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SOCIALISM ON SAFARI: WILDLIFE AND NATION-BUILDING IN POSTCOLONIAL TANZANIA, 1961–77*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2015

JULIE M. WEISKOPF
JULIE M. WEISKOPF*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
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Abstract

This article examines the fraught history of officials' innovative uses of wildlife in socialist Tanzania, as they pursued both international and domestic agendas with the country's wild fauna. Internationally, officials sought to enhance Tanzania's reputation and gain foreign support through its conservation policies and diplomatic use of wild animals. Domestically, officials recognized the utility of wildlife for a number of nation-building agendas, ranging from national identity to economic development. However, internal contradictions riddled the wildlife economy, creating difficulty for government officials and party leaders when balancing socialist commitments with an effective, market-driven industry.

Keywords

Tanzaniaconservationenvironmentpolitical ecologynationalismpostcolonial
Type
Ideological Innovation in Postcolonial Africa
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , November 2015 , pp. 429 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Funding for this article came from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Faculty Research Grant, International Development Fund, and College of Liberal Studies Small Grant. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their useful feedback. Commenters at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Africa at Noon Series, the African Studies Seminar at Emory University, and Augustana College (Rock Island, IL) also offered helpful suggestions, as did the members of the History Authors' Writing Group at UW-L. I am grateful to the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology for research clearance and to the dedicated staff of the Tanzanian National Archive, the African College of Wildlife Management, and Pasiansi Wildlife Training Institute. Author's email: jweiskopf@uwlax.edu

References

1 Tanzania National Archives Dar es Salaam (TNA) 599/GD/25/55 Part A. The mainland was called Tanganyika until its 1964 unification with Zanzibar to become the United Republic of Tanzania.

2 Two government bodies managed wildlife conservation in Tanzania. The National Parks – where no hunting occurred – were under the Tanzania National Parks Authority. Licensed hunting occurred under the management of an entity that switched ministries and designations. It was the independent Game Department until 1960 and then was the Wildlife Division (or Department) under different ministerial names. When referring to both sets of employees, I call them ‘wildlife officials’ but capitalize ‘Wildlife’ when it is the specific division.

3 The two party newspapers are the Swahili-language Uhuru and its English-language counterpart The Nationalist. J. Conden's study of these newspapers notes how each tended to reflect the party's priorities, with Uhuru serving as ‘the clear voice of the party’. Conden, J., ‘Nation building and image building in the Tanzanian press’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 5:3 (1967), 352–3Google Scholar. See also M. Sturmer, The Media History of Tanzania (Ndanda, Tanzania, 1998), 103–8.

4 How Tanzanians understood and engaged with these state policies is a critical question that I explore in a forthcoming piece.

5 Garland, E., ‘The elephant in the room: confronting the colonial character of wildlife conservation in Africa’, African Studies Review, 51:3 (2008), 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Bernhard Grzimek repeated this statement, himself quoting a Daily Telegraph article. See B. Grzimek, ‘African national parks – the position today’, in W. Engelhardt (ed.), Survival of the Free: The Last Strongholds of Wild Animal Life (London, 1962), 112.

7 See D. Brockington, Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve (Indianapolis, IN, 2002), 23–43; C. Conte, Highland Sanctuary: Environmental History in Tanzania's Usambara Mountains (Athens, OH, 2004), 149–56; R. Neumann, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Preservation in Africa (Berkeley, CA, 2002), 69–72; Sheridan, M., ‘The environmental consequences of independence and socialism in North Pare, Tanzania, 1961–1988’, The Journal of African History, 45 (2004), 81–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Shetler, Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present (Athens, OH, 2006), 15–16, 201–11, 217–23; and C. Walley, Rough Waters: Nature and Development in an East African Marine Park (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 180–6. The points about colonial conservation are cogent and focus on officials’ paternalistic attitudes towards locals, officials' continued appropriation of customary rights, and their use of global heritage as a justification for conservationist agendas.

8 See Neuman, Imposing, 143 for an example of listing a series of possible motives rather than investigating likely ones. The one study that seriously engages this period only makes claims for a narrow group of officials. See Hurst, A., ‘State forestry and spatial scale in the development discourse of post-colonial Tanzania, 1961–1971’, The Geographical Journal, 169:4 (2003), 358–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 E. Garland, ‘State of nature: colonial power, neoliberal capital and wildlife management in Tanzania’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2006), 124–31, 169–71.

