tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/zanzibar-22181/articlesZanzibar – The Conversation2024-03-02T12:59:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2248862024-03-02T12:59:12Z2024-03-02T12:59:12ZAli Hassan Mwinyi: the Tanzanian former president who oversaw the transition to market economy<p>Ali Hassan Mwinyi, Tanzania’s second president <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/former-tanzania-president-ali-hassan-mwinyi-dies-at-98-4541336">who has died aged 98</a>, pushed through tough economic and political reforms that transformed the East Africa nation from socialism to an open economy and a multi-party democracy. He was president from 1985 to 1995.</p>
<p>He did all of this in the shadow of Julius Nyerere who had led Tanzania since independence in 1961 and turned the country into a one-party socialist state. Tanganyika joined together with Zanzibar in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. Nyerere stepped down in 1985 but remained chairman of the party that had ruled Tanzania since independence.</p>
<p>Mwinyi’s presidency was always going to be a test, coming at a difficult period. The country was in a serious economic turmoil. Nyerere had admitted that the <a href="https://books.openedition.org/africae/713?lang=en">Ujamaa policy</a> – Tanzania’s socialist experience – had failed. Nyerere decided it was time the country tried another leader. He stepped aside in 1985. During that period, the country had experienced drought, the impacts of the oil shocks and the <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199791279/obo-9780199791279-0242.xml">Kagera War</a>, which Tanzania fought to oust Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=kxptJf0AAAAJ&hl=en">political science scholar</a>, I have studied the politics, political parties and democratisation of Tanzania and Zanzibar in the last 10 years. It is my view that it took Mwinyi’s careful balancing act to ward off Nyerere’s influence after taking the presidency. He had to take bold decision amid the shadow of Mwalimu Nyerere who remained as the chairman of the ruling party CCM.</p>
<p>Mwinyi will be remembered for steadying the economic ship and setting ground for <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-benjamin-william-mkapa-a-life-of-achievements-and-regrets-143422">President William Mkapa</a> to consolidate economic liberalisation. Although there are controversies as to whether he was truly a Zanzibari. This notwithstanding, his elevation as the first Zanzibari Union president somewhat helped to ease the Union tensions. In the postscript of his memoir, Mwinyi reflects on several issues and prided his legacy on the economic reforms he initiated. </p>
<h2>Early life</h2>
<p>A trained teacher, Mwinyi was born on 8 May 1925 in Mkuranga, Coast region, Tanzania Mainland. Between 1933 and 1942, he attended primary school at Mangapwani and Dole – Zanzibar. He studied for Diploma in Education from 1954 to 1956 at the University of Adult Education in Dublin, United Kingdom. He specialised in English and Arabic languages. He taught at Mangapwani and Bumbwini schools in Zanzibar. He later served as an ambassador, and minister in various government ministries before becoming president of Zanzibar.</p>
<p>A rank outsider, Mwinyi’s elevation to the presidency of Tanzania was rather fortuitous. Nyerere had other preferred successors. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aboud-Jumbe">Aboud Jumbe</a>, the man who Mwinyi succeeded as president of Zanzibar in 1984 was Nyerere’s preferred successor. Nyerere had always wished a Zanzibari to succeed him as a way of galvanising the Union which was formed in 1964. However, the tense political period between 1983 and 1984 culminated with Jumbe falling out of favour, and being <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/aboud-jumbe-he-dared-and-paid-the-price-2564240">kicked out</a> as the president of Zanzibar and as vice president of the Union government. By virtue of being president of Zanzibar and vice president of the Union, Mwinyi became Nyerere’s compromise successor. Nyerere had described Mwinyi as honest, humble, and a loyal socialist.</p>
<h2>The reforms</h2>
<p>Mwinyi was not a socialist. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45341629">At the time he was taking over as president</a> of Tanzania, Mwinyi compared himself to an anthill, succeeding the colossal socialist ideologue. He carefully negotiated and struck a balance between loyalty to Nyerere and driving the reforms. Chief among his reforms was re-initiating negotiations with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – two institutions Nyerere had fallen out with. These negotiations meant that Tanzania was transitioning to a liberal market-led economy. </p>
<p>During Mwinyi’s first term in office, he <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/downloadpdf/book/9781557752321/ch003.xml">launched</a> the three-year Economic Recovery Program in 1986. The aim was to spur positive growth, reduce inflation and restore sustainable balance of payments. </p>
<p>With this programme, there was an <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/display/book/9781557752321/ch003.xml">upturn</a> in the country’s economy with the GDP growing at an average rate of 3.9% compared, to 1% during the 1980-1985 period. There was also a 4.8% increase in agricultural productivity, a 2.7% upsurge in manufacturing as well as a significant growth in external investment. The downside to these reforms was the rise in corruption and misappropriation of public funds. These economic reforms necessitated political reforms. President Mwinyi was able to rally the ruling CCM party, which was reluctant to accept International Monetary Fund and World Bank conditions. </p>
<p>In 1992, the Mwinyi administration acceded to constitutional amendments with a return to multiparty politics.</p>
<h2>Foreign policy</h2>
<p>Mwinyi also changed Tanzania’s foreign policy. Tanzania had modelled itself as a champion of <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzania-south-africa-deep-ties-evoke-africas-sacrifices-for-freedom-202448">pan-Africanism and African liberation</a>. This was the key pillar of the country’s post-independent foreign policy. </p>
<p>In line with Tanzania’s position regarding apartheid South Africa, Mwinyi called for tough sanctions as a means of defeating white minority rule. </p>
<p>The transition from Nyerere to Mwinyi in 1985 heralded a new foreign policy with major conflicts in the Great Lakes Region. As President Mwinyi was settling into his second term, conflicts in the Great Lakes began, with Tanzania feeling the need to act as a mediator. In the 1990s, Tanzania was the key facilitator in the Rwanda domestic crisis. The Rwanda Genocide of 1994 had immediate impact on Tanzania with massive inflows of refugees. </p>
<p>President Mwinyi admitted in his <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/mzee-rukhsa">autobiography</a> that the Rwanda Genocide was one of his greatest foreign policy challenges. He recalled the circumstances leading to the events of 6 April 1994, the start of the genocide. He had called for the meeting to discuss the peace and security in Burundi and Rwanda in Dar es Salaam. </p>
<p>After the meeting ended, Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira and Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana left in one plane which was shot down, sparking off the genocide in Rwanda. Tanzania received many refugees fleeing the killings. In 1995, Tanzania’s city of Arusha became host of the UN backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to investigate those charged with genocide. During Mwinyi’s second term in office, plans to revive the East African Community began with the signing of an agreement to establish the permanent commission for East African Cooperation in 1993. This process culminated with reformalisation of the East African Community in 2000.</p>
<p>But it is Mwinyi’s contribution to liberalisation that will be his enduring legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224886/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicodemus Minde is affiliated with the Institute for Security Studies. </span></em></p>Ali Hassan Mwinyi successfully drove economic and political reforms in Tanzania, all in the shadow of his predecessor, Julius Nyerere.Nicodemus Minde, Adjunct Lecturer, United States International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1998322023-02-16T13:12:04Z2023-02-16T13:12:04ZTanzania is ruled with impunity – four key issues behind calls for constitutional reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510162/original/file-20230214-20-egw7ke.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzanian opposition politician Freeman Mbowe (left) flashes a victory sign at a public rally in January 2023.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Jamson/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzania’s president issued a <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/01/tanzania-president-hassan-lifts-the-blanket-ban-on-political-assemblies/">statement</a> in June 2016 announcing a ban on political rallies outside campaign periods. The ban was unconstitutional. </p>
<p><a href="https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/constitution.pdf#page=17">Article 20 (1)</a> of the constitution of Tanzania allows for public assembly. Other laws, such as the <a href="https://media.tanzlii.org/files/legislation/akn-tz-act-1992-5-eng-2019-11-30.pdf">Political Parties Act</a> and the <a href="https://www.tanzanialaws.com/principal-legislation/parliamentary-immunities-powers-and-privileges-act">Parliamentary Immunities, Powers and Privilege Act</a>, give political parties and politicians the right to conduct rallies. </p>
<p>Despite these laws, it took another <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/09/tanzania-ends-ban-political-rallies">presidential statement</a> in January 2023 to unban rallies. This illustrates the power of the president – even over the constitution. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzania-opposition-rallies-are-finally-unbanned-but-this-doesnt-mean-democratic-reform-is-coming-198436">Tanzania: opposition rallies are finally unbanned – but this doesn't mean democratic reform is coming</a>
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<p>Opposition parties and activists have noted that this great presidential power is a constitutional loophole. The Tanzanian constitution has proved to be weak in protecting itself. </p>
<p>A constitution can protect itself if it has clear checks and balances. With <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/interview-tundu-lissu-discusses-need-constitutional-reform-tanzania">imperial presidential powers</a>, the constitution gives the executive branch of government the upper hand over the two other branches of government: the judiciary and legislature. </p>
<p>Such powers – and their abuse – have led opposition parties and activists to <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzania-must-face-up-to-calls-for-reform-if-it-wants-to-keep-the-peace-172967">call</a> for constitutional reviews. </p>
<p>There are four reasons driving the agitation for constitutional change in Tanzania: unfree and unfair elections; unchecked presidential powers; political impunity; and the skewed political arrangement between Tanzania and Zanzibar.</p>
<h2>Entrenching dominance</h2>
<p>Recent calls for constitutional change in Tanzania <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/109246/tanzania-whats-really-behind-ccms-refusal-to-change-the-constitution/">began in 2010</a>. A constitutional review commission was set up in 2012, headed by former prime minister <a href="https://www.taas-online.or.tz/members/view/hon-joseph-sinde-warioba">Joseph Warioba</a>. The commission drafted a report, and a constitutional review assembly was set up to debate it. </p>
<p>The review assembly was dominated by members of the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi. They altered the Warioba report and proposed a draft constitution similar to the existing one. A coalition of opposition parties boycotted the process and it stalled. </p>
<p>Maintaining the same constitution has been the ruling party’s strategy. The current constitution facilitates <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/opinion/2022/2022-07/tanzanias-undemocratic-constitution-is-a-template-for-disaster.html">one-party dominance</a> by entrenching the party’s and president’s power. </p>
<p>Further review was stopped by president <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-john-magufuli-a-brilliant-start-but-an-ignominious-end-157092">John Pombe Magufuli</a>, who came into power in 2015. Magufuli rejected any calls for constitutional reforms – and acted in a way that disregarded the existing law.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-john-magufuli-a-brilliant-start-but-an-ignominious-end-157092">Tanzania’s John Magufuli: a brilliant start but an ignominious end</a>
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<h2>Chasing change</h2>
<p>The four triggers for constitutional reform in Tanzania are related.</p>
<p><strong>1. Repeated unfree and unfair elections</strong> </p>
<p>In Tanzania, unfree and unfair elections began after the constitution was amended <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/tan5.htm">in 1992</a> to allow for multi-party elections. Since then, there have been six general elections. Each has been marred by accusations of an <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/jpola5&div=36&id=&page=">unlevel playing field</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/29/tanzania-announces-election-winner-amid-claims-of-vote-rigging">rigging</a> and violence. The <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/11/1077292">2020 general election</a> was especially violent. </p>
<p>Constitutional reform is crucial to realise free and fair elections. This is because the composition of the electoral commission as provided for by the constitution is bound to be biased. The president, who is often the incumbent candidate and the chairperson of the ruling party, is responsible for appointing the executive director and commissioners of the commission. All election returning officers at the constituency level are also presidential appointees. </p>
<p>The consequence is that electoral officials are likely to be loyal to their appointing authority rather than to the ideals of free and fair elections. </p>
<p>Additionally, once the presidential vote has been announced, the constitution <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/news/1840340-5593992-b0yrsv/index.html">doesn’t allow for it to be challenged in court</a>. </p>
<p><strong>2. Unchecked presidential powers</strong> </p>
<p>Under the current constitution, the president of Tanzania has enormous power. He or she appoints senior officials in other branches of government and all heads of public institutions. This includes the chief justice, all other judges and the inspector general of police. The president also appoints the controller audit general, who audits government accounts. </p>
<p>Through loyalty, these appointees are likely to enforce the president’s statements even if they are unconstitutional. </p>
<p>Further, the president cannot be prosecuted as per <a href="https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/constitution.pdf#page=29">Article 46</a> of the constitution. The president is protected during and after their tenure in office. Such provisions promote impunity. </p>
<p><strong>3. Impunity</strong> </p>
<p>Impunity in Tanzania plays out where one group of people can do what they like politically, while another group – in particular opposition politicians – faces excessive exposure to an unjust system. </p>
<p>Trumped up charges against opposition leaders, activists and business people deemed critical of the president are popular tools for keeping critics silent. Such charges, facilitated by undemocratic laws, were used during Magufuli’s regime. Magufuli <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/17/tanzanian-president-john-magufuli-is-dead-vp">died in March 2021</a> and was succeeded by Samia Suluhu Hassan.</p>
<p>In the early days of Hassan’s administration, in July 2021, Freeman Mbowe, the leader of the opposition party Chadema, was <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/31/tanzania-opposition-leader-freeman-mbowe-appears-in-court-to-face-charges">arrested and charged</a> with terrorism offences. Due to political pressure – and a failure to find evidence – the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60616800">charges were dropped</a>. Mbowe spent eight months in jail.</p>
<p>After his release in March 2022, Hassan <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/tanzania-frees-detained-opposition-leader-mbowe-drops-charges-citizen-newspaper-2022-03-04/">expressed her determination</a> to boost the country’s democracy. She has also expressed her resentment of the unjust political system and <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/massive-fraud-at-the-dpp-s-office-as-plea-bargain-money-stashed-away-in-china-4106530">called out corruption</a> at the office of public prosecutions. </p>
<p>But presidential sentiments like these are not adequate as they don’t lead to institutional changes in political structures or norms. </p>
<p><strong>4. The Tanzania-Zanzibar agreement</strong> </p>
<p>This is arguably the most contentious trigger for calls for constitutional reform. </p>
<p>The political relationship between the island of Zanzibar and the mainland, Tanzania, has raised calls for Zanzibari autonomy. The government of the United Republic of Tanzania deals with union matters, as well as all mainland issues. The Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar deals with the matters of Zanzibar only. </p>
<p>Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution and this current structure increase the ruling party’s influence in Zanzibari politics. Constitutional debate on this issue is often around <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45342101">four proposed structures</a>: one joint government, two governments, three governments (with the union being the <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/zanzibar-mourns-the-advocate-of-three-tier-system-of-government--1354218">third tier</a>), or a confederation with a central authority. </p>
<h2>What next?</h2>
<p>The underlying call for constitutional reform seeks to uproot the one-party state system to allow for accountability and democratic progress in Tanzania. Under the current constitution, any pronouncements of change are cosmetic, with no sustainable effects. </p>
<p>For Tanzania to realise real and sustainable democracy, a new constitution is necessary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199832/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aikande Clement Kwayu has previous received funding from various academic and research institutions. She has volunteered at CHADEMA. </span></em></p>Tanzania’s six-year ban on political rallies shows how the president’s power can override the constitution.Aikande Clement Kwayu, Independent researcher & Lecturer, Tumaini University MakumiraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1917982022-10-16T15:29:44Z2022-10-16T15:29:44ZClimate change must be a catalyst for reform of the World Heritage system<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489563/original/file-20221013-11-omsint.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C13%2C2204%2C1352&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Switzerland's Great Aletsch Glacier is 23km long and located in the World Heritage site Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch. It leads the list of glaciers in the European Alps in terms of length and size, yet since the mid-19th century, it has lost more than 25% of its volume.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Great_Aletsch_Glacier.jpg">Jo in Riederalp/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the last few years, many parts of the world have been devastated by <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-affects-extreme-weather-around-the-world/">extreme droughts, floods, wild fires and heatwaves linked to climate change</a>. But climate change is not only influencing our weather: it also poses an existential threat to the outstanding universal value (OUV) of many of the world’s most precious sites on UNESCO’s <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/">World Heritage List</a>, and potentially to the World Heritage system itself.</p>
<p>This year is the 50th anniversary of the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/convention/">World Heritage Convention</a>, one of the most successful international conventions. It was adopted in 1972 to protect globally significant heritage places as a common heritage of humankind. Renowned World Heritage sites include the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, Yellowstone National Park and the Galápagos. The convention has been signed by 194 countries (known as states parties). More than 1,150 sites in 167 countries have been inscribed on the World Heritage List for their cultural and/or natural values. On average, around 25 more sites are added to the list at each of the annual meetings of the World Heritage Committee, even as existing sites come under threat from climate change.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The increasing number of World Heritage sites and their increasing exposure to greenhouse gases causing climate change" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487752/original/file-20221003-16-qm218l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487752/original/file-20221003-16-qm218l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487752/original/file-20221003-16-qm218l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487752/original/file-20221003-16-qm218l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487752/original/file-20221003-16-qm218l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487752/original/file-20221003-16-qm218l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487752/original/file-20221003-16-qm218l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The rise is the number of World Heritage sites and their increasing exposure to greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Greg Terrill/UNESCO</span>, <span class="license">Fourni par l'auteur</span></span>
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<p>Climate change is now the most significant threat to many World Heritage sites, especially those inscribed for their natural values. Short- and long-term climate-related impacts are increasing. For example, by 2100 and depending on the emissions scenario used, complete glacier extinction is predicted for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF001139">8 to 21 World Heritage sites</a>, within which glaciers are an attribute of their universal value. The number of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01280-1">African coastal heritage sites at risk</a> from a 100-year extreme flooding and coastal-erosion event, including the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/599/">Stone Town of Zanzibar</a> and <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/599/">Mozambique Island</a>, is projected to more than triple by 2050 under a moderate emissions scenario.</p>
<p>Impacts are cumulative and some will persist for centuries after the world achieves net-zero emissions. Climate change is a threat multiplier, exacerbating existing threats, impacting sites in increasingly complex ways, and demanding further resources for management and adaptation. Food insecurity, social stresses and the displacement of populations as a consequence of climate change will further increase pressures on World Heritage sites.</p>
<p>The concept of outstanding universal value is fundamental to the World Heritage Convention and its processes. OUV has generally been interpreted assuming that the environment is largely stationary, something that climate change has proved incorrect. It will ultimately be impossible to maintain the outstanding universal value for which many sites were inscribed, even if effective global and local mitigation strategies and local adaptation strategies are implemented.</p>
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<p>In Venice, the effectiveness of massive retractable barriers constructed at the entrance to the lagoon will be tested by the <a href="https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-21-2643-2021">projected sea-level rise</a> of anywhere from 17cm to 120cm by 2100 that will bring increasingly frequent, longer-lasting and potentially permanent flooding. A <a href="https://gbrrestoration.org/">restoration and adaptation program</a> is attempting to develop a suite of safe, acceptable interventions to help the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/154/">Great Barrier Reef</a> resist, adapt to, and recover from the impacts of climate change. However, it will be challenging to operationalise interventions at scale across this large World Heritage Area.</p>
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<img alt="Venice flooding, 2010" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489426/original/file-20221012-14-i7ulul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C2048%2C1140&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489426/original/file-20221012-14-i7ulul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489426/original/file-20221012-14-i7ulul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489426/original/file-20221012-14-i7ulul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489426/original/file-20221012-14-i7ulul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489426/original/file-20221012-14-i7ulul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489426/original/file-20221012-14-i7ulul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Flooding has long been a threat in Venice, Italy, but with a projected sea-level rise of anywhere from 17cm to 120cm by 2100, higher water levels will be more frequent, longer-lasting and potentially permanent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/23748404@N00/5265451716">A. Currell/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Substantive reforms are necessary for the World Heritage system to address these challenges. Although amending international conventions is notoriously difficult, the convention is a treaty where many important matters are dealt with in subsidiary documents, especially its <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/">operational guidelines</a>, which are much easier to change than the convention, if state parties so wish.</p>
<p>An open-ended working group is working to finalise a <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/archive/2021/whc21-23GA-inf11-en.pdf">policy document on climate action for World Heritage</a> and to develop an implementation plan. The document outlines high-level directives but says little about the operational reforms required to address the scale and complexity of the challenges. Meaningful operational reforms are likely to be highly contested because of the differing priorities of various states parties. For example, African nations are very concerned about the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2441">under-representation of African sites</a> on the World Heritage List and the perceived over-representation of African sites on the list of World Heritage in Danger.</p>
<p>In 2021, the Australian Academy of Science bought together 18 experts – in climate science, climate vulnerability assessment, IPCC processes, cultural, natural and Indigenous heritage, outlook reporting, site management, World Heritage system processes, environmental law, international law and diplomacy – in a roundtable on reforms to the convention to address the consequences of climate change. Their <a href="https://www.science.org.au/files/userfiles/support/reports-and-plans/2022/climate-change-world-heritage-roundtable-report.pdf">ideas for change</a> focused on three key areas:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>identification of climate-related threats to World Heritage sites;</p></li>
<li><p>the processes for state party reporting to the World Heritage Committee;</p></li>
<li><p>responses to climate impacts to outstanding universal value.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Identification of climate-related threats</h2>
<p>Introducing a requirement for World Heritage nominations to include a standardised vulnerability assessment could provide a baseline against which climate-related impacts to its potential OUV could be monitored. Currently there is no agreed standard: several methods have been applied to <a href="https://doi.org/10.5070/P536146384">individual sites</a> and a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envc.2022.100538">thematic approach</a> has also been used, assessing comparable sites or groups of sites facing similar risks. Clear guidelines around the requirements for such assessments need to be discussed and developed so that assessments are systematic, useful and comparable.</p>
<p>The World Heritage Committee responds to threats to outstanding universal value through complex and resource-hungry reporting processes – these include state-of-conservation reporting, reactive monitoring and a six-year cycle of periodic reporting based on geography. These processes are already under strain due to the large number of sites in the reporting cycle. In 2021, less than 20% of the state-of conservation reports were discussed by the committee. Given the anticipated increase in the number and severity of threats as a result of climate change, the reporting processes need reconsideration. Such change cannot take place without considerable discussion.</p>
<h2>Responding to climate impacts</h2>
