‘The Eye of Authority’: ‘Native’ Taxation, Colonial Governance and Resistance in Inter-war Tanganyika

Abstract

This article examines taxation in inter-war Tanganyika; an institution of central importance to the colonial state yet one which is relatively neglected in the historiography of colonialism in East Africa. Existing analysis of colonial taxation has emphasised its economic role, notably its effects in forcing African men to engage in waged labour. This account seeks to give greater weight to taxation's important political and administrative roles, whilst not ignoring its economic objectives and effects. Collection of tax not only formed an incentive for African participation in the colonial economy and an important source of colonial revenue, it was also at the heart of the political system erected by the British in Tanganyika. Moreover, taxation was central to imperial ambitions to engineer disciplined African subjects. Its failure on this score resulted not only from the limitations of the colonial state, but from a fundamental inability to establish the legitimacy of its fiscal regime. The article ends with a description of the widespread tax evasion occurring throughout Tanganyika. The extent of evasion reflected Africans’ rejection of colonial arguments for taxation that emphasised its supposedly civilising role in promoting socio-economic and political development in local societies.

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend thanks to Jim Giblin and Richard Waller for their comments on an earlier version of this article; and to Barbara Bush and Josephine Maltby, and Michael Tuck, for making available electronic versions of their journal articles. The title quote is from the 1945 Dar es Salaam District Annual Report (DAR), 5.

Notes

1. See e.g., for Deutsch Ost-Afrika/Tanganyika, Iliffe, Modern History, 132–34, 306–07; for Kenya, van Zwanenberg, Colonial Capitalism and Labour in Kenya, 1919–1939, ch.3; and for Africa, Curtin et al (eds.), African History, 518, 537.

2. Though see e.g., Vincent, Teso in Transformation, 149; Lonsdale, ‘Scramble and Conquest in African History’, 30.

3. Hunt, ‘Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy’, 471–94; Redding, ‘Government Witchcraft’, 555–79; Bush and Maltby, ‘Taxation in West Africa’, 5–34; Newbury, ‘Accounting for Power’, 257–77; Makgala, ‘Taxation in the Tribal Areas’, 279–303. The quote is from Bush, ‘Taxation’, 1556.

4. Newbury, ‘Accounting for Power’, 276.

5. Tarus, ‘Peasants, Money and Markets’, 84–100; Tuck, ‘Rupee Disease’, 221–45.

6. Sovereign power is characterised by Bush and Maltby as ‘the imposition of state power from without exemplified, for instance, by drastic punishments’; disciplinary power as (quoting Armstrong, ‘The Influence of Michel Foucault’, 25–55) ‘concerned with moulding the actual details of individual conduct’.

7. Bush and Maltby, ‘Taxation in West Africa’ (as the author's copy is a Word document, not the printed article, no page numbers are included in referring to this article).

8. Disentangling the political and economic objectives of colonial taxation is difficult, as these aspects are inextricably intertwined. Forcing out resources – whether in the form of labour or agricultural products – was clearly an important motivation behind taxation. However, as Scott observes, ‘every public act of appropriation is, figuratively, a ritual of subordination’ (Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 188). Similarly, the task of creating ‘self-disciplinary’ Africans was not always easy to distinguish from appropriating resources. Wage labour (to pay tax) was thought to be good for Africans as well as profitable to the state and private business; as was marketing stock.

9. Hoskin and Macve, ‘Writing, Examining, Disciplining’, quoted in Bush and Maltby, ‘Taxation’.

10. The introduction of what were perceived as more progressive tax measures in the late-colonial period complicated matters somewhat, though even then taxation probably remained characterised more by its sovereign than its disciplinary characteristics.

11. See Koponen, People and Production in Late Pre-colonial Tanzania, 277–80; Raum, ‘Changes in African Life’, 197.

12. Iliffe, Modern History, 133; see also 161 for tax forcing Iramba and Bena onto the labour market.

13. Emphasised in particular by Koponen, Development, 215–16, 382–89; Iliffe, ‘Wage Labour and Urbanisation’, 281–85; and Shivji, Law, State and the Working Class, 11. Thaddeus Sunseri seeks to qualify this somewhat, noting an emerging peasantry's ability to cover tax through the sale of agricultural produce. Sunseri, Viliman, 64–67.

