An investigation by the Oakland Institute, a policy think tank, has turned up allegations that the government of Tanzania is sidelining the country’s Maasai population in favor of tourism.
The government and some foreign investors worry that the Maasai, semi-nomadic herders who have lived in the Rift Valley for centuries, are degrading parts of the Serengeti ecosystem.
The authors of the Oakland Institute’s report argue that approaches aimed at conservation should focus on the participation and engagement of Maasai communities rather than their removal from lands to be set aside for high-end tourism.
The government of Tanzania is casting aside Maasai communities to make way for lucrative high-end safari tourism and hunting, says the Oakland Institute, a policy think tank, in a report published May 10.
The four-year investigation revealed that groups of the Maasai in the Loliondo division of northern Tanzania have been kept off lands vital to their survival so that wealthy safari-goers and foreign royalty can have unfettered access to East Africa’s iconic wildlife.
The policy has led to widespread hunger and fear among the population, said Anuradha Mittal, director of the California-based Oakland Institute.
A map showing the location of Loliondo Game Controlled Area in northern Tanzania. Image courtesy of the Oakland Institute.
After thousands of Maasai have been threatened or displaced, “Their sentiment is that the next person to be evicted and displaced will be me,” Mittal said in an interview with Mongabay. “This is a fear that the villagers live with.”
The report cites firsthand accounts, communications with and within a safari company, and government and legal documents. It argues that authorities, eager to keep the deep-pocketed tour companies that operate in Tanzania happy, are driving the Maasai into poverty and dependence on aid to maintain the country’s tourism sector. The reason they often give is the protection of the environment.
But this issue isn’t confined to Loliondo or Tanzania, Mittal said.
“This is not just about a specific company. This is not just about a specific government,” she said. “This is happening across the world in the name of conservation, in the name of economic opportunity for governments.”
An elephant in Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Image by John C. Cannon/Mongabay.
Conservation and the Maasai
It’s difficult to pin down an exact figure, but perhaps a million or more Maasai live in East Africa’s Great Rift Valley, stretching across northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. For centuries, large numbers have grazed their livestock in the area around the Serengeti plain. The name Serengeti translates to “the place where the land runs forever” in Maa, the group’s language.
In the 1950s, the colonial government in charge of what is today Tanzania asked the Maasai to leave Serengeti National Park, which was created in 1951, so the area could be devoted entirely to conservation. The Maasai living in the region agreed and moved into the vicinity of the nearby Ngorongoro Crater. But when concerns arose that too many people living there would impact the wildlife, they were again asked to move, with many ending up in Loliondo division.
This pattern, the Oakland Institute contends, has continued, justified as efforts to keep ecosystems intact, but also as a way to maintain the flow of tourism dollars, mostly from high-end safaris, into the country. Restrictions by the government on where the Maasai could and could not go, as well as their ability to cultivate small farm plots and gardens, had by the 1990s led to widespread malnutrition, one study found. The authors, who published their research in the journal Human Organization, concluded that the government’s success in protecting the region’s wildlife was coming at the cost of the health of the semi-nomadic Maasai.
In 1992, Tanzania’s prime minister, John William Malecela, lifted the ban on gardens in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to ease the pressure on the Maasai, and laws passed in 1999 were aimed at codifying customary claims to land in Tanzania. But that wasn’t the end of the setbacks to the Maasai’s way of life, according to the Oakland Institute’s investigation.
A herd of cows in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Image courtesy of the Oakland Institute.
Mittal and her colleagues point to an emblematic example of the challenges that Maasai communities face in Loliondo, centering on a piece of land originally called Sukenya Farm near the border with Kenya. In 2006, Rick Thomson and Judi Wineland, the owners of Thomson Safaris, a safari outfitter based in Watertown, Mass., that has operated in Tanzania since the 1980s, bought a 96-year lease on 12,617 acres (5,106 hectares) of land for $1.2 million. Thomson and Wineland intended to turn the land into a nature reserve, according to the company’s blog.
