The rural district of Arumeru is the heartland of the Arusha and Meru peoples. Spear provides the most detailed account of the history of Arusha and Meru farmers on Mount Meru up until 1961 and their relations with the pastoralist Maasai and Chagga of nearby Kilimanjaro (Spear 1993, 1997). A detailed history of the Arusha and Meru and their relationship with the land is beyond the scope of this thesis. A brief overview will however, contextualise the present struggles over land.
Spear traces the history of farming on Mount Meru back to the seventeenth century when Kichagga speaking Meru from Kilimanjaro established new farming settlements
on the south-eastern slopes of the mountain. The Arusha (or Ilarusa as they are also known) were originally inhabitants of the semi-arid plains of Arusha Chini (Lower Arusha) and traded with the Maasai and Swahili caravans on their route to Kenya. The conquest of the south-eastern Maasai plains by the Kisongo Maasai led some Arusha to relocate to the south-western slopes of Mount Meru in the 1830s. However, the Kisongo Maasai and Arusha maintained close relations through the Kimaasai language, age-set ceremonies, intermarriage and cooperation in pasturing animals and agricultural production.
According to Spear, in the mid-nineteenth century as both Meru and Arusha populations increased and cleared forest areas on the mountain slopes for cultivation they eventually came into contact and conflict with each other before joining together in raids of people and cattle on Kilimanjaro. By the 1890s the Arusha had grown to dominate the mountain through more intensive farming practices, displacing Kisongo pastoralists and by assimilating many Meru, Chagga and Maasai into Meru clans. The intimately connected history of the Kisongo Maasai and the Arusha and their shared language helps to explain why Arusha farmers are today also often known as Maasai – or ‘town Maasai’.
German colonial rule (1885-1916) was a period of bloody conquest and resistance (Spear 1997: 61-74). In Arusha, much of the land around the lower slopes of the mountain was alienated in favour of European settlers. Land used by Arusha and Meru farmers was restricted to a band between the lowland settler farms below 4,300 feet and the designated forest reserve above 5,300 feet on the upper slopes of the mountain. This contributed to an intensification in the farming practices of the indigenous farmers, who replaced fields of maize and beans with permanent cash crops of coffee and bananas, sent some of their cattle to the plains and stall-fed those that remained. The practice of keeping cattle, sheep and goats in stalls – or ‘zero-grazing’ on the mountain continues to this day.
As a consequence of German defeat in the First World War, in 1918 Tanganyika passed to the British under a League of Nations Mandate and later as a Trust Territory until the country’s political independence in 1961. Tanganyikan lands that were alienated under German rule were sold, mostly to the British, some to Asians, with only a fraction of
one percent being bought by Africans (URT 1994: 10). In Arusha, as population density rose in the 1940s and 1950s some Meru moved off the mountain to settle to the east and west on the plains where they kept large cattle herds. Pressure on land from indigenous population increases and British colonial aspirations to develop European settler production led to the establishment of the Arusha-Moshi Lands Commission in 1946 to resolve the growing crisis. This resulted in further alienation of Meru land when it was proposed that Meru people be relocated from the north-eastern slopes of the mountain to land acquired for them in less fertile semi-arid lowlands (Spear 1997: 210- 225).
Meru protest and resistance to the forced evictions in 1951 was reported to be non- violent. Their struggles culminated in the Meru land case before the U.N. Trusteeship Council and General Assembly in 1952. However, despite two tabled resolutions condemning British actions, in the face of British statements that they would refuse to withdraw, the removals were accepted at the U.N. as a fait accompli (Spear 1997: 229). The post-war period also saw expropriation of Arusha land with rapid expansion of the town and relocation of the main road connecting Arusha with Moshi at Kilimanjaro and the Kenyan border at Namanga (Spear 1997: 201).