<p>As climate change accelerates, the outstanding universal value of some World Heritage sites will be severely or permanently impacted. In others, the changes may be milder. Limits of acceptable change could be developed for each property to identify the amount or nature of change that each property’s attributes can sustain without irretrievable loss of OUV. Accepting that change is inevitable, improved methods are needed to assess significant and minor changes to each site’s statement of OUV as well as clearer guidelines and thresholds for including a site on the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/danger/">List of World Heritage in Danger</a> or delisting it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489570/original/file-20221013-18-adrgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489570/original/file-20221013-18-adrgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489570/original/file-20221013-18-adrgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489570/original/file-20221013-18-adrgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489570/original/file-20221013-18-adrgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489570/original/file-20221013-18-adrgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489570/original/file-20221013-18-adrgad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arlington Reef, located in Queensland, is part of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Developing a set of safe interventions to help this fragile World Heritage site minimise and adapt to the impacts of climate change is essential.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Luka Peternel/Wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These reforms could result in more systematic and comparable evidence for climate impacts as a basis for realistic adaptation strategies and greater transparency and objectivity in decision-making by the World Heritage Committee.</p>
<p>Substantive reform of the operational guidelines would be a fitting project to commence in 2022, the 50th anniversary of the convention. We hope this article will stimulate widespread discussion about these matters, which are existential to the future of the Convention and its capacity to protect the world’s most precious heritage places in the face of climate change.</p>
<p><em>The authors gratefully acknowledge Greg Terrill for his ideas and comments and for Figure 1.</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/485372/original/file-20220919-20-pguqfq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em><a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/next50/">50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention</a> (16 November 2022): World Heritage as a source of resilience, humanity and innovation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191798/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Rising temperatures and extreme weather pose an existential threat to many UNESCO World Heritage sites, but widespread discussion is needed for meaningful change.Helene Marsh, Emeritus Professor, Environmental Science, James Cook UniversityAnita Smith, Associate professor, Archaeology and Heritage, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1844662022-06-06T15:07:04Z2022-06-06T15:07:04ZQueen Elizabeth II: a reign that saw the end of the British empire in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467177/original/file-20220606-22-vdmb9p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II waves from the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the Platinum Jubilee Pageant.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Jackson/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the UK the Queen’s official title is: <a href="https://royalcentral.co.uk/uk/what-are-elizabeth-iis-titles-172181/">Elizabeth the Second</a>, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.</p>
<p>There has been a lot of political and social change during her <a href="https://theconversation.com/taking-a-look-back-at-the-evolution-of-sport-during-queen-elizabeths-platinum-jubilee-184119">70 years on the throne</a>. None less than in what was once her African empire. </p>
<p>Famously, she was in Kenya (then pronounced by the British as “Keenya”), at the luxury Tree Tops game lodge, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-16904171">when her father died in 1952</a>. She returned hastily to Britain to accede to the throne <a href="https://theconversation.com/taking-a-look-back-at-the-evolution-of-sport-during-queen-elizabeths-platinum-jubilee-184119">that year</a>.</p>
<p>This was her second trip to Africa. She had accompanied her parents to South Africa <a href="https://britishheritage.com/the-royal-family-in-south-africa#:%7E:text=In%201947%20the%20Royal%20Family,Swaziland%2C%20Basutoland%20and%20the%20Bechuanaland">in 1947</a>, the monarchy’s “last hurrah” in the country before the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a>, which formalised apartheid, displaced General Jan Smuts’ United Party the following year. </p>
<p>At its height, the British Empire extended over something like a third of the world, but was already in recession when the Queen came to the throne. India had been the “Jewel in the Crown”, but had proceeded to a violently partitioned independence involving the creation of predominantly Muslim Pakistan <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Independence-Day-Indian-holiday">in 1947</a>. Burma (now Myanmar) went <a href="https://www.au.edu/news/myanmar-national-day.html">in 1948</a>. There were still other territories in Asia, notably Malaya, odd outposts in Latin America and various islands in Oceania. And there was still Africa. </p>
<p>There Britain’s territories included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>four territories in west Africa</p></li>
<li><p>four in east Africa (inclusive of Zanzibar, then still separate from Tanganyika), </p></li>
<li><p>the two Rhodesias (Zambia and Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi)</p></li>
<li><p>the three High Commission Territories in southern Africa (Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland), </p></li>
<li><p>the island of Mauritius, and </p></li>
<li><p>the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/British-Empire/Dominance-and-dominions">Dominion of South Africa</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>All are now independent, and have become republics, although all (Zimbabwe being the exception) belong to what used to be known as – but is no longer known as – the “British” <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries">Commonwealth</a>.</p>
<p>It was not realised at the time, nor intended, that the Empire would begin to dissolve as fast as it did after the Queen had come to the throne. However, by the early 1970s a bulk of the Empire had gone. </p>
<p>Britain effectively scuttled in the face of early nationalist stirrings (Ghana); the expense in blood, money and prestige of confronting armed struggle and violence (Malaya and Kenya); the increasing cost of demands for “development” in the colonies; the foreign policy disaster of Suez; and London’s developing sense that it should reorient its trade to a uniting Europe. </p>
<p>In fact, the decolonisation process had started half-a-century before. Ironically, it was South Africa which provided the constitutional precedent for the decolonisation process which was to take place so rapidly during the reign of Elizabeth II.</p>
<h2>The story of the dominions</h2>
<p>The rot (if that is the right word) started at the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10314616608595335?journalCode=rahs18">1911 Imperial Conference </a>, the first of several meetings of the British Prime Minister and his counterparts in the four <a href="https://www.britannica.com/summary/Decline-of-the-British-Empire">“dominions”</a> (Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand). These were all countries of white settlement, territories to which Britain had exported population since the end of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Napoleonic-Wars">Napoleonic wars</a>. </p>
<p>Some went as “explorers”, more as traders, and some (notoriously to Australia) were <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/australia-day">dispatched as convicts</a>. The majority went to make a new life, many escaping hunger and misery at home.</p>
<p>Fearful of a repeat of the loss of their American empire, the British governments of the day conceded “self-government” to British settlers, albeit in fits and starts. An early marker was laid down with by the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliament-and-empire/collections1/parliament-and-canada/british-north-america-act-1867/">North America Act of 1867</a> which created confederation in Canada. </p>
<p>As dominions, such settler states enjoyed “self-government” over their internal affairs. But, they lacked total independence as Britain continued to control their foreign affairs, and notably, the right to take them into a war. </p>
<p>South Africa had become a “dominion” at <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/union-south-africa-1910">Union in 1910</a>, and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Botha">Prime Minister Louis Botha</a> attended the imperial conference of the following year. In response to the growing assertiveness of the four dominions, the British government made a significant concession. </p>
<p>It retained the right to declare that the dominions would join it in declaring war against an enemy state. But it conceded that they would have the right to decide their level of support for the war effort. The British were wholly confident that Australia, Canada and New Zealand would display their loyalty for “the mother country” in any European conflict. </p>
<p>However, a question hung over South Africa. Its government headed by Botha and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Smuts">Jan Smuts</a>, two former Boer generals who had recently been fighting against the British. This was answered in 1914. When it came to the crunch, Botha and Smuts <a href="https://en.unesco.org/courier/news-views-online/first-world-war-and-its-consequences-africa">threw South African troops into the First World War</a> without any hesitation. </p>
<p>They subsequently took to the field in uniform to crush an Afrikaner Nationalist rebellion against fighting “Britain’s war”. Yet when the war was over, a Nationalist government led by another former Boer general,<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/james-barry-munnik-hertzog"> Barry Hertzog</a>, led the way in securing a further concession from the British at the <a href="https://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/imperial-conference">Imperial Conference in 1926</a>. </p>
<p>This time round, the dominions gained the right to run their own foreign policies, to have separate diplomatic representation in countries around the world, and importantly, to decide for themselves whether to side with Britain in the event of another war. </p>
<p>All this was confirmed by the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1931/4/pdfs/ukpga_19310004_en.pdf">Statute of Westminster of 1931</a>. Come 1939, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Africa/World-War-II">Smuts won a critical vote</a> in the Union Parliament to lead South Africa into the Second World War against Nationalist opposition. But, they took their revenge by defeating him <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-south-africas-catastrophe-the-1948-poll-that-heralded-apartheid-96928">in the 1948 election</a>. </p>
<p>Although Nationalist desire for South Africa to cut ties with Britain and become a republic ran deep, caution initially prevailed, and formally, the Queen remained head of state, represented by a governor-general as her viceroy. But when faced with hostility to apartheid by African states, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/south-africa-withdraws-commonwealth">led South Africa out of the Commonwealth</a>. </p>
<p>By 1961 it was also <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/union-south-africa-movement-towards-republic">a republic</a>.</p>
<h2>Decolonisation</h2>
<p>This began with the Gold Coast, which achieved “self-government” in 1951 before moving rapidly to independence as Ghana <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/gold-coast-ghana-gains-independence">in 1957</a>. Government was now firmly in African hands. But, the imperial legacy remained in the form of a governor-general, who represented the Queen as the country’s formal head of state and sovereign. But this was not to last long. </p>
<p>The time of the Great White Queen sitting at the heart of Empire had long gone, and Ghana transitioned to the status of a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Ghana/Independence">republic in 1960</a> with <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/nkrumah-kwame">Kwame Nkrumah</a> becoming its first president and head of state. Albeit with local variations, this was the route followed in virtually every other British African territory over the course of following two decades.</p>
<p>By the late 1970s, every formerly British African state, bar <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/lesotho">Lesotho</a> and Swaziland (now <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries/kingdom-eswatini">Eswatini</a>) whose own monarchs replaced the Queen as head of state, had become a republic. </p>
<p>The exception which proved the rule was Rhodesia. White Rhodesians, a tiny proportion of the territory’s population, had obtained self-government <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/zimoverview2.htm">in 1923</a>, yet Britain had retained nominal sovereignty. As one African government after another swept to freedom, the Rhodesians wanted to follow suit to retain white rule, but fearing African reaction, Britain had declined to grant full independence unless an incoming government had a democratic mandate. </p>
<p>Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front party rebelled and unilaterally declared independence <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zimbabwe/Rhodesia-and-the-UDI">in 1965</a> and although the white settlers famously thought themselves more British than the British themselves, declared in 1970 that they no longer recognised the Queen as head of state and declared Rhodesia a republic. This never gained international recognition, and a conservative politician, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137318299_7">Christopher Soames</a> returned briefly as governor and the Queen’s representative in 1980. </p>
<p>The last British governor in Africa, he waved goodbye when Rhodesia transitioned to independence as the Republic of Zimbabwe <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zimbabwe">in 1980</a>.</p>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>Britain’s relationships with its former African colonies are now those of trade, aid and diplomacy. The Queen herself remains highly respected, and acknowledged as head of the Commonwealth. Yet once she has gone, and that cannot be long, even that status for the British monarch may go. </p>
<p>At that moment, the rout of the British monarchy in Africa will be complete.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184466/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The decolonisation process was to take place rapidly during the reign of Elizabeth II.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1777612022-03-14T13:53:29Z2022-03-14T13:53:29ZTanzania is getting a political remake as President Hassan eyes the 2025 polls<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450332/original/file-20220307-51485-6244ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan. Photo by Hannah McKay - Pool</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theconversation.com/asset_images/450332/edit?content_id=177761">Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The sudden death of Tanzania’s populist president <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56437852">John Pombe Magufuli</a> on 17 March 2021 catapulted his then little-known vice-president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, to the helm of political leadership. In one year, President Hassan has reversed her predecessor’s policies, from COVID control to media freedom and foreign relations. Nicodemus Minde has studied political dominance and democratisation in Tanzania. We asked him to assess the president’s first year in office</em>.</p>
<h2>How did Hassan get to the helm?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/constitution.pdf">constitution</a> of Tanzania provides for <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2014.896719">power sharing</a> between the mainland and Zanzibar. If a presidential party candidate comes from mainland Tanzania, the running mate should be from Zanzibar, and vice versa. </p>
<p>The party picks a presidential candidate through a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2017.1410758">politburo</a> style nomination in which the candidate is sieved through three national party organs: the Central Committee, the National Executive Committee, and the National Congress. As the 2015 ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party’s presidential candidate, John Magufuli, from Tanzania’s mainland, chose Zanzibar’s Samia Suluhu Hassan as a running mate.</p>
<h2>Does Hassan have the mettle for national politics?</h2>
<p>The role of vice-president in Tanzania is largely a <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-samia-hassan-has-the-chance-to-heal-a-polarised-nation-157523">ceremonial one</a>. But Samia Suluhu Hassan, who was the country’s first woman vice-president, executed her role well. </p>
<p>President Magufuli rarely made foreign trips. He only visited a few African countries and attended the African Union Summit once. He never attended the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York. </p>
<p>On many occasions, Hassan represented the president. This exposure is evident from the way she has <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/my-travels-are-paying-off-in-a-big-way-samia--3586960">embraced</a> the international community and the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/07/27/1021118952/tanzanias-dilemma-its-not-so-easy-to-go-from-vaccine-denier-to-vaccine-embracer">drastic</a> change from the COVID-19 <a href="https://www.american.edu/sis/news/20210617-overcoming-denialism-from-the-top-tanzanias-covid-19-response.cfm">denialism</a> of her late predecessor. Magufuli had overseen a period of international obscurity and isolationism. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-roots-of-repression-and-the-prospects-for-democracy-in-tanzania-159052">The roots of repression and the prospects for democracy in Tanzania</a>
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<p>In the year since she assumed office, President Hassan has made many international visits and welcomed high-level foreign dignitaries to Tanzania. They include former British prime minister Tony Blair, World Bank managing director Mari Pangestu and African Development Bank president Akinwumi Adesina. </p>
<p>At the domestic level, she has navigated the political terrain at the national and political party levels. Previously viewed as a naive CCM outsider, she has tactfully manoeuvred the party factions. </p>
<p>The way she dealt with rebellion from the speaker of parliament, Job Ndugai, for instance, shows her maturing political statecraft. The speaker was forced to <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/tanzania-national-assembly-speaker-job-ndugai-resigns-3674296">resign</a> in January after he questioned the president’s external borrowing. </p>
<p>The president has carefully built her political base by gradually discarding Magufuli loyalists like <a href="https://www.parliament.go.tz/administrations/50">Medard Kalemani</a>, who had served as energy minister, <a href="https://www.taas-online.or.tz/members/view/prof-palamagamba-kabudi">Palamagamba Kabudi</a>, who was minister for constitutional and legal affairs, and <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/bashiru-ally-and-his-unenviable-record-as-shortest-serving-chief-secretary-3344568">Bashiru Ally</a>, who served as the chief secretary and was Magufuli’s last political appointee. </p>
<h2>Is Hassan’s regime transitional?</h2>
<p>Hassan has on a number of occasions admitted that she was aware of the political undercurrents that described her as a <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/president-samia-hints-at-major-cabinet-reshuffle-3672436">transitional president</a>. </p>
<p>In September 2021, she announced she would be <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/samia-confirms-she-will-vie-for-presidency-in-2025-3554492">running for president</a> in 2025. This was seen as a response to critics, especially from the ruling party. The purge of Ndugai was interpreted as the flexing of political muscles and consolidating her base. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-new-president-faces-a-tough-to-do-list-157973">Tanzania's new president faces a tough 'to do' list</a>
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<p>She has <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/president-samia-reshuffles-tanzanian-cabinet-3676116">reshuffled</a> the cabinet twice, both times excluding perceived Magufuli loyalists and bringing in new people. </p>
<p>Her approach so far has been to consolidate her authority within the party by appeasing the faction that was sidelined by Magufuli. Her handling of the opposition, especially the <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/freeman-mbowe-behind-bars-3739844">case</a> of Party for Democracy and Progress (Chadema) chairman Freeman Mbowe, was seen as a tacit ploy to win the hearts of the CCM faithful. Mbowe’s party has been the biggest threat to CCM and has been demanding democratic reforms and a new constitution. </p>
<h2>How would you compare the president to her predecessor?</h2>
<p>President Hassan has undone most of the excesses that characterised her predecessor. She inherited a deeply <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53492436">divided</a> country at the peak of the COVID pandemic, which her predecessor had responded to by calling for national prayers. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-covid-19-response-puts-magufulis-leadership-style-in-sharp-relief-139417">Tanzania's COVID-19 response puts Magufuli's leadership style in sharp relief</a>
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<p>Magufuli came in as a relatively unknown candidate in the 2015 elections. He benefited from factional divisions to win the presidential nomination. Gradually, he was able to build a political base within the party. </p>
<p>Like Magufuli, Hassan was considered a party outsider. She has been careful not to completely upset the <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/ccm-old-guard-incumbents-routed-in-party-primaries-1299618">old guard</a>. She seems to have the goodwill of former president <a href="https://www.globalpartnership.org/who-we-are/board/chair">Jakaya Kikwete</a>. She appointed Kikwete’s son in the last cabinet reshuffle. </p>
<p>Magufuli had an abrasive approach in dealing with government officials and international investors. Hassan’s approach has been more of candour and civility. </p>
<h2>What’s your assessment of the first year under Hassan?</h2>
<p>Hassan has <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202109230575.html">championed</a> women’s rights. Nine of her cabinet ministers are women, which <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/oped/is-president-samia-s-cabinet-reshuffle-gender-inclusive--3679926">represents</a> 36%, a six percentage point rise from the previous cabinet. </p>
<p>She has also been able to put Tanzania back on the international map after a <a href="https://kujenga-amani.ssrc.org/2019/03/26/the-waning-foreign-policy-influence-of-tanzania-under-president-magufuli/">period of isolation</a>. The country is now attracting foreign investment and goodwill. </p>
<p>Last year, her government <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/tanzania-lifts-ban-on-pregnant-school-girls-3629738">reversed</a> the heavily criticised policy of banning pregnant schoolgirls from attending school, initiated by Magufuli. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanian-girls-need-support-not-threats-to-avoid-pregnancy-126540">Tanzanian girls need support, not threats, to avoid pregnancy</a>
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<p>The government has recently ended the ban on four newspapers, signalling a positive turn in media freedom. </p>
<p>On the downside, the president has ignored the <a href="https://theconversation.com/tanzanias-hassan-faces-her-first-political-test-constitutional-reform-165088">demands for a new constitution</a>, terming it a non-priority. She promised political <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/samia-is-a-master-political-player-3723874">dialogue with the opposition</a> when she assumed office. She still has not had these talks.</p>
<p>In February this year, she <a href="https://www.citizen.digital/news/samia-suluhu-meets-exiled-tanzanian-opposition-leader-tundu-lissu-n292643">met</a> exiled Chadema party leader Tundu Lissu in Belgium. But a few days later, the court trying Chadema chairman Mbowe <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/tanzania-opposition-leader-freeman-mbowe-stand-trial-terrorism-3721698">ruled</a> that he had a case to answer. On 4 March, the director of public prosecutions dropped the terrorism charges against Mbowe and his colleagues. The case was seen by many as politically motivated.</p>
<p>Despite the shortcomings, <a href="https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/mbowe-meeting-president-samia-was-a-milestone-3741918">political dialogue</a> is now possible in Tanzania under President Hassan.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicodemus Minde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hassan is winning party loyalists, and has launched a diplomatic charm offensive ahead of 2025 polls.Nicodemus Minde, Adjunct Lecturer, United States International University - Africa, United States International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1760352022-02-28T00:37:17Z2022-02-28T00:37:17ZAt Unguja Ukuu, human activity transformed the coast of Zanzibar more than 1,000 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445313/original/file-20220209-17-1brmlqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C5199%2C1730&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Kotarba-Morley</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The medieval settlement of Unguja Ukuu, on the Zanzibar Archipelago off the coast of Tanzania, was a key port in an extensive Indian Ocean trade network that linked eastern Africa, southern Arabia, India and Southeast Asia.</p>
<p>Our archaeological research shows how human activities between the seventh and twelfth centuries AD <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15564894.2022.2030441">irreversibly modified the shoreline around the site</a>. At first, these changes may have helped the trading settlement develop, but later they may have contributed to its decline and abandonment. </p>
<h2>Ancient seafaring</h2>
<p>For millennia, the Indian Ocean has been the maritime setting for an early form of globalisation. Large trade networks operated across the vast ocean, foreshadowing modern global shipping networks. Unguja Ukuu was a crucial location in this early trade and an important node in the nascent slave trade out of continental Africa.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-war-elephants-to-cheap-electronics-modern-globalisation-has-its-roots-in-ancient-trade-networks-125483">From war elephants to cheap electronics: modern globalisation has its roots in ancient trade networks</a>
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<p>Unguja Ukuu was an active settlement from the mid-first millennium until the early second millennium AD. Archaeological evidence and historical accounts suggest Unguja Ukuu is one of the earliest known trading settlements on the Swahili coast.</p>
<h2>The rise and fall of trading ports</h2>
<p>To understand how and why early ports thrived or declined, it is important to know how the coastal landscape influenced the way traders operated. This includes their choice of mooring locations and their connections to inland locations. </p>
<p>But the question of how these commercial activities in turn modified the coastline has received less attention.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443920/original/file-20220202-25-1ojip7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443920/original/file-20220202-25-1ojip7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443920/original/file-20220202-25-1ojip7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443920/original/file-20220202-25-1ojip7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443920/original/file-20220202-25-1ojip7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443920/original/file-20220202-25-1ojip7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443920/original/file-20220202-25-1ojip7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443920/original/file-20220202-25-1ojip7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Satellite image of the location of Unguja Ukuu and the surrounding landscape. Insets: A) the extent of the tidal channel leading to the settlement; B) satellite view of the settlement site; c) the Uzi channel leading towards the creek. Illustration by Juliën Lubeek.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GoogleEarth</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unguja Ukuu prospered in an ecologically marginal zone, hemmed in between the sandy back-reef shore of Menai Bay and mangrove-banked creeks to the east. </p>
<p>Menai Bay afforded shelter from monsoonal storms and navigable waterways across the shallow inner shelf to the shore. It also provided food and other materials from the mangrove habitat. </p>
<p>This landscape enabled the emergence of the farming, fishing, and trading settlement of Unguja Ukuu.</p>
<h2>Sediment, sand and shells</h2>
<p>We studied sediments, back-beach sands, and shells at Unguja Ukuu to understand how the settlement had affected its own environment. We found the accumulation of coastal sediments over centuries led to significant changes in the landscape.</p>
<p>Detritus from the settlement, such as food remains, hearths and other domestic waste, helped the beach spread outward into the sea. Our analyses show how human waste and the compaction of ancient surfaces drove the coastline change, supporting the emergence of a major trading site. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445062/original/file-20220208-23-ibrjsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445062/original/file-20220208-23-ibrjsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445062/original/file-20220208-23-ibrjsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445062/original/file-20220208-23-ibrjsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445062/original/file-20220208-23-ibrjsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445062/original/file-20220208-23-ibrjsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445062/original/file-20220208-23-ibrjsk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Photograph of the north section of Trench UU14 with a schematic representation of facies.