10 The wildlife economy here thus differs from the conservationist ‘mode of production’ analyzed brilliantly by Garland. Part of her analysis is that this economy does not rely on ‘the harvesting and physical removal’ of wildlife to have value as it ‘relies heavily upon ideological mediation [Western ideas attached to African animals] to add value’. My focus on the political economy of using wild animal bodies shows that harvesting and removal were key to wildlife industries, even if ideological mediation enhanced their value. See Garland, ‘The elephant in the room’, 64.

11 Matheka, R., ‘Decolonisation and wildlife conservation in Kenya, 1958–1968’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36:4 (2008), 617CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Matheka, R., ‘Antecedents to the community wildlife programme in Kenya, 1946–64’, Environment and History, 11:3 (2005), 239–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibson, C., ‘Killing Animals with guns and ballots: the political economy of Zambian wildlife policy, 1972–82’, Environmental History Review, 19:1 (1995), 49–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 P. Bjerk, ‘Sovereignty and socialism in Tanzania: the historiography of an African state’, History in Africa, 37 (2010), 299Google Scholar.

13 Bjerk, P., ‘The allocation of land as a historical discourse of political authority in Tanzania’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 46:2 (2013), 259Google Scholar.

14 R. Aminzade, Race, Nation and Citizenship in Post-colonial Africa (Cambridge, 2013), 10–12, 147–9.

15 Lal, P., ‘Self-reliance and the state: the multiple meanings of development in early post-colonial Tanzania’, Africa, 82:2 (2012), 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 R. Matheka, ‘The international’, 113 and 122.

17 TNA 593/GA/4/1, report of Professor Monod from IUCN conference 15–24 June 1960.

18 J. Huxley, The Conservation of Wild Life and Natural Habitats in Central and East Africa: Report on a Mission Accomplished for UNESCO (Paris, 1961). Quoted in Neumann, Imposing, 139.

19 The other officials were A. S. Fundikira and T. S. Tewa. Wildlife officials today and many published sources attribute the Manifesto to Nyerere, but foreign conservationists wrote it and Fundikira read it. See TNA 593/GA/4/1, press release of 8 Sept. 1961. The TANAPA website claims that Nyerere gave this speech: (http://www.tanzaniaparks.com/corporate_information.html) accessed 25 Feb. 2015.

20 Garland, ‘The elephant’, 52.

21 TNA 593/GA/2/6, Wildlife Management School Mwika [sic] 23 July 1963 Speech. The government contributed money for buildings, but USAID, Frankfort Zoological Society, African Wildlife Leadership Foundation, World Wildlife Fund, and the British government provided most funding. See Neumann, Imposing, 140–4 and Garland, ‘State’, 141–7 for their descriptions.

22 ‘Mguga za wanyama ni urithi wa walimwengu wote’, Uhuru, 4 Oct. 1972.

23 Garland, ‘Sate’, 130. Shetler, Imagining, 201 also asserts that international funding and legitimacy were major benefits of wildlife conservation.

24 International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Proceedings of a Regional Meeting on the Creation of a Coordinated System of National Parks and Reserves in Eastern Africa 14–19 October 1974 (Morges, Switzerland, 1976), 10–11.

25 ‘Tito leaves with pleasant memories’, The Nationalist, 3 Feb. 1970.

26 The Nationalist, 29 Feb. 1968; Uhuru, 31 Jan. 1970; The Nationalist, 30 Mar. 1972. Karume accompanied Yugoslavian diplomat Edvard Kardelj, Kawawa accompanied Tito, and Nyerere accompanied Ceausescu.

27 Interview with Berthold Mlolere, Mwanza, 25 July 2014.

28 For Nyerere setting these policies, see Bjerk, P., ‘Postcolonial realism: Tanganyika's foreign policy under Nyerere, 1960–1963’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 44:2 (2011), 219Google Scholar.

29 The Nationalist, 6 Jan. 1969, Makarios visited Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater; The Nationalist, 27 Jan. 1970, Tito visited the same two; The Nationalist, 27 Sept. 1972, Palme visited Lake Manyara. His predecessor, Tag Erlander, visited Lake Manyara in 1968. The Nationalist, 31 Mar. 1972, Ceausescu visited Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Manyara. See The Nationalist, 9 Jan. 1968 and O. Nnoli, Self Reliance and Foreign Policy in Tanzania (New York, 1978), 72 on Sweden's support for liberation movements. For Swedish aid to Tanzania, see C. Pratt, The Critical Phase of Tanzania, 1945–1968 (Cambridge, 1976), 158 and S. Mushi, ‘Tanzania’, in A. Adedeji (ed.), Indigenization of African Economies (New York, 1981), 230, Table 19.