14. Koponen, Development, 216–17.

15. Predominantly adult males, though Koponen observes that ‘sometimes’ African women were also taxed; Development, 382.

16. Predominantly adult males, though Koponen observes that ‘sometimes’ African women were also taxed; Development, 386, 389, 390.

17. An arrangement which could result in substantial wealth. Kahigi of Kianja, Buhaya, had an annual income of 12,000 rupees derived from tax share monies alone; Raum, ‘Changes in African Life’, 198.

18. See e.g., Koponen, Development, 219; Iliffe, Modern History, 134; Sunseri, Vilimani, 66; Giblin, The Politics of Environmental Control, 114–15; Lockwood, Fertility, 70.

19. Henderson, ‘German East Africa, 1884–1918’, 137.

20. Koponen, Development, 217–18; Sunseri, Vilimani, 65.

21. See Treasury Circular 83, 16 Sept. 1922 and replies in Tanzania National Archive (hereafter TNA) AB/1180.

22. Circular 9/1924; quote from Administrative Officer Rufiji to Chief Secretary, 29 March 1924, both in TNA/AB/1180.

23. Administrative Officer i/c Rufiji to Chief Secretary, 29 March 1924, TNA/AB1180.

24. Baker, ‘Memorandum on the Social Conditions of Dar es Salaam’, 72.

25. Draft Memorandum on the collection of tax (Draft Memo), 1929, 2, TNA/13428.

26. Circular 39/1926, TNA/AB/1181. Though, as we shall see, District Officers often struggled to keep an accurate update of ‘assessment rolls’.

27. Hallier (Dep. Provincial Commissioner, Eastern Province) to Chief Secretary, 27 March 1934, TNA/61/50/5.

28. Min. by Tr. to Chief Secretary, 31 July 1931, TNA/19925.

29. Native Tax Ordinance, 1934.

30. Undated memo (circa.1946?) on Native Tax Exemption TNA/61/502/Pt.I.

31. Kwetu, 3 May 1939, 14 (original in Swahili).

32. E.g., 1932 Njombe DAR, 10 (DARs are currently to be found in the TNA reading room); Paper on tax collection in Tanga and Temeke by P. H. Harris, 22 Dec. 1938 [Harris, ‘Tax’), paras. 21, 43, TNA/13428/Vol.II.

33. Where wives occupied buildings that constituted an ‘entirely separate establishment in the same or different locality’ they attracted the full rate of tax (though it was apparently assumed payment would rest on their husband or male relatives), not the ‘plural wives’ tax. Min. from (name unknown) to D. C. S., 26 April 1935, TNA/22426/Vol.I. For the confusion over what constituted a separate establishment, see various correspondence in this file (e.g. Provincial Commissioner, Northern Province to Chief Secretary, 2 April 1935).

34. ‘Native taxation in Tanganyika with special reference to the introduction of communal tax’ (undated, 1938), TNA/ 22557/Vol.I.

35. Rose Hunt observes the same was true in the Belgian Congo; Hunt, ‘Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy’, 474.

36. ‘Taxation’, 22 March 1932, prepared by C. S. Wade for the 1932 East African Governors’ Conference, TNA/21471/Vol.I.

37. ‘[W]ith the possible exception’, he notes, ‘of the Masai’. ‘Native Taxation’, undated (ca. early 1933), TNA/21471/Vol.I.

38. Taxation of townswomen in the Belgian Congo was associated with suspicion surrounding their urban presence, notably in connection with prostitution (Hunt, ‘Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy’). While it is possible that this formed a motivation for women's payment of urban house tax in Tanganyika, I have come across no evidence of this.

39. Municipal House Tax in 1936 varied from Sh.6/- to 20/-. Houseowners also paid an annual land rent of Sh.6/- (in Dar es Salaam and Tanga) and 4/- in other towns.

40. Though the District Officer recommended that the tax was made uniform as ‘able-bodied natives of the three tribes’ all earned money through work outside the District. 1926 Njombe DAR, 14.

41. E.g. 1934 Njombe DAR, 6.

42. ‘Native Taxation’, undated (ca. early 1933), TNA/21471/Vol.I.

