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The Politics of Publishing Oral Sources from the Mara Region, Tanzania1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Jan Bender Shetler*
Affiliation:
Goshen College, [email protected]

Extract

The intense scholarly debate concerning the shift from orality to literacy has not often directly concerned African historians in spite of the fact that many work closely with oral sources. In the process of publishing a series of locally-written histories, I discovered that transforming oral tradition into written form is ultimately political. It raised a number of important ethical dilemmas for me as a scholar and brought to my attention the power relations inherent in these transactions. Oral knowledge and its transformation is not neutral or entirely benevolent. I found out that the change from an oral to a written knowledge base takes power out of the hands of community elders and puts it into the public domain, where literate men have the advantage and where community security may be vulnerable. As scholars we need to face our own involvement in these political processes, even if we cannot ultimately control them.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2002

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Footnotes

1

This paper was first presented at the African Studies Association Meetings in Nashville, 2000. Much of the information is based on Chapter 2, “Oral Tradition: The Gendered Spaces of Historical Knowledge and the Secrets of the Past,” from my Ph.D. Dissertation, “The Landscapes of Memory: A History of Social Identity in the Western Serengeti, Tanzania” (University of Florida, 1998). This research was supported by grants from the Fulbright IIE program and the Social Science Research Council, under the auspices of the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology.

References

2 See Shetler, Jan Bender, “‘A Gift for Generations to Come’: A Kiroba Popular History from Tanzania and Identity as Social Capital in the 1980s,” IJAHS 28(1995), 69112.Google Scholar

3 I use the term “tribe” here in quotation marks to convey the idea that these are constructed identities of the colonial period.

4 Interview with Mahewa Timanyi and Nyambureti Morumbe, Robanda, 27 May 1995, with Wilson Machota.

5 The literature on the generation-sets in this region does not mention the secret nature of this walk, see for example, Ruel, Malcolm, “Kuria Generation Classes,” Africa 32(1962), 1436CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bischofberger, Otto, The Generation Classes of the Zanaki (Tanzania) (Fribourg, 1972).Google Scholar

6 Kershaw, Greet, Man Man From Below (Athens, 1997), 16.Google Scholar

7 Guyer, Jane I. and Belinga, Samuel M. Eno, “Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and Composition in Equatorial Africa,” JAH 36(1995), 91120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Ibid

9 This is a classic anthropological insight; for example, Bohannan, Laura, “A Genealogical Charter,” Africa 22(1952), 301–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the Tiv genealogies as a validation of present relationships, the genealogies must change over time and in different situations to be consistent with present social relationships. She argues that writing down these genealogies would make them rigid and thus incompatible with their usefulness as social charter.

10 This was the case in the 1993 coronation of the Kabaka Ronald Mutebi II in Buganda, where some of those officiating referred to the missionary/anthropologist John Roscoe's account of the ceremony. Roscoe, John, The Baganda: An Account of their Native Customs and Beliefs (2d. ed.: London, 1965).Google Scholar

11 Niane, D. T., Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, trans. Pickett, G. D. (London, 1965), viii.Google Scholar

12 This confusion is evident in the population statistics of the various chiefdoms. In 1909 the German officer in Shirati reported a total of twenty-six Sultans (Chiefs) north and twenty-eight Sultans south of the Mara River with a total estimated population of 110,000. (Schultz, Schirati, to Governor, Dar es Salaam, 25 December 1909, Schirati, 1909-1910, G/45/2, TNA). A German classification of “tribes” listed more than thirty, with the major classifications, including the Nata and Ikoma as Maasai peoples and the Sizaki, Ngoreme, Ikizu and Ishenyi as “Shashi” peoples. (Musoma District, “Notes from the Musoma District Books on Local Tribe and Chiefdoms in German,” [ca. 1912?], CORY #348, EAF, UDSM). The first British census in 1928 listed a population total of 199,520 with nine major “tribes” (Kuria, Girango, Rangi, Jita, Sizaki, Zanaki, Ngoreme, Simbiti, and Ikoma) (Native Affairs Census 1926-1929, Chiefdom Census 1926, 246/P.C./3/21, TNA). A 1937 report on governance identified “upwards of forty petty chiefs” and thus corresponding “tribes” (Baker, E. C., “System of Government, Extracts from a Report by R. S. W. Malcolm,” 1937, MDBGoogle Scholar).

