Operacionalización de variables

“Urbanity is neither simply when different people live together, nor does it emerge automatically after some time. If the promise becomes reality, that is, if an urban society in that sense actually emerges, it is the outcome of a social process that juxtaposes encounter and distanciation.” (Förster 2013: 244)

This quote by Till Förster describes urbanity as process of coping with difference. Indeed, the three towns under consideration had been ethnically mixed from the very beginning, a trend which became further accentuated in the interwar years. Thus, Manyema constituted only one group among the many migrants inhabiting these ‘cosmopolitan’ towns – a label which is often used for Dar es Salaam and seems to promise that the continuing interactions between different groups did have a genuine urbane society as outcome. Clearly there were means to cope with diversity and to incorporate strangers in 19^th century urban Swahili culture,

“as the greatest strength was probably its openness. The assumption of unanimity in terms of faith, communication and fashion permitted great diversity in terms of ethnicity, economic interests and social traditions.” (Brown 1973: 227)

Accordingly, the “urban melting pot” Dar es Salaam is seen by Deborah Bryceson (2009: 241) as

“exceptional in East Africa for a record of relatively little ethnic tension”. This might be true from today’s perspective (leaving rising religious tensions apart) and in comparison to towns in neighboring countries. However, social encounters between different ‘ethnic’ groups were of course not always harmonious. Early Manyema migrants, stigmatized by their upcountry origin and (alleged) slave descent, struggled to become recognized as ‘civilized’ members of Swahili urban society. Nonetheless, these struggles should not lead us to dismiss the label ‘cosmopolitan’,

40 People for example tried to get non-native status within the colonial apparatus by claiming (also distant) Arab parentage. Similarly, to ‘Mungwana’, ‘Swahili’ was increasingly dismissed as ethnic self-designation. In Zanzibar, for example, the number of ‘Swahili’ dropped in the 1924 census from 34.000 to 2.000 as it was no longer understood as designating a freeborn coastal Muslim, but rather a slave trying to hide his origins, see Fair 2001.

41 See interviews 38, 31 October 2012, Tabora and 18, 5 October 2012, Mwanga.

rather the contrary, as Simpson and Kresse (2008: 2) remind us: “Any conception of ‘cosmopolitan society’ […] ought to reflect the historical struggles on which it builds.“ Cosmopolitanism is not simply there in multi-ethnic surroundings, but is a challenge. Critical understandings of cosmopolitanism go beyond European intellectual notions of the Weltbürger as well as the diffusion of a global lifestyle from one (Western) center. They rather stress the ability of people to see their place in a larger world and “ways of inhabiting multiple places at once” (Breckenridge et al. 2002: 64)⁴² as most important features of cosmopolitanism.

In the interwar years, there were still many Manyema in Tanganyika Territory, who had been born in what had in the meantime become Belgian Congo; others were born east of Lake Tanganyika under Arab, German, Belgian or British rule. Most of them had not lived in one locality only, but, pervasive in the family histories I recorded, in several towns along the old route of caravan trade.

The 1931 census counted 16,889 ‘Nyema’ (Manyema) all over the colony, found in “Tabora; and smaller numbers in Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Pangani”.⁴³ Tabora, in the heart of Nyamwezi country, may be less reputed for its ethnic diversity and cosmopolitan nature than Dar es Salaam, or, for the 19^th century, Ujiji. But there are some sources referring to Tabora’s ethnic diversity in German colonial times. As important node in the 19^th century caravan trade, it certainly attracted not only Arab and Swahili traders but also African porters, guards, and service providers from the wider Lakes region and the coast. With the establishment of colonial rule, Europeans of various countries, Indians, African soldiers, railway workers and other migrants can be added (Becher 1997). The high percentage of slaves in the district, around 67% in 1900, equally contributed to the ethnic diversity especially of Tabora Township. According to the 1948 census 6,600 Manyema in the district constituted 4% of the overall, clearly Nyamwezi dominated population. In Tabora town, Manyema (2,193) ranked second after the Nyamwezi (3,099) and constituted 20% of the population, followed by Sukuma, Zaramo, Tusi, Wemba and others. Already in German times, there were quite some land owners among the Manyema.⁴⁴ In Dar es Salaam, 167 different African groups were counted in 1931, which – together with the European and a substantial Asian population numbering several thousand – demonstrated the growing regional importance of the colonial capital. While most Africans came from the immediate hinterland, like the Zaramo and Rufiji, Manyema were with 1,221 persons among the biggest African migrants group. They were described as best established urban community with their own mosque and freehold cemetery as well as substantial house property in Dar es Salaams ethnically mixed African settlements like Kariakoo (Brennan / Burton 2007b: 34-35; Leslie 1963: 49-50). Interestingly, Kigoma-Ujiji was not mentioned at all in this 1931 overview of Manyema ‘tribal distribution’. As later census data illustrates, we can add substantial numbers of Manyema for Kigoma District as well as smaller numbers for towns like Bagamoyo, Dodoma, Mwanza and Iringa.⁴⁵ For Kigoma district 69 different

42See further Vertovec / Cohen 2002; Loimeier / Seesemann 2006.