“Purchasing the land in Loliondo was a way to protect a wildlife corridor from Kenya to the Serengeti, to provide a refuge for the endangered wildlife, to provide a place for tourists to see wildlife in the wilderness, to walk amongst the wildlife in an authentic setting, to meet the [Maasai] who have been our friends for years and to provide benefits to the community around us,” Thomson told Mongabay in an email.
But it would also mire them in an ongoing dispute over the land that started in the early 1980s. In 1984, Tanzania Breweries Limited purchased 10,000 acres (4,047 hectares) of this land from the district council. The sale drew the ire of some of the local Maasai, who said they grazed their animals on the land and should have been consulted.
In the ensuing years, however, Tanzanian Breweries Limited didn’t use much of the land, ostensibly abandoning it in 1990. Meanwhile, the Maasai continued to move their herds through in search of grass and water, and they would set up traditional compounds called bomas in the area.
An entrance to a new boma built by the Maasai. Image courtesy of the Oakland Institute.
When Wineland and Thomson acquired Sukenya Farm through their company, Tanzania Conservation Limited (TCL), some of the adjacent Maasai communities objected. For one, the size of the land had grown to include an additional 2,617 acres that the Maasai say the brewing company illegally took several years before the sale. Maasai communities also said that once again, their traditional lands had been sold without their consent, and their lawyers argued that the Maasai communities’ use of Sukenya Farm in the preceding decades amounted to a legal claim on the land.
This all came as a surprise to Thomson and Wineland.
“Unbeknownst to us,” Thomson said, “we would be used as a pawn, a political football, in a broader game on the board of Loliondo that is a struggle between NGO local interests and national government interests for political, economic and territorial control of Loliondo.”
The land has been the subject of several court cases. In 2015, a Tanzanian court upheld TCL’s claim to the land for 10,000 acres, but said that the extra 2,617 acres had been illegally acquired.
If it should not have been part of the sale, Wineland contends that the addition happened before she and Thomson purchased it. “The title deed reads 12,617 acres,” she wrote in an email to the Oakland Institute on Nov. 21, 2017. “Any changes made to the size of the land did not happen under the ownership of the land by TCL.”
In the 12 years since TCL acquired the land, according to the report, Maasai communities point to several instances in which herders have been driven off the land, now called Enashiva Nature Refuge. The Oakland Institute surveyed the testimony by both sides of the recent court case over the land involving several communities and TCL, which alleges that at times TCL staff would call in the local police to force the Maasai off the land. That led to arrests, beatings, shootings and the destruction of bomas, the report says.
A leopard in Serengeti National Park. Image by John C. Cannon/Mongabay.
“All these will remain allegations as the villages could not provide evidence in court to prove any of the allegations,” Wineland wrote in her emailed response to the Oakland Institute.
Thomson also told Mongabay that Mittal’s team “failed in its due diligence” because it didn’t speak with representatives of Thomson Safaris while in Tanzania. Nor did the researchers include the perspectives of village leaders who are supportive of the company’s work.
Mittal said she aimed to find unvarnished accounts of what was happening in Loliondo, and she said that in village after village, she saw people who weren’t happy with TCL and Thomson Safaris’ presence in the area.
Thomson, who said that Thomson Safaris “vehemently” denies any allegations of abuse, insists that the company’s relationship with local communities is quite different than how it’s portrayed in the report.
“There are no conflicts with our neighbors, in fact we have letters requesting more dispensaries, water bore holes and school buildings,” he said, referring to the clinics, wells and schools that the company has helped fund in communities near Enashiva. Wineland also co-founded Focus on Tanzanian Communities, a nonprofit charity involved in social and economic development.
In his testimony during the court case, Thomson said, “The police are only called when the situation is escalating and people are feeling like they’re being threatened or something of that nature.”
