Politics in Land and Water Management: Study in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (review)

In arid and semiarid areas of Tanzania, key resources of water and fertile land are patchy, limiting, and continually contested—between different farming and pastoralist groups in the nineteenth century (Spear and Waller 1993; Waller 1985), between colonial settler and local user in the twentieth century (Spear 1997), and among smallholder, state socialist, and commercial enterprises over the last few decades (Igoe and Brockington 1999; Ndagala 1990; Shivji 1998). Policies, rulings, and procedures have undergone major changes in direction in that time. Land tenure in Tanzania, always a palimpsest, has become a "legal quagmire" (Shivji 1994; United Republic of Tanzania 1994).

Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world, and most of its people depend on farming for their livelihoods. It has been acknowledged internationally for its good governance, yet there is a world of difference between the rhetoric of its plans, procedures, and governance systems, and the everyday reality with which its farmers contend. Lerise's book uses the case of Chekereni to dissect issues of land and water tenure, access, and control in present-day Tanzania. Chekereni is a semiarid area with limited irrigation potential. Perennially seen as "underutilised by pastoralists" (p. 28), it was settled in colonial times by immigrants employed on sisal plantations, and by environmental refugees. Following independence, experienced Chagga¹ farmers from neighboring, higher-potential areas of the Kilimanjaro region saw in Chekereni and ujamaa an opportunity for access to new land and state-funded infrastructure. Ujamaa collectivization in Chekereni was a mixed experience, benefiting immigrants able to capture political control, and dispossessing established farmers, who had to surrender their land and labor or leave. Collectivization was followed by the donor-driven Lower Moshi Irrigation Project. Designed beyond the capacity of available water resources, the project dispossessed some, and provided opportunities for corrupt accumulation by others. Political pressures to demonstrate success, "expert" ignorance of the physical and social hydrology of the area, lack of joined-up planning, and, above all, chronic failure to consult or respect local knowledge and local needs contributed to its dismal performance.

Through careful ethnographic research, building on interviews with key informants, life histories, group discussions, and archival work, Lerise details how access to resources has been transformed in this area as the population grew and political systems changed. He documents the evolution from customary systems of land allocation, which held a deep-rooted legitimacy, through political structures imposed by ujamaa socialism, to the manipulation of those ideological systems by local elites and the increasing subordination of smallholder livelihoods to political ends. He sets out the narratives as presented by different players in the history of Chekereni with minimal comment, letting each speak for himself or herself—inconsistencies highlighting the vested interests they serve. An overall picture emerges of a system in which formal procedures have lost all meaning and most of their former authority, and where the smallholders' needs are overridden by national, donor, and local political elite interests.

Lerise documents contests over resource access and control, ranging from skillfully negotiated political compromise, through mutually unsatisfactory stalemates, to corrupt manipulation, intimidation, and outright violence. Lack of clarity over the relative weights of customary, ujamaa, and recently legislated rights has multiplied disputes. Systems of conflict resolution have disintegrated into multiple alternative channels of authority, where any ruling or appeal stagnates. Smallholders face decisions of dubious legality, corrupt maneuvering, lack of any clear forum to negotiate, and the inability of official authority to enforce. Lerise's carefully observed account details the grinding powerlessness of the Tanzanian rural poor, but also reveals the common sense, courage, and political skill of those who find ways through this Kafkaesque maze to small victories and mutually workable compromises.

The book hardly tries to contextualize Chekerani. There is no review of the state of knowledge on resource rights and access in Tanzania or more widely in East Africa. There is barely mention of Shivji, whose radical Presidential Commission (though overruled...