43 See Census of the Native population of Tanganyika Territory, 1931. Dar es Salaam. Census figures are notoriously unreliable especially when it comes to ethnic labeling and should be seen rather as rough approximations.

44 See The East African Statistical Department. 1950. African Population of Tanganyika Territory. Geographical and tribal studies. (Source: East African population Census, 1948); Pallaver 2011.

45 In the 1948 census 2784 Manyema (5% of the population) were counted in Kigoma district, most of them located within the Luiche Federation, of which Ujiji formed part. Though their numbers were smaller, Manyema constituted

ethnic groups and among them 20 groups with Congolese origin were estimated in 1928.⁴⁶ To establish the exact number of ‘Manyema’ in the district is difficult. Some people continued to refer to themselves with their Congolese ethnic origins like Kusu or Bangubangu, and there are no detailed figures for urban Ujiji.⁴⁷ After a short visit to Ujiji Township an officer in 1930 reported besides 150 to 200 Asians and Arabs around 8,000 “mostly detribalized” natives.⁴⁸ This referred in official parlance to the common description of ‘Swahilized’ townspeople without (or at least for outsiders not visible) distinctive ‘tribal’ markers, again a hint to the integrative nature of Swahili urban culture.

The German colonial administration had adopted the liwali (governor) system in Muslim urban settings and appointed ‘strangers’ to various political positions, allocated land for newcomers or recognized ownership rights of long-time (also immigrant) residents and used Swahili as official language (Brown 1973; Iliffe 1979). In all these points Manyema profited, as they were among the early permanent inhabitants of the towns, in contrast to those who resided few months in town before they returned home, like Nyamwezi in Dar es Salaam or Ha in Kigoma. Thus, Manyema had been able to get a strong foothold in the towns, exemplified by the considerable number of Manyema house owners in central African quarters in interwar Dar es Salaam as compared to the original local Zaramo or Shomvi population (Brennan / Burton 2007b: 33-34, 37). In struggles about political and religious power, rituals and resources, however, Manyema were continuously being reminded of their migrant status, as the cleavage often went along the migrants/locals line.

In Dar es Salaam, conflicts between the Zaramo and Shomvi wenyeji (owners) of town, and more progressive and economically successful watu wa kuja (migrants), including Nubi, Manyema and Zulu, rose about the control of the main Islamic institutions in town. (Brennan 2012: 103-106, 139-50; Said 1998: 44-49). In Ujiji, a violent conflict remembered as ‘war’ evolved between earlier and later migrants of Congolese origin, the Watanganyika (people from the lake shores) and the Arabiani Congo (people from the Manyema forest region). (McCurdy 1996) Thus, while townspeople were in general aware of the multiple worlds their inhabitants felt part of, and would for example celebrate their unity as fellow Muslims integrated into a global Muslim network (Zöller 2012), times of crisis revealed major divisions of the towns’ cosmopolitan population.

In her historical analysis of colonial Zanzibar, Anne Bang (2008) asks whether the colonial factor changed constellations of cosmopolitanism or restricted cosmopolitan thinking and acting.

Certainly, colonial conquest and rule directly brought new actors to the Tanganyikan towns:

Europeans of different national and occupational backgrounds, South Asians and Africans from all over the colony and beyond. Hence, colonialism broadened the scope of people living in a town, which intensified the challenge of a cosmopolitan urban society. British rule in Tanganyika Territory had in the 1920s enforced initial German projects of racial segregation and as Bryceson

also around 5% of the population in Iringa, Dodoma or Mwanza. See The East African Statistical Department. 1950.

African Population of Tanganyika Territory. Geographical and tribal studies. (Source: East African population Census, 1948).

46 See Kigoma District Book, TNA.

47 See Kigoma District Book, TNA.

48 Officer of the Commissioner of Police and Prisons Dar es Salaam to CS Dar es Salaam, 22 July 1930, TNA SF 12218.

(2009: 249) states for Dar es Salaam, “the cultural compass of town life was being radically reoriented from that of ustaarabu to racial rigidity and exclusivity of ‘non-natives’”. The legal divisions along racial lines and between ‘natives’ and ‘non-natives’ translated into spatial segregation and became decisive for town life in the interwar years. In Dar es Salaams, as James Brennan (2012) demonstrates, economic conflicts united Africans of diverse origins for example against rising prices driven by Indian businessmen in Kariakoo, a quarter which was theoretically reserved for Africans. Also Pan-Islamic welfare organizations with Indian or Arab leaders, which had previously united Muslims of all ethnic backgrounds, were increasingly criticized by African Muslims as paternalistic and they set out to found their own associations. Hence, segregationist policies together with strengthened economic competition led to an increased racial awareness also in other spheres of town life. Conflicts like the above mentioned as well as subsequent initiatives along racial lines, hint at the vulnerability of the cosmopolitan urban project.