accumulation by land dispossession and labor ... - Land Portal

(ii) Methods
This research employed a mix of research methods. These included semi-structured
interviews with district officials, village officials and selected villagers; focus group
discussions (FGDs) with villagers and village councils; and consultations with other
researchers. The research also involved reading village assemblies and councils‘ minutes
as well as official, albeit public, correspondences between district and village officials on
one side and those involving the investors on the other.
2.0 The Politics of Land in Tanzania
Tanzania is highly regarded as a country richly endowed with natural and human
resources. Its mainland part – the then Tanganyika – won its independence from Britain
in 1961 and became a republic in 1962. Zanzibar, its main isle part, got ‗independence‘ in
1963. However, upon a successful, albeit contentious, revolution in the latter, the two
parts hurriedly formed the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964. In both parts, the
struggle for land – as epitomized by the famous Meru Land Case and the Kiembe Samaki
uprising in the 1950s – informed the quest for self-determination during colonial
occupation and continues to do so in the post neo-colonial context.
With a total area of about 945, 087 square kilometres, Tanzania‘s land surface, currently
estimated at 888, 200 square kilometres, has been attracting land grabbers since the times
of Karl Peters and his fellow German conquistadors claimed to have acquired an area
―covering 140,000 square kilometres‖ through ten ―particularly dubious‖ treaties with
―African chieftains‖ (Juhani Koponen 1994: 72). The country‘s population – which has
quadrupled from about 11 million people in the immediate aftermath of independence
and union to nearly 44 million in 2010 – is increasing at a growth rate of 2.9,
continuously shattering the myth of a vast underpopulated-cum-underutilized land. By
the time the previous political regime – the third phase government – came into power in
1995, only ―10.1 percent of the land [was] under cultivation, of which 93.4 per cent [was]
under small-scale while some 6.6 per cent [was] under large-scale farming‖ (Land Policy
of 1995 as cited in Issa Shivji 2009: 106). By the early 2000, as the National Sample
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