Following independence in 1961 President Nyerere’s government pursued a series of national rural development policies aimed at fighting ‘poverty, disease and ignorance’. Significant budgetary resources were put into the agricultural sector to improve and transform agricultural production. However, ultimately the country’s economic growth was too low to achieve these aims (Kamuzora 2010: 94). Nyerere’s policy of Ujamaa (African Socialism) announced in the 1967 Arusha Declaration led to the nationalisation of former alienated lands into the hands of governmental and parastatal bodies. The later policy of ‘Operation Vijiji’ (‘villagisation’) between 1974 and 1976 saw millions of rural peasants relocated to Ujamaa villages throughout Tanzania. As Shivji writes, this caused widespread confusion and alienation of land in its disregard of customary land tenure (Shivji 1998: 12).
As elsewhere in colonial Tanganyika, Arusha town was developed to serve the interests of the colonisers, and racial divisions that were created then have translated into racial and class divisions in urban land occupancy today. The roads and the boma
headquarters of the German administration, which still stands in the centre of Arusha, were built by African forced labour. The town was designed to serve the colonial power as a centre for commerce and administration. While European town dwellers were given security of tenure through leases of up to 99 years in well-planned low-density housing areas, transient African inhabitants ‘squatted’ or held short term licences, which could be revoked easily by administrative officers (URT 1994: 65). The Asian community lived in medium-density housing in the commercial area of town (Lugalla 1995: 14, cited in Hughes and Wickeri 2011: 802).
During the British colonial period laws such as the Labour Utilization Ordinance of 194719 were passed to serve colonial interests and restrict indigenous rural-urban migration. Such laws were abolished after political independence leading to a period of increased rural-urban migration and very rapid growth of squatter areas (Lugalla 1995: 8, 11, 27, cited in Hughes and Wickeri 2011: 802-3). Various policies were introduced to meet the growing demand for urban housing. These included the establishment of the National Housing Corporation and later projects intended to facilitate construction and lending (Mahanga 2000: 95, cited in Hughes and Wickeri 2011: 803-80). Later attempts to instigate new building projects in place of slums and to encourage town dwellers to build new houses were largely unsuccessful (Lugalla 1995: 52, cited in Hughes and Wickeri 2011: 804).
The legacy of colonial alienation of the Meru and Arusha from the land and subsequent post-independence land policies sowed the seeds for many contemporary land disputes in the region and left sharp racial and socio-economic divisions in the allocation of land that have endured to the present day. In more recent years some parts of large settler farms surrounding Arusha Municipality have been sold to make way for new planned residential areas with more mixed populations. Meanwhile as demand for land continues to rise, old conflicts flare up over farms that were historically owned by settlers and were later moved into government hands. During my fieldwork year there were clashes between some 300 Meru villagers and police on the site of a government owned 500-acre farm near the Arumeru market town of Tengeru. Following rumours
19
that it had been sold to a public official, villagers claimed the farm to be Meru ancestral land and invaded it, slashing the banana trees to stake their claim.20
Contemporary Arusha
It is estimated that in the last ten years alone the population of urban Arusha has nearly doubled.21 In July 2010 - six months after I completed fieldwork - Arusha Municipality was officially declared a city. Approximately 95,000 kilometres squared of land was administratively annexed from western Arumeru with some 27,947 Arumeru residents becoming citizens of the new Arusha City.22 For clarity and consistency, in this thesis the former district name of Arusha Municipality is used when referring to the administrative boundaries that were in existence during my period of fieldwork. This section contextualises the claims discussed in subsequent chapters through a descriptive portrait of Arusha’s urban centre and the five wards I visited to conduct my Ward Tribunal study. Four of the wards were located in Arumeru and one in Arusha Municipality. To protect the identity of some informants and third parties I refer to these wards as ‘Upper Arusha’, ‘Arusha Plains’, ‘Meru Rural’, ‘Meru Town’ and ‘Arusha Urban’.
Today, the leafy area known as Uzunguni (‘Europeans’ place’), situated close to the centre of the municipality, is characterised by European-style housing, restaurants, tourist hotels and surfaced roads lined with jacaranda and flame trees. The area is largely inhabited by foreign nationals and wealthy Tanzanians, many of whom work in Arusha’s most lucrative employment sectors – the nearby U.N. Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and East African Community, Tanzanite mining, commercial agriculture, tourism and safari companies. The buildings are guarded by askaris (watchmen) – often Maasai who migrate to the town from other parts of the region for work. Many local women are employed as maids and housegirls. This is also the location of the High Court and the Regional Commissioners’ Building which houses Arusha’s DLHT.
