The Sukuma People!
The Details of Sukuma origins are obscure. Available evidence suggests that the tribe as it exists today a conglomeration of disparate, indigenous. Bantu- speaking clans, overlaid with immigrant Hima (Nilo - Hamitic) stock. The migrants, who were Voluntarily accepted as chiefs after their arrival, made their way around the West Side of Lake Victoria from Uganda and farther north between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Perhaps because it represents one geographical extreme of this Migration, the Sukuma amalgam is virtually complete physically and culturally.
Rigid differentiation does not exist as in some other inter-lacustrine tribes: most Sukuma believe they are at least distant relatives of former chiefs. The individual chiefdom, rather than the tribe, was traditionally the primary focus of loyalty above the most local community of homesteads like the Soga of Uganda, the Sukuma were a multi- kingdom collection of more or less autonomous chieftaincies. Approximately fifty in number, these were ruled by chiefs possessing magic-religious as well as political powers. The necessity for a fundamentally approving consensus on the part of the people, and certain privileges and sanctions enjoyed by groups within the traditional political order limited the autocratic tendencies of chiefs. Principal among these groups were electors (bananghoma) who were relatives of the royal line but themselves ineligible for office, leaders of the elders (Banamhala), and leaders of the young men (basumba batale). Lacking precise age-grades and associated initiation rites, the Sukuma developed their characteristic social organisations unique within East Africa on the basis of broader distinctions between elder and younger, male and female, married and Unmarried. Within and across these categories and often with considerable overlap there developed a veritable plethora of co-operative cultivation groups, dancing and singing societies and special interest associations. Though generally a peaceful people, the Sukuma in the 1870s fought to turn back the Nyamwezi predator. Mirambo, who was bent on conquest to the north. In addition to occasional conflicts among themselves, they have had to guard their eastern frontiers against the incursions of Masai cattle raiders even to the present day. EUROPEANS, ARABS AND ASIANS Sukumaland was an out-of-the-way area even for the nineteenth century Arab slave traders who travelled from the coast to Tabora and then worked the area on the Tanganyika and Congo sides of Lake Tanganyika. The opening up of Sukumaland had to await European explorers in search of the legendary lakes and mountains of central Africa and the headwaters of the Nile. The hill above what is today the town of Mwanza, Speke caught his first glimpse- the first glimpse by any European - of a portion of the vast expanse of Lake Victoria. This, the second largest freshwater lake in the world, he correctly guessed was the source of the Nile. The intrepid Henry Murton Stanley passed through Sukumaland in 1875 and again in 1889. As one observer familiar with Sukumaland has noted, Stanley's descriptions of the land in rainy season and dry season 'could hardly be improved upon today. Stanley's taste for aesthetics and description however did not stop him from a characteristically ruthless use of firepower. He used machine guns to force his way across Nera in 1889. Answering Stanley's challenge to Christian England to take the light to dark East Africa, the Church Missionary Society sent a party inland from Bagamoyo in 1876. Bound for Uganda, they reached Lake Victoria near Mwanza in 1877. Several of the party died, but Alexander Mackay and one other reached Uganda. Mackay returned to Sukumaland ten years later. Mission stations were opened in Busambiro in 1887 and in Nassa in 1888. Meanwhile, in 1883 the European Roman Catholic White Fathers missionary order established an outpost at Bukumbi. The White Fathers Expanded into Ukerewe in 1895, to Kome Island in 1900,to Mwanza in 1907, and to Sumve in Kwimba District in 1911. In 1909 an American Protestant missionary society, the Africa Inland Mission, took over the foundering C.M.S outpost at Nassa. The A.I.M established stations at Kizima in Kwimba District in 1910 and at Kolandoto in Shinyanga in 1913. In subsequent years both the White Fathers and the A.I.M expanded activities. They provided, in addition to religious training. THE SETTING In the late 1890s, after subduing a few recalcitrant native authorities, the Germans took the first steps toward establishing a coherent administration in their new African territory. The character of their relationship with traditional authorities then inclined as much toward what has come to be known as the indirect rule model of administration more usually associated with German colonialism. The latitude given to Sukuma native authorities by the Germans did not arise from any fondness for African tradition or hope for the stable long -term elocution of African local government institutions; it was due rather so shortage of staff