43. Cunliffe-Lister to Governor MacMichael, TNA/22426/Vol.I.

44. Reference to the waiving of arrears is made in J.A. Calder to Sir Harold Kittermaster, 5 May 1935, Public Records Office, London (PRO) CO/822/69/7.

45. 1934 Bagamoyo DAR, 6; see also, Provincial Commissioner, Eastern Province to Chief Secretary, 3 Sept. 1934, TNA/22426/Vol.I.

46. See tax schedules in TNA/22426/Vol.II.

47. Shivji especially emphasises the socio-economic purposes of tax, declaring it ‘primarily a system aimed at extracting labour’ (Shivji, Law, State and the Working Class, 12). Iliffe too, in his brief treatment of taxation in the British period, stresses its impact on increased labour migration though he does not necessarily impute governmental motives (Iliffe, Modern History, 305–07).

48. In Uganda, Tuck (Tuck, ‘Rupee disease’) also emphasises tax's revenue role in contrast to its use in other colonies to mobilise labour.

49. Only two other headings were over £100,000: Import Duty, which Africans and others paid on imported goods, at £426,725 and Railway Goods, £210,265. This and other data in this paragraph are from the Tanganyika Blue Books.

50. Import Duty was again the only other major source of revenue (£612,653).

51. Memo on the administration of Dar es Salaam, 22 Feb. 1937, TNA/61/207/Vol.I.

52. Harris, ‘Tax’, para.2.

53. While African tributary systems may have been open to abuse, in fact colonial administrative structures often resulted in diminishing the accountability of local rulers with potentially serious consequences for their ‘subjects’.

54. ‘Draft Memo’, 11. Though, according to the makers of a colonial propaganda film from the 1930s, ‘[m]any natives are under the impression that tax goes into the pockets of local administrative officers’. The film first showed a pre-colonial scene in which a Chief raided a village that refused to pay tribute; and then colonial scenes in which ‘examples were given of various services rendered to Natives in return for the taxes paid … medical attention, education, help in the time of famine, maintenance of order and peace’; Notcutt and Latham, The African and the Cinema, 35.

55. For West Africa, see Bush and Maltby, ‘Taxation in West Africa’.

56. Circular by Chief Secretary, Nyasaland, 3 March 1935, PRO/CO/822/69/7.

57. For the ‘enlargement of scale’, see Iliffe, Modern History, ch.1.

58. 1936 Njombe DAR, 2.

59. ‘Draft Memo.’. However, the degree to which colonial officials were capable of accurately interpreting African conditions through such contact is moot. Moreover, the close association of administration and tax also had its disadvantages. Tarus notes that as Keiyo, in neighbouring Kenya, generally only came across European officials in their tax-collecting role colonial administrators became ‘synonymous with tax collection.’ Tarus, ‘Peasants’, 93.

60. 1934 Njombe DAR, paras.7 and 10.

61. For detailed information on the death of a defaulter in Ufipa in 1929, see correspondence in TNA/13572.

62. The proportion of tax retained differed. In areas with established political leadership it represented the amount reckoned to have formerly (prior to 1925) been received as tribute (generally in goods or labour) by chiefs (Ingham, ‘Tanganyika’, 571; Iliffe, Modern History, 283). In other areas an arbitrary rate was set to encourage collection. See e.g. for Tanga, where Majumbe received 3 per cent of tax collected, 1933 Tanga DAR, 9–10.

63. See e.g. the 1934 and 1935 Uha DARs. The former (2) observes that ‘Native Administration finances are in a flourishing condition largely due to the excellent yield of tax rebate during the year … [which] has placed the Uha Native Treasury in a position from which it can safely embark on a scheme of expenditure on material improvements.’

64. Iliffe, Modern History, 328.

65. Iliffe, Modern History, 283, 328; see also Giblin, The Politics of Environmental Control, 139.

66. Iliffe, Modern History, For concern over the ramifications of the abuse of tax-collecting powers, see e.g., ‘Draft Memo.’

67. Tanga DAR, 10.

68. ‘Labour Conditions in Tanganyika Territory’, copy in PRO/CO/691/83; see also, Chief Secretary to Provincial Commissioners, 31 May 1926, TNA/AB1181. For a discussion of African mobility and its control in 1920s–1940s Tanganyika, see Burton, African Underclass, 76–81, 99–113.

