COMPARATIVE LAND TENURE OF TEN TANGANYIKA TRIBES
| Date | 01 April 1954 |
| Published date | 01 April 1954 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1954.tb00050.x |
80 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ADMINISTRATION
Conclusion.
Ustaz Saad el Din Fawzi has described this project as
"a
gigantic operation
of slum clearance and social resettlement". It concluded the demolition of
5,855 houses and shops in the Old
Deims
between June 1949 and January 1953,
the construction of 3,721 houses in the New Deims up to November, and the
removal of a population of approximately 30,000 people, at an initial cost of
£E.9,482 and a total cost of £E.27,794. It met with bitter opposition from
vested interests in the early stages
but
enjoyed the full co-operation of all the
persons concerned as soon as its benefits were realised. As a result, it would not
be unreasonable to claim that the working population of Khartoum are now
contentedly accommodated in houses of a higher standard than in most cities of
the Middle East, Asia and Africa. A remarkable feature of the project is
that
the actual construction of the houses has been carried out by the people them-
selves with scarcely any financial help from the government in the form of
housing loans and subsidies.
The
successful conclusion of the project owes
much to the zeal and energy of the Deims Re-Settlement Officer (Ali Eff. Nadirn,
:.\1.B.E.) and his Sudanese staff. They were responsible for the detailed
execution of the scheme, under the supervision of the District Commissioner,
Khartoum, who was first the writer of this article and then Mr. G. E. C. Pease.
COMPARATIVE LAND TENURE OF
TEN
TANGANYIKA TRIBES
DBy E. B. Dobson.
DRING
the last few years I have had the opportunity of studying the detailed
recordings of the customary land rules of ten tribes of Tanganyika which were
compiled by
Mr.
H. Cory, Government Sociologist.
The
study of these rules
has given rise to the idea that acomparison between them might be useful. I do
not say that generalization is necessarily possible,
but
I do say that the factual
evidence of the rules of these ten tribes show certain obvious similarities and
differences which allow of a classification of them accordingly.
The
trihes which
I have used for comparison purposes are: the Arusha, Sambaa, Gogo, Arimi,
Nyamwezi, Sukuma, Kerewe, Haya, Hangaza, and Kuria. I have to thank
Mr. Cory very much for his permission to use his recordings in this way, and
also for the great help he has given me in this work.
The
Appendix shows the
table which I made, from which I have drawn my conclusions.
In making my classification I have taken into account what I consider to be the
three main factors governing the customary land tenure rules and their evolution.
These factors are:
A.
The
political system of the tribe;
B.
The
scarcity or abundance of land suitable for cultivation;
C.
The
type of economic crops grown.
In
every case these three factors have reacted on each other in various ways and
the development of the land tenure rules has taken a slightly different path and
has been rapid or slow according to the predominant importance of one factor
over another.
The
original land tenure rules still persist everywhere to a greater
or lesser extent alongside the new conceptions which have been developed. In
this paper Iendeavour to show what the effect has been on each of the tribes
under consideration by first giving a summary of the more important rules prevalent
at the present time in each group and then by showing the influence the
thr~e
factors have had on the original rules to bring them to their present stage. This,
III
tum,
gives an opportunity for prognostication as to the future development of [and
tenure conceptions, still from the point of view of the same three governing agencies.
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