A Squandered Heritage

(Published in the Guardian Newspaper 2006)


Tanzania’s new president told a charming tale when he was announcing his new cabinet. A man was seen to be beating his father’s grave every evening. When confronted and asked why, he replied that he was punishing his old man‘s spirit for destroying the families heritage when he was alive.

Every time I drive into Arusha on the Babati road, a route used by most of the countries tourists, I am overcome with anger and become very animated. Usually those accompanying me have then to suffer my ranting for the next half hour.

By the end of every dry season the Merarani/Kisongo area is grazed clean of any grass cover and turned into a dust bowl. The deep fertile soil is being lost at a staggering rate through totally irresponsible agricultural practice. If one is lucky enough to fly into Arusha from the west you will be treated to a view of spectacular soil erosion. Huge washouts cut through the rolling countryside.

As the rains start the dry dusty soil that has been pounded to powder by thousands of hooves is washed away, if it was not blown away by the dry season winds. There is hardly any ground cover left and nothing to hold the soil in place. No wonder the hydro electric dams are silting up.

I was told that pastoralists were encouraged to settle in the area by the government in the nineteen sixties. The noble idea was that civil services could then be provided by the government. Schools, clinics and community projects are not easy to move seasonally.

Much of the area has deep rich fertile volcanic soil. However it has weak structure rendering it particularly susceptible to erosion. This coupled with low rainfall makes the land unsuitable for intensive farming and small scale intensive subsistence farming particularily.The strong pastorralist tradition combined with encouraged crop farming serve to denude this landscape.

The area is well suited to extensive crop farming or ranching, and where well managed has an abundance of the very best grazing. However it is now overpopulated by communities that still hold to the tradition of community ownership of grazing. Now even the most conservation minded farmers find it impossible to keep livestock off their fields. I once tried to help a friend keep livestock from invading his fields at night and had pangas and spears thrown at me for my trouble.

The solution is easy. Better agricultural practices and less livestock. It is a bitter pill to swallow for the communities living off these God given resources of soil and grazing. However their offspring will certainly be attacking their legacy if they do not change. If one is from a poor family, as I am, that had no shamba one tends to regard land as sacred, and seeing it misused is agony. These natural resources are surly a divine gift that we have been given freely to care for. Our very existence is dependant on responsible custodianship of this gift. Those that have a share of it should not ask for more but ask only how to use the gift responsibly.

David Read writes about a compulsory government cattle purchasing scheme in his book “Beating About The Bush”. I was once told of an area near Dodoma where the government banned livestock in order to restore an overgrazed area. Most of the urban settlements in Tanzania are bordered by an overgrazed ring as the new urban population cling on to a pastoralist past.

Tanzania has a tradition of confiscating land that is being underutilized. Perhaps it would be wiser to consider confiscating land that is being abused and over utilized too.