However, Mittal points to internal communication within TCL that surfaced during the discovery phase of the litigation, indicating that TCL staff would call the commissioner of Ngorongoro district (which includes Loliondo) in response to herders grazing livestock, cutting wood or farming. The district commissioner would then call the police, according to court documents.
On July 30, 2012, a TCL staff member wrote in an email, “Nice to know that it is the [district commissioner] and police that are dealing with this, that we are out of that picture in the sense that we did not have face to face conflict and the usual thing of being accused of beating people …”
People from the village of Naiyobi line up for water. Image courtesy of the Oakland Institute.
A hunting concession
In another part of Loliondo, a land dispute has long simmered between Maasai communities and the Otterlo (sometimes spelled Ortello) Business Corporation. In 1992, the Tanzanian government gave Otterlo permission to hunt on 4,000 square kilometers (1,544 square miles) in the Loliondo Game Controlled Area, which the Oakland Institute estimates is home to 50,000 Maasai.
The Oakland Institute reports that the license has effectively turned the Loliondo Game Controlled Area into a private hunting reserve for the family, complete with an airstrip and Emirati cellphone networks.
Otterlo has also played a part in keeping the Maasai from using the land, according to the report, as in a 2009 eviction of 200 bomas by Otterlo security and a government “paramilitary” unit. Accounts hold that the action affected 20,000 people and rendered 3,000 homeless. Government officials said the Maasai were evicted because their cultivation of the land was degrading it.
Otterlo did not respond to several requests for comment through social media, and the telephone number listed for the office in Tanzania is no longer in service. The Oakland Institute’s attempts to reach out to Otterlo by telephone and postal mail also went unanswered.
A boma in Ngorongoro District. Image courtesy of the Oakland Institute.
John Cannon is a Mongabay staff writer based in the Middle East. Find him on Twitter:@johnccannon
Citation
McCabe, J. T., Perkin, S., & Schofield, C. (1992). Can conservation and development be coupled among pastoral people? An examination of the Maasai of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. Human Organization, 353-366.
Editor’s note: This is the paper produced for a South African Student Organisation Leadership Training Course in December 1971.
by Steve Biko
We have defined blacks as those who are by law or tradition politically, economically and socially discriminated against as a group in the South African society and identifying themselves as a unit in the struggle towards the realization of their aspirations.
This definition illustrates to us a number of things:
Being black is not a matter of pigmentation–being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.
From the above observations therefore, we can see that the term black is not necessarily all-inclusive, i.e. the fact that we are all not white does not necessarily mean that we are all black. Non-whites do exist and will continue to exist for quite a long time. If one’s aspiration is whiteness but his pigmentation makes attainment of this impossible, then that person is a non-white. Any man who calls a white man “baas,” any man who serves in the police force or security branch is ipso facto a non-white. Black people–real black people–are those who can manage to hold their heads high in defiance rather than willingly surrender their souls to the white man.
Briefly defined therefore, Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression–the blackness of their skin–and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude. It seeks to demonstrate the lie that black is an aberration from the “normal” which is white. It is a manifestation of a new realization that by seeking to run away from themselves and to emulate the white man, black are insulting the intelligence of whoever created them black. Black Consciousness, therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of the God’s plan in creating black people black.
It seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life. The interrelationship between the consciousness of the self and the emancipatory programme is of a paramount importance. Blacks no longer seek to reform the system because so doing implies acceptance of the major points around which the system revolves. Blacks are out to completely transform the system and to make of it what they wish. Such a major undertaking can only be realized in an atmosphere where people are convinced of the truth inherent in their stand. Liberation therefore is of paramount importance in the concept of Black Consciousness, for we cannot be conscious of ourselves and yet remain in bondage. We want to attain the envisioned self which is a free self.
The surge towards Black Consciousness is a phenomenon that has manifested itself throughout the so-called Third World. There is no doubt that discrimination against the black man the word over fetches its origin from the exploitative attitude of the white man. Colonization of white countries by whites has throughout history resulted in nothing more than sinister than mere cultural or geographical fusion at worst, or language bastardization at best.