and the interpretations of the anthropogenic signatures in the sediments. Author provided.</span>
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<p>As more land was used for urban living and agriculture, more sediment moved from the land to the sea. This contributed to rapid growth of beach fronts, physically altering the coastal landscape and the ecological conditions of the adjacent sea-scape. </p>
<p>These changes in turn could have resulted in habitat shifts and silting of the lagoon which possibly contributed to Unguja Ukuu’s decline. </p>
<h2>Early human impacts</h2>
<p>Human-made processes might also be implicated in the decline and eventual abandonment of Unguja Ukuu in the second millennium AD. This was an important period in the socio-political and economic transformation of coastal African societies, marking the emergence of maritime Swahili culture. </p>
<p>But suggesting a purely environmental cause for the settlement’s abandonment would be too simplistic. The interaction of coastal villages and harbours with their dynamic landscapes may have had a role in this regional reorganisation of settlements, harbours, and trade flows.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-term-anthropocene-jumped-from-geoscience-to-hashtags-before-most-of-us-knew-what-it-meant-130130">How the term 'Anthropocene' jumped from geoscience to hashtags – before most of us knew what it meant</a>
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<p>New advances in archaeological science techniques, combined with systematic archaeological analyses, are increasingly allowing us to disentangle natural from human-made drivers of events. Such work often reveals <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18603-4">far earlier human impacts than once envisioned</a>, shedding light on the early roots of Earth’s current geological epoch: the Anthropocene, in which human activity is a key force reshaping the planet. </p>
<h2>Human-made soil</h2>
<p>Our work records snapshots of the evolution of a natural coastal system at the fringes of an early settlement. </p>
<p>River sediments were covered by beach sands containing increasing amounts of human waste accumulating from the mid-seventh century AD. This backshore activity area was used for small-scale subsistence activities (including processing shells for meat), trade, and the dumping of industrial waste. </p>
<p>Earlier urban development shaped Unguja Ukuu’s soils over the long term and through periods of settlement decline and abandonment from the twelfth century AD onwards. A dark earth “anthrosol” (human-made soil) continues to evolve on these archaeological deposits today, supporting cultivation in and around the modern town. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/soil-its-what-keeps-us-clothed-and-fed-146">Soil: it's what keeps us clothed and fed</a>
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<p>Dark human-made soils such as these, formed by rapid decay of organic- and phosphate-rich waste from the settlement, may be used as markers for as-yet undiscovered archaeological sites on the eastern African coast. Their distinctive dark colour renders the soils easily identifiable on satellite images and other remote-sensing datasets.</p>
<h2>Understanding the past to shape the future</h2>
<p>Our study clearly shows how human modification of natural environments affected coastal landscapes on an East African island more than 1,000 years ago. These findings are a reminder that humans have been changing our environment for thousands of years - sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. </p>
<p>Studying history and archaeology is not simply about learning from our ancestors’ mistakes so that we don’t repeat them. It is also about ensuring that scientifically rigorous data that show how human activity in the past often altered the landscapes and environments in which people lived is effectively communicated, to both governments and the public. </p>
<p>If we can do this we might be able to make better informed sustainable choices for the future of our planet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna M. Kotarba-Morley receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Crowther receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike W Morley receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Boivin received funding for this research from the European Research Council.</span></em></p>Human waste created the landscape for a medieval Indian Ocean trading port and may eventually have led to its demise.Anna M. Kotarba-Morley, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, Flinders UniversityAlison Crowther, Senior Lecture in Archaeology, The University of QueenslandMike W. Morley, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityNicole Boivin, Director, Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute of GeoanthropologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1695852021-10-09T15:29:24Z2021-10-09T15:29:24ZNobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s fiction traces small lives with wit and tenderness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425554/original/file-20211008-14-qtrczj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Abdulrazak Gurnah captivatingly draws readers into the experiences and vivid lifeworlds of his characters </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For those of us who have read and reread, taught, and written about the fiction of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2021/bio-bibliography/">Abdulrazak Gurnah</a>, the Nobel Prize in Literature committee has confirmed what we knew all along. His superb writing deserves much wider recognition and readership.</p>
<p>Gurnah was born in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zanzibar-island-Tanzania">Zanzibar</a>, the archipelago off the Tanzanian coast, in 1948. Then still a British Protectorate, Zanzibar gained independence in December 1963, only to be thrown into the turmoil and violence of the Zanzibar Revolution of January 1964. These are historical events to which he returns in his fiction repeatedly.</p>
<p>He left for the UK in 1967 and has lived there ever since, except for a short teaching stint at Bayero University Kano in Nigeria in the 1980s. He taught in the English department at the University of Kent in Canterbury until his recent retirement. </p>
<p>Even though he has lived most of life in England, all his novels – except for <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/dottie-9781408885659/">Dottie</a> (1990), which is set entirely in the UK – are set either fully or partially on the Eastern African Swahili Coast or in Zanzibar. To date he has published ten immensely readable novels and many short stories. These are written in clean and uncluttered prose. It makes him a master storyteller, captivatingly drawing the reader into the experiences and vivid lifeworlds of the characters depicted. </p>
<h2>Connecting people and geographies</h2>
<p>The work of the imagination to follow the storyteller’s attention creates connections that in their intangibility might seem elusive. And yet any reader will know these to be powerful and potentially transformative. As <a href="https://benokri.co.uk/">Ben Okri</a>, a Nigerian writer, reminds us, such threads, which interweave stories and life, are deeply significant. This is because stories <a href="https://benokri.co.uk/books/a-way-of-being-free/">“can infect a system, or illuminate a world”</a>. The ambiguity in Okri’s description of the effect of stories captures the way in which stories potentially open up the world and contest narratives that circumscribe and preclude mutuality. It also talks to the danger of stories when they participate in and serve as justification for structures of domination, exclusion and violence.</p>
<p>Gurnah, the storyteller, probes the efficacy of stories to connect people and geographies. Yet at the same time he is acutely attentive to the divisive nature of stories of certainty: of colonial domination, of patriarchal scripts, of racism, of xenophobia towards strangers from elsewhere. His work points to the way in which such certainties furnish people with a belief in the rightness of the violence they wreak on others, in the destruction of other people’s lives which they deem to matter less than their own.</p>
<p>Instead, Gurnah’s work asks the reader to consider stories as provisional accounts that cannot claim closure or complete knowledge. Ambiguity, multiple viewpoints of the same events, complex focalisation, self-reflexive irony and narrative wit are some of the features of his writing. They make his writing so incredibly compelling. It elides narrative certainty. The narrative mode is often oblique. Perhaps we can imagine it like this, or perhaps it happened otherwise. This mode is particularly apt to illuminate the itinerant lives of people who find themselves on the move and who do not seem to belong anywhere.</p>
<p>Migration and other forms of displacement, as Gurnah’s stories suggest, are common occurrences in Africa and across the globe. Therefore, it is important to see others in relation to ourselves, to perceive their right of abode even if they cannot claim national belonging. However, it is precisely the humanity of the stranger that is at stake once the status of citizenship is in question. Hospitality is revealed as conditional in the current hostile immigration climate. The asylum seeker, the refugee and the migrant are hardly afforded the dignity which the recognition of a common humanity would demand.</p>
<p>It is this refusal to recognise the humanity of the other and its terrible consequences that Gurnah’s stories explore in detail. He crafts carefully delineated juxtapositions between hostile, implacable environments in which his characters find themselves with little room to manoeuvre, and pockets of hospitality that gesture towards alternative social imaginaries where kindness and joie de vivre become possible.</p>
<p>In contrast to an essentialist view of a citizen as someone who is described in terms of appearance or ancestry, Gurnah sets the complexity of centuries of intermingling along the East African shores of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/exploring-the-indian-ocean-as-a-rich-archive-of-history-above-and-below-the-water-line-133817">Indian Ocean</a>. In this way his stories question ideas of purity and difference. They emphasise the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of East African coastal regions and their place within the continent, the Indian Ocean world, and the globe in order to stress a common humanity.</p>
<h2>Empathetic storytelling</h2>
<p>Across his oeuvre, which traverses settings in Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, Bagamoyo, Mombasa, Lake Tanganyika, Nairobi, Muscat, Bahrain and several locales in England, Gurnah traces a long history of transnational and transoceanic movements. His work references the Eastern African slave trade and indenture, German and British colonial oppression and less legible but equally destructive forms of social exclusion to do with economic precarity and migration. While his characters are often caught in violent and unequal plots not of their own making and beyond their control – since Gurnah’s stories tend to focus on people whose lives are deemed insignificant and small – his empathetic storytelling subtly points to the importance of social connections, however unexpected, that offer reassurance and warmth.</p>
<p>In this way, his novels also cautiously celebrate the polyglot cosmopolitanisms and generous forms of accommodation that emerged on the Swahili coast within broader structures of ambivalent encounter in the monsoon trade and imperial conquest. In a passage in <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/by-the-sea-9780747557852/">By the Sea</a>, Gurnah’s sixth novel, published in 2001, seven-year-old Saleh Omar, one of the protagonists and narrators, describes his first encounter with a map of an Africa embedded in the wider world of the Indian Ocean: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As [the teacher’s] story developed, he began to draw a map on the blackboard with a piece of white chalk: the coast of North Africa which then bulged out and tucked in and then slid down to the Cape of Good Hope. As he drew, he spoke, naming places, sometimes in full sometimes in passing. Sinuously north to the jut of the Ruvuma delta, the cusp of our stretch of coast, the Horn of Africa, then the Red Sea coast to Suez, the Arabian peninsula, the Persian Gulf, India, the Malay peninsula and then all the way to China. He stopped there and smiled. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This moment of the unbroken chalk line is pivotal, not just in relation to this particular novel, but perhaps to Gurnah’s oeuvre as a whole. It makes visible the ocean on which so many of his stories float. And I suspect that this teacher’s smile is also the soryteller’s. It is the subtle humour which suffuses his writing that give his stories a lightness of touch, despite the harrowing aspects of the narratives. It contributes enormously to the pleasure of reading.</p>
<p>There is the acerbic sarcasm which exposes racial aggression and renders it absurd. And there is the self-deprecating humour of the migrant in the face of an immovable and indifferent environment, which staves off self-pity and sets in motion processes of disalienation. The dry wit of the narratives allows Gurnah to forge a bond with readers, who come to appreciate it as a mode of interaction that can liquefy ossified social categories by opening up spaces of irony and ambiguity and remind us of the fragility of the human condition we all share.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169585/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tina Steiner receives funding from The National Research Foundation (incentive funding for rated researchers). </span></em></p>Abdulrazak Gurnah’s stories suggest that it is important to see others in relation to ourselves, to perceive their right of abode even if they cannot claim national belonging.Tina Steiner, Professor in the English Department, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1694842021-10-07T17:34:41Z2021-10-07T17:34:41ZAbdulrazak Gurnah: what you need to know about the Nobel prize-winning author<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425262/original/file-20211007-15-jgqdto.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C7%2C1196%2C790&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alamy/Bloomsbury</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Abdulrazak Gurnah has been awarded the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature/">2021 Nobel prize for literature</a>. The Tanzanian novelist, who is based in the UK, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/nobel-prize-in-literature-2021-abdulrazak-gurnah-honoured-1.4693669">was awarded the prize</a> for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.</p>
<p>Migration and cultural uprooting along with the cultural and ethnic diversity of east Africa are at the heart of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/07/abdulrazak-gurnah-wins-the-2021-nobel-prize-in-literature">Gurnah’s fiction</a>. They have also shaped his personal life. </p>
<p>Born in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zanzibar-island-Tanzania">Zanzibar</a> in 1948, Gurnah came to Britain in the 1960s as a refugee. Being of Arab origin, he was forced to flee his birthplace during the revolution of 1964 and only returned in 1984 in time to visit his dying father. Until his retirement, he was a full-time professor of English and postcolonial literatures at the University of Kent in Canterbury. </p>
<p>Gurnah has written ten novels to date, including the Booker-nominated <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/paradise-9780747573999/">Paradise</a> in 1994 and <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/by-the-sea-9780747557852/">By the Sea</a> in 2001. His most recent novel, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/afterlives-9781526615855/">Afterlives</a>, was described by the Sunday Times as “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/afterlives-9781526649751/">an aural archive of a lost Africa</a>”, and indeed the opening pages of this and many of his other works take the reader directly into the realm of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/storytelling-and-cultural-traditions/#:%7E:text=Oral%20storytelling%20is%20telling%20a,historically%20accurate%20or%20even%20true.&text=Here%20are%20some%20examples%20of,of%20passing%20down%20cultural%20traditions.">oral storytelling</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/30/afterlives-by-abdulrazak-gurnah-review-living-through-colonialism">Afterlives</a> is set against the backdrop of <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199846733/obo-9780199846733-0020.xml">German rule in east Africa</a> in the early 20th century. It tells the story of a young boy sold to German colonial troops. The novel was shortlisted for the 2021 Orwell prize for political fiction and longlisted for the Walter Scott prize for historical fiction. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/will-european-countries-ever-take-meaningful-steps-to-end-colonial-legacies-148581">Will European countries ever take meaningful steps to end colonial legacies?</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>Gurnah’s work is attentive to the tension between personal story and collective history. In particular, Afterlives asks readers to consider the <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-european-countries-ever-take-meaningful-steps-to-end-colonial-legacies-148581">afterlife of colonialism</a> and war and its long lasting effects, not only on nations but also, and perhaps mainly so, on <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-britains-colonial-legacy-still-affects-lgbt-politics-around-the-world-95799">individuals and families</a>. </p>
<h2>Influence and style</h2>
<p>His writing is heavily <a href="https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11741">influenced by</a> the cultural and ethnic diversity of his native Zanzibar. Shaped by its geographical location in the Indian Ocean off the coast of east Africa, it was at the centre of the major Indian Ocean trade routes. </p>
<p>The island attracted traders and colonists from what was then known as Arabia (modern-day Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the UAE), south Asia, the African mainland, and later Europe. </p>
<p>Gurnah’s writing reflects this diversity with its many voices and its range of references to literary sources. Most of all, it insists on hybridity and diversity in the face of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41157604">Afrocentrism</a>, which dominated the east African independence movements in the 20th century. </p>
<p>His first novel, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/memory-of-departure-9781408883983/">Memory of Departure</a>, published in 1987, is set around the time Gurnah left Zanzibar. A coming-of-age story in the form of a memoir, it follows the protagonist’s attempts to leave his birthplace and study abroad. </p>
<h2>Consequences of colonialism</h2>
<p>His novel Paradise is similarly conceived as a coming-of-age narrative, though set earlier in time, at the turn of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, when Europeans were beginning to establish colonies on the East African coast. Paradise also addresses domestic <a href="https://theconversation.com/slavery-was-never-abolished-it-affects-millions-and-you-may-be-funding-it-105153">slavery</a> in Africa, with a bonded slave as the main character. </p>
<p>Above all, Paradise highlights the great diversity of Gurnah’s literary repertoire, bringing together <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00138398.2015.1045158?src=recsys">references to Swahili texts</a>, Quranic and biblical traditions, as well as the work of Joseph Conrad.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425250/original/file-20211007-18946-17ja927.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A narrow street in Zanzibar, Tanzania, where Gurnah was born.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-people-in-a-narrow-street-in-stonetown-zanzibar-tanzania-53418378.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=BA9889F9-18B6-4140-87EB-027B36AE284A&p=27879&n=0&orientation=0&pn=1&searchtype=0&IsFromSearch=1&srch=foo%3dbar%26st%3d0%26pn%3d1%26ps%3d100%26sortby%3d2%26resultview%3dsortbyPopular%26npgs%3d0%26qt%3dZanzibar%26qt_raw%3dZanzibar%26lic%3d3%26mr%3d0%26pr%3d0%26ot%3d0%26creative%3d%26ag%3d0%26hc%3d0%26pc%3d%26blackwhite%3d%26cutout%3d%26tbar%3d1%26et%3d0x000000000000000000000%26vp%3d0%26loc%3d0%26imgt%3d0%26dtfr%3d%26dtto%3d%26size%3d0xFF%26archive%3d1%26groupid%3d%26pseudoid%3d447050%26a%3d%26cdid%3d%26cdsrt%3d%26name%3d%26qn%3d%26apalib%3d%26apalic%3d%26lightbox%3d%26gname%3d%26gtype%3d%26xstx%3d0%26simid%3d%26saveQry%3d%26editorial%3d%26nu%3d%26t%3d%26edoptin%3d%26customgeoip%3dGB%26cap%3d1%26cbstore%3d1%26vd%3d0%26lb%3d%26fi%3d2%26edrf%3d0%26ispremium%3d1%26flip%3d0%26pl%3d">Alamy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gurnah’s work, with its diverse textual references and its attentiveness to archives, reflects and touches on wider concerns in postcolonial literature. His novels consider the deliberate erasure of African narratives and perspectives as one major consequence of European colonialism. </p>
<p>In highlighting conversations between the individual and the record of history, Gurnah’s work has similarities to Salman Rushdie – another postcolonial writer who is equally attentive to the relationship between personal memory and the larger narratives of history. Indeed, alongside his novels, Gurnah is also the editor of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-salman-rushdie/4D1FA62312A720A74BA17BDFAA9520A2">the Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie</a>, published in 2007.</p>
<p>Gurnah’s books ask: how do we remember a past <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-history-is-a-discipline-on-the-rise-and-one-that-raises-many-questions-74459">deliberately eclipsed and erased</a> from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/school-curriculum-continues-to-whitewash-britains-imperial-past-53577">colonial archive</a>? Many postcolonial writers from diverse backgrounds have addressed this issue, from the aforementioned <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-salman-rushdies-decision-to-publish-on-substack-the-death-of-the-novel-167530">Rushdie</a> to the Jamaican writer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/books/michele-cliff-who-wrote-of-colonialism-and-racism-dies-at-69.html">Michelle Cliff</a>, both of whom pitch personal memory and story against a collective history authored by those in power. </p>
<p>Gurnah’s work continues this conversation about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-dogs-no-indians-70-years-after-partition-the-legacy-of-british-colonialism-endures-82489">long shadow of colonialism</a> and employs a diversity of textual traditions in the process of commemorating erased narratives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Otto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gurnah won the prize for his “uncompromising and compassionate” look at the “effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugees”.Melanie Otto, Assistant Professor in English, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1694912021-10-07T14:38:39Z2021-10-07T14:38:39ZNobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah: an introduction to the man and his writing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425286/original/file-20211007-18946-f6zeiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Abdulrazak Gurnah during the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The Nobel Prize in Literature, considered the pinnacle of achievement for creative writers, has been awarded <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature/">114 times to 118</a> Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 2021. This year it <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2021/gurnah/facts/">went to</a> novelist <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/7/tanzanias-abdulrazak-gurnah-wins-2021-nobel-prize-in-literature">Abdulrazak Gurnah</a>, who was born in Zanzibar, the first Tanzanian writer to win. The last black African writer to win the prize was <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/ceremony-speech/">Wole Soyinka in 1986</a>. Gurnah is the first black writer to win since <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/">Toni Morrison in 1993</a>. Charl Blignaut asked Lizzy Attree to describe the winner and share her views on his literary career.</em></p>
<h2>Who is Gurnah and what is his place in East African literature?</h2>
<p>Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian writer who writes in English and lives and works in the UK. He was born in Zanzibar, the semi-autonomous island off the east African coast, and studied at Christchurch College Canterbury in 1968.</p>