and other exigencies of the earliest 'bush-bashing ' phase of colonial rule. So, in the first instance, was British practise. Indirect rule, which had its origins in the administrative arrangements of nineteenth-century British India was adapted as an imaginative expedient by Lord Lugard in Nigeria. It became a theory of administration only with the writings of Lugard and his disciples. Eventually, it became a mystique through association with Victorian conceptions of the white man's burden and with an anthropologically inspired twentieth-century reverence for African tribal tradition. When, after the defeat of Germany in 1918, German East Africa was awarded to Britain under a League of Nations mandate and renamed Tanganyika, British Administration was as yet unaffected by notions of indirect rule. Ironically, in Sukumaland for example, British administration was, if anything, more direct than its German predecessor. Provincial and District Commissioners often deposed or installed native authorities without regard for local tradition. They amalgamated or divided traditional imported Ganda 'akidas' from Uganda to oversee groups of chiefdoms. Mission- trained schoolboys without ties to ruling families were as likely to be made chiefs as any legitimate heir even where a tradition ruling family was preserved, matrilineal succession gave way under colonial duress to the more rational patrilineal form. INDIRECT RULES: SUKUMALLAND VARIATIONS The arrival from Nigeria in 1825 of Sir Donald Cameron's governor signalled the beginning of a conscientious effort to effect principles of indirect rule. In sukumaland in the late 1920s and early 1930s, administration endeavoured to meet the wishes of the people by re-establishing tradition ruling lines in some areas where they had been outset previously. Cameron's secretary for Native Affairs, Charles Dundas, reported that in Mwanza Province there were 'all too many chiefs who have in the past been appointed without right or title. He urged in several localities the re-institution of indigenous authorities. These changes were most frequently implemented, however, in areas where the chiefs had proven to be personally unsuitable or where strong local opposition, as in Usmao or Kanadi, made them ineffective. Elsewhere, as in Geita (known as ' Uzinza ' before 1950) where no suitable alternatives seemed available aliens were allowed, for the sake of efficient administration, to remain. In fact at times, as in Ntuzu, non-tradition chiefs were not only preserved but also placed in office by Cameron and post-Cameron Lake Province administrations. Although Cameron's policy sought in theory to foster traditional native authorities as a basis for the evolution of local administration, in practice the changes wrought did as much to transform as to consolidate tradition. Even indigenous chiefs who had depended upon electors, elders, leaders of young men's societies and the people themselves for their initial selection and subsequent exercise of authority, found themselves increasingly estranged from this traditional context as they became simultaneously tied to and empowered by an alien colonial superstructure. The power of the chief increased in relation to these other traditional groups. At the same time, the chief lost the position of pre-eminence which his new employer, the British government, now enjoyed. In the eyes of both chief and people, the local incarnation of alien rule, the District Commissioner, assumed an aura of authority and the prerogatives of power. A further departure from traditional forms was the attempt to establish federations of chiefs. The first federation in Shinyanga in 1926 was followed by others in Maswa and Kwimba. Smaller sub-district federations were up in Mwanza: and, in November 1932, all the chiefs of Sukumaland met together for the first time. After debating at length the virtues of paramount versus federation, the administration decided to permit no paramount chief. The` most influential' of the Chiefs, however, occupied a `somewhat nebulous position as `primus inter pares.' Even the federation idea itself was alien to Sukumaland's pattern of autonomous multiple chiefdoms. This, together with the burden of disagreement within the administration and other preoccupations of the 1930s. Meant that little of substance was accomplished before the war. Nonetheless, the concentration of power in the hands of chiefs and initiatives in the direction of federation illustrated that the doctrine of indirect rule was elastic enough to support radical modification of traditional political structures. DEVELOPMENT Development in Tanganyika as a whole had suffered between the wars because of the change- over from German administration, the paucity of administrative personnel, and a continuing uncertainty as to the future of mandated territory. This anomalous status inhabited both private and governmental expenditure. Britain did not know that the territory would not some day revert to German administration, and was, in any case, more devoted to the improvement of her colonies.