It is true that the history of weaker nations is shaped by bigger nations, but nowhere in the world today do we see whites exploiting whites on scale even remotely similar to what is happening in South Africa. Hence, one is forced to conclude that it is not coincidence that black people are exploited. It was a deliberate plan which has culminated in even so-called black independent countries not attaining any real independence.
With this background in mind we are forced, therefore, to believe that it is a case of haves against have-nots where whites have been deliberately made haves and black have-nots.
There is for instance no worker in the classical sense among whites in South Africa, for even the most downtrodden white worker still has a lot lose if the system is changed. He is protected by several laws against competition at work from the majority. He has a vote and he uses it to return the Nationalist Government to power because he sees them as the only people who, through job reservation laws, are bent on looking after his interests against competition with the “Natives.”
It should therefore be accepted that analysis of our situation in terms of one’s colour at once takes care of the greatest single determinant for political action–i.e. colour–while also validly describing the blacks as the only real workers in South Africa. It immediately kills all suggestions that there could ever be effective rapport between the real workers, i.e. blacks, and the privileged white workers, since we have shown that the latter are the greatest supporters of the system.
True enough, the system has allowed so dangerous an anti-black attitude to build up amongst whites, who are economically nearest to the blacks, demonstrate the distance between themselves and the blacks by an exaggerated reactionary attitude towards blacks. Hence the greatest anti-black feeling is to be found amongst the very poor whites whom the Class Theory calls upon to be with black workers in the struggle for emancipation. This is the kind of twisted logic that Black Consciousness approach seeks to eradicate.
In terms of the Black Consciousness approach we recognize the existence of one major force in South Africa. This is White Racism. It is the one force against which all of us are pitted. It works with unnerving totality, featuring both on the offensive and in our defence. Its greatest ally to date has been the refusal by us to progressively lose ourselves in a world of colourlessness and amorphous common humanity, whites are deriving pleasure and security in entrenching white racism and further exploiting the minds and bodies of the unsuspecting black masses. Their agents are ever present amongst us, telling that it is immoral to withdraw into a cocoon, that dialogue is the answer to our problem and that it is unfortunate that there is white racism in some quarters but you must that things are changing.
These in fact are the greatest racists for they refuse to credit us any intelligence to know what we want. Their intentions are obvious; they want to be barometers by which the rest of the white society can measure feelings in the black world. This then is what makes us believe that white power presents itself as a totality not only provoking us but also controlling our response to the provocation. This is an important point to note because it is often missed by those who believe that there are a few good whites. Sure there are few good whites just as much as there are a few bad blacks.
However what we are concerned here with is group attitudes and group politics. The exception does not make a lie of a rule–it merely substantiates it. The overall analysis therefore, based on the Hegelian theory of dialectic materialism, is as follows. That since the thesis is a white racism there can only be one valid antithesis, i.e. a solid black unity, to counterbalance the scale. If South Africa is to be a land where black and white live together in harmony without fear of group exploitation, it is only when these two opposites have interplayed and produced a viable synthesis of ideas and modus vivendi. We can never wage any struggle without offering a strong counterpoint to the white racism that permeate our society so effectively.
One must immediately dispel the thought that Black Consciousness is merely a methodology or a means towards an end. What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce at the output end of the process real black people who do not regard themselves as the appendages to white society. This truth cannot be reserved.
We do not need to apologize for this because it is true that the white systems have produced throughout the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are people. Our adherence to values that we set for ourselves can also not be reversed because it will always be a lie to accept white values as necessarily the best. The fact that a synthesis may be attained only relates to adherence to power politics. Someone somewhere along the line will be forced to accept the truth and here we believe that ours is the truth.
