‘But the coast, of course, is quite different’: Academic and Local Ideas about the East African Littoral

Abstract

In recent years, anthropology has paid much attention to the concept of identity. Identity politics is a shifting and complex area, but the trick is to claim the right identity at the right time. This article discusses some of the issues associated with this topic on the coast of East Africa. The quotation in the title is a phrase I often heard when a student studying Swahili in the early 1960s. The East Coast was considered to be different from the rest of East Africa – otherwise known as ‘up-country’ – because it had a long history and impressive material remains as well as a written language with its own literature. What it did not have, unlike the rest of East Africa, were ‘tribes’. In the postcolonial period, ‘tribalism’ has provided a popular and simplistic explanation in the mass media for the conflicts and wars in Africa. Historians, political scientists and anthropologists have argued, however, that modern ‘tribalism’ does not represent indigenous polities but rather the fall-out from the introduction of modern political systems and conflicts over resources. Given all of these factors, why, in the late twentieth century, should there have been calls for the Swahili to be recognised as a ‘tribe’? Seeking answers to this question takes us to an old debate – who are the waSwahili? – sometimes phrased as ‘Is there such an entity as the Swahili?’ In the first section of this article, I consider the arguments of those who have maintained that the Swahili are not a single people, and in the second discuss the contrary case. The third section considers some of the reasons for such differences in approach, including historiography, identity politics, and the relative positions of authors.

Acknowledgements

This article was written while I was in receipt of a Leverhulme Fellowship 2001–02. I am grateful to the Foundation for its support, and to the Nuffield Foundation for funding to attend the ASA 2002 conference in Arusha. My thanks also to Lionel Caplan, Janet Bujra and Richard Reid for comments.

Notes

1. Friedman, ‘Global Crises’, 84.

2. Gillis, ‘Memory and Identity’, 2.

3. I have in mind here numerous studies written in the 1940s and 1950s, for example: Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems; Colson and Gluckman, Seven Tribes of British Central Africa and Middleton and Tait, Tribes Without Rulers.

4. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 323.

5. Magubane and Faris, ‘On the Political Relevance of Anthropology’, 100.

6. Barnard and Spencer, Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 626.

7. Barfield, Dictionary of Anthropology, 475.

8. See for example Vail, The Creation of Tribalism; Southall, ‘The Illusion of Tribe’.

9. Barfield, Dictionary of Anthropology, 476.

10. Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili.

11. Allen, Swahili Origins, 8.

12. Eastman, ‘Who are the Swahili?’, 228.

13. Eastman, ‘Who are the Swahili?’, 230.

14. Allen, Swahili Origins, 4.

15. Pearce, Zanzibar; Hollingsworth, Short History; Ingrams, Zanzibar.

16. Allen, Swahili Origins, 5.

17. Chittick, Kilwa.

18. Prins, Swahili-Speaking People, ix.

19. Mazrui and Shariff quote from a publication of the Kenya Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife leaflet which states that ‘There is no such thing as a Swahili tribe or group’, in The Swahili, 44. Unfortunately, no date for this publication is given, and a reference to it does not appear in their bibliography.

20. Mazrui and Shariff quote from a publication of the Kenya Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife leaflet which states that ‘There is no such thing as a Swahili tribe or group’, in The Swahili, 44. Unfortunately, no date for this publication is given, and a reference to it does not appear in their bibliography., 45.

21. Cameron, ‘Political Violence’.

22. For example: Nurse and Spear, The Swahili: Reconstructing the History; Middleton, The World of the Swahili; Allen, Swahili Origins; Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili; Horton and Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape..

23. Nurse and Spear, The Swahili: Reconstructing the History, viii.

24. Allen, Swahili Origins, 11.

25. Allen, Swahili Origins, 12.

26. Horton and Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape, 199.

27. Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili, 46; Chiragdhin, ‘Kiswahili Na Wenyewe’; Chami, ‘A Review of Swahili Archaeology’.

28. Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili, 48.

29. Harries, Swahili Poetry; Knappert, Traditional Swahili Poetry; Prins, Swahili-Speaking People.

30. Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili, 42.

31. This exchange began with a hostile review by Mazuri of Henry Gates’ television series and book, both entitled Wonders of the African World (Gates and Davies, 1999). Most of these polemics were conducted on the web particularly in the journal West Africa Review which published a special edition in 2000 (http://www.westafricareview.com). See references to A. Mazuri 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, H. Gates, 2000, and W. Soyinka, 2000a and 2000b.

32. The governments of Kenya and Tanzania both maintain Tourist Offices, as does the (semi-autonomous) government of Zanzibar. All of these produce numerous booklets and leaflets, often obtainable in their overseas offices. As will be seen, these make for interesting reading, but unfortunately are rarely dated. I have used the dates of acquisition, which is a good approximation as new ones are continually being produced.