30 Nnoli, Self Reliance, 70–1.

31 The Nationalist, 3 Nov. 1969 for Swedish Prince Carl Gustav in the Serengeti; The Nationalist, 10 Jan. 1969 and 15 Jan. 1970 for Danish King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid in Lake Manyara and Seronera – they stayed for a private holiday and returned to witness the Great Migration in the Serengeti. For Nordic aid's increased importance, see Nnoli, Self Reliance, 63–4, 68; and Pratt, The Critical, 158.

32 P. Bjerk, Building a Peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the Establishment of Sovereignty (Rochester, NY, 2015), 201; W. Duggan and J. Civille, Tanzania and Nyerere: A Study of Ujamaa and Nationhood (Maryknoll, 1976), 154.

33 Nnoli, Self Reliance, 60. Notably, Tanzania exported 1,000 tons of hides and skins to Yugoslavia in 1966. During Ceausescu's 1972 visit, they struck trade deals for Tanzanian goods, including hides and skins. See The Nationalist, 30 Mar. 1972.

34 Uhuru, 31 Jan. 1970.

35 For other examples of animal diplomacy, see Cushing, N. and Markwell, K., ‘Platypus diplomacy: animal gifts in international relations’, Journal of Australian Studies, 33:3 (2009), 255–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hartig, F., ‘Panda diplomacy: the cutest part of China's public diplomacy’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 8 (2013), 49–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Hotuba ya Ndugu SA Ole-Saibull, Mbunge Mbunge na Waziri wa maliasili na Utalii, akiwakilisha kwenye Bunge Makisio ya Mapato na Matumizi ya Fedha ya Mwaka 1977/78, 27.

37 Nnoli, Self Reliance, 73. Other gifts of live animals were sent to Mexico in 1975 and Nigeria, Cuba, and Mexico in 1977. See Uhuru, 22 July 1975; Hotuba ya Ndugu, 27; and Nnoli, Self Reliance, 73.

38 The Nationalist, 16 May 1969. They were rhinoceros, giraffes, elands, monkeys, buffaloes, ostriches, and gazelles.

39 Uhuru, 25 Mar. 1970; The Nationalist, 7 Apr. 1970, 10 Apr. 1970, 24 Apr. 1970.

40 L. Edmondson, Performance and Politics in Tanzania: The Nation on Stage (Indianapolis, IN, 2007), 17–39 and 67–70; A. Ivaska, Culture States: Youth, Gender, and Modern Style in 1960s Dar es Salaam (Durham, NC, 2011), 48.

41 L. Mbuguni and G. Ruhumbika, ‘TANU and national culture’, in G. Ruhumbika (ed.), Toward Ujamaa: Twenty Years of TANU Leadership (Kampala, 1974), 276.

42 National Parks were key to imagining American and Australian national identity, as well as a common identity between whites in South Africa. See J. Carruthers, The Kruger National Park (Pietermaritzberg, 1995), 48–9 and M. Ramutsindela, Parks and People in Postcolonial Studies (Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2005), 25–8. An intriguing difference here is that animals were the focus.

43 See ‘Radioni Leo’ section of Uhuru, Apr.–Sept. 1973. According to Radio Tanzania's archivist, none of the recordings from this era have survived.

44 ‘Wanyama ni wetu: Msituhangaishe’, Uhuru, 28 Apr. 1962.

45 Lal demonstrates the colonial roots to other nationalist projects, like self-help schemes. See ‘Self-reliance’, 216.

46 J. S. Owen, ‘Awakening public opinion to the value of the Tanganyika National Parks’, Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in Modern African States; Report of a Symposium Organized by CCTA and IUCN and Held under the Auspices of FAO and UNESCO at Arusha, Tanganyika, September 1961, compiled by Gerald G. Watterson (Morges, 1963), 262–3.

47 ‘Mbuga za Tanzania za kuhifadhi wanyama wa porini nzuri za kwanza katika ulimwengu’, Uhuru, 1972.

48 See Hurst, ‘State’, 366 for Forestry officials' similar rhetoric.

49 For the radio programs, see the ‘Radioni Leo’ section of Uhuru, Sept.–Apr. 1973. For the pamphlets, see H. S. Mahinda, ‘An experiment in spreading propaganda among indigenous people as to the value of wild life, and the need for its conservation’, in Conservation of Nature, 235–7.

