Losing faith in the land: changing environmental perceptions in Burunge country, Tanzania

Abstract

Two studies carried out among Burunge small-scale farmers disclosed a striking difference in their relation to the area's natural resources over a period of less than fifteen years. The paper outlines how the Burunge had come to develop essentially trustful attitudes to the world they inhabit. Dramatic changes in official land policies in the 1970s had not changed this by the early 1990s. However, this was also a time when a new mode of farming became dominant in the area, which caused Burunge farmers to move from a view of nature as a reliable provider to become concerned over increased drought, diminishing soil fertility and accelerated soil erosion. Rainfall records did not tally with the perceived increased severity of drought and therefore it is concluded that the Burunge did not relate drought only to meteorological events but also understand drought as a function of a diminishing resource base.

Keywords:

• drought
• environmental adaptation
• deforestation
• land degradation
• Burunge
• Kondoa

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the competent and committed contributions by our co-fieldworkers in Goima, Athanas Joseph, Josephine Joseph and Joseph Mduma. We thank the Kondoa District Council for assistance. The kindness of the Goima Roman Catholic Church to offer accommodation is highly appreciated. The Tanzanian Commission on Research and Technology provided research clearance. Monique Slegers is deeply grateful for the supervision by Prof. Dr Stroosnijder and Dr De Graaff at the Land Degradation and Development Group, Wageningen University and Research Centre, the financial support from this group and the co-operation offered by the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the Sokoine University of Agriculture. Wilhelm Östberg is equally grateful for affiliation to the Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam, and for financial support from the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries and the Swedish Research Council. Critical comments on an earlier version of this paper from the editors and anonymous peer reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. Östberg, Land is Coming Up.

2. Slegers, Exploring Farmers' Perceptions.

3. Anderson and Johnson, Ecology of Survival, 4, differentiate between “environmental change” (long-term changes in geography and climate) and “ecological change” (relations between organisms and their surroundings, in which human agency is significant). We will use the term “environmental change.”

4. Mung'ong'o, Social Processes, ch. 6, describes how politics has affected land use and territoriality in the Kondoa Irangi Hills. The expansionism of Rangi farmers was a result of severe soil erosion and population pressure, as well as concepts of territoriality inherent within the Rangi society. See Kesby, “Progress and the Past”; Östberg, Kondoa Transformation.

5. Mung'ong'o, Social Processes, 85 ff.

6. In the mid-1960s 85% of Tanzania's population lived in scattered homesteads: Raikes, “Eating the Carrot,” 112. Villagisation was made compulsory in 1973 with a resolution at the Biennial Conference of the ruling party TANU. See Coulson, “Agricultural Policies,” 78; Havnevik, Limits to Development, 44, 48.

7. Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 168.

8. Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 32.

9. Words in Swahili or in Burungaiso appear in underlined italics.

10. For more detail, see Slegers and Östberg, “The Strength of the Land.”

11. Mondo village, on the road between Kondoa town and Goima village, was then within the Burunge area but is today dominated by Rangi and included in the Irangi area, not Burunge country.

12. Von Gotzen, Durch Afrika.

13. Kannenberg, “Reise durch die hamitischen”; Reche, Zur ethnographie.

14. Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha; Kannenberg, “Reise durch die hamitischen.”

15. Chief Damasi of Goima, interviewed by Bagshawe in 1919, when the chief was about 55 years of age, remembered this from his youth, probably around 1880. See, “Notes on the Waburungi,” June 28, 1919. Rhodes House, Oxford, MSS.Afr.s.301.

16. Sayers, Handbook of Tanganyika, 399ff.

17. Iliffe, Modern History; Koponen, Development for Exploitation; Maddox, “Nja”; Maddox, “Gender and Famine”; Patton, Dodoma Region.

18. Banyikwa et al., “Studies on Soil Erosion,” 5ff.

19. The forest in Burunge subsistence and worldview is explored in Östberg, Land is Coming Up, ch. 4.

20. For the concept “cool” in Burunge, see Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 56, 91.

21. Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 91ff.

22. Banyikwa et al., “Studies on Soil Erosion,” 26.

23. Iliffe, Modern History, 47, 213; Koponen, People and Production, 82, 93.

24. Christiansson, Soil Erosion; Håkansson, Widgren, and Börjeson, “Introduction.”

25. Mung'ong'o, Social Processes, 61 ff.

26. Kjekshus, Ecology Control: 86; Lane, “Environmental Narratives,” 471ff.; Lane, Mapunda, and Eriksson, “Soil Erosion,” 804.