13 District Commissioner, Musoma, “Memorandum on the Revival and Application of the Clan Regime in the Musoma District,” 4 July 1945, CORY #347, EAF, UDSM. See also Hans Cory, “Report on the pre-European Tribal Organization in Musoma (South Mara District and Proposals for Adaptation of the Clan System to Modern Circumstances,” 1945, CORY #173, EAF, UDSM.

14 This point has been made my many; see Schmidt, Elizabeth, Peasants Traders and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939 (Portsmouth, NH, 1992), 98108Google Scholar, and LeroyVail, , “Introduction” in The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, 1991), 120.Google Scholar

15 However, agreement on what was customary was far from settled. In 1928 the Musoma District Officer reported that the Ikoma, Ishenyi, and Nata “women have the men completely under their thumbs” and “divorce is more frequent than with most native tribes.” Acting D.O. Musoma to P.C. Mwanza, 10 October 1928, Monthly Report for September 1928, 10 March 1928, Monthly Report for February 1928, and 13 September 1927, Monthly Report for August 1927, 1926-29 Provincial Administration Monthly Reports, Musoma District, 215/P.C./1/7, TNA. Litigation in the Musoma District on the issues surrounding marriage and bridewealth counted for the biggest percentage of court cases. As Martin Chanock noted in his study of the creation of customary law in colonial Africa, traditional understanding of justice which had been open to situational interpretation now became fixed and inflexible, with a clear bias toward the interests of a male elite and supported by the colonial regime. See Chanock, , “Making Customary Law; Men, Women, and Courts in Colonial Northern Rhodesia” in African Women and the Law; Historical Perspectives, ed. Hay, Margaret Jean and Wright, Marcia (Boston, 1982), 5367.Google Scholar

16 For the classic elaboration of the British position on Indirect Rule see Lugard, John Frederick, The Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa (London, 1965).Google Scholar

17 See Shetler, , “Landscapes,” 8192.Google Scholar This has been observed by many in Africa, including early anthropologist Fallers, Lloyd A., Bantu Bureaucracy: A Century of Political Evolution among the Basoga of Uganda (Chicago, 1965), 90Google Scholar, who states that, “lineage males must often draw upon the genealogical knowledge of wives and mothers … women often remember genealogical complexities better than men.”

18 Feierman, Steven, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison, 1991)Google Scholar, chapter 8, and Iliffe, John, Africa: A Modern History (Cambridge, 1979), chapters 10, 13, and 15.Google Scholar

19 See for example, Chacha, Gabriel N., Historia ya Abakuria na Sheria Zao (Dar es Salaam, 1963)Google Scholar; Kamera, W. D, Hadithi za Wairaqw was Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, 1978)Google Scholar; Ntiro, S. J., Desturi za Wachagga (Dar es Salaam, 1953)Google Scholar; and Dodoma Literacy Committee, Ugogo na Wilaya Zake (Dar es Salaam, 1965).Google Scholar Examples of schoolbooks with this agenda, Elimu, Taasaisi ya, Historia, Shule ya Msingi: Jamii za Watanzania tangu 1880 (Dar es Salaam, 1984)Google Scholar and for secondary schools, Institute of Education, Development of African Societies up to the Nineteenth Century (Dar es Salaam, 1981).Google Scholar

20 Interview with Mohere Mogoye, Bugerera, 25 March 1995 (Nata),who mentioned this in connection with the story of how Megasa was made the first Nata chief. It is a standard motif in all of the chief-making stories throughout the region.