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Sungusungu: State-Sponsored Village Vigilante Groups Among the Kuria of Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Michael L. Fleisher
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Abstract

In the mid-1990s the village vigilantism known as sungusungu emerged, for the first time, in Tarime District, in northern Tanzania, in response to high levels of cattle theft and related violence—not in the form of independently organised but co-operating village vigilante groups, as it had first manifested itself a decade and a half earlier, in west central Tanzania, among the Sukuma and Nyamwezi peoples, but under state sponsorship. This article describes the organisation and operation of this form of state-sponsored vigilantism as it unfolded in a village of the agro-pastoral Kuria people, and argues that, while it offers a number of significant benefits both to the state and to local people, it nonetheless suffers from some of the same weaknesses that plague the official law enforcement system.

Résumé

Au milieu des années 90, le mouvement villageois d’autodéfense appelé sungusungu est apparu pour la première fois dans le District de Tarime, dans le nord de la Tanzanie, en réponse aux nombreux vols de bétail et à la violence qu’ils ont engendrée, non pas sous la forme de groupes indépendants organisés mais agissant en commun, tels qu’ils se sont manifestés pour la première fois quinze ans plus tôt dans la partie centrale occidentale de la Tanzanie au sein des populations Sukuma et Nyamwezi, mais avec le soutien de l’Etat. Cet article décrit l’organisation et le fonctionnement de cette forme d’autodéfense soutenue par l’Etat à travers son développement dans un village de la population agro-pastorale Kuria, et suggère que, bien qu’offrant des avantages certains tant pour l’Etat que pour la population locale, elle souffre néanmoins des mêmes faiblesses dont est en proie le système officiel de maintien de l’ordre.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , May 2000 , pp. 209 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2000

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