50 TNA 599/GD/7/6, letter from Acting Chief Game Warden H. S. Mahinda to Senior Game Wardens, 9 Jan. 1964.

51 Garland, ‘State’, 126–7. The Swahili caption reads ‘Ulimwenguni kote wanatamani national parks zetu’.

52 Mahinda, ‘An experiment’, 235–7.

53 Garland, ‘State’, 126–7. The Swahili caption reads ‘National parks zetu zinaleta faida ya fedha nchini – tuzilinde’.

54 ‘Wanyama ni wetu: Msituhangaishe’, Uhuru, 28 Apr. 1962; ‘Mbuga za Tanzania za kuhifadhi wanyama wa porini nzuri za kwanza katika ulimwengu’, Uhuru, 1972.

55 Interviews with Matamika Bhuzamba, Busunzu village, 13 July 2011 and Muhamed Matamika, Kifura village, 9 July 2011.

56 J. Brennan, Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania (Athens, OH, 2012), 160–5.

57 See The Nationalist's coverage: 5–20 Mar. 1971. Namata was likely circumventing Leadership Code provisions that prevented state employees from engaging in private industry.

58 L. Schneider, Government of Development: Peasants and Politicians in Postcolonial Tanzania (Bloomington, IN, 2014), 130; Aminzade, Race, 133.

59 Brennan, Taifa, 160. Ideal national citizens were also Africans and farmers.

60 The Nationalist, 13 June 1970 and 18 Mar. 1971. See Rodgers, W. A. and Lobo, J. D., ‘Elephant control and legal ivory exploitation: 1920 to 1976’, Tanzania Notes and Records, 84/85 (1980), 44Google Scholar for possible cross-border smuggling.

61 Uhuru, 8 Jan. 1970, 19 Oct. 1972, and 13 Mar. 1973.

62 Garland, ‘State’, 128.

63 Uhuru frequently listed trophies worth 320,000 TZS or more. In 1977, average per capita income was 1,200 shillings. B. Mwansasu and C. Pratt, ‘Introduction: Tanzania's strategy for the transition to socialism’, Toward Socialism in Tanzania (Toronto, 1979). 7.

64 ‘Mbinu za majangili kuua wanyama’, Uhuru, 6 Feb. 1976.

65 TNA 599 GD/19/CA/54 II, letter from R. I. Ludanga Protection Officer to Kibondo Ward Secretaries and Village Chairmen, 19 Dec. 1979.

66 J. Nyerere, ‘President's inaugural address’, Freedom and Unity (Dar es Salaam, 1966), 177.

67 Annual Report of the Game Division 1961 (Dar es Salaam, 1962), 14.

68 Garland, ‘State’, 135–6.

69 These policies date from the late 1950s. See Hurst, ‘State’, 361–2; Sunseri, T., ‘“Something Else to Burn”: Forest squatters, conservationists and the state in modern Tanzania’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 43:4 (2005), 618CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Matheka, ‘The international’, 120.

70 T. S. Tewa, ‘The value of the tourist industry in the conservation of natural resources in Tanganyika’, Conservation of Nature, 336–9.

71 ‘Wanyama ni wetu: Msituhangaishe’, Uhuru, 28 Apr. 1962. The 1968 Organization of African Unity convention on natural resources echoes this focus on meeting human needs. See Burhenne, W. E., ‘The African Convention for the conservation of nature and natural resources’, Biological Conservation, 2:2 (1970), 105–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Nyerere, ‘President's inaugural’, 177.

73 Annual Reports of the Game Division, 1941–61 (Dar es Salaam, 1962).

74 In the Second Five Year plan, 1969–74, the TTC invested 194 million TZS and the Wildlife Division invested 3.5 million. See TNA 599/GD/1/1/69/III, Development Project Budget Estimates Tourist Development of Game Areas 1971/2.

75 For Nyerere's ideas on this see ‘Value of Private Investment’, Freedom and Unity (Dar es Salaam, 1973), 318–19.

76 TNA 273/MLFW/618/SFI C, ‘Tourism in Tanganyika’, Aug. 1962. See also Rodgers, W. A., ‘Few hunting safaris in Tanzania despite lifting of ban’, Africana, 8:4 (1981), 17Google Scholar. In 1972, TWS began to allocate hunting blocks, rather than the Wildlife Division. See TNA 599/GD/7/26, letter from TWS to Director of Game, 5 June 1972.

77 Tanzania Today (Dar es Salaam, 1967), 171 and 196–7.

78 I. Shivji, Not yet Democracy: Reforming Land Tenure in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, 1998), 85.