The future of South Africa in the case where blacks adopt Black Consciousness is the subject for concern especially among initiates. What do we do when have attained our Consciousness ? Do we propose to kick whites out ? I believe personally that the answers to these questions ought to be found in the SASO Policy Manifesto and in our analysis of the situation in South Africa. We have defined what we mean by true integration and the very fact that such a definition exists does illustrate what our standpoint is. In any case we are much more concerned about what is happening now, than will happen in the future. The future will always be shaped by the sequence of present-day events.
The importance of black solidarity to the various segments of the black community must not be understated. There have been in the past a lot of suggestions that there can be no viable unity amongst blacks because they hold each other in contempt. Coloureds despise Africans because they (the former), by their proximity to the Africans, may lose the chances of assimilation into the white world. Africans despise the Coloureds and Indians for a variety of reasons. Indians not only despise Africans but in many instances also exploit the Africans in job and shop situations.
All these stereotype attitudes have led to mountainous inter-group suspicions amongst the blacks.
What we should at all times look at is the fact that:
We are all oppressed by the same system.
That we are oppressed to varying degrees is a deliberate design to stratify us not only socially but also in terms of the enemy’s aspirations.
Therefore it is to be expected that in terms of the enemy’s plan there must be this suspicion and that if we are committed to the problem of emancipation to the same degree it is part of our duty to bring to the black people the deliberateness of the enemy’s subjugation scheme.
That we should go on with our programme, attracting to it only committed people and not just those eager to see an equitable distribution of groups amongst our ranks. This is a game common amongst liberals. The one criterion that must govern all our action is commitment.
Further implications of Black Consciousness are to do with correcting false images of ourselves in terms of culture, Education, Religion, Economics. The importance of this also must not be understated. There is always an interplay between the history of people i.e. the past, their faith in themselves and hopes for their future. We are aware of the terrible role played by our education and religion in creating amongst us a false understanding of ourselves. We must therefore work out schemes not only to correct this, but further to be our own authorities rather than wait to be interpreted by others.
Whites can only see us from the outside and as such can never extract and analyze the ethos in the black community. In summary therefore one need only refer this house to the South African Student Organisation Policy Manifesto which carries most of the salient points in the definition of the Black Consciousness. I wish to stress again the need for us to know very clearly what we mean by certain terms and what our understanding is when we talk of Black Consciousness.
One of the most difficult things to do these days is to talk with authority on anything to do with African Culture. Somehow Africans are not expected to have any deep understanding of their own culture or even of themselves. Other people have become authorities on all aspects of the African life or to be more accurate on Bantu life. Thus we have the thickest of volumes on some of the strangest subjects – even “the feeding habits of the Urban Africans,” a publication by a fairly “liberal” group, Institute of Race Relations.
In my opinion, it is not necessary to talk with Africans about African culture. However, in the light of the above statements one realises that there is so much confusion sown, not only amongst casual non-African readers, but even amongst Africans themselves, that perhaps sincere attempt should be made emphasising the authentic cultural aspects of the African people by Africans themselves.
Since that unfortunate date – 1652 – we have been experiencing a process of acculturation. It is perhaps presumptuous to call it “acculturation” because this term implies a fusion of different cultures.
In our case this fusion has been extremely one-sided. The two major cultures that met and “fused” were the African Culture and the Anglo-Boer Culture.
Whereas the African culture was unsophisticated and simple, the Anglo-Boer culture had all the trappings of a colonialist culture and therefore was heavily equipped for conquest.
Where they could, they conquered by persuasion, using a highly exclusive religion that denounced all other Gods and demanded a strict code of behaviour with respect to clothing, education ritual and custom. Where it was impossible to convert, fire-arms were readily available and used to advantage. Hence the Anglo-Boer culture was the more powerful culture in almost all facets. This is where the African began to lose a grip on himself and his surroundings.
Thus in taking a look at cultural aspects of the African people one inevitably finds himself having to compare. This is primarily because of the contempt that the “superior” culture shows towards the indigenous culture. To justify its exploitative basis, the Anglo Boer culture has at all times been directed at bestowing an inferior status to all cultural aspects of the indigenous people.