The depression further stalled development during the final decade of the inter-war period. Within Tanganyika, the Sukuma, though populous and wealthy by subsistence standards, received less attention than, say, the Chagga or the Haya. The indifferent fertility of the cultivation steppe did not attract the Europeans farmer who preferred the volcaty richsoil of the Kilimanjaro slopes and the more familiar European environment of the highland areas. Though Catholic and Protestant missionary outposts in Sukumaland dated from the end of the nineteenth century, Christianity did not rapidly take hold. Even missionaries were subject to European preferences: they were often less inclined toward the disease-ridden shore areas and the vast expanse of open land stretching to the south and east from Mwanza than they were to the Verdant cliffs and sandy beaches of Bukoba, or to the fragrant atmosphere and bracing climate of Moshi or Tukuyu. Characteristics of the people and the economy were important factor, too. The Sukuma's very life depended upon the cultivation of food crops. Drought and famine were ever-present possibilities. To prevail against the inevitable vagary o climate and soil in the cultivation steppe required the sustained labour of men, women and children during several stages of the yearly agricultural cycle. Usually by the critical European eye as a hard worker (in other repeats he was disparaged as `dull' and `unimaginative'), the Sukuma found that the daily and seasonal requirements of his mixed agricultural and pastoral economy left little leisure for the luxuries of European education and religion. While he and his wife (or wives) and his older children tilled the fields the younger children, even the smallest, took the family's few head of cattle, sheep and goats, out to graze. Even the construction of home required long treks into the few remains forested areas and laborious transport of poles back to the homestead site. Availability of water, too, was a problem during the dry season when the rivers disappeared beneath the sandy soil. In contrast, the Haya and Chagga lacked cattle. Even their staple nutrient, bananas, was available with a minimum of toil in the ields. Coffee cash-cropping again with relatively little labour required-provided revenue. Material for house construction was readily available, as were water supplies. Leisure and funds for the indulgence of European-inspired pursuits were available, especially to men and to school-age children. European missionaries proliferated in the `progressive ' context of Moshi and Bukoba. Men of radically different temperament, they implemented and formulated, shaped and directed, initiated and rescinded policy and program during the most critical decade of colonial rule in Sukumaland- the 1950s. As we have noted, the idea of federation for Sukuma chiefs dated from 1932 and even earlier. Also, experiments in land rehabilitation and stock control were tried on a limited scale in the 1930s. The Second World War, however, delayed any major departures, political or economic. Several chiefs asked in 1942 for a resuscitation of Sukumaland-wide meetings, but they were told that wartime demands argue for the postponement of any new initiative until peace had been restored. Nor did available staff or funds allow the launching of large-scale economic programs other than the campaign- directly related to the war effort -for the slaughter of cattle to supply beef for Britain. Not until after the war did the administration embark on dynamic and wide-ranging programs for political and economic advance.