79 Rodgers and Lobo, ‘Elephant’, 25 and 50. Wildlife officials shot 2,000 elephants annually, see 52 Table XII.

80 TNA 599/GD/7/1, Press Release 12 Aug. 1959; TNA 273/MLFW/660, letter from Acting Chief Game Warden to Permanent Secretary Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, and Wildlife, 20 May 1964; and Tanzania Today, 229. The exchange rate was 20 TZS to $2.80.

81 Uhuru, 15 Sept. 1973 and 27 Mar. 1974. Besides selling curios locally, the Tanzania Taxidermy Corporation earned 1.5 million TZS in 1972 from exports. Skins unable to earn foreign revenue supplied the state-owned shoe company.

82 TNA 599/GD/12/16/II, letter from Director of Agriculture, Food, and Advisory Services to Conservator of Ngorongoro Conservation Unit, 12 Apr. 1969.

83 TNA 599/GD/12/16/II, letter from Conservator of Ngorongoro to Director of Natural Resources, 14 July 1969. L. Brown, ‘Leslie Brown has a good word to say for controlled game cropping’, Safari, March/April (1974), 39 and ‘Project for the revitalization and promotion of the Tanzanian tourist industry’ (Dar es Salaam, 1983), 60–1.

84 Tanzania Today, 196.

85 W. A. Rodgers and B. D. Nicholson, ‘Game division national projects: Guidelines for long-term development of selected game areas with suggested management and development plans’, Mar. 1973, 10 and 20B. Available at the African College of Wildlife Management's library.

86 Uhuru, 7 Apr. 1972.

87 Annual Report of the Game Division 1961 (Dar es Salaam, 1962), 14, emphasis added.

88 TNA 599/GD/7/6, letter from Acting Chief Game Warden H. S. Mahinda to Senior Game Wardens, 9 Jan. 1964.

89 TNA 599/GD/12/16/II, letter from Director of Natural Resources to Conservator of Ngorongoro, 29 Aug. 1969 and letter from Game Management Officer to Wildlife Services, 23 May 1969. Experts viewed game cropping as a more efficient use of the environments where wild species thrived better than domesticated animals. See L. Talbot, ‘Comparison of the efficiency of wild animals and domestic livestock in utilization of east African rangelands’.

90 Rodgers, ‘Few’, 17 explicitly states that it was TANU officials' doing and much of Nje's description of the ban and the reforms that followed indicate it was not made by Wildlife officials. For example, 68 hunters were in the field at the time, 25 were on their way, and TWS had to refund over 600,000 TZS to canceled safaris. Additionally, the Wildlife Division had to justify the numbers of permits it issued and have an outside accountant examine their books. See N. N. Nje, ‘Public opinion and possible effect of ban on hunting in Tanzania’ (unpublished student research project from the Africa College of Wildlife Management, 1974), 5, 6, 22. Available at the African College of Wildlife Management's library.

91 For the text of this editorial, see Tanganyika African National Union Youth League, ‘Tourism and socialist development in Tanzania’, in I. Shivji (ed.), Tourism and Socialist Development (Dar es Salaam, 1973), 10; Aminzade, Race, 188–9 discusses this debate.

92 ‘Tanzania Wildlife Safaris’, The Nationalist, 1 Jan. 1971. TWS's manager reported $5,000 in profit from each hunter.

93 ‘Shughuli za utalii zinasaidia kujenga ujamaa nchini Tanzania?’, Uhuru, 21 Sept. 1973.

94 ‘Arusha trophy dealer appears in court’, The Nationalist, 13 June 1970 and 1 Apr. 1971.

95 ‘Wafukuzwa kazi kwa ujangiri’, Uhuru, 19 Nov. 1974 and interview with Berthold Mlolere. See also Nje, ‘Public’, 5–6 for the secrecy and mystery in official circles about the ban.

96 TNA 599/GD/7/26, letter from P. P. Shanalingigwa TAWICO to Director of Game, 15 Nov. 1974.

97 ‘Hifadhi ya Tanzania’, Uhuru, 5 Dec. 1974.

98 ‘Nyama ya porini kuwa kitoweo cha wote’, Uhuru, 22 July 1974.

99 ‘Umuhimu wa kuhifadhi wanyama wa porini’, Uhuru, 31 May 1975. Licensed subsistence hunting became legal in 1975. The tourist hunting industry remained small until after the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s. Today it is entirely privately run and is a multimillion-dollar industry. See Rodgers, ‘Few’ and N. Leader-Williams, ‘Tourist hunting in Tanzania’, proceedings of a workshop held in July 1993, published by IUCN The World Conservation Union (Dar es Salaam, 1996), 14–23.