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Understanding the livelihoods of the village elite is important because their organ- ising practices are geared towards promoting such livelihoods. In order to under- stand the livelihoods of the village elite, I use two cases. The first case is about the everyday life productive activities of the elite. The second case is about the leader- ship positioning of the elite in the villages.

Everyday productive life of village elite

The following is an extract from an in-depth interview about the life of an important young man in the village.

I completed my primary school in 1994 and joined a vocational school at in 1997 in Uganda, sponsored by the World Vision. I got a loan of 270,000 TZS from the World Vision and some other benefactor; with the money, I bought carpentry items and began working as a carpenter in the village.

I have a banana plantation with coffee. I have got students of carpentry who pay me 2000 TZS a month. My monthly income is between 50,000 and 200,000 TZS.

I have a plastered house with a cemented floor and iron sheets. I have a television that I charge with a car battery, and sometimes dry cells. I have a bicycle that assists me in my movements to get and deliver furniture orders together with my private life activities.

I belong to two community-based organizations. The first one deals with providing help in moments of death, sickness, and parties. The entrance fee for this organization is 1,000 TZS and a monthly contribution amounts to 1,000 TZS. The second organization deals with giving loans that extend from 5,000 TZS to 40,000 with an interest rate of 25%.

My future plans are establishing a tree plantation, rearing dairy cattle, opening an account in bank, and getting higher in politics. (Int.VP1.Buk.Apr2004)8

This extract encompasses all the characterisations of the village elite. It fits well with the characterisation of the village elite as medium economically from the “ladder of life”, as presented in the previous section. What is important in this extract is the description of the engagement of the village elite in the daily pro- ductive activities in the villages.

When the young important person talks about a banana plantation with coffee and his carpentry activities, he refers to the everyday livelihood productive activities in order to earn a living. The village elite are engaged in agricultural and business- oriented activities, like any other village people. As I already explained in chapter four when giving the background to the catchment area of YFEC, the livelihoods of the village people in this zone rotate around the banana plantation. Food crops such as bananas, sweet potatoes, cassava, and yams, together with beans, are inter- cropped in the banana plantation. Coffee and vanilla are cash crops which are found in the banana plantation as well. These are crops that need shade, which the banana plantation provides.

Not only do the village elite deal with agriculture, but they also deal with business-oriented activities, especially in the trading centres, which are like town centres in rural areas. When the young man speaks about his future plans as

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This in-depth interview was part of the study on Income Dynamics in Kagera Region Tanzania, (Kessy 2005), in which I participated as a research team member. In this report, this in-depth interview is reported in Appendix 2 about Life histories from KHDS Respondents as “Respondent A7: (15200403)” (Kessy 2005: 72-73).

“establishing a tree plantation, rearing dairy cattle, opening an account in the bank …”, he refers to investment for more income generation. The business-oriented activities in the trading centres are investments from the village elite. They include small shops and kiosks, selling the daily needs of the people in their households (sugar, salt, tea leaves, match boxes, paraffin, cooking oil, and so on); bar and restaurant activities; milling machine(s) in order to take care of maize, sorghum, cassava, and so on. Most of these business activities belong to the important people in the village, the elite: they can directly do the businesses themselves, even though in most cases, they employ the village people to take care of them.

Linked to the aspect of business is the use of the education by the elite to engage in their areas of profession and generate income out of those areas. Taking as an example the young important person, he was trained as a carpenter. He earns a living from selling furniture and he trains people in carpentry for which he is paid. Other village elite are engaged in practicing private extension work, mechanics tasks, while others are engaging in teaching. All these types of work stem from their areas of profession they were trained in. From the income obtained from agriculture and business-oriented activities, the elite possess property such as land, houses, means of transport, and can spend money on equipment such as a television.