69. See ibid., esp. ch.12.

70. Harris, ‘Tax’, para.5.

71. See e.g., ibid. para.10; and for Dar es Salaam, see below.

72. ‘Thoughts on Taxation’, August 1959, Tanga Regional Archive (TRA) 3/L.3/34.

73. Former Chief Secretary, D. J. Jardine addressing the Royal Empire Society, London, April 1934, quoted in M. J. Fortie to Permanent Mandates Commission, League of Nations, 23 July 1935, TNA/21471.

74. Chief Secretary to Provincial Commissioner, Western Province, 7 Feb. 1933, TNA/20546/Vol.II; see also Circular no.39 of 1926, TNA/AB1180.

75. Sec. Min. 13 Aug. 1931, TNA/19925.

76. Hartnoll (District Officer?) to Webster (Provincial Commissioner?), 2 Feb. 1936, TNA/61/50/5.

77. M. J. Fortie to Permanent Mandates Commission, League of Nations, 23 July 1935, TNA/21471.

78. Memo at f.74, TNA/321471/Vol.I.

79. Tanganyika's system was actually in contravention of the International Labour Organisation convention on forced labour, and while government had undertaken to phase it out, tax labour remained in place till the early 1950s. P. Cunliffe-Lister to Gov. MacMichael, 21 Aug. 1934, TNA/22426/Vol.I; Notes of meeting in Sir C. Bottomley's room, 27 Nov. 1936, PRO/CO/822/69/7.

80. Provincial Commissioner Brett to Chief Secretary, 24 Oct. 1933, TNA/20546/Vol.I.

81. Provincial Commissioner Grierson to Chief Secretary, 7 Sept. 1934, TNA/20546/Vol.I.

82. Liebenow, Colonial Rule and Political Development in Tanzania, 158.

83. The principal exception was tsetse reclamation work.

84. He gave an example of a road from Tabora to the Lupa Goldfields on which ‘hundreds of natives’ who had failed to pay tax had been conscripted to work. Petition dated 30 July 1935, TNA/21471/Vol.I.

85. Provincial Commissioner Collingwood to Chief Secretary, 19 Jan. 1934; and Min. by Intd., P.E.M.(?), 23 Jan. 1934, TNA/20546/Vol.I; 1936 Bagamoyo DAR, 1.

86. 1932 and 1933 Tanga DARs.

87. As opposed to work devised only to occupy defaulters.

88. Min. to Chief Secretary, 7 Feb. 1934, TNA/20546/Vol.I.

89. M. J. Fortie to Permanent Mandates Commission, 2 Nov. 1935, TNA/21471/Vol.I.

90. 1934, 1936 DARs; Iliffe, Modern History, 305. For an excellent discussion of Njombe migrant labour, see Giblin, A History of the Excluded, chs. 4 and 5.

91. Iliffe, Modern History, 305; 1940, 1943, 1944 Kigoma DARs.

92. Iliffe, Modern History, 306.

93. 1934 Bagamoyo DAR.

94. 1933 Tanga DAR, 9; for Dar es Salaam, see Provincial Commissioner Brett to Chief Secretary, 6 Nov. 1933, TNA/20546/Vol.I.

95. ‘[Y]oung unmarried natives’, he observed, ‘in normal tribal areas have no land or stock or other property’; 13 Aug. 1931, TNA/19925.

96. For a discussion of Rufiji, see Lockwood, Fertility, 69–74.

97. 1930 DAR, 8; see also, 1931 DAR; Commisioner of Police to Chief Secretary, 1 July 1931, TNA/19925.

98. 1931 DAR, 19.

99. Commissioner of Police to Chief Secretary, 1 July 1931, TNA/19925.

100. 1941 Kigoma DAR, 2; 1932 Uha DAR.

101. Although there was an element of quid pro quo; Njombe elders were in return said to ‘assist the young men with cattle for dowry purposes’; 1934 Njombe DAR. More generally, official views such as those cited in this paragraph likely rested upon a distorted impression of African society that omitted all the complexity of moral obligation within families.

102. 1932 Kigoma DAR, 2.