<p>Zanzibar underwent a revolution in 1964 in which citizens of Arab origin were persecuted. Gurnah was forced to flee the country when he was 18. He began to write in English as a 21-year-old refugee in England, although Kiswahili is his first language. His first novel, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Departure-Abdulrazak-Gurnah/dp/0802110185">Memory of Departure</a>, was published in 1987.</p>
<p>He has written numerous works that pose questions around ideas of belonging, colonialism, displacement, memory and migration. His novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765618.Paradise">Paradise</a>, set in colonial east Africa during the first world war, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.</p>
<p>Comparable to <a href="http://www.mgvassanji.com/">Moyez G. Vassanji</a>, a Canadian author raised in Tanzania, whose attention focuses on the east African Indian community and their interaction with the “others”, Gurnah’s novel Paradise deploys multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism on the shores of the Indian Ocean from the perspective of the Swahili elite.</p>
<p>A distinguished academic and critic, he recently sat on the board of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-kiswahili-science-fiction-award-charts-a-path-for-african-languages-163876">Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African literature</a> and has served as a contributing editor for the literary magazine <a href="https://www.wasafiri.org/">Wasafiri</a> for many years.</p>
<p>He is currently Professor Emeritus of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, having retired in 2017.</p>
<h2>Why is Gurnah’s work being celebrated - what is powerful about it?</h2>
<p>He was <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2021/gurnah/facts/">awarded</a> the Nobel </p>
<blockquote>
<p>for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He is one of the most important contemporary postcolonial novelists writing in Britain today and is the first black African writer to win the prize since Wole Soyinka in 1986. Gurnah is also the first Tanzanian writer to win.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425279/original/file-20211007-18619-132ptr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425279/original/file-20211007-18619-132ptr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425279/original/file-20211007-18619-132ptr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425279/original/file-20211007-18619-132ptr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425279/original/file-20211007-18619-132ptr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425279/original/file-20211007-18619-132ptr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425279/original/file-20211007-18619-132ptr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425279/original/file-20211007-18619-132ptr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Copies of Afterlives by Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His most recent novel, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/afterlives-9781526615855/">Afterlives</a>, is about Ilyas, who was taken from his parents by German colonial troops as a boy and returns to his village after years of fighting against his own people. The power in Gurnah’s writing lies in this ability to complicate the Manichean divisions of enemies and friends, and excavate hidden histories, revealing the shifting nature of identity and experience.</p>
<h2>What Gurnah work stands out for you and why?</h2>
<p>The novel Paradise stands out for me because in it Gurnah re-maps Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad’s 19th century journey to the “heart of darkness” from an east African position going westwards. As South African scholar Johan Jacobs <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00138390903444164">has said</a>, he </p>
<blockquote>
<p>reconfigures the darkness at its heart … In his fictional transaction with Heart of Darkness, Gurnah shows in Paradise that the corruption of trade into subjection and enslavement pre-dates European colonisation, and that in East Africa servitude and slavery have always been woven into the social fabric. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The tale is narrated so gently by 12-year-old Yusuf, lovingly describing gardens and assorted notions of paradise and their corruption as he is pawned between masters and travels to different parts of the interior from the coast. Yusuf concludes that the brutality of German colonialism is still preferable to the ruthless exploitation by the Arabs. </p>
<p>Like Achebe in Things Fall Apart (1958), Gurnah illustrates east African society on the verge of huge change, showing that colonialism accelerated this process but did not initiate it.</p>
<h2>Is the Nobel literature prize still relevant?</h2>
<p>It’s still relevant because it is still the biggest single prize purse for literature around. But the method of selecting a winner is fairly secretive and depends on nominations from within the academy, meaning doctors and professors of literature and former laureates. This means that although the potential nominees are often discussed in advance by pundits, no-one actually knows who is in the running until the prize winner is announced. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, for example, is a Kenyan writer <a href="https://theconversation.com/tipped-to-win-nobel-literature-prize-kenyas-ngugi-misses-out-again-67009">whom many believe should have won by now</a>, along with a number of others like Ivan Vladislavic from South Africa. </p>
<p>Winning puts a global spotlight on a writer who has often not been given full recognition by other prizes, or whose work has been neglected in translation, thus breathing new life into works that many have not read before and deserve to be read more widely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lizzy Attree does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The power in Gurnah’s writing lies in his ability to complicate the Manichean divisions of enemies and friends.Lizzy Attree, Adjunct Professor, Richmond American International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1340672020-03-18T18:05:42Z2020-03-18T18:05:42ZWe’ve just discovered two new shark species – but they may already be threatened by fishing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321329/original/file-20200318-1942-12qjqmq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C29%2C4955%2C1684&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the newly discovered sixgilled sawshark species (_Pliotrema kajae_).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Weigmann</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Finding a species that’s entirely new to science is always exciting, and so we were delighted to be a part of <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228791">the discovery of two new sixgill sawsharks</a> (called <em>Pliotrema kajae</em> and <em>Pliotrema annae</em>) off the coast of East Africa.</p>
<p>We know very little about sawsharks. Until now, only one sixgill species (<em>Pliotrema warreni</em>) was recognised. But we know sawsharks are carnivores, living on a diet of fish, crustaceans and squid. They use their serrated snouts to kill their prey and, with quick side-to-side slashes, break them up into bite-sized chunks. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321317/original/file-20200318-37382-1kvg3zk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321317/original/file-20200318-37382-1kvg3zk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321317/original/file-20200318-37382-1kvg3zk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321317/original/file-20200318-37382-1kvg3zk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321317/original/file-20200318-37382-1kvg3zk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321317/original/file-20200318-37382-1kvg3zk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321317/original/file-20200318-37382-1kvg3zk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321317/original/file-20200318-37382-1kvg3zk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The serrated snout of a sixgill sawshark (<em>Pliotrema annae</em>).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ellen Barrowclift-Mahon/Marine MEGAfauna Lab/Newcastle University.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sawsharks look similar to sawfish (which are actually rays), but they are much smaller. Sawsharks grow to around 1.5 metres in length, compared to 7 metres for a sawfish and they also have barbels (fish “whiskers”), which sawfish lack. Sawsharks have gills on the side of their heads, whereas sawfish have them on the underside of their bodies. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321354/original/file-20200318-1953-1i2ndk3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321354/original/file-20200318-1953-1i2ndk3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321354/original/file-20200318-1953-1i2ndk3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321354/original/file-20200318-1953-1i2ndk3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321354/original/file-20200318-1953-1i2ndk3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321354/original/file-20200318-1953-1i2ndk3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321354/original/file-20200318-1953-1i2ndk3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321354/original/file-20200318-1953-1i2ndk3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A sixgill sawshark (<em>Pliotrema annae</em>) turned on its side, showing gills and barbels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ellen Barrowclift-Mahon</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Together with our colleagues, we discovered these two new sawsharks while researching small-scale fisheries that were operating off the coasts of Madagascar and Zanzibar. While the discovery of these extraordinary and interesting sharks is a wonder in itself, it also highlights how much is still unknown about biodiversity in coastal waters around the world, and how vulnerable it may be to poorly monitored and managed fisheries.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321322/original/file-20200318-37441-1xec9fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321322/original/file-20200318-37441-1xec9fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321322/original/file-20200318-37441-1xec9fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321322/original/file-20200318-37441-1xec9fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321322/original/file-20200318-37441-1xec9fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321322/original/file-20200318-37441-1xec9fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321322/original/file-20200318-37441-1xec9fr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The three known species of sixgill sawshark. The two new species flank the original known species. From left to right: <em>Pliotrema kajae</em>, <em>Pliotrema warreni</em> (juvenile female) and <em>Pliotrema annae</em> (presumed adult female).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Weigmann</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Fishing in the dark</h2>
<p>Despite what their name might suggest, small-scale fisheries employ around 95% of the world’s fishers and are an <a href="https://theconversation.com/local-communities-play-outsized-but-overlooked-role-in-global-fisheries-123143">incredibly important source of food and money</a>, particularly in tropical developing countries. These fisheries usually operate close to the coast in some of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, such as coral reefs, mangrove forests and seagrass beds. </p>
<p>For most small-scale fisheries, there is very little information available about their fishing effort – that is, how many fishers there are, and where, when and how they fish, as well as exactly what they catch. Without this, it’s very difficult for governments to develop management programmes that can ensure sustainable fishing and protect the ecosystems and livelihoods of the fishers and the communities that depend on them.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321316/original/file-20200318-37397-yjxu6s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321316/original/file-20200318-37397-yjxu6s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321316/original/file-20200318-37397-yjxu6s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321316/original/file-20200318-37397-yjxu6s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321316/original/file-20200318-37397-yjxu6s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321316/original/file-20200318-37397-yjxu6s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321316/original/file-20200318-37397-yjxu6s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Small-scale fishers of Zanzibar attending their driftnets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Per Berggren/Marine MEGAfauna Lab/Newcastle University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>While the small-scale fisheries of East Africa and the nearby islands are not well documented, we do know that there are at least <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-017-9494-x">half a million small-scale fishers using upwards of 150,000 boats</a>. That’s a lot of fishing. While each fisher and boat may not catch that many fish each day, with so many operating, it really starts to add up. Many use nets – either driftnets floating at the surface or gillnets, which are anchored close to the sea floor. Both are cheap but not very selective with what they catch. Some use longlines, which are effective at catching big fish, including sharks and rays.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sharks-one-in-four-habitats-in-remote-open-ocean-threatened-by-longline-fishing-120849">Sharks: one in four habitats in remote open ocean threatened by longline fishing</a>
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<p>In 2019, our team reported that catch records <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.12.024">were massively underreporting the number of sharks and rays caught</a> in East Africa and the nearby islands. With the discovery of two new species here – a global hotspot for shark and ray biodiversity – the need to properly assess the impact of small-scale fisheries on marine life is even more urgent.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321319/original/file-20200318-37401-19jg3xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321319/original/file-20200318-37401-19jg3xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321319/original/file-20200318-37401-19jg3xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=207&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321319/original/file-20200318-37401-19jg3xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=207&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321319/original/file-20200318-37401-19jg3xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=207&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321319/original/file-20200318-37401-19jg3xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321319/original/file-20200318-37401-19jg3xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321319/original/file-20200318-37401-19jg3xr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"><em>Pliotrema kajae</em>, as it might look swimming in the subtropical waters of the western Indian Ocean.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Weigmann</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>How many other unidentified sharks and other species are commonly caught in these fisheries? There is a real risk of species going extinct before they’re even discovered. </p>
<p>Efforts to monitor and manage fisheries in this region, and globally, must be expanded to prevent biodiversity loss and to develop sustainable fisheries. There are simple methods available that can work on small boats where monitoring is currently absent, including using cameras to document what’s caught. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321356/original/file-20200318-1972-n0x8np.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321356/original/file-20200318-1972-n0x8np.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321356/original/file-20200318-1972-n0x8np.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321356/original/file-20200318-1972-n0x8np.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321356/original/file-20200318-1972-n0x8np.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321356/original/file-20200318-1972-n0x8np.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321356/original/file-20200318-1972-n0x8np.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A selection of landed fish – including sharks, tuna and swordfish.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Per Berggren</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The discovery of two new sixgill sawsharks also demonstrates the value of scientists working with local communities. Without the participation of fishers we may never have found these animals. From simple assessments all the way through to developing methods to alter catches and manage fisheries, it’s our goal to make fisheries sustainable and preserve the long-term future of species like these sawsharks, the ecosystems they live in and the communities that rely on them for generations to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134067/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Per Berggren receives funding from the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (Grant Number MASMA/CP/2014/01).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Temple receives funding from the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (Grant Number MASMA/CP/2014/01).</span></em></p>Scientists thought there was only one sixgill sawshark species – until now.Per Berggren, Marine MEGAfauna Lab, Newcastle UniversityAndrew Temple, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Marine Biology, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1221432019-09-01T09:21:58Z2019-09-01T09:21:58ZWhy Tanzania’s attacks on free speech break with Nyerere’s legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289435/original/file-20190826-8868-1y4ynnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The statue of founding president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in Tanzania's political capital Dodoma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">WikiCommons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I visited Tanzania recently for the first time in five years, and the first time since John Magufuli was elected President. I have been visiting the country regularly since 1976 – spending a year as a student in 1979 and three years as a diplomat in 1993-6. I have followed its fortunes through the decades with close interest, meeting all its Presidents (except the incumbent) at one time or another.</p>
<p>While I was there on this occasion, the journalist Erick Kabendera was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/arrest-of-tanzanian-journalist-sparks-fears-over-press-safety">picked up by police and kept incommunicado for several days</a> until he was suddenly re-appeared in court and improbably charged with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/05/tanzanian-journalist-in-court-accused-of-money-laundering">economic crimes and tax evasion</a>. </p>
<p>This is not a lone incident: since 2015 it has become more frequent for independent journalists to face <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2018/03/15/i-had-to-flee-my-home-tanzania-for-doing-journalism-i-was-lucky/">harassment and even the threat of death</a>. Only a few weeks later another journalist, <a href="https://www.nation.co.ke/news/africa/Tanzania-journalist-arrested-over--fake-news--released/1066-5248084-tvkd8pz/index.html">Joseph Gandye</a>, was arrested apparently for a story criticising police brutality. He was subsequently released. The government has also obstructed news or even the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-worldbank/tanzania-law-punishing-critics-of-statistics-deeply-concerning-world-bank-idUSKCN1MD17P">publication of standard national statistics</a> that it dislikes. </p>
<p>It is worth asking where this comes from. Since independence in 1961, Tanzania has been a beacon of the liberation struggle in Africa and of peaceful political stability. The country’s moral and political compass was set very firmly by its first president of 24 years, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. His successors have appealed to and pledged to uphold his legacy.</p>
<p>So what is that legacy? Nyerere was unusual among African leaders in leaving a substantial body of writings that set out his political thinking and which enable us to see its evolution. It is important to register that his thinking changed over time, adapted in the light of experience. </p>
<p>But some elements remained a bedrock: a powerful moral tone, an intolerance of corruption, a central role for the state, but with a real accountability to the people. Above all was the value of unity - at the national level, in the union with Zanzibar, and across Africa as a whole.</p>
<p>Kabendera has long been a critic of Tanzania’s government, helping expose <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/28/tanzania-cabinet-reshuffle-energy-scandal-jakaya-kikwete">an energy scandal</a> in 2015 in which $18 million was misappropriated. The scandal cost the then Minister of Energy his job. There was suspicion that a more recent article in The Economist probably caused the government’s ire. It was entitled “John Magufuli is bulldozing Tanzania’s freedom”.</p>
<p>Mwalimu would probably be angry as well but also sad to see his successors prefer a closed society to an open one and to look to the past rather than to the future. After all, Nyerere often argued that Tanzanians should not be afraid to challenge authority. He also spoke out strongly for <a href="https://www.juliusnyerere.org/resources/view/freedom_and_development">freedom of speech</a>. </p>
<h2>Nyerere’s legacy</h2>
<p>Nyerere started as an unabashed African Socialist. Capitalism and colonialism had gone hand-in-hand, and had <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/486390?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">destroyed</a> many of the traditional communal values of African society. These needed to be restored and built upon.</p>
<p>He justified the one party state as necessary for building national unity and avoiding fissiparous political divisions. He also advocated <a href="https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/abstract/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-172">“ujamaa”</a>, or villagisation, as a path to economic and social modernisation. But over time he came to see the drawbacks of both policies and began to adapt his own approach. </p>
<p>Nyerere was sometimes intolerant of criticism. But he tended to respond with argument rather than force. Although the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi had robust internal competition and accountability, any single party that remains in power continually tends to become politically complacent and financially corrupt. </p>
<p>The target tends to become climbing to the top of the party tree and reaping the benefits along the way, not serving the people. And villagisation and state production proved socially disruptive and financially disastrous. Economically, Nyerere’s prescription <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/160361?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">just did not work</a>.</p>
<p>In response, Nyerere did two things: he put in place succession arrangements that allowed him to step back from running the government, though retaining oversight as chairman of the party, and he allowed his successors <a href="https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft138nb0tj&chunk.id=d0e2247&toc.id=&brand=ucpress">to liberalise both politics and the economy</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, multi-party politics was re-introduced, a number of loss-making parastatals that were draining the government’s resources were privatised, and the country began to encourage outside investors. Nyerere’s personal interventions became increasingly rare, limited largely to upholding the sanctity and importance of the political union with Zanzibar, and working for peace in neighbouring Burundi.</p>
<p>His genuine legacy, therefore, is to value unity but recognise diversity, not to overstay your welcome in power, and to be guided by principles but adapt your policies in the light of experience.</p>
<h2>Negation of legacy?</h2>
<p>Are the events of recent years the fulfilment or the negation of that legacy? Like his predecessors, President Magufuli puts great emphasis on respecting Nyerere’s legacy. </p>
<p>Selected at least in part for his well-known personal probity, he entered office breathing fire and fury against <a href="https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/24853/1/ACE-WorkingPaper001-TZ-AntiCorruption-171102_final%20revised.pdf">corruption</a> in the state machine, and his <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/12725/is-magufulis-economic-nationalism-working/">dramatic interventions</a> appeared to shake state utilities, including water and power, out of their torpor and corrupt practices to deliver to the public what they were supposed to. Basic infrastructure, including roads and energy, has been developed and delivered. All this was overdue.</p>