20
‘300 villagers in Arusha clash with armed police’ The Guardian (Tanzania) 8.6.09 p.3.
21
Fieldwork interview with Arusha Municipality Land Registration Officer 7.10.09. Arusha’s regional population growth in the inter-censal period 1988-2002 was 73% - the fourth highest regional growth rate in Tanzania (National Bureau of Statistics 2006: 4).
22
‘Arusha elevated to city status.’ The Arusha Times 31.7.10 – Report of an interview with the Executive Director of Arusha Rural District.
In marked contrast, the western half of the centre - home for much of Arusha’s Asian population - is dominated by civic apartment blocks, offices, shops, fabric sellers, cafes, small bars and guesthouses, the main marketplace and bustling streets where many men and women make their livelihoods in countless small businesses. The streets are alive with the enterprises of mafundi (tradesmen and women). Maasai and Arusha women sit making their handmade shanga beaded jewellery to sell to passers-by. There is a whirr of tailors’ sewing machines, alongside shoe repairers, key cutters and mobile phone credit sellers. Mama Lishe women serve up hot lunches of rice, beans, chicken and beef to local workers while street food sellers at the bus stand cater for travellers with chipsi mayai (omelette with chips) maandazi (doughnuts), chapattis and sweet chai (tea). Women roast maize on small charcoal stoves or sell bananas, mangoes, avocadoes, green vegetables and other produce from buckets.
To the south-west of the municipality in the shadow of an imposing maize flour factory lies ‘Arusha Urban’ ward. Rapid urbanisation since the 1980s has seen what were once village areas become an integral part of the municipality: a maze of unplanned housing and unsurfaced roads where the local population make their living in service industries or small businesses, selling home-grown produce in the market, or working as employees in garages or local factories. The majority of the population living in urban Arusha are not Arusha or Meru and have migrated to Arusha from all over Tanzania. Lack of urban planning in these areas has caused a large number of land disputes concerning boundaries and roads blocked by people building new houses, as well as landlord and tenant disputes in rented properties. This ward generated a high number of appeals to the DLHT.
‘Upper Arusha’ ward is situated to the north of the Arusha-Moshi road on the periphery of the municipality. The southern peri-urban part of the ward near the main road has a mixed population of Tanzanians and a small number of wazungu (Europeans). Walking up the bumpy unsurfaced road from the main highway there is a concentration of cement-built houses, small businesses and shops, a bar and local primary school. As the road stretches uphill onto the lower slopes of Mount Meru the scene becomes rural. Bananas, maize, beans, fruit and vegetables are grown on family shambas and houses are constructed of either mud or cement bricks. Cattle for milk production and goats are kept near to the house in a kibanda (hut) and fed on chopped up banana stems and other
vegetation from the shamba. There is the occasional small wooden kibanda where local women sell just a few neat piles of locally grown fruit and vegetables, a butcher’s kibanda, a church. Further uphill the noise of the local shops and bars disappears to the sounds of cockerels and mountain streams flowing alongside the lush shambas and hedged mud pathways. This is Arusha heartland, where the first language of many inhabitants is Kimaasai.
Despite its location on the periphery of Arusha town this ward has not been subject to urban planning. The area is mostly unsurveyed, informal settlement and family shambas. Demand for land in the ward is high. Population increases over successive generations have reduced the size of fertile agricultural plots that families rely on for their livelihood and subsistence. The high cost of coffee production coupled with its declining value on the international market has led many families to reduce coffee farming in favour of vegetables with yields three times a year. Increasingly people are building brick or cement houses on their shambas to meet population rises or to provide an additional source of income from renting. The demand for land has created a market for it and now constitutes a great incentive for villagers to sell land that has been passed down through families for generations. This has given rise to a high number of land disputes in the ward, particularly where sellers have failed to obtain consent from family members and the village authority. A large number of appeals to the DLHT were from Upper Arusha Ward Tribunal.
