2
Dar es Salaam in Transition
Farming is the backbone of our country. Even the government considers it this way. In any case, you always end up going back to farming.
Crane operator at the Tanzania Harbor Authority, whose wife and children farm eighty kilometers north of Dar es Salaam
Since 1779 Omani sultans had controlled settlements along the Tanzanian coast and had even transferred Oman's capital from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1840 to accommodate the expansion of their commercial links with East Africa. Thus Dar es Salaam was founded by Zanzibar Sultan Seyyid Majid in the 1860s at a time of increased contacts between the mainland and Zanzibar, with Swahili, Arab, and Indian traders transporting copal (resin used in varnish) and produce to Zanzibar markets. Caravans brought slaves and ivory through the area from the interior, although primarily to the trading center at Bagamoyo, sixty-four kilometers north of Dar es Salaam.
As Dar es Salaam (Arabic for "haven of peace") grew, it engulfed local Shomvi and Zaramo settlements along the coast that subsequently were to become centers of the city's suburbs. In 1957, 36 percent of the city's population was Zaramo, with the Rufiji and Luguru representing the secondand third-largest ethnic groups, respectively (African Census Report 1963, 47). However, migration and intermarriage among a large number of ethnic groups diffused the influence of the Zaramo over the next decade. By 1967 the Zaramo made up roughly 27 percent of the city's population (Sporrek 1985, 32). Although their numbers have dwindled over the years, the Zaramo remain the largest ethnic group in Dar es Salaam, making their influence felt especially in the city's cultural and economic life. Even though official statistics are no longer gathered on ethnic background in Tanzania, it is obvious to observers that one of the main characteristics of Dar es Salaam is its heterogeneity: it brings together large numbers of Tanzania's 120 ethnic groups. Even in my small survey of 287 residents in Buguruni and Manzese, I came across people from 45 different ethnic groups. People of various ethnic origins were concentrated in different parts of the city: the Zaramo in Ilala and Buguruni; the Nyamwezi in
Magomeni and Kinondoni; the Ngoni in Kiwalani; the Luguru in Manzese; andthe Ngindo, Matumbi, and Ndengereko in Temeke.
With the onset of German rule in 1891, Dar es Salaam was the natural choice as the administrative, commercial, and communications center of German East Africa. It remained the administrative center of the British-controlled territory from 1991 to 1961, when it became the capital of independent Tanganyika (Sutton 1970, 7). It still serves as the effective capital of the country, although efforts have been under way since 1973 to shift the capital to Dodoma.
Today, Dar es Salaam has about 1.4 million people, making it the largest city in Tanzania, the population of which reached 23 million with the 1988 census (Bureau of Statistics 1989). The city covers an area of 1,100 square kilometers and is the most densely populated area in Tanzania (Kulaba 1989, 206). It has the country's largest harbor and is also the industrial, commercial, and communications center of Tanzania.
At the center of the city are the administration buildings, the main commercial and shopping areas, and the Asian residential area, which is divided between the main Asian communities: Hindus and Muslims (mostly Ismai'li but also Ithnasheri and Bohora). Asians in Dar es Salaam also belong to other religious communities, including Jains and Sikhs (sects that are offshoots of Hinduism), Parsees (Zoroastrians), and Catholics. The industrial centers are located along a railroad that extends from the harbor through the two main industrial areas. Warehouses and light mechanical and construction industries are located along Pugu Road; the newer textile, beer-brewing, and dairy plants are situated along Morogoro Road in Ubungo. Pugu Road also runs through Buguruni and Morogoro Road through Manzese, the two areas that were the focus of my survey. Lime quarries and brickworks are found on the northern outskirts of the city, especially near the Wazo Hill cement factory (Sutton 1970, 12).
Of the living quarters, only Kariakoo, Ilala, Magomeni, Kijitonyama, Mwananyamala, and parts of Keko, Chang'ombe, and Temeke can be considered planned. Kariakoo has the most sizable concentration of workers and the largest wholesale market. It also has more stores and restaurants than does any other part of the city (Sutton 1970, 13–14). Most of the city–60 percent, according to Stren–sprang up in unplanned fashion, often out of already existing villages surrounded by farming areas (1982, 78).
According to 1991 labor-force survey figures, wage earners accounted for 36 percent of the urban working population. In a 1986–1987 survey of 600 Dar es Salaam residents, Kulaba discovered that 60 percent of the adult
population was self-employed or working with family in a small business (1989, 212). These figures generally corroborate the findings of other, concurrent surveys (Tibaijuka 1988), including those of my 1987–1988 research, in which I found that 68 percent of Manzese and Buguruni residents in Dar es Salaam were self-employed, 59 percent farmed, and only 5 percent had no income-generating enterprise, employment, or farm (Table 1). Of the last group, most were young wives or students not seeking employment or self-employment. In other words, I found few truly unemployed people. Kulaba likewise found no unemployed respondents in his survey. This is not to say that they did not exist: many young people wandered the streets of the city center, some of whom were engaged in petty crime. However, these survey results suggest that many of the studies may have exaggerated the problem of unemployment by automatically considering street vendors and others engaged in similar occupations as unemployed (Ishumi 1984).
Most city dwellers (83 percent) were tenants, according to Kulaba's survey (1989, 213). Even in the mid-1950s, Leslie found that 81 percent of the 5,000 Dar es Salaam residents he surveyed were tenants (1963, 261). According to my 1988 survey, rents in typical neighborhoods like Manzese and Buguruni averaged around TSh 260 per household.[1]
All dollar amounts given in this chapter correspond to the exchange rate around the beginning of 1988—when I conducted my survey—of $1 = TSh 100.
About four households lived in every house, generally renting from one to two rooms each. According to the 1988 census, the average household in Dar es Salaam was composed of 4.3 people; in Buguruni, 3.6 people; and in Manzese, 4.2 people (Bureau of Statistics 1989).In the planned as well as the unplanned neighborhoods, houses are built in what is called the Swahili style. Each house has a porch in the front that is used by all members of the household for sitting and chatting with visitors or neighbors, for preparing food and weaving mats on occasion, and (for men, usually) for playing cards or bao , a game on a large board with four rows of holes. Some rent their porch to a tailor or launderer. Others sell pastries, flour, or charcoal (retail) from their porch or turn it into a food stall for selling vegetables and fruit. A central hallway separates the two or three rooms on each side. The hallway leads from the front entrance to the back courtyard, which is used for cooking and washing clothes. These courtyards are frequently closed off with a fence of thatched palm fronds called makuti . In the back courtyard is a pit toilet that is also used as a washroom.
Each house is built on a foundation of a mixture of stones and cement. The walls are made of mangrove poles, which are tied together and filled with mud, often covered with a makuti roof or a mabati tin roof. The
Table 1 Percentages of Occupations among Dar es Salaam Residents, 1988 | |||||
Women | Men | Total | |||
Employed | |||||
with no other source of income | 4 | 11 | 7 | ||
and self-employed | 1 | 9 | 5 | ||
and farming | 2 | 9 | 5 | ||
and self-employed and farming | 2 | 5 | 4 | ||
Total employed | 9 | 34 | 21 | ||
Self-employed | |||||
with no other source of income | 13 | 35 | 24 | ||
and employed | 1 | 9 | 5 | ||
and farming | 53 | 15 | 34 | ||
and employed and farming | 2 | 5 | 4 | ||
and retired | 0 | 2 | 1 | ||
and retired and farming | 0 | 3 | 1 | ||
Total self-employed | 69 | 69 | 69 | ||
Farming | |||||
with no other source of income | 15 | 8 | 12 | ||
and employed | 2 | 9 | 5 | ||
and self-employed | 53 | 15 | 34 | ||
and employed and self-employed | 2 | 5 | 4 | ||
and retired | 0 | 2 | 1 | ||
Total farming | 72 | 39 | 56 | ||
Retired | |||||
without any source of income | 0 | 1 | 1 | ||
and self-employed | 0 | 2 | 1 | ||
and farming | 0 | 2 | 1 | ||
and self-employed and farming | 0 | 3 | 1 | ||
Total retired | 0 | 8 | 4 | ||
No occupation | 10 | 0 | 5 | ||
N = 272 | |||||
SOURCE : Survey data 1 collected in Manzese and Buguruni in 1987–1988. For the methodology used, see Appendix A. | |||||
borders of doors and windows are often strengthened with small stones and cement. By 1995 most houses in Dar es Salaam had nonearthen floor and iron roofs. Half of the houses had electricity, but kerosene was the main source of lighting fuel for 49 percent of city residents (Ferreira and Goodhart 1995, 26).