<p>But in other respects, the administration seems stuck in the early Nyerere-ite mode of suspicion – even hostility – to <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/12725/is-magufulis-economic-nationalism-working/">international capitalism and all its works</a>, and to open markets even within its region, preaching a narrow view of self-reliance similar to that which led the country into near bankruptcy in the early 1980s. </p>
<p>And in political terms, the president seems to adopt an intolerance of criticism and opposition that Nyerere in his later years had abandoned. The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi itself seems increasingly frightened of fair competition, <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2015/10/02/tanzania-cannot-be-allowed-to-be-the-new-front-for-state-led-islamophobia/">fearful</a> that given a free choice and transparent information the people just might choose someone else. </p>
<p>Sadly, such transparency and freedom is the only thing that keeps democracies honest. To <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/Magufuli-criticised-as-Tanzania-bans-rallies--/2558-3245376-124jyo5z/index.html">constrain the opposition</a> and <a href="https://cpj.org/2019/03/tanzania-citizen-7-day-publication-ban.php">harass the free press</a> will in the end destroy democracy and even the Chama Cha Mapinduzi itself.</p>
<p>We have seen elsewhere that some political leaders decide they should be the sole arbiter of political decisions, and stay on in charge long after their sell-by date, presiding over ever-more corrupt and incompetent governments and leading their countries to wrack and ruin. But in almost all cases, it does not end well. The same can apply to parties as to leaders.</p>
<p>Tanzania has benefited greatly from a regular political succession in its leadership. But it would be a betrayal, not a fulfilment, of Nyerere’s legacy to fail to allow the Tanzanian people a free and informed choice about the party and the policies they want.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article are solely my own.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122143/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Westcott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While sometimes intolerant of criticism, Nyerere tended to respond with argument rather than force.Nicholas Westcott, Research Associate, Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD), SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1095262019-01-15T14:00:49Z2019-01-15T14:00:49ZPasha 2: Fighting malaria with drones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253855/original/file-20190115-152983-1q7wqms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Drones</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zanzibar, which lies off Tanzania’s east coast, has been fighting a well documented battle against malaria. The island has seen some genuine successes. Bed nets and insecticides have played a major role in slowing the spread of the disease and there’s been a marked drop in prevalence in parts of the country.</p>
<p>In this episode of Pasha, Nontobeko Mtshali finds out more from Andy Hardy on the latest method adopted to fight malaria in Zanzibar. Andy, who is a lecturer in remote sensing, explains how drones are being used to identify water bodies where mosquitoes breed and what are the next steps.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-drones-are-being-used-in-zanzibars-fight-against-malaria-86355">How drones are being used in Zanzibar's fight against malaria</a>
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<p><strong>Photo:</strong> Shutterstock Drone quadcopter with digital camera, Image By Dmitry Kalinovsky</p>
<p><strong>Music</strong> “Happy African Village” by John Bartmann found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/John_Bartmann/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One/happy-african-village">FreeMusicArchive.org</a> licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a>.</p>
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<p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/pasha-from-the-conversation-africa/id1448995925?mt=2"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233721/original/file-20180827-75984-1gfuvlr.png" alt="Listen on Apple Podcasts" width="268" height="68"></a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109526/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Drones are being used to combat malaria in Zanzibar.Ozayr Patel, Digital EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1071442018-11-20T13:19:53Z2018-11-20T13:19:53ZChildren in Africa struggle to get justice. Here’s how to improve their access<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246395/original/file-20181120-161612-1bece9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many children don't receive the treatment they deserve.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Millions of children throughout Africa don’t have access to justice that’s needed to realise their rights.</p>
<p>Simply put, they don’t receive the treatment they deserve as victims, witnesses, children with welfare needs, children in conflict with the law, the subject of parental disputes about care, contact and maintenance, and as potential claimants for redress when their rights have been violated.</p>
<p>There are several reasons for this. For instance, African justice systems are often hard to reach; courts are usually situated in large towns. Another barrier is that in most countries children cannot approach a court in their own right. </p>
<p>On the continent, only South Africa has a widespread legal aid system that’s available and accessible to children. </p>
<p>We know what child-friendly justice looks like. Its key elements were <a href="http://www.kampalaconference.info/index.php?Itemid=60">identified at a conference</a> in Kampala, Uganda in 2011. The conference led to the formulation of <a href="https://www.crin.org/en/library/legal-database/guidelines-action-children-justice-system-africa">Guidelines on Action for Children in Justice Systems in Africa</a>. </p>
<p>But one important area has been largely overlooked: the role that informal justice systems can play in realising justice for children. People often choose these informal and largely traditional systems over more formal processes. That’s because they don’t trust the formal justice system, struggle to access it, cannot afford the travel costs to get to court and find the long delays in adjudication off-putting. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://defenceforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Spotlighting-the-Invisible-Justice-for-children-in-Africa-Final.pdf">recent study</a> that I was involved in set out to understand how much children interact with informal justice systems in selected African countries. Our findings were instructive. </p>
<p>It appears that when children are drawn into their countries’ informal justice systems, their human rights are often threatened. </p>
<p>That’s not to say informal justice mechanisms must be entirely abandoned. They play an important role in communities, often focusing on restorative justice and taking a conciliatory approach which serves to rebuild relationships and secure peace in communities. They are also close to the communities they serve, and familiar with local issues.</p>
<p>The answer to these human rights concerns is to strengthen communities’ capacity to access and navigate the formal justice system. Only then will formal court structures become the preferred option for seeking justice.</p>
<h2>What the study found</h2>
<p>We know that informal justice systems are working in several countries, as shown by case studies undertaken in Egypt, Sierra Leone and Tanzania as part of the broader research report.</p>
<p>But there are issues with these traditional, informal settings. For instance, gender power imbalances may be reinforced so that girls in particular get a raw deal. </p>
<p>As an example, sexual offences may be dealt with <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/03/23/no-justice-for-rape-victims-as-elders-hide-behind-maslaha_c1734433">through mediation</a> between a young victim’s family and that of their abuser. This does not secure any justice for the violated child. </p>
<p>Children will not enjoy legal representation or the right to an appeal. Their voices may be muted, as others speak for them (such as elders). This denies their right to participate in proceedings affecting them. </p>
<p>It’s not entirely negative, though. One particular advantage of informal justice outlined in the study is that it does not resort to deprivation of children’s liberty through detention or incarceration. In this way it upholds the injunction in the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx">Convention on the Rights of the Child</a> that deprivation of liberty be used as a last resort. Instead, sanctions include reparations, restitution and fines. </p>
<h2>Some positive steps</h2>
<p>It would be incorrect to tar all African countries with the same brush when it comes to child justice. Many have made noteworthy advances. Many, among them <a href="https://mwnation.com/judiciary-opens-modern-child-justice-court/">Malawi</a> and <a href="http://data.africanchildinfo.net/qiiyyzc/africa-report-on-child-wellbeing-international-and-regional-child-related-legal-instruments?tsId=1007310">Mauritania</a>, have launched specialised children’s courts. </p>
<p>Specialised police units dedicated to dealing with offences against children have also been set up in places like <a href="http://news.trust.org//item/20131128131537-fitsc">Zanzibar</a> and <a href="http://www.nampol.gov.na/domestic-violence">Namibia</a>. These ensure that dedicated services (including forensic services) are on hand, and that the child victim’s inevitable trauma is reduced. Another promising practice is the introduction of child rights focused modules in police training programmes, as seen in Namibia and Zambia.</p>
<p>These are positive steps in the right direction. But more work is needed. For instance, specialised children’s courts tend only to be located in capital cities and a few big towns. They are not readily accessible by the majority. </p>
<p>And, although specialised courts ought to be staffed by specialised personnel, this is not always the case. The support of social workers is also vital, but social workers are in <a href="http://www.socialserviceworkforce.org/system/files/resource/files/Under%20Recognized%20Cadres%20of%20HRH%20in%20Africa%20-%20Profesionalizing%20the%20Social%20Service%20Workforce.pdf">short supply</a> in most African countries. Those who are in the system tend to be overworked and under-trained.</p>
<p>The jury is out on whether informal justice systems have a role to play here. Some see informal justice as entrenching human rights violations but a necessary player – for now. Others view informal justice more benignly and can tolerate its coexistence with formal systems. My view is that while informal systems have a role, access to formal justice should be improved. </p>
<h2>Way forward</h2>
<p>This can be done in several ways.</p>
<p>Children need adequate information about their rights and role in justice processes. This can happen in a variety of ways and formats, including at school. Another important step is to constantly train justice and police officials, probation officers and social workers about children’s developmental and other needs. </p>
<p>Judicial proceedings, where these are necessary, should be adapted to enable children’s meaningful participation. Children should also be informed of the outcome of justice processes, and what implications a ruling or decision might have.</p>
<p>Children’s rights are generally not embedded in African countries’ justice systems. Our recent study highlights the need for services that are truly child sensitive to be progressively augmented, and for laws and institutions that are meant to protect children’s rights to be properly resourced.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107144/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Sloth-Nielsen receives funding from various international organisations such as UNICEF and the African Child Policy Forum. </span></em></p>When children are drawn into their countries’ informal justice systems, their human rights are often threatened.Julia Sloth-Nielsen, Professor, Department of Public Law and Jurisprudence, University of the Western Cape and Professor of Children's Rights in the Developing World, University of Leiden, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1025852018-09-13T14:10:05Z2018-09-13T14:10:05ZPeople across Africa have to travel far to get to a hospital. We worked out how far<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234987/original/file-20180905-45135-p8f2jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A small hospital in Wakiso district in the central region of Uganda.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly half of all deaths and about a third of disabilities in low and middle-income countries could be avoided if people had access to <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(18)30026-3/fulltext">emergency care</a>. In Africa the main causes of emergencies are road accidents, obstetric complications, severe illnesses and non-communicable diseases.</p>
<p>Over the past 18 years the <a href="https://www.afem.info/">African Federation for Emergency Medicine</a>, an advocacy group, has been encouraging the development of emergency care systems on the continent. The gaps it has identified include decent transport and hospital services. </p>
<p>But to address these challenges data is needed on the number of hospitals, their locations as well as the population marginalised. Most countries in Africa don’t have this information. They lack basic inventories of health care service providers, including the number of hospitals. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(17)30488-6/fulltext?utm_campaign=lancet&utm_content=66283296&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook">Our study</a> set out to address this problem by producing the first ever assessment of hospital services in sub-Saharan Africa, and used it to work out peoples’ access to care. </p>
<p>The results – including how long it takes to get to a hospital – show where investment is needed in improving access. Various interventions are necessary. These should include building new hospitals, improving ambulatory care, building new roads and fixing existing ones. </p>
<p>But the most urgent action is that countries must update their hospital lists, including assessment of capacity and capability to provide emergency care and updating of the private sector. Our research goes someway to helping them start this process. We have built a database which can be accessed for <a href="https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/JTL9VY">free</a> and used for assessing service availability at national levels.</p>
<h2>Building the database</h2>
<p>The hospital list covers 48 countries and islands of sub-Saharan Africa. </p>
<p>To develop the list we used numerous sources for the data, including ministries of health, health information systems, national and international organisations from all the countries and islands. In most cases, the sources were available online but we also relied on personal contacts to obtain hospital data in some countries. </p>
<p>Close to 50% of the hospitals on the list didn’t have GPS coordinates that could aid in precisely locating them. To overcome the problem we assigned them unique location attributes using online mapping tools such as Google earth and OpenStreetMaps. </p>
<p>This audit located 4908 public sector hospitals which were precisely assigned location attributes (Figure 1). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234990/original/file-20180905-45178-l6s510.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234990/original/file-20180905-45178-l6s510.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234990/original/file-20180905-45178-l6s510.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234990/original/file-20180905-45178-l6s510.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234990/original/file-20180905-45178-l6s510.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=574&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234990/original/file-20180905-45178-l6s510.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234990/original/file-20180905-45178-l6s510.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234990/original/file-20180905-45178-l6s510.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Map of public hospitals in Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nigeria, which accounts for close to a fifth of sub-Saharan Africa’s population had the highest number of hospitals at 879. Other countries with significantly high numbers of public hospitals were the Democratic Republic of Congo (435), Kenya (399) and South Africa (337). </p>
<p>The least were in smaller countries such as Cape Verde, Zanzibar, and São Tomé and Príncipe. This information was used as a starting point to calculate the geographic access to the hospital services. </p>
<h2>Timely access</h2>
<p>We measured geographic accessibility by travel time to the nearest public hospital. We did this by calculating how long it would take to travel by road based on the major means of transport in the region. </p>
<p>We assembled road networks from Google earth and OpenStreetMaps, and assigned travel speeds along the roads. We then developed a model that calculates the time it would take for a patient to travel from any 100m by 100m square grid of location to the nearest hospital. </p>
<p>More specifically, a significant proportion of women need access to hospital care when in labour and we additionally determined how long they would take to get to the nearest hospital. </p>
<p>Results reveal that, less than a third (29%) of the total population and 28% of the women of child bearing age, lived more than two hours from the nearest hospitals. The two-hour threshold is a widely used recommendation by the <a href="http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/monitoring/9789241547734/en/">WHO</a> and the <a href="http://www.lancetglobalsurgery.org/">Lancet Commission for global surgery</a> for defining access to emergency obstetric and surgical care respectively. In addition, international benchmarks by the Lancet commission for global surgery recommends having 80% of any given population within two hours as critical in ensuring universal health coverage by 2030.</p>
<p>The most surprising outcome was the huge differences between countries. For example, more than 75% of the population in South Sudan lived outside the two-hour threshold. Other poorly served countries included Central African Republic, Chad and Eritrea. More than half of their populations lived outside the two-hour threshold. </p>
<p>The best served countries were mostly islands like Zanzibar, Comoros and São Tomé and Príncipe. More than 95% of their populations were within two hours of a hospital. Large countries such as Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria also had good access indices, with more than 90% within the two-hour band. </p>
<p>All 48 countries in our survey have signed up to the sustainable development goal of delivering universal health care by 2030, part of which involves access to hospitals. Our research can help countries work out what they need to do to make this a reality when it comes to emergency care. There’s still a long way to go. Only 16 countries in our survey achieved 80% coverage in access to a hospital within two hours.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102585/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Ouma receives funding from the Initiative to Develop African Research Leaders as a PhD student (# 107769). The work was also supported by Wellcome Trust Principal Fellowship to Robert W Snow (# 103602) and the Department for International Development (UK) – Project on Strengthening the Use of Data for Malaria Decision Making in Africa (DFID Programme Code # 203155). The authors also acknowledge the support of the Wellcome Trust for the Kenya Major Overseas Programme (# 203077). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emelda Okiro receives funding from the Wellcome Trust as an intermediate research fellow (# 201866). </span></em></p>Only 16 out of 48 African countries and islands have access to hospital services within the WHO’s two-hour time threshold.Paul Ouma, PhD Fellow, Kenya Medical Research InstituteEmelda Okiro, Head, Population Health Unit, KEMRI, Kenya Medical Research InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1022812018-09-04T14:07:14Z2018-09-04T14:07:14ZThe fate of unique species in Tanzania’s coastal forests hangs in the balance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234764/original/file-20180904-45172-gnrssh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Zanzibar Red Colobus is endemic to Tanzania.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzania is known for its tapestry of lush forests, expansive grasslands and tropical beaches, and abundant and diverse wildlife. Its coastal forests are part of the Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa <a href="https://www.cepf.net/our-work/biodiversity-hotspots/coastal-forests-eastern-africa">biodiversity hotspot</a> – a place recognised for its wealth of wildlife but threatened with destruction, making it a high priority for conservation efforts.</p>
<p>These forests are home to hundreds of endemic plant and animal species – ones that aren’t found anywhere else in the world. For example, there are <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/div-classtitletwo-decades-of-change-in-state-pressure-and-conservation-responses-in-the-coastal-forest-biodiversity-hotspot-of-tanzaniadiv/084C3958DEBB8F1F36D2AF9BC363CB06">five endemic mammals</a> – including the Zanzibar Red Colobus – five endemic birds, six endemic amphibians and three endemic reptiles, as well as 325 endemic plants. More than 300 other species are shared only with the nearby Eastern Arc Mountains. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/div-classtitletwo-decades-of-change-in-state-pressure-and-conservation-responses-in-the-coastal-forest-biodiversity-hotspot-of-tanzaniadiv/084C3958DEBB8F1F36D2AF9BC363CB06">paper</a> we found that biodiversity – and the level of endemic species – is exceptional by global standards. We show that many endemic species are threatened with extinction. This is due to increasing human-use pressures as well as emerging mining, gas and oil exploration. Habitat loss and degradation has continued and the space remaining for the endemic species is shrinking. It’s now often confined to government protected areas and lands managed for conservation by villagers. </p>
<p>The region epitomises the challenges of conserving forests in a developing country with a rapidly expanding population, many of whom are dependent on subsistence farming and biomass for cooking. Both have a direct impact on forest habitats.</p>
<h2>Forest loss</h2>
<p>The forest habitat where these endemic species are uniquely found has continued to be lost and degraded over the past two decades. Between 1990 and 2007, coastal forest cover decreased by more than a third, and has continued to decline <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environmental-conservation/article/deforestation-and-co2-emissions-in-coastal-tanzania-from-1990-to-2007/DBF62FE46790B3051B83C75477CA5572">ever since</a>. This is largely as a result of agricultural expansion, charcoal production and logging for timber and firewood. </p>
<p>Endemic species are only able to survive in forest. The loss of their habitat is therefore a direct threat to their survival. </p>
<p>By mapping forest loss we can see that there are areas that are some distance from the major coastal towns – Dar es Salaam and Lindi. The lack of recent forest loss closer to these cities is because it’s already been cleared and replaced with urban areas or farm land. Clearance of forest has spread like a wave from these cities into more rural areas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234763/original/file-20180904-45166-1c2jmuf.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234763/original/file-20180904-45166-1c2jmuf.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234763/original/file-20180904-45166-1c2jmuf.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234763/original/file-20180904-45166-1c2jmuf.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234763/original/file-20180904-45166-1c2jmuf.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=298&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234763/original/file-20180904-45166-1c2jmuf.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234763/original/file-20180904-45166-1c2jmuf.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234763/original/file-20180904-45166-1c2jmuf.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Areas of forest loss (red) and remaining tree cover (green) close to larger cities in coastal Tanzania (black) and protected areas (pale brown). Data covers the period 2000-2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Millions of people in Tanzania rely on natural resources – clean freshwater, healthy forests and abundant wildlife – for food and income. And, the destruction of Tanzania’s coastal forests to support the growing population is putting huge pressure on the natural environment.</p>