27. Håkansson and Widgren, “Labour and Landscape,” 240.

28. Baumann, Durch Massailand, 113ff.

29. Kannenberg, “Reise durch die hamitischen,” 156, our translation.

30. Obst, Das abfluβlose Rumpfschollenland im Deutch-Ostafrika, 46.

31. Tosi, Hartshorn, and Quesada, “HADO Project,” 13

32. Christiansson, Soil Erosion, 163

33. By the 1930s soil erosion was a major preoccupation of the colonial agricultural service. After 1945 land improvement schemes became its main activity. See Coulson, “Agricultural Policies,” 55; Anderson, “Depression”; Raikes, “Eating the Carrot,” 113. For the political reaction, see Young and Fosbrooke, Land and Politics; Cliffe and Saul, Socialism in Tanzania; Iliffe, Modern History; Feierrman, Peasant Intellectuals; Maack, “We Don't Want Terraces”; Conte, Highland Sanctuary. Carswell, Cultivating Success, 69f., for a general survey and commentary.

34. Lane, “Environmental Narratives.”

35. Tanzania Government, “The Threat of Desertification”; Iliffe, Modern History, 350

36. Mbegu and Mlenge, “Ten Years of HADO”; Östberg, Kondoa Transformation; Mung'ong'o, Social Processes.

37. Backéus, Rulangaranga and Skoglund, “Vegetational Changes”; Backéus, Rulangaranga and Skoglund, “Dynamic Interrelationships.”

38. Östberg, “Eroded Consensus”; Kikula, “Back to Office Report”; Madulu, “Population Dynamics”; Yanda and Kangalawe, “Land Tenure,” 135ff.

39. Kesby, “Progress and the Past,” 14; Östberg, Kondoa Transformation, 20f.

40. Kesby, “Progress and the Past”; Mung'ong'o, Social Processes; Östberg, Kondoa Transformation; Östberg, Land is Coming Up; Slegers, Exploring Farmers' Perceptions. Pre-colonial group identities were far more flexible than the concepts tribe or ethnic group suggest – see Kopytoff, “The Internal African Frontier,” and Spear and Waller, Being Maasai. For Rangi examples, see Östberg, Kondoa Transformation, and Land is Coming Up.

41. Eriksson and Östberg, “Finding a Place to Live.”

42. Anderson and Johnson, Ecology of Survival; Berry, No Condition; Iliffe, The Africans; Niemeijer, “The Dynamics”; Sutton, “Towards a History.”

43. Eriksson and Östberg, “Finding a Place to Live.”

44. Eriksson and Östberg, “Finding a Place to Live.”

45. Östberg, Madah; Östberg, Land is Coming Up, ch.6; Östberg, “Some Struggle for a Living.”

46. Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa.

47. The early phase is described in Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 192ff. Similar rapid bursts of commercial production, and ensuing land degradation, following the opening-up of new cultivation areas occurred in several other parts of the country. See Raikes, “Eating the Carrot,” 115f.

48. Burunge at this time seems a perfect illustration of Adam's Green Development, characterising the relationship between developers and locals as “the blind and dumb.”

49. For implementation under colonialism, see Coulson, “Agricultural Policies,” 60, and for the Burunge Hills in the 1990s, see Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 74f.

50. Östberg, Land is Coming Up; Slegers, “If Only it Would Rain.”

51. Slegers, “If Only it Would Rain.”

52. cf. Strauss and Orlove, “Up in the Air.”

53. Croll and Parkin, “Cultural Understandings”; De Bruijn and Van Dijk, Arid Ways.

54. Slegers, Exploring Farmers' Perceptions.

55. Lindskog and Tengberg, “Land Degradation”; Dahlberg and Blaikie, “Changes in Landscape”; Amsalu, Caring for the Land; Slegers and Stroosnijder, “Beyond the Desertification Narrative.”

56. Slegers, “If Only it Would Rain.”

57. Striga hermonthica as well as Striga asiatica were observed.

58. Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 89ff.

59. Fosbrooke, “The Fight to Rescue a District”; Anderson, “Depression”; Östberg, Kondoa Transformation; Mung'ong'o, Social Processes; Eriksson, Landscape and Soil Erosion History; Lane, “Environmental Narratives.”

60. A Burunge theory of soils is explored in detail in Östberg, Land is Coming Up, ch. 3.

61. Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 197ff.

62. These methods have been advocated by the agricultural extension service for decades: Patton, Dodoma Region, 32.

63. Ziervogel et al., “Household Food Security.”

64. Östberg, Land is Coming Up, 31.

65. Watts and Bohle, “Hunger.”

66. Slegers, Exploring Farmers' Perceptions.

67. Roe, Huntsinger, and Labnow, “High Reliability Pastoralism.”

68. Slegers, Zougmoré, and Stroosnijder, Closing the Gap.

69. Meze-Hausken, “Contrasting Climate Variability”; Amsalu, Stroosnijder, and De Graaff, “Long-term Dynamics”; Slegers, “If Only it Would Rain.”

70. Iliffe, Modern History, 269; Maddox, “Nja,” 30

71. For example, see Richards, Coping with Hunger; Giblin and Maddox, “Introduction”; Niemeijer, “The Dynamics”; Reij, Scoones, and Toulmin, Sustaining the Soil; Mortimore and Adams, “Farmer Adaptation”; Reij and Waters-Bayer, Farmer Innovation; Carswell, Cultivating Success.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M.F.W. Slegers

The names of the authors appear in alphabetical order. No seniority of authorship is implied