THE SUKUMALAND FEDERAL COUNCIL Malcom was the most persistent advocate of a federal council of chiefs for Sukumaland. His ideas for political federation were closely linked with his assessment of the problems and potentialities of the land and his conviction that concerted efforts by the administration were needed to reverse the quickening trend toward desiccation. He viewed the Sukuma as an industrious but unwittingly destructive people. In Malcom's view, only a supradistrict organisation- sensitive to the particular characteristics and moulded to the special needs of Sukumaland-could adequately meet the challenge to rational planning which this large and important portion of the territory posed. In 1945 on taking up the post of District Commissioner of Maswa, he was asked to select a suitable site for a Sukumaland federation headquarters. First Steps After the war the administration moved ahead with Malcom's propasals. Preliminary work on dam construction and general layout began on the new Malya site, ten miles north of Malampaka railway station, in the late 1945. In October 1946 all the Sukuma chiefs met together for the first time. Lord Hailey laid the foundation stone of a federation council hall in September 1947, and Acting Governor Surridge officially opened the new council hall a year. As a Senior Provincial Commissioner wrote before his departure from Sukumaland in 1946" This great federation of Sukumaland is perhaps one of the most important federal developments of local government in Africa", embracing as it does a population of over three quarter of a million in laying the foundations of what may well become an African tribal unit of no small importance. From the beginning, the federation was associated with plans for the development and rehabilitation of Sukumaland. As the federation took its first steps in the three years after the war, the first of what were later to become a 'team of officers' began to arrive and 'preliminary plan for land utilisation in Sukumaland, for the first three years of limited staff, was prepared. Beginning with the 1946 meeting, the federation council, uniting all of Sukumaland's fifty-two chiefdoms, met twice yearly. A select executive committee of twelve chiefs met four times a year. In his opening speech to the first plenary session in 1946, the Provincial Commissioner stressed the developmental problems of Sukumaland and the Government's plans for attacking them. He cited the advantage of the larger unit which would allow uniformity of administration throughout Sukumaland, encouraging both good government and economic progress. Development Efforts: By 1948 the administration appointed a full-time Coordinating Officer (late made a Deputy Provincial Commissioner) to oversee the progress of the federation and of the development scheme. Discussion at Federal Council meetings expanded to include virtually every aspect of administration and development. Customary law, agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine, education, welfare, courts, markets, publications, native administration, development and research all came within the purview of the council. To implement development schemes, the Federal Council formulated rules and orders which grew in such bulk and complexity by the early 1950s that they impinged on virtually every aspect of a Sukuma's life and work. While the Chiefs enjoyed relatively little leeway in relation to the plans and projects of their Eauropean superiors, it must not be assumed that they served simply as grudging and recalcitrant tools of the administration. The administration succeed in convincing some chiefs, especially the more educated ones, that its programs were farsighted and progressive. The chiefs, too, achieved an added measure of status through their involvement in the superior deliberations and special affairs of the Federal Council, and they became more powerful in relation to their constituents. Lord Hailey noted with considerable prescience for this is precisely what happened in the middle 1950s. Chiefs and Councillors: The administration fostered attempts to forestall such unhappy eventuality through the application of democratizing measures. In 1947 the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Arthur Creech Jones, pressed for the development of more representative institutions in African local government.
A dynamic and idealistic young Provincial Commissioner, R. de Z. Hall, set out convince the chiefs tat people's representatives, or councillors, should be added to the Federal Council. In Maswa, Malcolm was partial to the selection of "basumba batale", the village leaders of the young men's organizations, 'as more independent representatives of popular sentiment than the village headmen'.
1. Maswa chiefs had found them 'of enormous value in enlisting the support of the people' for development measures.
2. The majority of chiefs, however, refused to accept basumba balate, who had sometimes in the past acted to check their authority.
3. Noting that the tasks of the basumba balate were traditionally 'to assist with problems in the countryside and not to attend meeting of the chiefs,' the latter insisted that the basumba balate would be 'irresponsible' and 'destructive' in any council. In 1948 various schemes were proposed in the several districts for the selection of representatives. It soon became clear, however, that most of the chiefs opposed not just the basumba balate but the very idea of representation. They rightly foresaw an inevitable diminution of their own powers. After noting 'that there was no public demand for representation at Maly,' the chiefs ultimately acquiesced to the administration's rationalization 'that it was better to have the machinery ready in advance of the public demand, rather than to appear to make reluctant concessions to it when it became too strong to resist.' Thus, beginning in 1948, each chief came to meetings of the Federal Council accompanied by one or more councillors whose task it was to present the views of the people. In reality, however, many of the councillors were never more than prote'ge'es of the chiefs. No satsfactory system of election was ever devised. Chiefs and subchiefs made their own selections. The councillors participated only marginally, if at all. Though the administration tried various devices to instill a more independent spirit into the councillors, these met with scant success. Most of the councillors, like some of the chiefs, were too unsophisticated to play a significant role and came to Malya primarily for the ride and the overnight allowances. In the formalized and sometimes frighteningly large federation context Eauropean officers and educated chiefs tended to dominate.