<p>The main use of forests by people has been as a source of farmland. Tanzania’s economic development in the coastal region is highly dependent on agriculture. Freshly cleared forest is more fertile than established farmland. This has led to more clearance of unprotected forest patches. The need for fertile soil that is close to water courses puts coastal forest patches under even more pressure. Now, almost no forest patches remain in the coastal areas of Tanzania unless they are protected in government – or village-managed reserves, or are within sacred forest or burial sites for local villagers. </p>
<p>The forests and woodlands in the coastal areas have also been used as a source of timber and poles for construction, and as a source of energy – either as firewood in rural areas or converted to charcoal for transport to the growing cities and urban areas. About 90% of Tanzania energy generation comes from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800912001942?via%3Dihub">wood and charcoal</a> and is a vital source of income to some rural villages. But this has an impact on many of the endemic species.</p>
<h2>The challenge</h2>
<p>To deal with these challenges – protecting this unique habitat while ensuring people have the resources they need to survive – reserved areas have been created by central and local governments, as well as local communities who are promoting <a href="https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss1/art37/">better management</a>. There is also a gradual movement towards private ownership of land. </p>
<p>Between 1995 and 2014, the total area of protected lands increased by more than 20% and now covers <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/div-classtitletwo-decades-of-change-in-state-pressure-and-conservation-responses-in-the-coastal-forest-biodiversity-hotspot-of-tanzaniadiv/084C3958DEBB8F1F36D2AF9BC363CB06">1,233,646 hectares</a>. Much of this is community managed village-land forest reserves – over 140 of these reserves have been developed in recent years, covering many <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/div-classtitletwo-decades-of-change-in-state-pressure-and-conservation-responses-in-the-coastal-forest-biodiversity-hotspot-of-tanzaniadiv/084C3958DEBB8F1F36D2AF9BC363CB06">important habitats</a>.</p>
<p>In comparison, the state managed reserve network has not expanded much over the past two decades, and the forested areas within these lands have become more degraded – especially close to major cities.</p>
<p>Reserve managers working along the coastal region of Tanzania are using a <a href="https://www.protectedplanet.net/c/protected-areas-management-effectiveness-pame/management-effectiveness-tracking-tool">simple score card to determine</a> how well their reserve is managed. We also found that the best managed reserves in this area are national parks and village-land forest reserves. This means that these are the places where forest habitat, and hence the endemic species confined to that habitat, are most likely to survive. </p>
<h2>What does the future hold?</h2>
<p>These challenges will only be solved if the right framework – from policy through to on-the-ground actions – is put in place. Building partnerships with global communities, national stakeholders and involving local communities could improve the effectiveness of managing forests and biodiversity, as well as supporting the country’s development priorities.</p>
<p><em>Peter Sumbi, independent environmental consultant and Isaac Malugu, former forest officer were co-authors on this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102281/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Burgess receives funding from: 1, UK Darwin Initiative. 2. USA based Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund</span></em></p>Tanzania faces the challenge of conserving forests in a developing country with a rapidly expanding population.Neil Burgess, Professor at the Center for Marcoecology, Evolution and Climate, University of CopenhagenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/863552017-11-22T12:17:49Z2017-11-22T12:17:49ZHow drones are being used in Zanzibar’s fight against malaria<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195789/original/file-20171122-6013-yq6uu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Makame Makame from the Zanzibar Malaria Elimination Programme holds one of the drones used to map malaria vectors.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Hardy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a typically hot and humid July day in Stonetown, the capital of Zanzibar, a gaggle of children, teenagers and the odd parents watched our small drone take flight. My colleagues Makame Makame, Khamis Haji and I had finally found the perfect launch spot.</p>
<p>With a high-pitched humming, the drone took to the air. It sounded like a big mosquito – appropriate, since we were testing the use of drones for mapping aquatic malaria habitats. These shallow sunlit water bodies teem with mosquito larvae. In a matter of days, the larvae will emerge as adult mosquitoes in search of a blood meal. If one of those mosquitoes bites a human infected with malaria, it will become a vector for the disease and continue its deadly transmission cycle.</p>
<p>Zanzibar is a Tanzanian archipelago off the coast of East Africa. Both it and mainland Tanzania have fought a long, well documented battle with malaria. <a href="http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/">Globally</a>, the disease infects over 200 million people annually and is responsible for killing approximately 500,000 people each year.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.who.int/topics/millennium_development_goals/diseases/en/">Millennium Development Goals</a> prompted a number of large scale campaigns across sub-Saharan Africa to combat malaria. <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/reduction/itn.html">Millions of bed nets</a> were distributed. Insecticide was supplied to spray in homes across communities. The aim was to stop people getting bitten, interrupting the transmission cycle. </p>
<p>It’s been a real success story, leading to a notable decrease in the disease’s prevalence. Some areas of Zanzibar have seen <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3639098/">prevalence levels drop</a> from 40% of the population having malaria to less than 1%.</p>
<p>Now epidemiologists and public health managers are looking to complement indoor-based nets and spraying with outdoor based solutions. In effect, they’re taking the battle to mosquitoes. And drones are a crucial part of their armoury. One of the main challenges to disease managers is finding small water bodies that mosquitoes use to breed. This is where drones come in – for the first time, drone imagery can be captured over large areas which can be used to create precise and accurate maps of potential habitats.</p>
<h2>Tracking mosquitoes</h2>
<p>We <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/mosquitoes/">know</a> that once an adult mosquito has fed and rested, it will typically go in search of a mate. Then it moves on to a suitable location – an aquatic habitat like the fringes of river channels, roadside culverts and irrigated rice paddies – to lay its eggs.</p>
<p>Public health authorities need to be able to locate and map these water bodies so they can be treated using a larvicide like DDT. This process is known as larval source management, and was successfully used in Brazil and Italy many decades ago. There, the DDT killed mosquito larvae – but could also be <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169475899016051">devastating</a> for local ecology as well as having adverse effects on human health.</p>
<p>Today much safer, low toxicity replacements have been developed. The problem is that they come at a cost. Resources are also needed to disseminate the larvicide and to locate the water bodies that host the mosquito eggs and larvae. Some of these hideaways are tough to find on foot, and if water bodies are accurately mapped a larvicide campaign could end up being a waste of time.</p>
<p>My institution, <a href="https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/dges/staff-profiles/listing/profile/ajh13">Aberystwyth University</a> in Wales, is working with the Zanzibar Malaria Elimination Programme to fly drones over known malaria hot spots. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192794/original/file-20171101-19858-1muno94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192794/original/file-20171101-19858-1muno94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192794/original/file-20171101-19858-1muno94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192794/original/file-20171101-19858-1muno94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192794/original/file-20171101-19858-1muno94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192794/original/file-20171101-19858-1muno94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192794/original/file-20171101-19858-1muno94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192794/original/file-20171101-19858-1muno94.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A rice paddy in Mwera, Zanzibar. These and other watery sites are perfect spots for mosquitoes to lay their eggs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image collected by Andy Hardy using a DJI Phantom 3 drone.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 20 minutes, a single drone is able to survey a 30 hectare rice paddy. This imagery can be processed and analysed on the same afternoon to locate and map water bodies. This has proved to be highly accurate and efficient. This is all using one of the most popular off-the-shelf drones, the Phantom 3 made by DJI. These are about the size of a shoebox, weighing a little more than a bag of sugar (1.2 kg) and are used throughout the world for both leisure and commercial photography.</p>
<p>We started off working in test locations across Zanzibar but now, with the support of the <a href="http://www.ivcc.com/">Innovative Vector Control Consortium</a> – a non-for-profit partnership aiming to create novel solutions for preventing disease transmission – we’re widening our range to explore how this technology can be incorporated into operational malaria eliminating activities.</p>
<p>It doesn’t stop there. We plan to incorporate the drone imagery into smartphone technology to help guide larvicide spraying teams to water bodies on the ground, and to track their progress and coverage. There’s also an exciting drive towards automatically disseminating larvicide from the drones themselves.</p>
<h2>Getting people involved</h2>
<p>Despite these exciting advances, operators need to be mindful of the negative side of drones: invasion of privacy; collisions with aircraft and birdlife; their association with warfare. These are very real concerns for the public.</p>
<p>In Zanzibar, we worked alongside village elders to show them the drones and explain exactly what we plan to use them for. We also encouraged people to gather around when we were looking at live-feed footage from the drone’s onboard camera. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-pkmgpcNXFg?wmode=transparent&start=59" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Collation of drone imagery recorded using a DJI Phantom 3 over a range of sites across Zanzibar.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This introduced people to our work and gave them a chance to see how drones and similar technologies, used alongside traditional indoor-based interventions, can really help to make malaria elimination in their community a reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Hardy receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council, the UK Space Agency and the Innovative Vector Control Consortium. </span></em></p>Epidemiologists and public health managers are looking to complement indoor-based malaria solutions with those that focus on the outdoors. Drones are a crucial part of their armoury.Andy Hardy, Lecturer in Remote Sensing and GIS, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/842922017-09-24T09:43:26Z2017-09-24T09:43:26ZCoastal and island heritage offers a rich resource for the world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186777/original/file-20170920-938-6yltxk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women in colourful traditional dress in Nosy Be, Madagascar.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rosabelle Boswell</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Globally, more than <a href="https://www.islandstudies.ca/sites/default/files/ISJ-3-1-2008-Baldacchino-FINAL.pdf">a billion</a> human beings live in coastal and island communities. These exotic, exquisite locations are lucrative: they attract <a href="http://www.pamgolding.co.za/international-property/mauritius/international">real estate developers</a> and <a href="https://www.privateislandsonline.com/">well-heeled buyers</a> looking for their slice of seaside “paradise”.</p>
<p>But beyond the sandy beaches and glitzy resorts there is a rich cultural heritage that benefits both its custodians and global society. Islanders and coastal inhabitants produce a wealth of philosophies and cultural practices. They have made and continue to make huge contributions to the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17458927.2017.1319603">stories of humanity</a>, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19480881.2016.1270010">musical history</a>, livelihood practices, <a href="https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/top-10-foods-try-caribbean">culinary traditions</a> and <a href="https://afrolegends.com/2013/11/14/edmond-albius-the-slave-who-launched-the-vanilla-industry/">creative genius</a>. </p>
<p>Islands and coastal areas are also valuable from a natural science perspective. They are home to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/06/madagascar-biodiversity-600-species-discovered">bewildering diversity</a> of endemic species. Governments and universities that want measurable results have seduced by the allure of digitised natural sciences in a world where technology is “the in thing”. They’ve have been quick to fund and so further position natural sciences as the dominant player in ocean sciences. </p>
<p>The social sciences, humanities and art are differently positioned in this disciplinary hierarchy. They have different but equally meaningful contributions to make to the ocean sciences. This includes, for example, a better understanding of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/07/fiction7">historical connections</a> via ocean “highways”, knowledge of the <a href="http://www.news24.com/Tags/Topics/hurricane_irma">human impact</a> of intemperate weather and insight into social justice matters in the <a href="http://johnpilger.com/videos/stealing-a-nation">displacement</a> of a population. </p>
<p>The islands of the southwest Indian Ocean – Mauritius, Madagascar, Reunion, Rodrigues, Seychelles and Zanzibar – and the coastal towns and cities of east Africa offer excellent examples of valuable coastal and island heritages. </p>
<h2>Island and coastal cultures</h2>
<p>Take the Arab inspired <a href="https://mymoris.mu/en/portfolio/musical-thing-to-do-ravanne-learning/"><em>Ravanne</em></a>. This instrument is used by both the <a href="http://segamaurice.tripod.com/"><em>Segatier</em></a> (sega musicians) in Mauritius and Reunion and in Zanzibar’s <a href="http://zanzibar.net/music_culture/music_styles/taarab/"><em>Taarab</em></a>. These musicians provide what social scientists call a <a href="http://invisibleplaces.org/">soundscape</a> of knowledge that speaks back to our largely visually oriented world.</p>
<p>The islands of the southwest Indian Ocean, which have historically cultivated spice and floral plantations, also offer <a href="https://essquezaluzanzibar.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/spice-trade-history-of-zanzibar/">scent-scapes</a>. </p>
<p>This shows how island societies can offer points of departure for the decolonisation of knowledge. Understanding the relevance of all the human senses to identity can help us to create new spaces of learning. We no longer prioritise the visual above other ways of accessing and engaging with knowledge.</p>
<p>Island philosophies, environmental ethos and integrated knowledge systems can be used to <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonising-the-curriculum-its-time-for-a-strategy-60598">decolonise</a> university courses and teaching. They can also advance <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/review/november-/local-is-lekker">sustainable development models</a> and, ultimately, achieve <a href="http://responsibletourismpartnership.org/what-is-responsible-tourism/">responsible tourism</a>.</p>
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</figure>
<h2>Innovation and experimentation</h2>
<p>Resilience and cosmopolitanism – openness to diversity – are other attributes of coastal cultures. Not only have the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean and along the East African coast experienced slavery and colonisation; they have also experienced multiple waves of human contact. These encounters have encouraged tolerance as well as innovation and experimentation. </p>
<p>Although many of these features exist in other societies, they haven’t been given as much attention as they should have in island and coastal communities.</p>
<p>Some experiments have been more successful than others. The call and response technique used in Tanzania’s indigenous music is deeply useful. It is also found in the Sega of the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230745822_Mascarene_Islands_Biology">Mascarene archipelago</a> and articulates the musical prowess of the islanders. It serves as a powerful reminder that these places are not isolated: a web of historical and global relationships are maintained to this day, advancing social cohesion and creative diversity.</p>
<p>There is also a long tradition of storytelling, orality and linguistic sophistication in island societies. In Madagascar, especially in the central highlands, speech making and verbal play remains highly prized. These long speeches, known as <a href="http://www.madacamp.com/Kabary"><em>kabary</em></a>, are also performed in the call and response style. They honour the audience, recount family history (and ancestry) and reconstitute community. </p>
<p>In Seychelles one finds <em>paroles</em>; sayings embedded in riddle or cast in a tale. From such sayings and tales, knowledge is passed from one generation to the next, altered here and there to reflect the current political situation, family circumstance or moral lesson to be learned. In these, there are meaningful references to environmental conservation and social justice or rejections of dominant beliefs and ideas.</p>
<h2>Preserving heritage</h2>
<p>Social scientists have a key role to play in studying coastal and island communities. They assist us to reach a deeper understanding of the interface between human beings and nature. The data available about these communities is increasing. And social scientists are involved in <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=heq_CwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=routledge+heritage&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwimsf6ttLPWAhVKK8AKHTUXAIQQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=routledge%20heritage&f=false">the debate</a> around the management of culture in these societies. </p>
<p>Recently there have been efforts to include social science perspectives in the ocean sciences and heritage. But these have largely focused on physical artefacts. This may be because social scientists don’t foreground their work enough; or that intangible heritage is difficult to preserve. After all, human memory is transient and selective, culture dynamic and communities ever-changing. </p>
<p>The social studies of islands (and coasts) have already produced some knowledge that can be used to solve the world’s most pressing problems. But the world needs more than this. It needs knowledge that enriches and broadens perspective. Knowledge that addresses the holistic business of living in a complex and thoroughly diverse world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84292/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosabelle Boswell receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation. She is also Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town.</span></em></p>Island philosophies can be used to decolonise university courses and teaching. They can also advance sustainable development models and, ultimately, achieve responsible tourism.Rosabelle Boswell, Professor of Anthropology and Executive Dean of Arts, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/816272017-08-15T14:01:17Z2017-08-15T14:01:17ZHeroin trafficking through South Africa: why here and why now?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181408/original/file-20170808-22982-1by1v5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An addict prepares heroin in Lamu on the east coast of Kenya.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Goran Tomasevic</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A series of large <a href="http://mobserver.co.za/69733/middelburg-situated-popular-drug-route/">heroin seizures</a> have been made in South Africa since 2016, but the country is just one of the pitstops on Africa’s heroin highway.</p>
<p>The African continent is geographically situated between opium production and consumer states. </p>
<p>Heroin reaches South Africa via the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-06-21-from-afghanistan-to-africa-heroin-trafficking-in-east-africa-and-the-indian-ocean/#.WYHGVYTfqUk">southern heroin trafficking route</a> originating in Afghanistan, where the overwhelming majority of global opium is <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/drug-trafficking/index.html">produced</a>. </p>
<p>The route goes through Pakistan and Iran to their coastlines, known as the Makran Coast. From there, the drug is loaded onto dhows which cross the Indian Ocean to transit states in either Africa or Asia, from where it is rerouted to its final destinations, mostly in Europe. The second phase of the journey can be by sea, land or air. </p>
<p>The dhows are large vessels often used for fishing explorations and able to undertake long journeys.</p>
<p>To avoid detection, the dhows either dock at island ports or remain out at sea. The heroin is then collected by smaller boats and taken ashore. The East and Southern African coastline has many inconspicuous islands to serve this purpose, which was also one of the factors luring cocaine traffickers to the cocaine plagued country of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/09/drugstrade">Guinea Bissau</a>.</p>
<p>The coastline from Kenya to South Africa is long, with porous borders, weak maritime surveillance, weak law enforcement capacity and corrupt officials willing to turn a blind eye. There is also a large diaspora connecting different regions to East and Southern Africa. </p>
<p>These factors attract traffickers and mean that managing the heroin trade in South Africa is fraught with challenges. Chief among them is the transnational nature of the heroin trade, the likely increase in local heroin use and the ability of the networks who run the trade to outsmart and outperform regional law enforcement entities and their limited resources.</p>
<h2>Changing circumstances, changing routes</h2>
<p>There are three primary heroin trafficking routes out of Afghanistan; the Balkan Route, the northern route and the southern route. The <a href="http://www.adriaticinstitute.org/?action=article&id=32">Balkan route</a>, stretching overland from Afghanistan to the Balkan countries and Western Europe, has experienced the bulk of heroin trafficking. </p>
<p>Research shows that <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21639560-east-african-states-are-being-undermined-heroin-smuggling-smack-track">law enforcement</a> efforts as well as conflicts have pushed some of the trade away from the Balkan route to the southern route and maritime trafficking, where law enforcement is mostly absent. Despite an increase in the southern route’s popularity with traffickers, it remains the least used of the three. </p>
<p>In 2010, a surge in large maritime heroin seizures in East Africa first highlighted Africa’s role in the southern route, especially the use of Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar as <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-06-21-from-afghanistan-to-africa-heroin-trafficking-in-east-africa-and-the-indian-ocean/#.WYHGVYTfqUk">transit zones</a>. </p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australian-warship-seizes-a-tonne-of-heroin-worth-159-million-in-record-drug-bust-9291302.html">1,032 kg</a> of heroin was seized from a dhow off Mombasa. It was the largest ever seizure of the drug outside of Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries. </p>