33. Kenya National Tourist Office, n.d. (c.2001): ‘Kenya coastline’ leaflet.

34. Tanzania Tourist Board, n.d. (c.2001): ‘Karibu Tanzania: The Land of Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar’ tourist leaflet.

35. Zanzibar Tourist Commission, n.d. (c.2001): ‘Zanzibar – Island of Swahili Culture’ leaflet

36. In the first issue, the publisher-editor Javed Jafferji states that ‘[O]ur hope is to provide some balance … between the love of one's own heritage which one wants the world to experience [through] – tourism and yet maintain the dignity of a people's culture. Swahili Coast, the magazine, hopefully meanders … through the passages of beauty that is the Swahili Coast while exploring its potential in an enterprising manner … we hope this journey provides you with the richness of our historical roots and culture’: The Swahili Coast: International Travel Magazine to Promote Coastal Eco-Tourism in Tanzania, 1 (1998) p. 7.

37. They go on to discuss the new techniques which were beginning to revolutionise conceptualisations of the history of Africa, indeed, to make it possible to write a history at all. One such was archaeology but there were others: ‘the still scarcely charted ocean of traditional history, tell-tale custom and ceremony, tribal law, family nomenclature and genealogy, place names, and all other substitutes for literary evidence’: Oliver and Mathew, History of East Africa, xii.

38. M'Bow's ‘Preface’.

39. M'Bow's ‘Preface’.

40. M'Bow's ‘Preface’.

41. Diop, Civilisation or Barbarism.

42. Bernal, Black Athena.

43. Horton and Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape, 185, 199.

44. Horton and Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape, 14, 23.

45. Allen, Swahili Origins, 5.

46. Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili.

47. See Beckerleg, ‘Watamu’; ‘“Brown Sugar” or Friday Prayers?’; ‘Modernity Has Been Swahili-ised’ and Peake, ‘Swahili Stratification’.

48. Racine-Issa, ‘The Mwaka of Makunduchi, Zanzibar’, 173.

49. Parkin, ‘Escaping Cultures’.

50. Larsen, ‘The Other Side of “Nature”’.

51. Parkin, ‘Blank Banners and Islamic Consciousness in Zanzibar’.

52. The Coastal People's Party joined KADU, the Kenya African Democratic Union, made up mainly of smaller ethnic groups which feared domination by the ruling party KANU, which was dominated by the Kikuyu. Just after independence, KADU merged with KANU, leading to a long period of one-party rule. The so-called ‘Ten Mile Strip’ of coastal land had previously been ruled by the Sultan of Zanzibar during the British colonial period.

53. Cameron, ‘Political Violence’.

54. Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili, 4–5.

55. Mazrui and Shariff, The Swahili, 53.

56. There is a new wave of ‘tribalization’ which is particularly marked among indigenous groups or ‘First Nations’ in the Americas seeking to claim their human rights. See for example Miller, State of the Peoples and Clifford, The Predicament of Culture.

57. Cowan et al., Culture and Rights, 11.

58. Mazrui, The Africans, 38.

59. Middleton, The World of the Swahili.

60. See Caplan, Choice and Constraint; Walley, ‘Making Waves’.

61. Few anthropologists have worked on the coast south of Bagamoyo, although Lockwood, Fertility and Household Labour in Tanzania provides some useful data for the Rufiji. There is, however, much recent archaeological work: see Chami, ‘A Review of Swahili Archaeology’.

62. Most of the Swahili intellectuals cited in this chapter form part of the Swahili diaspora in the USA.

63. Some indication of its significance can be gauged from the fact that the debates already referred to between Mazrui, Soyinka and Gates also spilled over into both American and Kenyan newspapers.

64. Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa.

65. Horton and Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape.

66. Caplan, ‘Learning Gender’.

67. Peake, ‘Swahili Stratification’.

68. Middleton, The World of the Swahili, xi.

69. Swartz, The Way the World Is, xi.

70. Ibid.; Parkin, ‘Blank Banners’.

71. Larsen, ‘Change, Continuity and Contestation’.

72. For example, Stroebel, Muslim Women in Mombasa.

73. le Guennec-Coppens, Femmes Voilées de Lamu.

74. Fuglesang, Veils and Videos.

75. Porter, ‘Resisting Uniformity’, 622–23.

76. Horton and Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape, 16. Italics are mine.

77. Saleh, ‘“Going With the Times”’.

78. Allen, Swahili Origins, 244.

79. Allen, Swahili Origins, 254.

80. Berkerleg, ‘Modernity Has Been Swahili-ised’; Fuglesang, Veils and Videos.