Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania

6. Landscape Visions

Landscape Visions A visitor to the outskirts of Mngeta village in the year 1999 would have found there an unlikely cluster of grey industrial buildings, most of them in disrepair and inhabited by fruit bats. This was the former headquarters of KOTACO, a large-scale mechanized rice project established by North Koreans in 1988 and then abruptly abandoned in 1994. The huge rice fields that had been cleared and drained by the North Koreans were barely visible in the distance, most of them having already reverted back to wooded grassland. Beyond the gates of the main administrative compound stood rows of disabled Chinese tractors, and several of the windows of the management offices were broken or missing. Inside the lobby of the main building was an image that provided a surprising contrast with the surrounding environment. Painted on the wall in tranquil greens and blues was a large mural—a depiction of the rural development vision that the North Koreans had hoped to implement here at Mngeta. The mural portrayed a tamed and ordered landscape: in this image the swift-moving Mngeta river had been dammed and put to use for hydroelectric power; the woodlands and grasslands of the valley were cleared; and rectangular rice fields were laid out in parallel rows alongside drainage canals. The Chinese tractors were busy in the fields, while the grey administration buildings overlooked the scene from high on a hillside. Running through the center of the mural—providing the backbone for the entire enterprise—were the tracks of the TAZARA railway. A passenger train was shown gliding over a bridge on its way to the west. c h a p t e r 6 This image of rural order and industry represented yet another kind of railway vision for TAZARA—this time a vision of landscape change that would be shaped by the intervention of large-scale, state-sponsored agricultural projects. For while the ujamaa village development schemes alongside the railway were intended to mobilize rural resources and to distribute development benefits, large-scale irrigation projects were also deemed necessary by the state in the period after TAZARA’s construction “for the achievement of longer term objectives.”1 Like the planned villages that preceded it, however, this large-scale irrigation project ended up having a very different effect on the landscape than the one that its planners had Landscape Visions   125 Figure 6.1. Section of a mural depicting landscape vision of North Korean irrigated rice development project (KOTACO) at Mngeta, 1999. Photograph by Steven Davis. 126   Ordinary Train envisioned. The North Koreans originally contemplated a much larger project of 15,000 hectares, but settled for 5,000 and ended up clearing only half that area along with developing a road and culvert system. During the first growing season 400 hectares were cultivated; that amount reached 860 hectares the following year. The Korean rice fields were plagued by the same birds and wild animals that raided the shambas of local farmers—flocks of small quelea birds could devastate as many as 50 hectares at a time, with the help of hippos, wild pigs, antelope, and buffalo. In the end, according to farm manager Moses Kisugite, the project was a disappointing failure, not only because of the problems the Koreans encountered in the rice farms but also because of their sudden departure. “When the Koreans learned that the country was turning to multi-partyism,” he explained, “they ran away. They abandoned us, so the project never reached its goals.”2 In satellite images taken in 1996, the large rectangles of the KOTACO rice fields are still clearly visible in the midst of irregularly shaped smaller rice farms and the tangled pathways of pastoralist grazing lands. Yet despite their size and their imposing geometry, these fields were ultimately far less significant in the transformation of the landscape of the TAZARA corridor than the activities of small-scale cultivators. For by the late 1990s the rural landscape alongside the railway had been altered most not by the large-scale mechanized interventions of state-sponsored enterprises , but through the cultivation by small farmers of thousands of rice, maize, and banana fields. Farmers had transformed the landscape surrounding each station along the railway line—not only at big towns like Ifakara, but alongside each smaller station and halt stop served by the Ordinary Train. A comparison of satellite images from 1975 through the 1990s shows that the...