103. 1932 Njombe DAR, 10.

104. 1931/1934 Bagamoyo DARs, 3, 6.

105. Provincial Commissioner Brett to Chief Secretary, 6 Nov. 1933, TNA/20546/Vol.I.

106. 1933 Dsm DAR, 2.

107. Hobley, Kenya from Chartered Company to Crown Colony; quoted in Berman, Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya, 53.

108. Undated extract from speech to the Legislative Council regarding revised tax legislation, 1934, TNA/22426/Vol.I.

109. See e.g., 1934 Kigoma DAR, 7/8. It was possible to achieve in excess of 100 per cent collection due to immigration of additional taxpayers from neighbouring districts where rates were higher, or even from neighbouring colonies.

110. ‘The true defaulter’, observed Njombe's District Officer in 1935, ‘is the young able-bodied man who spends far more time in evading the collector than would, if devoted to honest employment, earn his tax’; 1935 Njombe DAR, 4. For examples from Bagamoyo and Lushoto, see Grierson to Chief Secretay, 27 March 1924 and AO i/c Usambara District to Chief Secretary, 13 Oct. 1924, TNA/AB1180.

111. Harris, ‘Tax’, para.3. Movement was often seasonal. Utete's District Officer in 1927 ascribed a diminishing fiscal intake to the ‘leaving of the district by a large number of taxpayers, mostly unmarried, during the period of tax collection’; McMillen to Provincial Commissioner, Eastern Province, 25 June 1927, TNA/AB1182.

112. W. M. M. Duncan, Assistant District Officer, Mbulu, 27 May 1936 to Provincial Commissioner, Northern Province, TNA/23821.

113. District Officer Bampfylde to Provincial Commissioner, Eastern Province, 27 March 1936, TNA/61/50/5.

114. 1936 Njombe DAR, 2.

115. 1934 Tanga DAR, 3/4.

116. This was written prior to the introduction of imprisonment as a punishment for evasion. 1933 Tanga DAR, 12/3.

117. 1936 Dar es Salaam DAR, 2.

118. Provincial Commissioner, Eastern Province to Chief Secretary, 18 March 1927; Sec. Min. 24 March 1927, TNA/AB1181.

119. Conference Mins., Dsm, 1929, TNA/54.2. In 1934, the Municipal Secretary noted the extraction of tax could actually impede its role in encouraging African waged work; tax collection at the wharf leading to a withdrawal of labour ‘until a definite assurance has been given that the collectors have been withdrawn.’ ‘To approach … after they have arrived at their homes’, meanwhile, was ‘to find them without the means to pay’; ‘Report on Township affairs’, 5, TNA/61/625.

120. DARs, 1930, 8; 1931, 17; 1932, 6; 1933, 2; see also Baker, ‘Memorandum’, 88/9.

121. Provincial Commissioner, Eastern Province to Chief Secretary, 10 Oct. 1935, TNA/20546.

122. Municipal Secretary, ‘Memorandum on the administration of Dar es Salaam’, 22 Feb. 1937 (MS, ‘Administration’), 7/8, TNA/61/207/Vol.I.

123. Reminiscences of life as a DO 1947–64 by T. Mayhew, 18, RH/Mss.Afr.s.2089.

124. MS, ‘Administration’, 7/8.

125. DO Pike to Provincial Commissioner, Eastern Province, 27 November 1938, TNA/61/207/Vol.1.

126. 1942 DAR, 3; 1942 Provincial Annual Record, Eastern Province, 20.

127. 1945 DAR, 5.

128. Quoted in Berman, Control and Crisis, 53.

129. Likewise, in Buganda, the imposition of tax contributed to a shift in ‘chief–bakopi [peasant] relationships … from personal to bureaucratic’; Tuck, ‘Rupee Disease’.

130. As an alien imposition of central government, tax epitomised the contradiction embedded in the institution of indirect rule between colonial authority and customary legitimacy. For a brief summary and reference to the literature, see Spear, ‘Indirect Rule, the Politics of Neo-traditionalism and the Limits of Invention in Tanzania’, 70, 83.

131. Undated extract from speech to the Legislative Council regarding revised tax legislation, 1934, TNA/22426/Vol.I.