<p>As seizures have continued, international attention and law enforcement efforts in and around East Africa have increased. This is probably what caused traffickers to increasingly turn to landing points in Southern Africa. </p>
<p>South Africa is attractive for other reasons too. Drug traffickers are able to exploit the country’s efficient financial and transport infrastructure.</p>
<h2>Indian Ocean heroin trafficking</h2>
<p>Law enforcement on the southern route is mainly concerned with disrupting maritime heroin shipments before they reach the shore. The biggest law enforcement effort has come from the <a href="https://combinedmaritimeforces.com/ctf-150-maritime-security/">Combined Maritime Forces Combined Task Force 150</a>. </p>
<p>It is a fleet of 31 international navies mandated to patrol the Western Indian Ocean to disrupt terrorist activities and financing. This includes disrupting heroin trafficking on the high seas. Between 2013 and 2016 the force seized <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2016/November/indian-ocean_-colombo-declaration-adopted-to-coordinate-anti-drugs-efforts.html">9.3 tons</a> of heroin. </p>
<p>The task force patrols a vast <a href="https://combinedmaritimeforces.com/ctf-150-maritime-security/">area</a> – 2.5 million square miles across the high seas, extending as far as Mozambique. South Africa must, therefore, rely on its own navy and intelligence to detect shipments that outwit the Combined Task Force. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181385/original/file-20170808-21888-1h9cem1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181385/original/file-20170808-21888-1h9cem1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181385/original/file-20170808-21888-1h9cem1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181385/original/file-20170808-21888-1h9cem1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181385/original/file-20170808-21888-1h9cem1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181385/original/file-20170808-21888-1h9cem1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181385/original/file-20170808-21888-1h9cem1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A heroin trafficking dhow seized in Tanzanian waters, docked in Dar es Salaam next to the ferry to Zanzibar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carina Bruwer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the biggest obstacle to exposing the criminal networks running the southern route has been the Combined Task Force’s lack of jurisdiction to arrest heroin trafficking crews in international waters. This has resulted in the practice of the Combined Task Force throwing the heroin overboard and setting the crew and their vessel free. </p>
<p>If heroin can be seized in territorial waters, the national laws of the country apply and prosecutions can follow. </p>
<h2>Land based seizures in South Africa</h2>
<p>It is likely that dhows are only dropping off heroin as far as Mozambique because they would attract suspicion if they travelled as far as South Africa. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/tocta/TOCTA_Report_2010_low_res.pdf">Land based seizures</a> in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique have shown that heroin is broken up when it reaches the shore and then transported onward by road. This explains the seizure of smaller amounts of heroin being transported in cars and trucks from Mozambique to South Africa. </p>
<p>A recent heroin seizure in Overberg in the coastal province of the Western Cape has provided new insights into what researchers and law enforcement have only been able to speculate - that southern route heroin is also being transported to and from East and Southern Africa in containers. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/asia/sri-lanka-seizes-550-pounds-of-heroin.html">Containerised heroin seizures</a> have been made elsewhere along the southern route.</p>
<p>The heroin was found on a wine farm, hidden among boxes of wine intended for container shipment to <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/2017-07-08-r292m-heroin-plot-collapsed-under-weight-of-cape-wine/">Europe</a>. This finally offers a more concrete link to container trafficking on the southern route, which would be harder to detect than dhows. </p>
<p>But lots of questions remain unanswered. These include: where did the shipment come from? Was it a single large shipment which entered at a harbour or smaller shipments that were consolidated on the wine farm? If so, which overland route was used? Was corruption involved? Is local heroin use increasing due to increased trafficking through the region? </p>
<h2>What needs to happen?</h2>
<p>Rooting out corruption and minimising the pool of potential small scale traffickers could be a good place to start. But the problem is much bigger than South Africa and encompasses many elements that increased law enforcement can’t address. One factor, for example, is increased local heroin consumption.</p>
<p>To understand, and respond to heroin trafficking networks there needs to be a coordinated effort that brings together production, transit and consumer states.</p>
<p>In the meantime, South Africa needs to increase its vigilance in local ports and along borders.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carina Bruwer receives funding from the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime and the Social Science Research Council. </span></em></p>South Africa is only one piece in a larger puzzle of the heroin trade along the continents east coast.Carina Bruwer, PhD candidate, Institute for Safety Governance and Criminology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/772202017-05-08T15:48:53Z2017-05-08T15:48:53ZOne year on: lessons from Zanzibar’s universal old-age pension<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168397/original/file-20170508-20729-1rdgnyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pensions have made a big difference in the lives of Zanzibar's elderly men and women.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">HelpAge/Courtesy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kombo Mohamed, then aged 72, was the first person in Zanzibar to receive the new old-age pension <a href="http://www.ilo.org/addisababa/media-centre/pr/WCMS_489536/lang--en/index.htm">introduced</a> in April 2016. “My whole family has benefited,” he says, “I can pay my daughter’s school fees and transport to school and our diet has improved as we eat more fruit and vegetables.” </p>
<p>The value of the pension is modest at only 20,000 Tanzanian shillings per month, or just under $10. The age threshold for eligibility is high at 70 years. Nonetheless, over the past year Zanzibar’s new pension has brought some material comfort and dignity to elderly men and women on this island territory off the east African coast.</p>
<p>Zanzibar’s pension programme is a pioneer in East Africa. It is universal, meaning that it is paid to every older man and woman. There is no “means test” – a test of income or wealth – or requirement of past contributions. It is funded fully through the budget of the government of Zanzibar, without any direct funding by foreign aid donors. </p>
<p>Most of the countries in Africa with universal or near-universal pension programmes are middle-income countries like Mauritius, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. <a href="http://www.pension-watch.net/about-social-pensions/about-social-pensions/social-pensions-database/">Their pension programmes</a> cover all elderly men and women, except for the rich (in the South African case). The cost ranges between 0.3 and 2.2 percent of GDP, depending on the generosity of benefits.</p>
<p>Governments in poorer African countries (including <a href="http://www.cssr.uct.ac.za/sites/cssr.uct.ac.za/files/WP%20377%20Ulriksen.pdf">Tanzania</a>) have been reluctant to introduce similar programmes, usually citing concerns over “affordability” – meaning that pensions are not a priority. Care for the elderly is left to kin, who more and more often fail to provide.</p>
<p>The case of Zanzibar shows that, given certain political conditions, even low-income countries in Africa can introduce and pay for a universal pension programme.</p>
<h2>Responsibility, not dependency</h2>
<p>Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania. It comprises an archipelago of islands with a total population of about 1.3 million people, almost all Muslim. Poverty remains widespread. Social change has rendered older people especially vulnerable, with very few people able and willing to support older relatives.</p>
<p>The “revolutionary” government of Zanzibar has long professed to be pro-poor. Since colonial times, the state administered a system of poor relief, making minimal payments or allowances, called posho, to the most destitute people. The government’s preference, however, was to rely on Muslim religious charity called zakat. In the past few years, a World Bank-driven programme began to operate a conditional cash transfer programme for poor families with children. But this did not cover older people, many of whom were compelled to continue working despite infirmity. </p>
<p>As across much of Africa, pensions – and other forms of social protection – were put on the policy agenda in Zanzibar by international agencies. In 2009, <a href="http://www.helpage.org/">HelpAge International</a>, a non-government global network, combined with Zanzibar’s Department of Social Welfare to produce a report on the needs of older people in Zanzibar. </p>
<p>HelpAge had recently become enthusiastic advocates of old-age pensions. The report on Zanzibar recommended a universal pension of the equivalent of about $9 per month, from the age of 60. The report costed this at 0.85 percent of GDP. Zanzibar’s president endorsed the general proposal when he spoke at the report’s launch. </p>
<p>The Zanzibari state did not yet have any capacity to implement the proposal. It began work on a social protection policy, established a social protection unit, and sent officials to related specialist courses. In 2013 a group of government officials and politicians <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Tanzania-learns-from-Mauritius-Experience/1840340-2013608-evrfba/index.html">toured Mauritius</a>, which has had a universal old-age pension for decades. </p>
<p>The study tour to Mauritius had a huge effect. As one participant put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Seeing is believing. We saw the enthusiasm of their leaders. They showed us how the system works. The way they told us about their experiences, we were motivated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the draft Social Protection Policy was presented to the Cabinet in early 2014, however, some ministers expressed concern over the cost of a universal pension in light of tight budget constraints. President Ali Mohamed Shein referred the proposal to an inter-departmental team. The team quickly agreed that pensions should be universal and benefits should be set at about $10 per month, but could not agree on the age threshold. </p>
<p>Eventually it recommended an age threshold of 65, which would cost 0.7% of GDP. But it added that, if resources did not permit this, the threshold should be 70, which would cost only 0.5 percent of GDP. In March 2015 the President and Cabinet agreed to introduce pensions, but with the high age threshold. After a further year of preparations, the first pensions were paid out in April 2016.</p>
<p>The context in Zanzibar was favourable to the introduction of a pension in several respects. Firstly, there was a clear need for financial assistance for older people. This is especially given the decline of agriculture and fishing, and the erosion of kinship obligations. </p>
<p>Secondly, Zanzibar had traditions of both public responsibility and religious charity for the poor, through posho and zakat. These traditions made it easier for advocates of pensions to represent their proposals as improvements of existing policies. The dominant discourse in Zanzibar was one of responsibility, not of dependency. </p>
<p>The political situation also facilitated the reform. In the 2010 presidential election, the incumbent party’s candidate Shein defeated the opposition candidate very narrowly. Following his election, Shein proceeded to bring the opposition into a Government of National Unity, which resulted in more constructive political debate and policymaking. The backdrop of close-fought elections probably also inclined Shein to be sympathetic to popular reform.</p>
<h2>Making a big difference</h2>
<p>Zanzibar’s case indicates that low-income countries can choose to introduce reforms such as old-age pensions. But its experience suggests also that successful reform requires a careful process of coalition-building beyond the Ministry for Social Welfare. This includes a willingness to deliberate and compromise with those parts of the government that are anxious about the cost. External actors, such as HelpAge in this case, can play important support roles. But it is crucial that local officials and politicians own the initiative. </p>
<p>Reports from Zanzibar indicate that the pensions have made a big difference in the lives of elderly men and women. They have allowed them not only to purchase basic necessities but also to invest in the education of their children or grandchildren, and in income-generating activities. </p>
<p>The Zanzibar model might well become more general. In 2017, the Kenyan government announced a similar scheme would be <a href="http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2017/03/universal-social-welfare-for-those-over-70-meant-to-foster-inclusivity-ps/">introduced</a>, also with an age threshold of 70.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Seekings does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The case of Zanzibar shows that, given certain political conditions, even low-income countries in Africa can introduce and pay for a universal pension programme.Jeremy Seekings, Director, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/711162017-01-15T17:19:32Z2017-01-15T17:19:32ZCoral reefs off Tanzania’s coast are being destroyed, most beyond repair<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152429/original/image-20170111-4591-cksms0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The main cause of coral bleaching -- the disappearance of the coral's colour, revealing the white skeleton -- is heat stress.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>If current trends continue and countries fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nearly all of the world’s coral reefs will suffer severe bleaching on an annual basis, according to a new United Nations environment agency <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39666">study</a>. Bleaching has a <a href="http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/habitats/coralreefs/coral-reefs-coral-bleaching-what-you-need-to-know.xml">hugely negative</a> effect on the health of a coral reef which, in turn, is vital to ocean health. The Conversation Africa’s Samantha Spooner asked Leonard Chauka to shares his insights into coral bleaching on Tanzania’s coastline.</em></p>
<p><strong>What is coral bleaching?</strong></p>
<p>Corals, that make structures we call reefs, are comprised of two partner organisms: an animal (coral) and a unicellular photosynthetic algae (dinoflagellate). The interaction whereby two different organisms live together for mutual benefit is called symbiosis. In this symbiosis, coral (the animal) provides protection and raw materials for photosynthesis while photosynthetic algae produces food. This enables both partners to grow and reproduce. The beautiful colour we see in coral comes from the photosynthetic algae because they have pigment that makes them colourful.</p>
<p>Coral bleaching is the disappearance of the coral’s colour, revealing the white coral skeleton. It occurs due to either the breakdown of symbiosis between coral and photosynthetic algal cells or the degradation of photosynthetic pigments of photosynthetic alga cells. This occurs as a result of stressful conditions caused by, <a href="http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/managing-the-reef/threats-to-the-reef/climate-change/what-does-this-mean-for-species/corals/what-is-coral-bleaching">in most cases</a>, high temperatures. </p>
<p>Therefore, major coral bleaching events occur during high sea surface temperatures associated with <a href="http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html">El Nino</a> – a warm extreme weather pattern. But other factors such as cold conditions, elevated solar radiations and pollution have been found to cause minor coral bleaching at local scale.</p>
<p><strong>Is coral along Tanzania’s coastline being affected?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. For example, the 1997-1998 <a href="http://www.oceandocs.org/bitstream/handle/1834/25/WIOJ1143.pdf?sequence=1">global coral bleaching event</a> caused mortalities of <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-25370-1_10">up to 80%</a> in some of Tanzania’s reefs. This worldwide bleaching event was caused by elevated sea surface temperature due to El Nino. Sea surface temperatures <a href="http://www.reefresilience.org/case-studies/tanzania-mpa-management/">were 2°C higher</a> than average (over 30°C).</p>
<p>The Misali and Tutia reefs in Pemba and Mafia Islands were the <a href="http://repository.udsm.ac.tz:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11810/2314/Chauka_Springer_2016.pdf?sequence=1">most affected</a> with about 90% of these reefs suffering coral mortality. </p>
<p>Normally prolonged bleaching events lead to coral mortality (deaths) because the provider of food - photosynthetic algae – is no longer there to play its role. Most of these reefs have not recovered and there is no hope for them to recover completely. </p>
<p>Another bleaching event occurred in 2016 between February and June along the Tanzanian coast. Like previous events, this was caused by high sea surface temperatures due to El Niño. But this one didn’t cause much mortality. Few coral mortalities were observed in reefs in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. Most coral recovered and are now in good health. </p>
<p>While these were two significant coral bleaching events, there are also minor seasonal bleaching events. These are not recorded and occur between February and June as these are the hottest months in Tanzania.</p>
<p><strong>What has the impact been?</strong></p>
<p>Coral reefs are an important habitat for fish species as breeding grounds. As a result, fisheries have been largely affected. <a href="http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v315/p237-247/">Fisheries statistics</a> show a decline in fish numbers. </p>
<p>The statistics also show changes in fish community structure, for example herbivores increasing in abundance. This is probably due to a shift from coral dominated reef to <a href="http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/3970/SORR_Macroalgae.pdf">macroalgae</a> dominated reef. Normally coral deaths resulting from bleaching encourage macroalgae to inhabit the area quickly and take over even the few remaining patches of live coral reefs. </p>
<p>Coral reefs are also very important in providing <a href="http://repository.udsm.ac.tz:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11810/2314/Chauka_Springer_2016.pdf?sequence=1">coastal protection</a> and stabilisation by reducing wave energy and mitigating both routine erosion and damage from waves associated with small and moderate storms. Current trends of climate change are accompanied by global warming, sea level rise and increased storm intensity. It will therefore be detrimental to future coastal protection to lose these reefs.</p>
<p><strong>What are the solutions to preventing or, if possible, reversing it?</strong></p>
<p>Coral bleaching is caused by rises in sea surface temperature which is why there is concern over the impact of global warming. There are, however, other minor bleaching events that are caused by factors such as low temperature, solar radiation, lowered salinity and pollution. But there is no scientific data established to show the contribution of these other factors on bleaching events that we have experienced in Tanzania. </p>
<p>There is no way we can stop current trends of global warming at the local level. What is being done in Tanzania is the restoration of highly degraded coral reefs. This involves <a href="http://coralrestoration.org/coral-tree-nursery/">growing</a> nursery reared coral transplants in areas with highly degraded reefs. </p>
<p>Currently I am involved in active restoration of highly degraded coral reefs off Dar es Salaam. In this project we have been able to successfully restore about 5,000 meters squared of degraded coral reef since July 2016 when the project started. The data are yet to be published.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonard Jones Chauka has received funding from the Western Indian Ocean Marine Sciences Association. His PhD was sponsored by the World Bank and his coral restoration project in Dar es Salaam is funded by the Vice President’s office of United Republic of Tanzania.</span></em></p>Tanzania has experienced two major coral bleaching events. Major coral bleaching events occur when sea surface temperatures are high thanks to El Nino.Leonard Jones Chauka, Molecular ecologist, University of Dar es SalaamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647862016-09-05T11:39:33Z2016-09-05T11:39:33ZThe heritage of hair: stories of resilience and creativity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136443/original/image-20160902-20247-1k8qsmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hair speaks of the past, and of cultural heritage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve Evans/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.jacarandafm.com/news-sport/opinion/its-not-just-about-hair/">Untangling</a> the <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-slavery-to-colonialism-and-school-rules-a-history-of-myths-about-black-hair-64676">racial politics</a> of hair has preoccupied casual observers and social analysts for centuries. </p>
<p>Cutting edge anthropological analyses suggest that contemporary hair styling is about “<a href="http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ai/article/view/110054">fashioning futures</a>”, since African identities are “works in progress that refuse to be <a href="http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ai/article/view/110054">impoverished by dichotomies</a>”.</p>
<p>However hair is also about the past and, specifically, cultural heritage. It is both tangible and intangible, a palpable thing that has long term symbolic value. As a changeable part of the human body, hair has long been modified for aesthetic and other ends. But skewed power structures entrenched by racism and sexism have meant that women, and particularly women of colour, have borne the brunt of stereotyping and prejudice. Even so, hair reveals the diversity of human history and cultural creativity.</p>
<h2>Profoundly political</h2>
<p>The politics of hair has deep roots. Ritually cleansing themselves, ancient <a href="http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/06/07/shaving-rituals/">Egyptian priests</a> would shave their bodies and pluck their eyebrows every other day. In ancient Ghana, historical hair grooming involving hair combs and pins revealed <a href="http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/fowler-focus-art-hair-africa/">leadership and status</a>, while in nineteenth century Madagascar the Tsimihety did not cut their hair, presenting their tresses as a sign of their <a href="http://www.madagascar-vision.com/ethnie-tsimihety-madagascar/">independence</a>. American slave traders, on the other hand, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hair-Story-Untangling-Roots-America/dp/0312283229">shaved their captives’ heads</a> supposedly to cleanse them. For many Africans, that act further stripped them of their dignity and symbolised cultural death. </p>
<p>In Europe and around the same time that the slave trade “boomed”, elaborate hairstyles flourished. This led to changes in European hair heritages. Increasing numbers of European men and women wore wigs and heavy makeup to signal their newfound <a href="http://thehistoryofthehairsworld.com/hair_18th_century.html">wealth and status</a>. Powdered and carefully coiffed, the wigs concealed undesirable odours and emerging ailments. Entire retinues of people were required to design, maintain and style the wigs. </p>
<p>Europeans promoted and entrenched racist discourses in slave and colonial society. In Zanzibar and Mauritius the short hair of African descendants was derisively described as pepper corns or sugar, major crops of the slave colonies. In South Africa, racist references to <em>kort kop</em> (short head) links short hair with inferior intelligence. The association of short hair with deficiency even makes it into song “<em>jou hare kan nie pom-pom nie</em>” (your hair cannot be tied in a bun).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5iL8TNl8mtg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Singer Emo Adams with his song ‘Jou hare kan nie pom-pom nie’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hair acquires new meaning</h2>