History of the City's Informal Economy
From the earliest times, the local Zaramo inhabitants of the coast traded food staples, fruit, vegetables, fish, and poultry with the growing urban center of Dar es Salaam. They also traded firewood, charcoal, and gum copal, which was sold to Indian traders and exported to Europe for varnishing ships (Beidelman 1967, 16-17). The gum copal trade decreased as wooden ships fell into disuse.
Informal income-generating activities grew as the city expanded, providing residents with cheap services and goods. Arab cultural influences were evident in coffee vending, one of the earliest small enterprises in Dar es Salaam. Much like today, coffee vendors would walk the streets, clicking together their small coffee cups to let people know they were passing by. They sold a strong coffee from a mdila (large brass pot) that was carried around on a frame with a base filled with hot charcoal pieces to keep the container warm. Some added ginger to the coffee to spice it up. Small coffee- and teahouses called mikahawa and hoteli were also popular gathering places for workers in the postwar period. At these places, a variety of refreshments and snacks were sold, including tea, often spiced with cardamom or cloves, fruit juices, and sambosa, chapati, vitumbua, maandazi and other such fried pastries popular to this day (Anthony 1983).
By the mid-1950s Leslie (1963) found people involved in diverse income-generating activities in addition to the ones already mentioned. These included large traders, shop owners, vehicle owners, and small vendors of fruit, mshikaki (roast meat), fish, coconuts, charcoal, onions, tembo (palm wine), water, milk, old bottles, tin cans for roofing, old clothes, and peanuts. Like today, some walked the streets with their wares; others sold from magenge (stalls) outside their home or just off their front porch. People reported profits of up to 50 percent from such activities. lliffe describes thousands of young boys and young men who collected scrap, sold oranges, and sought odd jobs like loading and unloading trucks at the harbors (1979, 388–89). Rickshaws were in use until the 1950s, when they gradually gave way to buses. Prostitution increased with the expansion of the docks and industry in the 1930s. However, as more women found their
way into the city, their income-generating activities expanded to endeavors like cooking and selling beans, local beer, pastries, rice, or porridge. Some women would buy wood scraps from sawmills, builders' yards, and furniture makers and resell them as firewood (Anthony 1983, 158; Leslie 1963, 135, 232).
Having such sources of income often put women in a position to build a house. At the end of the 1960s, as many as 18 percent of the houses in Dar es Salaam were owned by women (M.-L. Swantz 1985, 166). Leslie reported that in 1956–1957, when Magomeni, a large section of the city, was opened up for applications for plots to build houses, 19 percent of the applicants were women. In the Kisutu section of the city, as many as 45 percent of the houses were registered in a woman's name; and a sample taken in Kariakoo and Ilala, older parts of the city, showed that 40 percent of women owned houses. Although the majority of these women inherited houses from their deceased husbands, parents, or brothers, as many as one-third had been able to build houses from income they obtained through small enterprises like selling cakes, beans, coconut ice, and fried fish (Leslie 1963, 168–69).
Ethnic groups differed in their inheritance practices. The Zaramo, who comprised the largest ethnic group at the time of Leslie's study, integrated aspects of Islamic law into their inheritance practices, dividing the land and property of the deceased, with 25 percent going to the spouse, 50 percent to the father's side, and 25 percent to the mother's side of the family. The children inherited from the father's side, as did the father's brothers and sisters. If the children were minors, the father's brothers would hold the property until they were adults. There is evidence that even in the late 1960s family courts or extended-family courts were almost solely responsible for adjudicating inheritance cases (M.-L. Swantz 1970, 89–91). It is also noteworthy that in 1957, around the time Leslie was making his observations about home ownership, the male-female ratio in Dar es Salaam was 1.31; in 1978 it had been reduced to 1.15, and by 1988 it was only 1.11 (Bureau of Statistics 1986, 1989).
After independence the Asian and European communities, which had more capital at their disposal, were largely responsible for initially developing the small industries in areas like food processing and in the manufacture of clothing, furniture, soap, and shoes. Similarly, the largest shopkeepers were of Asian or Arab descent, and half of all shopkeepers were Asian (Anthony 1983, 5; Leslie 1963, 135).
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s self-employment continued to provide cheap food and goods for Dar es Salaam's residents. At that time,
unlike the 1980s, the self-employed earned incomes that were lower than those of wage earners, with the exception of a few lucrative activities, such as healing, wholesale charcoal trade, and shopkeeping.[2]
Many artisan and small-scale traders must have been doing quite well, because Leslie found that most houses were owned by them in the 1950s (Leslie 1963, 259). Dar es Salaam medicine men were also fairly comfortable, earning between TSh 120 and 511 a day at a time when the minimum wage was TSh 170 a month (L. Swantz 1972, 149).
A 1971 study of urban incomes found that 45 percent of those who were self-employed earned less than TSh 150 per month at a time when the minimum wage was TSh 170. One-quarter had incomes greater than TSh 350, and 10 percent earned more than TSh 1,000 per month (Bienefeld 1975, 57–59). Up until the 1970s, the rates of urban formal-sector employment appear to have kept pace with the growth of the urban labor force. This may have been why there were fewer street traders in Dar es Salaam than in some other African cities. One study in 1968 found that more than 77 percent of wage earners were migrants, whereas of the self-employed only 62 percent were migrants, indicating that those coming to the city were primarily seeking employment (Sabot 1974, 50). These demographics changed dramatically in the 1980s as self-employment began to offer better prospects than wage employment. As I will show in this chapter, employment declined significantly, in part due to factory closures but also because people left employment to farm and to engage in income-generating projects.The following two sections give a short background to Buguruni and Manzese, the two areas of Dar es Salaam I focused on in the study (see Appendix A).
Buguruni
Prior to colonialism, Buguruni was known for its coconut plantations, which were owned by Asians, Arabs, or Africans. One of the largest estates, the Daya Estate, was in the hands of an Indian planter. The first settler who moved from the city's coastline to Buguruni was called Momba. He parceled out land to others who followed, many of whom married into his family. These new settlers included names like Kirumba, a fellow Zaramo, and two Pogoro ex-slaves, Feruz Ambari and Farhani. Some of the most important figures in Buguruni's recent history derive their stature from being descendants of these early settlers and from owning coconut plantations. Two of them, Binti Madenge and Mwinyi Amani, had Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) Party branches named after them in Buguruni (Leslie 1963, 65; Mwijarubi 1977).
During German colonial rule, Buguruni grew out from a Zaramo village into an unplanned settlement on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. In the late 1960s its population was 10,000. Since then it grew nearly five fold, to a population Of 48,247 in 1988 (Bureau of Statistics 1989). Leslie
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found that 68 percent of Buguruni residents were Zaramo in the mid-1950s (1963, 258); today almost half the residents are Zaramo. As a renowned Zaramo area, Buguruni attracted people from throughout Dar es Salaam in search of its famed Zaramo Mdundiko dance troupes and medicine men.
The Ward of Buguruni belongs to the Ilala District of Dar es Salaam Region. The ward is made up of four branches: Madenge, Mnyamani, Malapa and Kisiwani, which are divided into 208 ten-house cells (Table 2). In the late 1980s about 2,171 CCM members lived in Buguruni (4 percent of the population), according to local party records. Buguruni had three schools: Buguruni Primary, Buguruni Moto, and Buguruni Visiwi, with a total enrollment of around 4,177 pupils (52 percent of whom were girls).[3]
Data provided by Buguruni schools' secretary, April 1988.