In contrast ‘Arusha Plains’ ward to the west of the municipality comprises a mix of commercial settler farms and smaller Arusha family plots. Again, the commoditisation of land and expansion of the urban periphery has encouraged many local people to sell plots to migrant workers from other parts of Tanzania and beyond. European settler occupancy of land close to the municipality in colonial times has remained substantially unchanged with large commercial coffee estates of several hundred acres extending south and north of the main road towards Kisongo, each managed by the descendants of European settlers. Parts of the coffee estates are now being sold under separate titles for multiple concept land use.
Beyond the irrigated coffee estates heading in the direction of Arusha’s small airport the landscape becomes wilder. Undulating hills and plains like dustbowls in the dry season
rapidly transform into grassland in the rainy season when rains flow through channels produced by soil erosion, enabling local farmers to grow maize, beans, sweet potatoes, peas and groundnuts on rain-fed family shambas. In contrast to the small half or quarter acre shambas in Upper Arusha ward, family shambas on Arusha Plains’ less fertile low- lying plains are typically 1 or 2 acres. In addition to growing crops, families ‘zero- graze’ their livestock on maize, bean husks and grass cut from road boundaries. Many of the inhabitants in this area are Arusha people and Kimaasai is widely spoken. Cattle and goats are traded amongst Maasai and Arusha men at the livestock market in Kisongo.
Urban expansion and the commercial value of land in this area has also encouraged selling. One Arusha woman living in the ward told me that she was preparing to sell one of her inherited two acres and to use the sale proceeds to build small brick houses for rental to ‘high class’ people working in the town. In 2010 more than 50% of the land in the ward had been registered, including settler farms and most of the village land that has subsequently become annexed to the new city.23 Land in the ward’s other villages is mostly unregistered. It is from these unregistered areas, where land is held under customary rights of occupancy that the majority of disputes heard in Arusha Plains Ward Tribunal originate.
Taking a daladala (public minibus) east from the municipality along the main Arusha- Moshi road towards Kilimanjaro the landscape gradually becomes rural and the passing scene is one of farms large and small, growing bananas, coffee, sunflowers, maize, sugar cane and rice. Women dressed in kanga and kitenge board the daladala with plastic buckets full of produce, and bundles of live chickens. The women are heading to do business in one of the Meru market towns situated on the main road to Kilimanjaro, where they will trade seasonal fruit and vegetables, ground coffee, rice, beans, maize four, chickens and fabrics, alongside men selling second-hand clothing and general household goods.
The rapidly developing ‘Meru Town’ ward lies to the east of the municipality along the Arusha-Moshi highway. Besides the market, it is also a frequent stopping point for business people on the way to Moshi as well as tourists visiting Mount Meru’s Arusha
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National Park. Some employees in the Tanzanite mines of Merarani in the adjacent Manyara region commute to work each week from their homes in the ward. People from many parts of Tanzania and a small number of wazungu live here, although the indigenous population is Meru. Local officials I spoke to anticipated that many land disputes would arise with implementation of the local planning strategy and land registration in the hitherto unplanned ward.
A number of large irrigated commercial farms adjacent to the highway around the ward were European settler farms during colonialism. Now they are leased by the government to foreign investors or wealthy Tanzanians and produce coffee and roses mainly for export. Meru Town’s larger farms, including the rice paddies are a source of seasonal employment for locals. There are also smaller family shambas in the ward although the soil here is not as fertile as on the mountain slopes. During my fieldwork year low rainfall caused crops such as maize on many small rain-fed shambas to fail. On one occasion when I attended the Ward Tribunal at Meru Town the day’s hearings had been cancelled to enable government emergency supplies of maize to be distributed to local people from the ward office during the drought.
To the east of Meru Town is ‘Meru Rural’ ward. Most of the inhabitants of this ward are Meru and rely on farming for their livelihood. Kimeru is widely spoken. Farms in the ward are typically one acre or so inherited family shambas growing coffee, bananas, beans, maize, sunflowers, fruit and vegetables. Families also keep a small number of cows, goats and chickens. Coffee farming in the ward remains an important source of income but has significantly declined in favour of vegetable production since the 1980s