<p>But hairstyles are acquiring new meaning. In Madagascar women wear “braids of love” to signal (from afar) a woman’s sole interest in marriage. At marriage, a woman will ask her sister-in-law to braid her hair to symbolise the strengthening of the marital bond between the families. Many Africans living in America today (and many African South Africans) wear their hair in dreadlocks to publicly validate the natural texture of their hair and symbolise a return to roots. Women everywhere are relinquishing “white crack” - chemical relaxers.</p>
<p>Increasingly, people are deliberately setting out to show that they don’t aspire to “western” ideas of beauty. The Himba people in Namibia braid and colour their hair and body with butter, fat and ochre. The mixture beautifies and protects their skin from the sun. <a href="http://acacia-africa.com/blog/2014/11/18/the-himba-tribe-some-interesting-facts/">Himba women</a> may take up to 12 hours to do their hair. </p>
<p>Innumerable variations of cornrows and dreadlocks in South Africa, Malawi, Lesotho and Botswana also showcase the diversity of hair heritage in southern Africa. </p>
<p>As a black woman who has done some interesting things to her own hair, I would say that hair heritage is profoundly gendered. It reflects not only racism but the impact of patriarchy in society. Many rituals of womanly beauty, including hair styling, involve making a woman look younger. Fulfilling a patriarchal desire for youthfulness, women have endured the challenge of acquiring longer hair. Anyone who has had their hair braided in singles or cornrows knows about waiting for the “tightness” to subside and the fact that the pain might drive you to find a toothpick to loosen those unhappy baby hairs. </p>
<p>Clearly then, there is more to hair politics than hair straightening. What about the association of hairlessness with femininity in the “<a href="http://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/news/a40350/everything-you-need-to-know-before-getting-a-brazilian-wax/">Brazilian</a>”? Women of all colours routinely request a “Brazilian” or a “Hollywood”, rituals of intimate depilation and purification. Contemporary women regardless of colour are modifying the hair they inherited. Billions subject themselves to plucking, waxing, tinting, electrolysis, crimping and perming.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the rise of manscaping suggests that women are not alone in this hair styling frenzy. Long held masculine hair heritages and hairy reassertions of manhood seem to emerge in <a href="https://www.academia.edu/5883155/_The_Beard_Goes_to_War_Men_s_Grooming_and_the_American_Civil_War_">times of crisis</a>. </p>
<h2>The role of globalisation</h2>
<p>Predictably, immigration and globalisation are diversifying hair heritages. Moroccan barbers have imported male nose and ear waxing to South Africa. The increasingly popular mixed martial arts trend, meanwhile, is encouraging an astonishing number of beard growers.</p>
<p>Given the rapid pace and intensity of globalisation, global trends may overcome local prejudices. The rise of <a href="http://www.askmen.com/daily/austin_100/102_fashion_style.html">metrosexual masculinity</a> might well encourage more ritualistic waxing of backs, cracks and sacks. Until then, things remain unequal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64786/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosabelle Boswell receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation. She currently holds a Competitive Rated Researchers' Grant (CPRR) to investigate silences and success in the management of African heritage.</span></em></p>Hair has long been modified for aesthetic and other ends. But skewed power structures have meant that women, particularly women of colour, have borne the brunt of stereotyping and prejudice.Rosabelle Boswell, Professor of Anthropology and Executive Dean of Arts, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/575002016-04-21T20:41:11Z2016-04-21T20:41:11ZTanzania at 55: some progress has been made but there’s a long way to go<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118731/original/image-20160414-2649-zckd87.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tanzania's President John Pombe Magufuli is still experiencing the "election honeymoon" and is highly rated by citizens.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Emmanuel Herman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli has <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201604050735.html">cancelled</a> this year’s Union Day celebrations, celebrated every April 26. Instead he has recommended road construction with the funds that were set aside for the <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/news/africa/Tanzanians-wont-celebrate-Union-Day/-/1066/3147292/-/9jpa0fz/-/index.html">celebrations</a>. </p>
<p>This follows a similar move last year when he ordered that the December independence day celebrations be dedicated to <a href="http://www.africansarise.com/tanzania/magufuli-orders-tanzanians-to-join-monthly-clean-up-campaigns/">clean-up campaigns</a>. </p>
<p>The cancellation of two national holidays as cost-cutting measures is Magufuli’s rushed attempt to finally deliver on <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nyerere/biography.htm">President Julius Nyerere’s</a> vision of self-reliance, accountability and good governance for his country. Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding father upon its independence in 1961, governed until he <a href="http://www.juliusnyerere.org/index.php/nyerere/about/">retired</a> in 1985.</p>
<p>But to achieve any of these goals, the new president must find consensus for constitutional reforms. This is especially important because the country’s elections have become increasingly <a href="http://www.saiia.org.za/opinion-analysis/will-competitive-elections-lead-to-change-in-tanzania">competitive</a>. Contested elections in the future could become increasingly polarised. As it is, Magufuli’s rival for the presidency, Edward Lowassa, has refused to recognise last year’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/29/tanzania-announces-election-winner-amid-claims-of-vote-rigging">election results</a>. </p>
<p>The reforms should entail a total overhaul of Tanzania’s old constitution. Successive governments since President Nyerere have promised to do this but all have <a href="http://www.africaresearchinstitute.org/publications/constitutional-reform-tanzania-2/">fallen short of their promises</a>. The latest attempt – a referendum on a new constitution planned for last year – also <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/tanzania-delays-constitution-referendum/2705034.html">failed</a>. The proposed new constitution was in any event rejected by opposition parties and civil society on the grounds that it was <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/tanzania-delays-constitution-referendum/2705034.html">not inclusive enough</a>.</p>
<p>Constitutional reforms would solve the controversy over the mainland’s relationship with the semi-autonomous <a href="http://csis.org/publication/political-crisis-zanzibar">Zanzibar archipelago</a>. They would also promote the drive for good governance and accountability that Magufuli is championing. </p>
<p>He is likely to succeed with these reforms if he undertakes them now while he is still <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dwayne-wong-omowale/what-would-magufuli-do-ho_b_8950422.html">popular among Tanzanians</a>. </p>
<h2>Nyerere’s legacy of social cohesion</h2>
<p>Nyerere’s main gift to Tanzanians was his ability to nurture a strong form of social cohesion among his countrymen. This seems to have endured. He managed to achieve this through African socialism known as <a href="http://tdsnfp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/MILITANTS-MOTHERS-AND-THE-NATIONAL-FAMILY-UJAMAA-GENDER-AND-RURAL-DEVELOPMENT-IN-POSTCOLONIAL-TANZANIA.pdf">Ujamaa</a>. </p>
<p>Ujamaa was both a party ideology and <a href="http://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:278969/FULLTEXT01.pdf">government policy</a>. Through his pragmatic approach to national unity, Nyerere was able to create a strong sense of social cohesion among Tanzanians, while uniting Zanzibar and Tanganyika.</p>
<p>This social cohesiveness prevailed before and after the recent elections, even though they were the most competitive <a href="https://www.ndi.org/tanzania">since independence</a>. Despite the fact that they were heavily polarised and threatened to split the independence party Chama Cha Mapinduzi, Tanzanian leaders made persistent calls for <a href="http://www.nai.uu.se/news/articles/2015/10/29/163013/index.xml">calm</a>. As a result, the country returned to normality after the polls.</p>
<p>This is in sharp contrast with several other countries in the region, specifically in the <a href="http://www.eac.int/">East African Community</a>. The rest of the community’s members – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda – have all experienced <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/uploads/EACANNIE.PDF">ethnic violence</a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless trends in Tanzania’s election suggested an emerging ethnic cleavage in the country’s voting patterns. Parties were forced to mobilise support from their leaders’ regional strongholds.</p>
<p>This is largely due to political opposition parties gaining increasing clout over the advantages of <a href="http://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/conferences/2009-edia/papers/457-OGorman.pdf">incumbency</a> enjoyed by Chama Cha Mapinduzi since independence.</p>
<p>Chama Cha Mapinduzi has been the dominant unifying party among top Tanzanian political elites for a long time. But the party nearly split after presidential candidate <a href="http://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/11292/Zanzibar_faces_poll_re-run">Edward Lowassa</a> decided to join opposition party Chadema when he failed to clinch the <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/It-s-Magufuli-vs-Lowassa/-/2558/2816328/-/7hu5kt/-/index.html">presidential ticket</a>.</p>
<p>The palpable tensions during the campaign resulted in the two leading presidential contenders – Lowassa and Magufuli – whipping up support among their <a href="http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000180882/ruling-ccm-headed-for-victory-in-tanzania-polls">regional bases</a>. Chama Cha Mapinduzi had the advantage of strong grassroots support across the geographically <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22781.pdf">vast country</a>. As a result Magufuli won, clinching more than 58% of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34669468">votes</a>. It was the lowest margin in Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s winning streak <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/After-win--it-s-uphill-task-for-Magufuli/-/2558/2936814/-/s0t4biz/-/index.html">since independence</a>.</p>
<h2>Zanzibar presents greatest threat</h2>
<p>The other issue that greatly threatens Tanzania’s social unity is political instability in Zanzibar. The island experienced political tension during the electioneering period. </p>
<p>An archipelago off the Indian Ocean, Zanzibar formed a union with Tanzania in 1964, and has never hidden its desire to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/africa/2012/09/39186.html">secede</a>. </p>
<p>Tensions have been a constant feature on the island since 1995’s multi-party elections. Post-election violence in <a href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/46f146f10.pdf">2000</a> triggered the worst political crisis in Zanzibar’s history.</p>
<p>Tensions last year resulted in the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34656934">elections</a> being nullified. This was not a surprise. The situation was saved by both sides agreeing with the Zanzibar Election Commission’s pledge to conduct a rerun of the elections.</p>
<p>Despite Chama Cha Mapinduzi candidate Ali Mohamed Shein winning the presidency in Zanzibar with 91% of <a href="http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/CCM-Shein-wins-Zanzibar-presidency-in-election-rerun/-/2558/3126934/-/bbutyb/-/index.html">votes cast</a>, the tension is likely to persist. The best option would be to form a government of national unity. The long-term goal should be to agree on constitutional reforms to reduce a sense of marginalisation by sections of Zanzibaris.</p>
<h2>Economic growth and development pressure</h2>
<p>Nyerere is widely credited with unifying Tanzania. But his economic policies, aimed at self-reliance, undermined Tanzania’s economic growth and <a href="http://pdfproc.lib.msu.edu/?file=/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/political%20science/volume8n1/ajps008001004.pdf">development</a>.
Nyerere’s policies failed despite Tanzania’s vast deposits of <a href="http://en.unesco.org/radioict/sites/radioict/files/interview_professor_mohammed_sheya_tanzania_transcript.pdf">natural resources</a>. The nationalisation of businesses and industries drove away foreign direct investment. Kenya, which traditionally has run an open economy, was the main beneficiary.</p>
<p>Now, as Tanzania celebrates its 52nd <a href="https://anydayguide.com/calendar/1936">Union Day</a>, there is a rush to undo past failures. Good governance and accountability are high on Magufuli’s agenda. His style of leadership has included impromptu visits to public offices to see how government officials work.</p>
<p>This has <a href="http://citizentv.co.ke/news/mwangi-is-magufulis-broom-strong-enough-to-sweep-eac-113118/">endeared him to Tanzanians</a> and his popularity has soared. Increasingly Tanzanians are coming around to trusting <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dwayne-wong-omowale/what-would-magufuli-do-ho_b_8950422.html">his leadership</a>.</p>
<p>But the country needs to establish new state institutions and strengthen existing ones. These are preconditions to the country’s much-needed constitutional reforms.</p>
<h2>Good neighbourliness</h2>
<p>Magufuli would also help Tanzania overcome its economic challenges by forging stronger regional relations. Since independence Tanzania has had varied levels of engagement with countries in the East African Community. The previous Jakaya Kikwete regime had a lukewarm approach towards the <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201604120242.html">regional economic block</a>. The current regime seems to be on a mission to mend fences and position Tanzania as a key actor in regional affairs. This was evident in his recent charm offensive <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201604120242.html">towards Uganda and Rwanda’s leaders</a>. Nevertheless, Tanzania still needs to formulate a grounded foreign policy framework for regional relations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sekou Toure Otondi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Good governance and accountability are high on the agenda of Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli.Sekou Toure Otondi, PhD Candidate, Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of NairobiLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/499342015-10-29T14:51:28Z2015-10-29T14:51:28ZTanzania’s ruling party wins election (again), but poll is annulled in Zanzibar<p>Tanzania’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-34669468">has been announced</a> as the winner of the country’s election, extending its 54-year reign for another five years. Its presidential candidate John Magufuli won 58.46% of the vote, although there have been calls for a recount by the opposition. </p>
<p>Despite CCM’s victory, the parliamentary and presidential elections on October 25 were the most competitive the country has ever seen and mark a decisive shift in Tanzanian politics. </p>
<p>Tanzania has a reputation as a peaceful country where election violence is virtually unknown outside of the island of Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous state with its own elected president. A rapid degeneration in trust after the poll – and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-34656934">nullification of the election</a> in Zanzibar over concerns they were not free and fair – has brought the country into uncharted territory. </p>
<h2>Ruling party divided</h2>
<p>This campaign season has laid bare the entrenched factionalism within CCM. What was once a highly-centralised, bureaucratic party is increasingly <a href="http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/114/456/382.full.pdf?etoc">split</a> by rival networks of competing political elites. These networks link national political figures, influential financiers, and regional and local party leaders, who are in many areas grouped into personalised political machines.</p>
<p>Faction tensions reached fever pitch during the CCM presidential <a href="http://presidential-power.com/?p=3607">nomination</a> process last June and July. A leading contender was Edward Lowassa, a former prime minister in the first government of the outgoing president Jakaya Kikwete before he resigned <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7232141.stm">over a corruption scandal in 2008</a>.</p>
<p>This fall from grace set Lowassa at loggerheads with Kikwete, his former political ally. It is widely accepted that Kikwete personally intervened to ensure Lowassa did not get the CCM nomination despite enjoying widespread support. The nomination instead fell to John Magufuli, a long-time minister with no clear factional affiliation.</p>
<p>Lowassa responded to his exclusion by defecting to the opposition, where he was selected as the presidential candidate for the coalition known by its Swahili acronym, Ukawa. Lowassa brought with him a wave of other <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/-Defections-won-t-weaken-CCM/-/1840406/2833646/-/4myc7f/-/index.html">defectors</a> from CCM, including more former ministers and local party cadres, especially from his home area in the Arusha region where his personal network is strongest.</p>
<p>This development fundamentally changed the election calculus, giving the opposition a shot at winning the presidency for the first time since Tanzania’s independence.</p>
<h2>A united opposition</h2>
<p>Tanzania’s opposition parties were in a relatively strong position even before Lowassa’s entry.</p>
<p>Four parties – Chadema, Civic United Front, National Convention for Construction and Reform-Mageauzi, and National League for Democracy – united in the Ukawa coalition in 2014 and <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/Ukawa-sign-MoU-to-field--one-candidate-against-CCM/-/1840392/2500598/-/rp95s8z/-/index.html">had agreed</a> to field joint parliamentary and district council candidates in the 2015 elections. Chadema, now Tanzania’s leading opposition party, had also built up its local party structures since the previous election in 2010, and had managed to implant itself in areas where previously it had only a slight presence.</p>
<p>Lowassa’s arrival at the helm may have cost the opposition some of its support, particularly as parties such as Chadema built their reputation as anti-corruption crusaders and were now seen to embrace Lowassa, a politician long-maligned for <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/31/uk-tanzania-politics-idUKKBN0OG0EG20150531">corruption, which he denies</a>. CCM took advantage of this situation during the election campaigns, <a href="http://mgafrica.com/article/2015-10-19-10-reasons-why-i-predict-tanzanias-ruling-party-will-retain-power-in-sundays-election">branding</a> the opposition hypocrites.</p>
<p>Even so, the opposition momentum only grew with Lowassa drawing huge crowds at election rallies. CCM meanwhile was struggling with its own flagging legitimacy, seeming to rely on the relatively untainted image of its presidential candidate, Magufuli, to carry the day. More sceptical observers tended to question both candidates’ promise of “<a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/-/1765046/2818926/-/sloa9gz/-/index.html">change</a>”.</p>
<h2>What the results tell us</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.uchaguzitz.co.tz/category/election-results/">election results published so far</a> on the Tanzanian mainland reveal interesting patterns. CCM’s lead in both the presidential and parliamentary elections reveal the ruling party’s continued popular support, despite internal divisions and a resurgent opposition. </p>
<p>But a number of factors suggest that the basis for that support is more fragile than a superficial reading of the results first implies. </p>
<p>In a country where politics do not generally play out along ethnic lines – certainly not compared with neighbouring Kenya – it is striking that the home regions of both the candidates Magufuli (Lake Victoria) and Lowassa (Arusha) have swung strongly in their favour. It would be a mistake, though, to interpret these swings as a marker of purely “ethnic” voting. Both Magufuli and Lowassa’s areas are ethnically diverse, making it difficult to rely on one group to win a victory. </p>
<p>There is a rational assessment voters make whereby they judge that having a president from their area – regardless of ethnicity – will ensure development gains for everyone. Whichever way you choose to interpret this regional vote, it does add to the perception of a more personalised politics where party allegiance is pegged to personal networks.</p>
<p>Much has been made of the growing number of CCM big-wigs who have <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzaniadecides/Drama-as-big-guns-swept-aside-in-surprise-results/-/2926962/2932882/-/lkvcup/-/index.html">lost</a> in the elections so far. An emblematic case was the defeat of Stephen Wasira, a minister under three different presidents and a top-ranking CCM official. Wasira lost to a young woman, Esther Bulaya, who stood out as a CCM MP critical of government in the last parliamentary session before defecting to Chadema (ahead of Lowassa) earlier this year. </p>
<p>This result speaks to a growing popular disillusionment with a CCM old guard, its yes-man politics and its apparent inability to address critical issues, such as corruption.</p>
<h2>Queries pour in</h2>
<p>While polling went smoothly on the day, vote tallying has raised serious concerns to the point where both sides are now accusing the other of foul play.</p>
<p>The day after the poll, police raided a number of Chadema vote tallying centres and eight volunteers were later <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzaniadecides/Chadema-volunteers-charged-with-publishing-wrong-results/-/2926962/2933186/-/6kxx4e/-/index.html">charged</a> with publishing false election results under the newly enacted and much criticised Cyber Crimes Act. This incident <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzaniadecides/CCM-says-Ukawa-has-panicked-as-alliance-alleges-results-fraud/-/2926962/2932866/-/m2ihmf/-/index.html">prompted</a> a volley of accusations and counter-accusations from Chadema and CCM.</p>
<p>More worrying was the decision made by the chairman of the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) on October 28 to <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzaniadecides/ZEC-nullifies-Zanzibar-polls--cites-irregularities/-/2926962/2933480/-/4bofkez/-/index.html">nullify</a> the Zanzibar elections on the basis of vague allegations of “irregularities”. This came after the opposition presidential candidate for Zanzibar announced he had won and security forces <a href="http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/News/CUF-urges-calm-as-Z-bar-awaits-results/-/1840406/2932872/-/1vm3jk/-/index.html">surrounded</a> a hotel where ZEC commissioners and international election observers were staying.</p>
<p>The opposition sees the ZEC announcement – issued just as vote-counting was nearing completion – as a panicked response to CCM losing the election in Zanzibar. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-africa-34629239">Lowassa</a> has also responded by calling into question results published by the National Electoral Commission responsible for counting votes for the Union President and National Assembly candidates for the mainland and Zanzibar.</p>
<p>Political leaders are calling for calm, but so long as accusations continue to fly, the potential for a dangerous escalation cannot be ruled out.</p>
<p>As it stands, the elections in Tanzania have proved historic. Even though there has not been a transfer of power, the poll unveiled the extent of factional divisions within CCM as never before. They also testify to a public desire for “change”, particularly within Tanzania’s growing youth population. </p>
<p><em>This article was co-published with the <a href="http://presidential-power.com/?p=4003">website Presidential Power</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michaela Collord does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>John Magufuli has been announced as president elect of Tanzania.Michaela Collord, PhD Candidate, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.