The ward remained primarily Muslim in the late 1980s, with eleven mosques, fifteen madarasa (Koran schools) and an Ahmaddiyah brotherhood that is growing in strength. It also had a Lutheran church (500 adult members), started in 1967, and a much smaller Assemblies of God church.[4]
Mzee Maulidi, imam, Malapa branch, interview by author, 16 January, 1988, Buguruni, Dar es Salaam; Gehas Malasusa, pastor, Lutheran Church, interview by author, 22 January 1988, Buguruni, Dar es Salaam.
In addition, there is a YWCA hostel for women, an Anglican-run hostel for young women, and an Anglican Theological College.Buguruni's laborers work along Pugu Road in nearby factories like Metal Box, Mitsubishi, and Sunguratex. Others are drivers at Wazo Hill, or workers at the harbors, or in the army. Buguruni's residents farm in the nearby valleys of Chanika and Msimbazi, although many have farms farther away in the Coast Region—in Kisarawe District, for example—or other, more distant parts of the country. Buguruni's Zaramo residents maintain strong ties with relatives in nearby areas where they go not only to farm but also to participate in puberty and other rites, as well as marriage
and burial ceremonies, to give birth, to make tambiko (ritual offerings to ancestor spirits), and for divination and medical treatment. To this day, patrons in Buguruni derive much of their prestige from their ability to manipulate rural-urban links. They take advantage of the urban areas' dependence on the countryside for produce, bringing into the city charcoal, fruit, wood, and fish from the coastal villages (L. Swantz 1969).
Manzese
Like Buguruni, Manzese grew during German rule from a small village into an unplanned settlement approximately ten kilometers outside the city limits. In fact, it is the largest unplanned settlement in Dar es Salaam and in Tanzania (Kulaba 1989, 245). It began as a settlement of Zaramo, Nyamwezi, and Manyema agriculturalists. Many of the Nyamwezi and Manyema were descendants of porters during the height of the Arab trade. Manzese grew after World War II, as the colonial government forcibly moved people out of areas like Muhimbili and the Technical College for purposes of construction. Even more important to Manzese's growth was the establishment of industries in the nearby Ubungo area in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1967 the population of Manzese was 4,630; by 1978 it had grown to 28,522. The population had nearly doubled ten years later, reaching 59,600, according to the 1988 census. Manzese flourished, in part, because it originally evolved outside the city limits and hence outside the jurisdiction of city licensing regulations, where it was easier to brew beer and carry out other illicit commercial activities like prostitution.
Today most Manzese workers are employed in the nearby Urafiki Textile Factory, Chibuku breweries, Fishnet factory, Coastal Dairy Industries, Portland Cement, Ubungo Water Supply, the University of Dar es Salaam, Wazo Hill, and the Transport Institute (Mashisa 1978; Sporrek 1985, 71).
The Ward of Manzese belongs to the Kinondoni District of Dar es Salaam Region. The ward is made up of nine branches: Mnazi Mmoja, Mferejini, Muembeni, Midizini, Uzuri, Mwungano, Mvuleni, Kilimani, and Sinza, which are divided into 397 ten-house cells. Sinza is strikingly different from the rest of Manzese. Although it grew in a similar pattern of unregulated housing, its residents are somewhat better off and the houses are of visibly better quality. In 1988 Manzese had approximately 6,655 CCM members (Table 3), or 11 percent of the population. It is ironic that even though the CCM had a proportionally stronger presence in Manzese than in Buguruni in the 1980s, by 1995 it was one of the
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first wards to elect an opposition ward leader after Tanzania adopted multipartyism. In a June 1995 by-election Dr. Masumbuko Lamwai, who was the Dar es Salaam Chairman of the National Convention for Construction and Reform (NCCR-Mageuzi) party, won by a landslide, defeating the CCM and Civic United Front (CUF) candidates.[5]
Daily News, 6 June 1995; 7 June 1995.
The ward has two schools (Uzuri and Ukombozi primary schools), with a total enrollment of about 2,535 pupils (53 percent of whom are girls).[6]
Data provided on 25 January 1988 by Karama Mlawa, headmaster, Uzuri Primary School, and Mrs. Minyala, headmistress, Ukombozi Primary School.
Manzese has several nursery schools, including one run by the YWCA in Uzuri and another started by parents in Muembeni. A nutrition center is located near the YWCA nursery. It was started by the City Council and Ministry of Agriculture in 1975 with World Bank funding to educate people about nutrition and providing farming inputs.Although Manzese has a greater mix of ethnic groups than does Buguruni, it does have a concentration of Luguru: according to my survey, Luguru make up about 20 percent of its population. Manzese remains primarily Muslim, with eight mosques, at least four madarasa , and, like Buguruni, a strong Ahmaddiyah brotherhood. One Koranic school alone has 250 children. In addition, Manzese has a Catholic church (800 members), a Lutheran church, and Pentecostal Church Hall.
People from all over Dar es Salaam flock to Manzese's thriving market, especially on Sundays. The market was established in 1967 by the Mzizima District Council. Its 107 sellers are organized into the Nguvu Moja
Cooperative Society.[7]
Jafari Nassoro, cell leader of Manzese market, interview by author, 25 November 1987; Mashisa (1978).
The market, a hub of activity, is surrounded by a major commercial area. Morogoro Road passes through the market, and buses from upcountry stop on their way downtown. In the mid-1980s the Manzese market became so congested that the authorities were finally forced to move some of the sellers to Tandale market in an adjacent ward. Both markets are famous for having been centers of the unofficial wholesale trade in Dar es Salaam.Most Manzese residents, like those in Buguruni, obtain their water from a nearby tap or purchase it from someone who has a private tap. Many also buy water from mkokoteni (pull-cart) vendors. A few, like store keepers, have electricity.
Manzese has a reputation throughout Dar es Salaam, especially among people who do not live there, as a place bustling with activity, especially illicit activities (see the description in Ishumi 1984, 80). Parts of Manzese, like Mwungano, are known throughout the city for prostitution and bars. People who simply pass through along Morogoro Road see the myriad stalls selling jewelry and mitumba (secondhand clothing); the boys selling bread to passengers on buses that have stopped temporarily; the milling machines; the shoe-repair shops; the wood for sale; carpentry sheds; brick-making factories; food stalls; stores selling colorful wrap-around cloths called khanga and kitenge ; and cassette-tape music stores. Outsiders often fear Manzese because it is said that most of the criminals in the city live there. Nonresidents also talk about "Radio Manzese" as the rumor mill of the city. Yet there is little to distinguish Manzese from Buguruni, Temeke, or any other part of Dar es Salaam. To its inhabitants, Manzese is an area of mostly hard-working and respectable citizens. Civil servants and workers return from work at 3 or 4 P.M. to concentrate on their income-generating projects. One finds more activity after hours and on the weekends in Manzese than downtown, for example.
The Changing Urban Household Economy
Decline in Real Wages
The steady decline in wages among employed people is probably the most significant change affecting urban dwellers since the mid-1970s. The drop in real wages reflects the difficult position of the Tanzanian economy as a whole. The government had come to control the bulk of the nation's wages (wage bill) and wage employment after the 1967 Arusha Declaration, because the declaration paved the way for the nationalization of key industries and banks and an increase in the number of parastatals (companies in
which the state owns at least 51 percent of the shares). This placed the wage crisis squarely on the government's shoulders. By 1968, government control of the country's wage employment stood at 53 percent of the total, while the wage bill was up to 57 percent. Eight years later, government control had reached 65 percent of wage employment and 70 percent of the wage bill.