A PYRAMID OF REPRESENTATIVE COUNCILS: While Sukumaland's first contingent of people's representatives were testing their wings at Malya, Provincial Commissioner Hall and the government sociologist, Hans Cory, prepared the ground for an even more audacious innovation in local government. Cory, fresh from Bukoba where he had concluded two years of research on Haya history, law and custom with a view toward its unification and codification. By 1949 he was ready to move on to a study of traditional Sukuma political organization preparatory to its reformation along democratic lines 'from the parish council upwards'. The report, which he submitted to the administration in 1950, served as the administration's basis for an attempt over the next five years to establish an elaborate hierarchy of representative councils. Indirect Rule - Democratic Style: The new council scheme superseded indirect rule of both the early pragmatic and later doctrinal varieties. No longer a holding operation requiring but minimum administration, the aggressive colonialism of the postwar era asked of its officers maximum effort to affect rapid political change. With the dogmas of Western liberalism standard parlance throughout the world, even a devotion to the development of indigenous political structures had to share the spotlight with newer commitments to democracy. After a minute scrutiny of the Sukuma trial structure,' Cory held that 'none of the existing institutions could be used as a base for the building up of an effective and modern political system.' He recommended 'complete emancipation from traditional institutions, with the acception of the executive,' because the offices of the great commoners and of chiefdom and village elders 'differ considerably in different areas as to their functions and powers' and because 'the old institutions were based, almost without exception, on conceptions and ideologies which have lost, or are in the process of losing, all hold on the people. He judged, nevertheless, that the Sukuma "had an indigenous political system in which democratic ideas were presented as well as the usual autocratic ones. This made it 'possible to design a constitution which employed latent conceptions to satisfy modern requirements. Though alleged 'latent conceptions' and the retention of 'the executive' allowed the British-still partial to indirect rule-to rationalized the innovations as based to some extent in indigenous culture and practice, the truth was that English local government was being imported virtually intact into the African context. In line with a model proposed by Creech Jones, Cory suggested the election of village (or parish) councils, then indirect election of two members from these to higher councils at subchiefdom or chiefdom level. These, in turn, were to elect representatives from among their own number to district federations and to the Sukumaland Federal Council. With regard to this ascending pyramid of indirectly elected councils, Cory argued that 'there is no reason why this system should not be extended ultimately to the Legislative Council level.' Implementation: Sukumaland, however, was a large enough project for the next few years. With 47 chiefdoms and some 795 village, the completion of the pyramid from village to federation required the incredible total of 907 separate council entities. With strong leadership from Provincial Commissioner E. G. Rowe and the continuous efforts of Cory and administrative officers in the field, over 100 village councils were established in 1951 in selected experimental areas. Another 130 were set up in 1952. In 1953 attention turned to higher councils: 18 chiefdom councils, 37 subchiefdom (and divisional) councils, and 375 additional village councils were established. By 1955 district advisory councils met three or four times a year in all districts. All had some non-African membership by 1956. By that date, too, the entire pyramidal hierarchy of lower councils (each of which met monthly) was virtually complete from village upwards in all districts. Difficulties: Untill the pyramid of councils was completed, a decided gap existed between the Sukumaland Federal Council at Malya and the people in the villages. Even after the pyramid became a fact, the Federal Council, because of its extraordinary size, tended toward 'irresponsibility and unwieldiness.' Representing as it did a joint meeting of the five district federations (47 chiefs, 92 councillors) rather than a council where the principle of delegated representation was recognized, the Federal Council 'apex' was viewed in 1954 as 'out of alignment with the subsequently created base.' There was, however, considerable reluctance on the part of the chiefs and councillors-charasteristic of vested interests in legislatures anywhere in the world-to entertain a motion for the council's reduction in size. Only after considerable prompting from the administration did the council agree to reduce its numbers from 139 to 99, then to 75 members on the formula of 7 chiefs, 7 commoners, and 1 nominated unofficial from each district. The effectiveness of the lower councils varied. The administration quickly discovered that continuous supervision of established councils was necessary in most cases for their