable harm is done through the dealings of receivers’, complained magistrate McPhillips in 1954, ‘and our prisons are full of many who would not be there but for the [m].’83
Amongst Africans, meanwhile, resentment was voiced towards the numerous pawn brokers that existed in the town, with whom -knowingly or otherwise- stolen property
77QPR, Dsm Dist, 1st October-31st December 1953, T N A /90/1011/V ol.l. 78 Leslie interview.
79 Baker, ‘Social Conditions’, p.93. 80 Police AR for 1926, p.54. 81 Police AR for 1927, p.49. 82 TS, 31st May 1952, p.24.
was frequently deposited. ‘These shops', wrote Mary Margaret Mkambe to the Standard in 1944,
are consuming the wealth o f the resident African community, encourage theft, burglary and smuggling; teach the African not to regulate his cash requirements; thus serve no useful purpose to the economic point o f view and make us slaves all the way through.84
Between 1931 and 1940 the number of pawn shops increased from four to fourteen,85 providing, according to Pike, a ‘convenient and profitable method of getting rid of stolen goods.’86 In spite of calls for pawning to be more strictly controlled from both officials87 and Africans88 the number of pawn shops had by the mid-fifties increased to eighteen.89 All the shops were Indian-owned.
Judging by inter-war police reports it was also Indians, and to a lesser extent Arabs, who usually performed the role of out and out receiver in the 1920s and 1930s.90 And as late as 1954 a magistrate observed that this ‘mean, low, despicable’ offence was ‘one most frequently practised by those who are not natives to this country, but whose very business and livelihood receiving has become.’91 As time went on though, it appears that more Africans acted as receivers. Three out of six individuals convicted of receiving in the second quarter of 1954 were African, two Indian, and one Arab.92 In his notebook from the same year ASP Young records receiving information from one Mohamed Chande ‘better known to the seamier side of Dar es Salaam as Kinyengu [Kinyenga?] a trader in stolen property.’93 The Shark Market in Kariakoo was well known as a place where such individuals operated, auctioning clothes and other stolen items.94
Men such as Kinyengu, along with those scrap dealers not averse to accepting items of
84 Letter to TS, 18th November 1944, p. 12.
85 Amendments by Baker to ‘Social Conditions’, 10.1.40, TNA/18950Aft)l.II. 8G Pike, ‘Native Affairs’, p. 16.
87 See, for example, Pike’s report; or Baker’s amendments in TNA /18950/V ol.II; or for a somewhat later eg. QPR, Dsm Dist., 1st July-30lh September 1954, TN A /90/1011/V oI.l.
88 See, for eg., the correspondence in TS, 18th Novem ber 1944; or the letter from D. Mtonga, TS, 2 1 st September 1946, p.9.
89 Leslie, Sw'vey, p. 143. W hilst they continued to provide an outlet for stolen property (consciously so or