Subsequently, the government took steps to lessen the fast-growing gap between urban and rural incomes and to reduce the difference between the highest- and lowest-paid employees. After 1967, the Standing Committee on Parastatal Organizations (SCOPO) was established to control wages and salaries of state companies, and the Permanent Labour Tribunal was formed to regulate wages in the private sector. As a result of these measures, the differential between urban and rural average incomes dropped from 2.45 in 1969 to 1.39 in 1980; the ratio of lowest to highest public-sector wages fell from 1:20 in 1967 to 1:5 in 1985. But around 1974 the downward spiral of real wages began, falling by 24 percent between 1974 and 1975. Even with continuing pay increases, real wages fell by 83 percent from 1974 to 1988. Under structural adjustment policies, incomes continued to worsen. By August 1995 the minimum wage was still only $31.50 a month under conditions of 28 percent inflation in which, according to the Organization of Tanzania Trade Unions (OTTU), the bare minimum wage should be $200 a month in order to survive (International Labour Organisation 1982, 267; Mtatifikolo 1988, 35; Valentine 1983, 52).[8]
"Tanzania Economy: Out of Control," Inter Press Service, 21 January 1995.
As real wages dropped, non-agricultural incomes, generally in the informal sector, began to climb (International Labour Organisation 1982, 264; Sarris and van den Brink 1993, 158). According to official statistics, which can be used only as rough indicators, not precise measures, in 1976–1977 wages constituted 53 percent of the total urban household income, and other private incomes accounted for 25 percent of the total household income (Sarris and van den Brink 1993, 68). According to the Bureau of Statistics (1977), in instances where the head of household was a wage earner, wage earnings accounted for as much as 77 percent of the total household income, and private incomes accounted for only 8 percent of the total household income. In contrast, by 1988, according to my survey, informal incomes constituted approximately 90 percent of the household cash income, with wage earnings making up the remainder.
One way to gauge these changes is to examine the amount spent on food. In 1976–1977 food expenditure roughly equaled income in low-income groups (Bureau of Statistics 1977, Table 3C2). Nearly a decade
later, according to my 1987–1988 survey, the average amount of money spent on food per day by the typical household of four, both with and without employed members, was TSh 325. This means that low-income household expenditure on food exceeded the minimum monthly salary eightfold. There is little doubt that informal sources of income made up the difference between wage earnings and food expenditure.
In low-income households the percentage of expenditure on food rose from roughly 52 percent of all household expenditures in 1940 to 85 percent in 1980 (Bryceson 1987, 174).[9]
There is considerable variability in these figures. Ödegaard cites Bureau of Statistics 1976/1977 data which suggest that urban food expenditure as a proportion of total expenditure was 33 percent in 1969 and 51 percent in 1977 (ödegaard 1985, 143). If one breaks the Bureau of Statistics data down into income groups, low-income food expenditure was 62 percent of total expenditure.
If we take Bryceson's estimate that food expenditure was 85 percent of all household expenditures, then informal incomes were contributing roughly nine times more than were formal incomes in households in which only one household member was an employed worker; that is, in 42 percent of all households surveyed.[10]Only 6 percent of the households had two members working for wages, whereas 52 percent were made up solely of members who were self-employed and or farmers.
The actual income derived from self-employment correlates much more accurately with the household expenditure figures than do wage rates. According to my survey, the mean income from an income-generating project in Manzese or Buguruni was about TSh 15,500 a month. The median was TSh 6,000 per month, or four times the monthly minimum wage. The median was skewed by the low informal incomes of women, whose average monthly income from their projects was TSh 5,346 a month, whereas for men it was TSh 29,064 a month (23 times the minimum wage). One of the reasons for this large discrepancy between women's and men's projects was the fact that the self-employed men had been in business longer and were established in more economically rewarding enterprises, like carpentry and tailoring.
Only one-third of full-time self-employed interviewees had spouses who were self-employed, whereas more than two-thirds of those who were employed had self-employed spouses or had a sideline project. This suggests once again that self-employment was a more viable means of obtaining a livable income than was employment. Those who were self-employed clearly had less need for a second income in the household than those who were employed.
This shift in workers' households from depending mostly on wages to depending mostly on income obtained through self-employment had a number of repercussions. Some workers, finding that their official jobs could not sustain them, had to leave employment altogether in order to involve themselves full-time in informal income-generating projects or in agricultural production. Increasing numbers of employed workers sought sideline projects. Larger numbers of women, children, and the elderly
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became involved in small, income-generating projects and farming, making their contribution to the household economy in monetary terms far greater than in the past.
Flight from Wage Employment
Dramatic changes took place in the 1980s as large numbers of workers left their jobs. According to the 1978 population census (Bureau of Statistics 1982, 51), 50 percent of the urban working population was employed. Of the men, 66 percent were employed; and of the women, 22 percent were employed. In Dar es Salaam, 84 percent of the men were employed, 39 percent of the women were employed, and 72 percent overall were employed (Bureau of Statistics 1982, 52). Thirteen years later, according to the 1990–1991 labor force survey, only 36 percent of the urban working population was employed, which represents a 28 percent reduction in the employed labor force. Of the men, 45 percent were employed in 1991; and of the women, 23 percent were employed.
My survey findings bear these patterns out. Of all the people I surveyed, 26 percent had left their wage jobs. One-third of this group that had left their jobs had done so in the 1970s; 63 percent left after 1980. Forty percent left between 1984 and 1987 (Table 4). About 45 percent terminated employment because of low pay, and 17 percent left because of layoffs due to plant cutbacks or closures. Other reasons of lesser importance included health problems, retirement, pregnancy, differences with employers, and being fired.
According to my survey, of those who left employment for reasons other than retirement, 87 percent had gone into self-employment and
40 percent into urban farming. (The numbers do not total 100 percent because most people engage in two or more activities simultaneously.) Of the 21 percent who remained employed, 38 percent planned to leave their jobs to engage in small enterprises, farming, or both. One-quarter were undecided, and the remainder said they would continue with their jobs and sideline enterprises or find a better sideline activity.
Those who left their jobs had been employed for an average of nine years, which indicates that those who were leaving were part of a stable workforce that had once sought employment with the intention of working their entire lives. Among the fifty-to-fifty-five-year-olds, the group of workers who had been longest employed, the average number of years employed at one job was fifteen.
One woman I interviewed who was running a successful soda kiosk had worked at the Kibo Match factory in the northern town of Moshi from 1970 until 1982. She said that many women worked there but were paid less than men, making between TSh 1,200 and 1,500 a month at a time when it cost TSh 350 to buy food each day for her family. When asked how her life had changed since leaving her job, she explained: "When I worked at Kibo Match I didn't have enough to eat, and I worked from 7 A.M. to 3 P.M. without food. I had to give priority to the children when it came to food. Since I quit my job and started my own business I have put on weight. I used to weigh 67 kilograms. Now I have gained up to 100 kilograms and the doctor has told me to lose weight before I can have another child."[11]
No. 166, interview by author, 26 August 1987, Tandika, Dar es Salaam.
In another fairly typical case, a man who had worked for twenty years at a clothing factory found that he could no longer sustain his family and left his job in 1980 to start a laundering business with his wife, son, and younger brother. As he put it, "I have children and a wife. If I had stayed with my job I would have gone down further. I would have been destroyed. The cents that I get now help more than my earnings when I was employed."[12]
No.3.230, interview by author 16 January l988, Buguruni Dar es Salaam.
His household of eight earned about TSh 425 a day and spent TSh 300 a day on food.The problem was the same even for better-educated, higher-income employees, often resulting in a serious brain drain. The University of Dar es Salaam saw the departure of more than 100 faculty and staff members from 1977 to the mid-1980s, in pursuit of alternative sources of income either in Tanzania or abroad (Lugalla 1993, 205). In Manzese I interviewed one university-trained television engineer who had studied in the former Soviet Union for six years and had worked for ten years with the government-run television station in Zanzibar. With two children and a
wife to support, he left his job in 1987 to go into business with his father running a bar. He explained his predicament: "There is no benefit in working. I liked my job and would return to it if I could, but I can't feed my family on those wages. Even though I have studied a lot, there is no benefit. My monthly earnings of 2,790 shillings lasted only five days of the month."[13]
No. 4.117, interview by author, 25 November 1987, Manzese, Dar es Salaam.