continued functioning. Only those councils under especially effective chiefs or subchiefs developed any momentum of their own, and even these required periodic guidance. It was obvious that the limited Eauropean staff could not continuously supervise the monthly meetings of hundreds of councils, and other schemes were attempted. Supervision by unofficial members of chiefdom and subchiefdom councils proved a failure, but African council supervisors employed by the district office proved somewhat more successful. Village councils, however continued to languish. Where the village councils were most active, initiative came from chiefs rather than from the local units themselves. Moreover, the substance of the activity was most likely to be with regard to implementing policies set at higher levels. In Shinyanga, for example, 'the Chiefs, on their own initiative and through the Parish Councils, set about the over-stocking problem in a most determined manner and it speaks well for the usefulness of the Parish Councils.' The Setting: In essence the government used the councils as instruments to implement and enforce unpopular land, agricultural and animal husbandry legislation. The inherent contradiction between democratic representation of the people and control of all policy from above by the government through the chiefs was never resolved. This difficulty was aggravated by the fact that the people relied upon the chiefs to make decisions, a pattern enforced by tradition and by the educational differences between the chief and his people. Even Cory recognized that 'the present political set-up…has been reformed according to our own pattern before it is ready to fulfil many of its primary conditions' (e.g., 'civic spirit,' a 'general high level of culture and morals'). He noted 'the lack of control…by any party or constituency' to permit councillors to express their personal views, making it 'impossible to assume that the councillors are representative of public opinion. Finally, Cory and the administration generally failed sufficiently to sense the dangers inherent in the isolation of the rurally based councils from the more vocal economic and political interests developing independently in the urban and semi-urban areas. Representation of voluntary associations on native authority councils was not permitted. The arrangement allowed appointment of individually qualified Africans to higher level councils and permitted direct elections at village level, but these devices proved insufficient to bridge the widening gap when the administration and the chiefs so clearly dominated the entire authority system, and the voluntary organizations so clearly existed and functioned outside that system. When the final assault on the colonial administration, and with it the native authority system, came in the late 1950s, the active and vocal segments of the population reacted against the councils because they embodied more of alien control and unpalatable legislation than they did of the democratic representation which was the avowed justification for their existence. THE SUKUMALAND DEVELOPMENT SCHEME: Neither the Sukumaland Federal Council nor the elaborate pyramid of representative councils below it were designed simply as intriguing experiments in local government. They were designed also to enlist the support of the people for policies related to the rehabilitation and development of Sukumaland and as instruments for the most efficient implementation of those policies. If anything, political advancement was regarded as secondary in importance. Describing the government's plans for Sukumaland as 'the first great step taken towards the generation of your country,' the Acting Governor told the Federal Council of chiefs in 1948: I also advise you that, in however important a light you regard your own political aspirations, these must take second place to your people's agricultural, social and economic progress. It must be remembered that there can be no sound political advancement unless the social and economic framework is secure. Rounce and 'The Team'. In addition to the work of Malcolm, the research into land utilization in the cultivation steppe conducted by Rounce provided the basis-both in terms of factual data and in terms of psychology-for the government's development plans in Sukumaland. Rounce's findings were published 'with the object of assisting those who are to extend the improved methods to the people. Among administrative and developmental officers in Sukumaland, Rounce's book became known as the 'Sukumaland Bible'. Both a formidable compendium of factual data on land, crops, livestock and people, and an elaboration of proper principles for application in the field, the book provided the starting point for land usage planning in Sukumaland. After the war Rounce himself served as Regional Assistant Director of Agriculture in the Lake Province and gave the added force of his personality to laying the foundations of the Sukumaland Development Scheme. Eauropen officers, posted on special assignment to the Sukumaland Development Team at Malaya, began to arrive in 1946 and 1947; but it was not until the early 1950s that Sukumaland felt the full impact of the Development Scheme. In essence the Scheme was