Another part of the livelihoods of the elite is the nature of the networks they are involved in. A good example is presented by the community-based organisations in which this young important man is involved. In the first organisation about funeral activities, there is some money to be paid as entrance at the beginning and every month some more. Much as it is little (0.6 EUR) at the beginning and every month, not many people would be able to spend the money in this way for the community- based organisations. Such organisations are already expensive and belong to a certain category of people, the village elite. This applies to the second organisation that gives loans. One needs to be trusted and to have a way that money will be made productive in order to pay back the money with an interest of 25%. The village elite can manage this because they have sources of income from their professions, agriculture, and more reliable business-oriented activities. Other village elite have recreation clubs: they contribute money which become capital to begin a recreation club where they drink and eat; in a rotational way, according to the time they agree upon (normally a year), each village elite runs the club, providing services to the member elite, and therefore enhancing the elite network, and at the same time getting some profit out of the activity. Thus, generally speaking, the village elite engage themselves in agricultural and business-oriented activities, professional- oriented jobs and financial-oriented networks.

Leadership positioning of the village elite

This is an important aspect in the livelihoods of the village elite. They lead the community/village people in politics, religion, and development organisations. I give a description of the leadership positioning of the village elite with the use of a donor-funded development organisation, TUNGO. In the next section, I particularly present a description of this organisation when I deal with the livelihoods of the village people.

The leadership positioning of the elite in TUNGO begins with its formation and development. The founders are government employees who used the experiences and networks they have had in order to create a development organisation. The founder and first chairperson of TUNGO invited some of his friends who had served in different civil servant positions. These founder members became the first policy regulating committee of TUNGO. All the founder members are still in that policy making committee of TUNGO. These are people who have invited other people they have known in order to work in the organisation. They organised the people into formation of farmers’ groups which were registered under TUNGO.

These village elite consider themselves a necessary component in the livelihoods promotion of the village people. In a discussion with one of the policy-making body of TUNGO, he said:

We had to work hard to see to it that we help our farmers. You see, they are there despaired. They used to grow coffee and it really brought lots of money for them. But now, the prices of coffee have gone down.

That is why we had to be saviours. Many people are proud of Bukoba. Many people have grown up from here and worked here. We could not accept that our people suffer because we knew many people who could help us in getting an alternative for agricultural problems. (Int.TI1.Bkb.Aug2005)

Not only have these elite managed to form the organisation, but also they have managed to organise resources for it. One of the TUNGO insiders commented: “We have different donors from abroad; we are soon getting some more from America. We have to see our organisation working”. The village elite take a leadership role in this development organisation by controlling everything and everybody. They think that once they have founded an organisation, it belongs to them and that is why they should control it.

This way of conceiving leadership and personalising it has caused some tensions in the organisation. Look at this quote from a response of a TUNGO insider:

The main weakness of the project was the lack of trust and cooperation between the policy- making body and the management team. … The tension between them dated back from the project start. The policy-making body considered TUNGO as “their” project (for reasons of prestige!) and liked to be in the “driver’s seat”. They wanted to be in control of most processes

(including daily management issues) and had difficulties delegating responsibilities, partly because the chief manager was not trusted/appointed by them. (Int.TI1.Nig.Dec2006)

The tension between the policy-making body and the management team is basically caused by the fact that it is never clear where the boundaries of each are. Contention is on the distinction between technical work which should be done by the management team and the policy work which should be done by the policy- making body. The policy-making body which is dominated by the founders feels that it should do everything. The elite in TUNGO hold the public relations of the organisation, that is, they are responsible for the public image of the organisation. They attend all kind of meetings and they represent the organisation in different forums.

Much as the consideration of the leadership position has been taken from TUNGO, this is a typical experience of the leadership positioning by the village elite even in other fields such as politics and religion: they create opportunities for the livelihoods promotion of the village people (and themselves) through development organisations.

Having presented in this section the livelihoods of the village elite from the two perspectives of everyday productive life and leadership positioning, it can be said that the village elite are in continuous struggle for their livelihoods promotion. They try to capture all the possibilities that would generate resources for survival, including development organisations. Sometimes, and this is the case with the development organisations, they tend to speak for the people while in actual fact they are trying to address their livelihoods. I shall come to this point when dis- cussing the organising practices of the village elite. After finishing this discussion about the livelihoods of the village elite, let me now go to the section about the livelihoods of the village people.

Livelihoods of the village people: Participatory development