Even education and a high-status job are no longer a guarantee of financial security.Although it is understandable that people need to find sources of income they can live on, some are perturbed by the effect of these departures on the quality of public institutions like schools and hospitals. As one primary-school teacher, Melania John, pointed out, "Although such problems [of people leaving their jobs to run businesses] are happening, I would like to ask that the ministries which are responsible find ways to help these workers see the importance of doing their job. If all these people are going away, can you tell me who is going to teach these classes? Who is going to provide service in the hospitals? Now let us look for a plan, so that those workers will stay in their positions and provide services to society."[14]
Comments made at a seminar on "Women Entrepreneurs in the Local Economy," hosted by the Small Entrepreneurs Association of Mwanga, 7-10 March 1994.
Combining Employment and Self-Employment
Although the gap between real wages and the cost of living was greater than ever before in the 1980s, militant resistance on the part of workers was less than in the past. Labor quiescence could be accounted for, in part, by the state's attempts to undermine the autonomy of the labor movement. But even if one takes into account the fact that the labor movement was largely under party control, the pressure to raise wages was still relatively small. Workers had little confidence that the government, which accounts for the majority of the country's wage bill, could improve their situation.
The average worker's salary was sufficient to pay for roughly three days of his or her household's monthly food budget in the late 1980s. Because the government is the largest employer, it would not be outrageous to suggest that workers were being charitable to the state by remaining on the job. Certainly one would be hard-pressed to find such loyal workers in the United States if one paid them one-tenth of what it costs to put food in their mouths. Thus a central issue for labor in Tanzania, as in other parts of Africa today, has to do not with issues concerning the job itself but, rather, with how to make a living outside one's workplace in order to keep up with the dramatic decline in real income.
It has long been recognized that Africa's urban dwellers rarely have depended solely on one source of income, either as individuals or as a household. Even in Britain, the classic example of an industrializing country, few families depended only on their weekly wages at the turn of the century. Most families derived income also from projects of women and children, similar to the ones found in urban Tanzania today.[15]
Benson found that even at the beginning of the present century in England, penny capitalism (small-scale business) was the main source of livelihood for 10 percent of all working-class families and partially supported at least another 40 percent. He argues that it did not disrupt existing relations in the community but helped to ease the dislocation caused by rapid economic and social change (Benson 1983, 134). Male workers mended furniture; sharpened tools and cutlery; made toffee and ginger beer; made shoes; and caught and sold fish. Female workers cut hair; took in washing and ironing; hawked flowers, fish, fruit, vegetables, and nuts; sewed; and prepared food. Benson suggests that these small-scale and labor- intensive activities were not simply survival strategies for the working class but a central and dynamic component of mid-and late-Victorian growth. The engineering and metal-working needs not met by large industries led to the proliferation of small, labor-intensive units. Some workers who had been able to save sufficient sums left industrial work altogether and went into business full-time as skilled artisans. Another detailed study of working-class living standards in Lancaster and Burrow at the turn of the century found that few married women were employed full-time outside the home. But interviews show that large numbers of women were dressmakers; sold home-made pies and cakes from their homes; helped their husbands in corner shops; took in lodgers; did domestic cleaning; and took in wash and babysat. Between 4o and 43 percent of working-class mothers were involved in penny capitalism (Roberts 1977).
Because informal sources of income and subsistence are the main means of survival for most Tanzanian urban dwellers, one may ask why people bother to work as wage employees when they could potentially make more if they went into managing their projects full-time. Instead, many work on both their jobs and their projects, keeping their options open in both the formal and the informal spheres of the economy.Some argue that it is the security of the formal income rather than the size of the income that keeps workers on the job (Berry 1978; Peil, 1972; Pfefferman 1968). As Keith Hart explained (1973, 78):
This preference for diversity of income streams has its roots in the traditional risk-aversion of peasants under conditions of extreme uncertainty, and is justified by the insecurity of urban workers today. The most salient characteristic of wage-employment in the eyes of the sub-proletariat is not the absolute amount of income receipts but its reliability. For informal employment, even of the legitimate variety, is risky and expected rewards highly variable. Thus, for subsistence purposes alone, regular wage employment, however badly paid, has some solid advantages; and hence men who derive substantial incomes from informal activities may still retain or desire formal employment.
This risk aversion is evident in the reasons Dar es Salaam's workers gave for remaining employed while pursuing more lucrative income-generating projects.
Some workers had not been in business long enough to be certain that they could succeed with their projects. This was the case with a young man in his twenties who, with a friend, had obtained a market stall and started selling fans, baskets to cover food, and kamali gambling boards they painted themselves. At night he worked as an embassy guard; during the day he worked on his project. From his painting project he earned about TSh 100 a day, which was 2.5 times his income as a guard. Lack of capital prevented him from expanding, and he believed that the business was still too risky to engage in on a full-time basis.
The same was true for one industrial machine operator at a textile mill. He had been employed for fifteen years but in 1988 was still making just
TSh 1,475 a month, only a little more than the minimum wage. He and his wife, who worked at the same textile mill and earned the same income as he did, had been unable to support themselves and their child until he decided in 1985 to start taking in laundry as a sideline business. After purchasing an iron, a table, and a cloth to cover the table, he went into business with his neighbor. By 1988 he was making about TSh 9,000 a month, six times his monthly salary. He saw no reason to leave his job and forfeit the additional income.
In another instance, two groups of neighbor men shared the same sewing machines. While one group worked the night shift at a nearby textile mill, the other group used the sewing machines in their sideline projects. Then, when the second group was at work during the day, the first group used the machines. None of them could afford to purchase a machine of their own and go into business full-time.
For many, jobs provided dependable sources of backup capital when business was in a slump. In one typical family that operated a food stall, the project was primarily the wife's responsibility. But the husband, a textile worker, went to the wholesale market downtown to buy fresh produce. His wife sold the fruit, vegetables, and fried cassava snacks from a stall in front of their home. When he came from work or when the children came from school they took over running the stall while the mother did housework. They planned to use the husband's small wage as capital to start up again if the business came to a temporary halt.
Some found that the prices of inputs were rising too fast, the sources of inputs were not secure, or their markets were not stable enough. This was the case for one worker at a suitcase factory, who, with his wife, started sewing mattress, pillow, and sofa covers as a sideline business because he was having a difficult time supporting his eight children. He bought thirty kilograms of scraps each week from the Urafiki and Sungura textile mills and made fifty to sixty mattress covers a week. He and his wife could make around TSh 30,000 a month, twenty-one times his wage earnings. But if inputs were not available and clients few and far between, at least there was always the wage at the end of the month to tide the family over.
Others saw no point in leaving their jobs because their spouse had a project that they thought was adequate to support the family. Of all married employees I surveyed, 54 percent had spouses engaged in projects. Wives were commonly found making and selling buns, fried fish, porridge, beans, tea, soup, retail charcoal, firewood, kerosene, or flour. Often the husband's only contribution to the project was to provide the starting capital. In one typical family, the husband, who was a welder, gave his wife
TSh 3,000, with which she started a project making and selling mbege , an alcoholic beverage made of bananas. With the starting capital she bought cups, pans, and a barrel, in addition to bananas and millet for fermenting. Less than one year after she began the project she was making about TSh 1,130 a day (twenty-six times her husband's wage) selling mbege to neighborhood residents.
In another household, a messenger and his wife built a restaurant with capital obtained from sales of cotton from their farm in Tanga. The wife supported their seven children and the husband's parents from what she made selling porridge, meat, beans, bread, and tea at their restaurant. The restaurant was primarily the responsibility of the wife, who made TSh 20,000 a month from her work in the project. The husband's job brought in only TSh 1,070 a month, which after deductions (such as taxes and insurance) amounted to only TSh 900 take-home pay. Although she had been in business since 1972 and considered the restaurant a fairly stable source of income, the messenger saw no reason to leave his job as long as his wife could manage the business, especially because unanticipated problems sometimes arose. For example, once a health officer closed down her restaurant for six months on the grounds that it was not sanitary because the walls were not painted, the building was too small, and the toilet not up to standard. Unable to afford the so-called requirements for the restaurant, the messenger finally gave the officer what he really wanted—a bribe. In the meantime, while their restaurant was closed, the husband's wages helped tide them over until they found another source of income.