designed to maximize the possibilities for productive use of the land by redistribution of what appeared to be surplus populations of people and livestock. Then, applying as rationally and consistenly as possible what were believed to be sound principles of cultivation and anima husbandry, Rounce's famous 'Sukumaland Equation' outlined an optimum population density of 100 per square mile and estimated water requirements per 30 square miles of inhabited area. As with the contemporaneous attempts to establish pyramids of representative councils, the aims were laudable and idealistic. The difficulty was the extent to which the implementation of the aims might require undesirable controls and restrictive legislation. Argument over the virtue of techniques of compulsion versus those of example and persuasion was to remain lively throughout the history of the Sukumaland Development Scheme and beyond. Rounce, the most influential figure in the field, argued that 'the African must be compelled to help himself.' Since 'agriculture…is the foundation of the prosperity…of the greater number of Africans and as such should be uppermost in the minds of the administrators,' Rounce pleaded for more emphasis by the administration on agriculture, and suggested 'an understanding by those who govern that in place of the stress which forces Eauropeans to do things, the African must be compelled-and forceably too-to improve the conditions under which he lives, with his own hands. Though Rounce and others could have desired it, the Tanganyikan administration did not agree to legislation permitting the forcible removal of people from overpopulated areas. Dar es Salaam ruled that the number of persons could be restricted in any new areas opened up by the clearing of bush and provision of water supplies, but only encouragement could be used to diminish the populations already over-concentrated in the heavily settled areas. Refusal to admit new persons to already overcrowded areas was permissible, but eviction of trespassers could not be countenanced. They could, however, be prosecuted and fined according to prevailing practice. Legislation of various sorts was already on the books of the individual district federations before the Development Scheme was effectively launched. Native authority orders dating from 1946 and 1947 required every farmer yearly to plant one acre of cotton, to tie-ridge one acre of cultivated area for conservation of top-soil and to uproot and burn cotton stalks after harvest for prevention of insect infestation in the subsequent year's crop. In 1948, after the Federal Council was established as a superior native authority, the chiefs decided 'that the power to make rules under the Native Authority Ordinance shall only be exercised by them jointly, together with the power to make orders in respect of matters appertaining to agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry. In 1949 consolidated sets of orders with regard to tie-ridging, planting of cassava, inter-planting of cotton and food crops, manuring, ploughing, soil conservation and forestry were approved by the Federal Council. While Dar es Salaam dallied with the fine points, the first instalments of compulsory legislation were already on the books in Sukumaland. Land Usage Councils: After protracted negotiations with Dar es Salaam, the substance of the land usage legislation advocated by Rounce and Proviancial Commissioner Rowe was passed by the Sukumaland Federal Council in May 1950, approved by the Governor in December, and signed into law by resolution of the Federal Council in May 1951. Unlike existing legislation which sought to limit soil erosion and increase crop yields, the new Sukumaland Federation Land Settlement Rules and Livestock Restriction Rules were designed to attack the underlying problem of human and stock densities in relation to available land. The legislation established a hierarchy of land usage councils, composed of native authorities and popularly elected representatives, were supervised by advisory councils staffed by provincial and district administrative personnel. The councils determined maximum population densities for villages and labelled villages as 'open,' 'restricted,' 'reserved,' 'closed' or 'bush-edge' units depending on the desirability of and conditions for further settlement. Prospective immigrants were required to apply for entry permits. The councils also ordered the sale or removal of stock from overcrowded areas-the first compulsory destocking in Sukumaland since the Second World War-and all stock movements from one land usage area to another required a permit. Persons convicted of offenses against the rules were subject to fine or imprisonment. The administration soon discovered that land usage councils could be set up effectively only in areas where the political 'Cory councils' were already functioning. In spite of the desire of agricultural officers to have a separate set of councils based on rationally determined land units and devoted entirely to land problems, it was too much to expect the administration successfully to inaugurate, or for the people simultaneously to accept and operate, two new council hierarchies which dealt with different matters and had different yet overlapping