Some workers remained at their job and merely hired employees to carry out projects. This pattern was more common among professionals, but such arrangements could be found even among workers. One thirty-five-year-old technician, who managed to purchase two sewing machines from his savings, hired two tailors to work for him. Other workers found their jobs necessary to obtain resources used in their projects. One man employed at the harbors brought home plastic bands used to wrap imported bales of secondhand clothing. After work he and his wife sat on their veranda each day and wove the bands into colorful baskets, which he sold at stores downtown. Workers sometimes obtained resources from their jobs illicitly and resold them. One worker at a printing company siphoned off paint, which was difficult to come by, and resold it on the outside to local sign writers and painters.
For professionals, jobs sometimes were sources of housing or access to parastatal automobiles or telephones, which came in handy in their projects. One primary-school teacher I interviewed had four projects, including a
farm of 1.2 hectares and raising livestock and poultry. Her brother, who worked as a statistician, had access to an automobile from his research center, which he used to transport her oranges to the market and bring feed for the eighteen pigs and chickens she was raising.
For middle- and upper-income employees the workplace often was a source of contacts, a place where one could exchange resources, information, and favors useful in operating projects. It also was a source of status. The status may not have been reflected in monetary terms but could be important enough to one's self-esteem to make it worth holding on to the job while one obtained one's real income from a kiosk, piggery, chicken farm, or hairdressing salon. In addition to status, a number of professionals and semiprofessionals mentioned that they stayed on their jobs simply because they enjoyed them. One nurse made TSh 80,000 a month raising chickens. When asked why she did not leave her job, she responded emphatically that she would never leave her job as a nurse because she enjoyed it so much.
Other workers used their jobs as a source of clients for their project. One machine operator at a cigarette factory learned how to fix radios from his friend. Since 1983 he had had a sideline business of repairing radios. Because he did not have a license he felt he could not advertise openly. For this reason his clients came mainly through contacts at work.
Workers could be creative when it came to using their jobs as sources of clients. When I went to a government-run store to purchase a map of the city, the salesman told me that there were none available and that they had not had any in print for years. He added that he could sell me a print of the map he had made himself in his own private replicating service. In the course of what became a rather lengthy discussion, the salesman told me that he had worked there six years and still only made the minimum wage. By reproducing and selling these maps he made every two days the same income as his monthly wage. "This way I can help myself and the government too," he said, because the store had not been able to provide this service.[16]
No. 7.34, interview by author, 14 October 1987, City Center, Dar es Salaam.
Income-Generating Projects
Most of those I surveyed who had started small-scale projects had done so between 1980 and 1987; only 15 percent had started their enterprises in the previous five years. Of those who were employed and had projects of their own, 76 percent had started between 1980 and 1987; only 5 percent had begun within the previous decade (Table 5).
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A 1991 survey of 7,000 households found that most informal-sector operators in Dar es Salaam obtained starting capital from relatives and friends (51 percent) or financed their own small businesses (45 percent); none indicated obtaining assistance from a formal financial institution, like a bank (Planning Commission and Ministry of Labour and Youth Development 1991, 2–6). In Dar es Salaam, lack of capital and problems of marketing were overwhelmingly identified as the key constraints in establishing and operating an enterprise in the 1991 survey, followed by finding premises from which to operate, lack of equipment and spare parts, and government regulations. My own survey showed lack of markets to be almost four times greater a problem than even capital, and expense and availability of inputs as the second and third major problem entrepreneurs identified.
Determinants of Income-Generating Projects
People engaged in a great variety of enterprises, ranging from food vending to frame making, tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry, masonry, beer brewing, laundering, hairbraiding, and market sales to running small restaurants and kiosks (see Appendix C). The largest number of self-employed people were found in the areas of vending fuel, processed food, and other goods like water, newspapers, vegetables, and fruit. Of those involved in the manufacturing sector, tailors made up the majority; in the area of services, launderers predominated.
Women and men, however, engaged in different kinds of enterprises. Women were mainly involved in the making and selling of pastries, fried
fish, porridge, beans, tea, soup, charcoal, firewood, kerosene, and flour. Men, on the other hand, tended to be tailors, carpenters, masons, launderers, mechanics, and shoemakers.
Lack of capital was a key constraint that kept especially youth and women locked in certain low-income-generating projects and prevented them from branching out into more lucrative ventures. This constraint, in turn, was reflected in the low incomes derived from their projects. Men, for example, reported four times higher starting capital than did women and had 5.4 times higher returns from their businesses. However, in general, the majority (54 percent) had low starting-capital requirements of less than TSh 1,000, and 30 percent had starting-capital requirements of 1,000 to TSh 5,000.
Ethnicity had some impact on the kinds of activities people engaged in, because many of the activities were organized along kinship lines, making it relatively easier for those with such connections to gain the necessary training, information, and contacts to start similar businesses. For example, according to my survey, one-third of those selling vegetable goods in Manzese (at the market, in stalls, on porches, or through street vending) were Luguru, for they were the ones with connections to traders of these goods in the Morogoro area. Similarly, W. Mashisa (1978) found that 71 percent of the market sellers in Manzese were Luguru. The Chagga were prominent in making local beers (especially mbege ); the Pare, as store owners; and the Zaramo, as charcoal and wood traders.
The determinants of the kinds of projects that yielded middle and upper incomes were much different. It was not only starting capital but also contacts at work and relatives studying or working abroad who could provide resources necessary to run projects like raising chickens, tending cows (for milk) and pigs, and running hair salons.
Historically, lack of education was one factor that kept those involved in informal-sector activities out of employment and forced them to resort to self-employment. It has also been argued that lack of education adversely affect so the types of goods produced and the ability to absorb technical information, while keeping managerial skills limited (Aboagye 1985, 22–23). However, given today's situation, in which even the middle-and upper-income salaries have fallen below subsistence levels, people of all income groups with all levels of education were involved in self employment. In fact, I found little difference in the educational backgrounds of those with and without projects. Education and employment in and of themselves were no longer guarantees of economic well-being even
in the higher-income brackets. Jobs that required more education, however, usually were important sources of contacts with whom one could trade resources and information that would advance sideline projects and affect incomes.
Income Differentiation and the Informal Economy
One of the consequences of the growth of the informal economy was the widening of income differentials. The gap is not discernible by looking simply at official statistics on incomes, but it is pronounced if one considers informal incomes, which by definition are not reported or taxed and are therefore not enumerated. The Tanzanian government's policy has been consistently to narrow official wage gaps, pulling up the minimum-wage earner's income while keeping the top salaries relatively constant. Through salary increments of the lowest wages and increased taxation of higher-income brackets, the ratio of the lowest to highest public-sector wages was lowered two and a half times between 1967 and 1985 (Mtatifikolo 1988, 35). These figures, however, tell only a small part of the story. The disparities between informal incomes were far greater. In the snowball survey I made of households in the middle- and upper-income brackets (earning between TSh 3,000 and 7,000 a month), women made an average income of TSh 51,130 a month from their projects. Because women were primarily involved in the family sideline projects of this income group, they became the focal point of the survey. These women were making almost ten times what the low-income women made from their small businesses and on the average ten times their own formal salaries as professionals or semiprofessionals. In terms of official incomes, however, these same middle- to upper-income women brought home only twice or at the most three times what the average woman worker made.