geographical bounderies. In 1953 the administration and the Federal Council decided that 'political councils…must assume responsibility for the implementation of land usage policies as one of their more important functions. MULTI-RACIALISM AND REGIONAL COUNCILS: Post-Second World War constitutional developments in Sukumaland involved even more substantial departures from the theory of indirect rule than the Sukumaland Federal Council and the Cory pyramid of subordinate representative councils. The desire of the government that democratization should provide a role for the non-African as well as the African (at least at higher levels of local government) produced a multi-racial policy of territorial political development which can be regarded in retrospect only as the principal blunder of the Twining regime. Together with a felt need for decentralization of government from Dar es Salaam to appropriate subordinate units, this led in 1949 to the formation of the Lake Province Council, by 1954 to multi-racial district advisory councils, and in 1955 to the establishment of a statutory South east Lake Country Council. The Lake Province Council: A non-statutory advisory council with some executive control over the administration of development funds, the Lake Province Council was the first of its kind in the territory. Stretching from Bukoba in the west to Musoma in the east and encompassing one-fourth of Tanganyika's population and half of its productive wealth, the province seemed a likely place to launch the multi-racial experiment. Divided equally between nine ex officio and nominated senior officials of the provincial administration and nine unofficial members (including two Eauropeans, two Asians and five Africans), the Council met for the first time in June 1949. The language of debate was English rather than Swahili, which sharply limited the possibilities for African membership. Chief Shoka Luhende of Uduhe in Shinyanga District was the only Sukuma appointed at the outset. Eustace Kibaja, a Tanga-born government clerk who received the first nomination as unofficial Africa representative of Mwanza township, was replaced in 1952 by Paul Bomani, a Sukuma and the leader of the cotton cooperatives. Following English patterns of local government organization and procedure, the council divided into functional committees. The full council met three times yearly. Its agenda customarily included official response to questions of public interest; examination of reports on the work of departments and on development schemes; consideration of recommendations from the three council committees; and debate on formal motions. This was the first multi-racial local government body of any size in Tanganyika (outside the Legislative Council itself and a few township councils). It was explicitly designed to be 'the forerunner of similar and equally significant political developments in other parts of the Territory.' Provincial Commissioner Hall (himself an unusually progressive exponent of African constitutional advancement) felt it necessary to explain the rationale behind the multi-racial from to the first meeting of the Council. Nothing that in the neighboring countries of Uganda, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland 'the present tendency is to create Provincial African Councils' he explained that: This is not intended in Tanganyika, since it is considered that the interests of immigrants races and of Africans are so closely interlocked, and that the contribution which immigrants can make to the development of Tanganyika is so great that it would be unrealistic and indeed against the interests of the indigenous people to aim at purely African institutions at so high a level as the Province. Frustration and Failure: With the single exception of its brief participation in the abortive Lake Province Local Tribes Union, the Sukuma Union in this first phase of its postwar history concerned itself entirely with the affairs of Sukuma residents of Mwanza township. Its interests were most narrow and its membership apparently highest in its first year, 1946. With eight officers and some sixty war leaders providing the nucleus of the Union, total dues-paying membership probably reached well over a hundred. The Union and its Membership were concerned entirely with the doctrine of cooperation and the practicalities of mutual aid. The Union was, in fact, an attempt to re-create in the town context a sense of tribal community and a network of communal obligations. It sought to provide some of the services for town-locked individuals which they would have enjoyed had they lived in traditional rural communities. By its very nature, however, a heterogeneous town society encouraged the breakdown of old loyalties and the formation of new social alignment based on geographical proximity, religious ties, occupational commitments and a variety of extra-curricular interests. This, plus logistical problems which mutual aid schemes encountered in the town situation and the monetary outlays which alone could make assistance to individuals meaningful in an urban context, combined to make the obstacles to success formidable indeed.
Below is a list of watemi (chiefs) in Buhungukila
...................................