The differential between middle- and upper-income households and the majority of poorer households was even greater if one considers that usually those at the upper end of the income spectrum had numerous marupurupu (job-related fringe benefits). They often had housing provided for them at nominal rents and access to company vehicles. They also found it easier to use their positions (through both licit and illicit means) to gain access to resources necessary for their projects. Most of the Manzese and Buguruni residents complained of having to pay illegally hiked prices for necessities and inputs for their projects. Middle-income households more frequently reported having contacts who helped them purchase inputs for their projects at official prices, which were much lower.
The position of professionals and semiprofessionals gave them the prerogative to take time off from work more freely to check up on their projects or carry out business related to their projects, whereas those who worked in factories did not have this option. As one woman who worked at the Ministry of Education said, "If you have a job in the government, you have security, even if it is only small. You know your job will be there. The top people have to worry but other middle-level civil servants have little to worry about. If you are in a private company you have no time to do your own thing. The government is more tolerant about time. You can just go in and leave your handbag on the desk and then go about your own business. Or you leave your jacket draped on a chair if you are a man."[17]
No. 2.13, interview by author, 12 June 1988, City Center, Dar es Salaam.
Rural-Urban Linkages
Another development in the 1980s was the strengthening of rural-urban ties. These ties have always been strong, but the economic crisis bound the futures of urban dwellers inseparably to those of their rural kin. In the 1960s there was reason to believe that migrants had come to the urban areas to stay. A study done by Michaela Von Freyhold in the late 1960s in Dar es Salaam, for example, suggested that workers were unlikely to leave their urban jobs to return temporarily or permanently to farming (Von Freyhold 1972, cited in Stren 1982, 73–74). Another 1965 survey of 3,308 Dar es Salaam residents found that half planned to remain in the city (Market Research, Ltd. 1965a).[18]
Even at this time there were those who believed that rural life was better than urban life. One survey by Market Research, Ltd., "Rural Life in Mpiji River Valley" (1965b) asked rural farmers who had been to Dar es Salaam why they had returned to the countryside. (Twenty-five percent of the farmers had lived in Dar es Salaam for more than twenty years, and 21 percent had spent between ten and twenty years there.) Of these, 92 percent said that rural life was better than life in Dar es Salaam; only 8 percent said it was the same or worse. More food and water were the main reasons given for this preference.
By the 1970s the picture had begun to change. A 1974 study of migrants found that 54 percent did not plan to stay in town and that 27 percent said they did intend to (Sabot 1974, 53). A 1981 survey of 5,500 urban residents throughout Tanzania found that two-thirds planned to return to the countryside. Eighty percent owned land in rural areas. But even of those without land, close to half said they planned to leave the city eventually (Stren 1980, 73–74). By the end of the 1980s, large numbers of urban dwellers not only planned to retire in the countryside but were leaving their jobs and returning to the rural areas to farm.
Migration to the cities contributed to an 8 percent growth in urban population between 1967 and 1978. This slowed down considerably after 1978, according to my survey. Forty-five percent of those I interviewed had come to Dar es Salaam between 1968 and 1977, whereas only 27 percent had come between 1978 and 1987. This is corroborated by the 1988 census, which shows that between 1978 and 1988 the city's growth rate slowed to 4.8 percent (Bureau of Statistics 1989). Thus, during this decade, Dar es Salaam's 3 percent annual birthrate accounted for most of the increase in
the city's growth rate rather than migration, which had been the main cause of city growth between 1968 and 1977.
The majority of those who did migrate found their way into self-employment. In the 1960s and 1970s those in younger age brackets were the most active in rural-urban migration. These trends are reflected in the fact that the largest number of those who said they migrated to the city were between the ages of thirty and thirty-nine. By the late 1980s, however, the majority (57 percent) of the fifteen-to-nineteen age group were born in Dar es Salaam, unlike youth of ten or twenty years earlier. Although more comprehensive studies are needed to further substantiate these trends, it was clear from my interviews that, for numerous households, life in the cities had simply become too costly, while the rural setting was beginning to hold more promise.
Although circumstances in the 1980s may have led to greater urban-rural emigration, it is worth noting that the rural-urban door has long been a revolving one, especially for those from villages in the Coast Region. This fact is often lost in migration studies. Apart from those with secure employment or self-employment, people would come to the city, stay a while, and go back to their villages either permanently or on a temporary basis, sometimes on a seasonal basis in order to plant and harvest crops.
Rural-urban ties were strengthened in numerous ways in addition to migration-emigration. As pointed out earlier, key social functions were still carried out in the countryside. Most of the city's fruit came from surrounding areas; green vegetables and potatoes came from the Uluguru and Usambara mountain areas (L. Swantz 1969; Van Donge 1992). In addition, many, especially those with better incomes, would send remittances to their rural relatives on a regular basis (Von Freyhold 1972, cited in Hyden 1980, 162).
Urban Farming
I have already shown how the drop in living standards forced many urban dwellers to return permanently to their home areas to farm. Others visited these home areas throughout the country simply for the planting and harvesting seasons. Most urban dwellers, however, farmed in the surrounding periurban areas of Dar es Salaam. For many, these areas were, in fact, their place of birth, where they continued to maintain close contact with their rural kin.
The new increase in urban farming in the 1980s is evident when compared with studies of previous decades. Historically, most of the food produced on plots around the city was for home consumption, and only a
small portion entered the market. In the 1930s it appeared that workers in Dar es Salaam depended on the food parcels a wife or visiting relative brought from farms in their home areas. Basic foodstuffs were obtained from cultivation; wages were used to purchase luxuries (Bryceson 1987, 165).
A 1950 Survey of African Labourers in Dar es Salaam found that 14 percent had farms on the outskirts of the city, growing primarily rice. Leslie's study at the end of the 1950s showed that only 7 percent of household heads had plots for farming. Apparently there was a decline in urban farming in the 1960s, suggesting that urban economic conditions were improving and wages adequately covered food expenses. One 1965 study in Dar es Salaam found that only 1 percent of wage earners reported making a living from agriculture (Marco, Ltd. 1965). The government's 1968 master plan for the city found that only 2.2 percent of the city's wage earners farmed, and another 1968 survey did not find any residents farming (Hoad 1968, cited in Bryceson 1987, 189). A survey conducted in the Department of Sociology at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1970 found that 8 percent of the wives cultivated (Westergaard 1970, 8). Yet another study of civil servants in Dar es Salaam in the early 1970s found that 3 percent of the wives engaged in farming (Lindberg 1974, quoted in M.-L. Swantz 1985, 129). Once again, the reliability of all of these statistics can be questioned, but a general trend is apparent: in the 1960s and 1970s relatively few urban wage earners farmed, and those who did farm were primarily women.
What probably did not change throughout these years was the practice of having small vegetable and fruit gardens near one's home. A detailed study of Manzese in December 1974 by the World Bank—sponsored National Sites and Service Programme found that 70 percent of home owners had vegetable gardens and half had fruit trees. Only a handful of these gardens were larger than 10 by 15 paces. The majority of the plots (32 percent) were 5 by 5 paces or less. The main vegetables grown in these plots were peas, cassava, spinach, and pumpkins, while the most common fruits were pawpaws, bananas, pineapples, oranges, mangoes, guavas, limes, and grapes. The 1974 study found the majority of residents at that time wanted to expand their gardens in size but lacked the nearby space to do so (Pilot Nutrition Study 1975).
An initial boost for urban agriculture came with the 1974–1975 KilimoCha Kufa na Kupona (Agriculture for Life or Death) campaign, in which government offices, factories, and other workplaces were issued land outside the city for cultivation (Bryceson 1987). The number of people who
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began to farm in the period after 1973 noticeably increased, so that the 1978 census registered farming as the primary occupation of 12 percent of Dar es Salaam's women and 4 percent of the city's men.
My own study indicates that 21 percent of those residents who farmed started doing so between 1973 and 1977, compared with the 9 percent who had started in the previous five years (see Table 6). The number who began to farm between 1978 and 1982 dropped to 13 percent and then picked up rapidly in the five years between 1983 and 1987, when the majority (49 percent) reported that they Started farming. These figures can only be taken as rough indicators, because the age of the respondents is not factored in. Nevertheless, these figures suggest some general trends.
The increase after 1983 reflects in part the expansion of urban farming after the 1980 urban food crisis. A 1980 survey found 44 percent of low-income wage earners with farms (Mganza and Bantje 1980, cited in Bryceson 1987, 190). By the late 1980s, my survey suggests, at least half of all workers were farming, and 59 percent of all residents had farms in 1987–1988. Of the residents, 72 percent of the women cultivated, whereas only 39 percent of the men did so (see Table 1). Another survey of urban dwellers in the city in 1987 found that, of workers who were household heads, 70 percent engaged in farming or raising livestock (Maliyamkono and Bagachwa 1990, 126).
Around the 1980s, with the declining living standards in the city, many began to believe that agriculture and village life held more promise than did city life. One street cleaner who grew maize, millet, cassava, and fruit
on a 1.6-hectare plot put it this way: "Living in the village has more advantages than life here in the city. There I get everything: pawpaws, bananas, pineapple, and cassava. There is no need to buy them. Here in the city everything requires money. This morning I drank tea but now I am hungry. I had only one bun. In the countryside I could have eaten boiled bananas for breakfast. I would not have been hungry at this time of the day."[19]
No. 4.33, interview by author, 4 November 1987, Manzese, Dar es Salaam.
The importance of farming to the survival of the urban household was underscored by a woman who said, "I farm and I harvest. If you have food you eat. I can't remain in the town and die of hunger. If I were to get some capital I could do something else, but I would never leave farming."[20]
No. 4.14, interview by author, 29 October 1987, Manzese, Dar es Salaam
This woman was originally from Bukoba and had been farming since 1985 in her husband's home area of Mikese, Morogoro, where she lived with his parents during her three-month visits twice a year. Her husband, who had worked as a security guard for fourteen years, assisted her, but the farming was primarily her responsibility. They had 1.62 hectares of maize and millet and 0.2 hectares of kisukari (very sweet bananas). They consumed most of what they grew, but they sold about five bags of millet and the bananas each season.For many workers, the goals were to acquire enough capital and move permanently to a rural setting. One secretary I interviewed was in the process of making the shift from the city to the countryside in a systematic way. She had bought a 0.4-hectare farm in the Kibaha periurban area, where she worked at a regional court. She started farming in 1987, growing oranges, bananas, and cassava. A single mother, she spent holidays and weekends farming with her children. When necessary she would rent a tractor at the standard 1987 rate of TSh 1,000 per 0.4 hectare. Her plans were to build a house near her farm and move there permanently. She had asked for a transfer in her job to work nearer her farm. Her plans were to expand the farm and eventually to go into agriculture full-time. In order to save, she was involved in several small, income-generating projects, including the sales of fried buns at work. She saved her money in two upato rotating-credit associations of women. One involved eight women at her workplace, each of whom pooled TSh 300 a month. The second association was of four people, who contributed TSh 400 a month. This meant that she was regularly saving TSh 700 a month (or 23 percent of her monthly wage earnings) in these societies. She also had money saved in a postal bank and in a credit union.
Urban farming after the 1970s was markedly different from the small garden plots that had characterized much of urban agriculture in the city
until that time. The new farms were substantially larger than the small 5-by-5-pace gardens held by the majority of urban farmers in the 1974 Nutrition Survey of Manzese. Instead, I found Manzese and Buguruni farmers cultivating farms that averaged 1.2 hectares on the outskirts of the city. Large numbers of people began to farm not only in the areas near their homes but also, and mainly, in periurban areas surrounding the city itself. In the 1974 Pilot Nutrition Project (1975) survey, most who cultivated were home owners who farmed their own land around their house. Few renters, who made up 54 percent of the population in Manzese, had access to land surrounding the houses for cultivation because of well-established customary rights regarding landownership and use. By the 1980s, however, it appeared that even renters were farming in greater numbers, but they were cultivating land on the outskirts of the city. In contrast to the 1974 survey of Manzese, which found virtually no renters farming, my survey of the same part of Dar es Salaam thirteen years later found 38 percent of renters farming.
By the late 1980s the large majority (83 percent) of Manzese residents had acquired plots in the Dar es Salaam area or on the city's outskirts. Close to half farmed in their home areas, which for two-thirds was in Dar es Salaam and its vicinity. One textile worker and his wife, for example, farmed in the periurban area of Bunju, some forty-eight kilometers outside the city. The husband earned TSh 3,741 a month as an instructor at the mill, but he started farming with his wife in 1984 because they needed to find another means of supporting themselves—food costs for his family had risen to more than twice his monthly salary. The husband's parents were from Bunju and had a farm there. They gave him land, and in return he helped them farm. He paid for laborers when necessary, especially during the weeding season. They grew cassava, bananas, and oranges. The husband would stay there to farm on weekends, paying a TSh 60 round-trip bus fare, while the wife would farm for one or two weeks at a time.
Although the majority of people I surveyed were given land by relatives or friends (36 percent), others purchased it (23 percent), inherited it (15 percent), or simply claimed it in their home area at a time when land was still available (23 percent). The purchase of land had become commonplace by the 1980s, in violation of laws prohibiting its sale. Land speculation was rampant. Because land could not be bought or sold officially, people evaded this stipulation by claiming to buy the coconut, pawpaw, mango, or other trees on the land, which could legally be purchased. In areas surrounding Dar es Salaam, fallow land sold for around TSh 2,000 per 0.4 hectare in 1988, whereas closer to the city, cultivated land could sell for
as high as TSh 100,000 per 0.4 hectare. The price of land was determined by its proximity to the center of Dar es Salaam, by whether the land had been tilled, and by the number of fruit and coconut trees on it.
As in the rural areas, urban women were more likely to be involved in farming than were men. Of the households surveyed, two-thirds of those who cultivated were women, and one-third were men. Of the 84 percent of the married couples who farmed, both the husband and wife said they cultivated, although the wife was likely to spend considerably more time in the field. In the households that farmed, approximately half of the household members were active in agricultural production. Children were also active in farming, although the extent of their involvement varied with their age. Frequently, younger children would sit in little huts, charged with scaring away pigs, rabbits, monkeys, and birds from ravaging the crops.
Urban dwellers with means would hire what were called vibarua or laborers to assist in planting and harvesting and to watch over the fields in their absence. Frequently living in close proximity to the farm, the laborers guarded the farms from animals, birds, and thieves who would help themselves to produce around harvest time. Of those farmers surveyed, 13 percent reported hiring laborers. The average amount paid to a laborer was TSh 870 per season.
Urban dwellers most commonly reported growing cassava, rice, maize, bananas, coconut, and millet. They grew fruits like bananas, oranges, and pineapples, which were most popular, and also guavas, breadfruit, pawpaws, and mangoes. They mentioned vegetables like potatoes, beans, spinach, and tomatoes most frequently, while cashew nuts, coffee, cotton, cloves, and groundnuts were the most popular cash crops. One-half said they sold their produce, but, with the exception of those who produced cash crops, they usually sold small quantities because the main purpose of cultivation was consumption.
Conclusions
The drop in real wages since the mid-1970s was one of the most important changes that set the stage for the developments described in this book. It resulted in the dramatic increase in the pursuit of income-generating activities by workers and members of their households. Some workers or their family members were involved in sideline occupations, which usually provided greater compensation than did their formal jobs. Others left formal employment altogether because their jobs simply could not sustain
them. In all, reliance on the government, which had been the largest employer, diminished as people increasingly sought private and informal economic strategies. The drop in real wages resulted in a slowing down of migration to the cities, strengthened rural-urban linkages, and increased urban farming. Income differentials also expanded significantly as a result of greater reliance on informal incomes. Access to the informal economy was determined largely by access to capital, with the most lucrative projects requiring the largest amounts of starting capital. All of these developments had an impact on the way in which people defended their right to subsist. They found themselves challenged not only by the adverse economic conditions in which they found themselves but also by a state whose policies made it ever more difficult to pursue productive economic activities.