I am against the belief that African culture is time-bound, the notion that with the conquest of the African all his culture was obliterated. I am also against the belief that when one talks of African culture one is necessarily talking of the pre-Van Riebeeck culture. Obviously the African has had to sustain severe blows and may have been battered nearly out of shape by the belligerent cultures it collided with, yet in essence even today, one can easily find the fundamental aspects of the pure African culture in the present day African. Hence in taking a look at African culture, I am going to refer as well to what I have termed the modern African culture.
One of the most fundamental aspect of our culture is the importance we attach to Man. Ours has always been a Man-centred society. Westerners have in many occasions been surprised at the capacity we have for talking to each other – not for the sake of arriving at a particular conclusion but merely to enjoy the communication for its own sake. Intimacy is a term not exclusive for particular friends but to a whole group of people who find themselves either through work or through residential requirements.
In fact, in the traditional African culture, there is no such thing as two friends. Conversation groups were more or less naturally boys whose job was to look after cattle periodically meeting at popular spots to engage in conversation about their cattle, girlfriends, parents, heroes, etc. All commonly shared their secrets, joys and woes. No one felt unnecessarily an intruder into someone else’s business. The curiosity manifested was welcome. It came out of a desire to share. This pattern one would find in all age groups. House visiting was always a feature of the elderly folk’s way of life. No reason was needed as a basis for visits. It was always part of our deep concern for each other.
These are things never done in the Westerner’s culture. A visitor to someone’s house, with the exception of friends, is always met with the question “what can I do for you?” This attitude to see people not as themselves but as agents for some particular function either to one’s disadvantage or advantage is foreign to us. We are not a suspicious race. We believe in the inherent goodness of man. We enjoy man for himself. We regard our living together not as an unfortunate mishap warranting endless competition among us but as a deliberate act of God to make us a community of brothers and sisters jointly involved in the quest for a composite answer to the varied problems of life. Hence in all we do we always place Man first and hence all our action is usually jointly community oriented action rather than the individualism which is the hallmark of the capitalist approach. We always refrain from using people as stepping stones. Instead we are prepared to have a much slower progress in an effort to make sure that all of us are marching to the same tune.
Nothing dramatises the eagerness of the African to communicate with each other more than their love for song and rhythm. Music in the African culture features in all emotional states. When we go to work, we share the burdens and pleasures of the work we are doing through music. This particular facet strangely enough has filtered through the present day. Tourists always watch with amazement the synchrony of music and action as African working at a road side use their picks and shovels with well-timed precision to the accompaniment of a background song. Battle songs were a feature of the long march to war in the olden days. Girls and boys never played any games without using music and rhythm as its basis. in other words with Africans, music and rhythm were a not luxuries but part and parcel of our way of communication. Any suffering we experienced was made much more real by song and rhythm. There is no doubt that the so called “Negro spirituals” sung by Black slaves in the States as they toiled under oppression were indicative of their African heritage…
Attitudes of Africans to property again show just how un-individualistic the African is. As everybody here knows, Africans always believe in having many villages with a controllable number of people in each rather than the reverse. This obviously was a requirement to suit the needs of a community-based and man-centred society. Hence most things where jointly owned by the group, for instance there was no such thing as individual land ownership. The land belonged to the people and was under the control of the local chief on behalf of the people. When cattle went to graze it was on an open veld and not on anybody’s specific farm.
Farming and agriculture, though on individualistic family basis, had many characteristics of joint efforts. Each person could by a simple request and holding a special ceremony, invite neighbours to come and work on his plots. This service was returned in kind and no remuneration was ever given.
Poverty was a foreign concept. This could only be really brought about to the entire community by an adverse climate during a particular season. It never was considered repugnant to ask one’s neighbours for help if one was struggling. In almost all instances there was help between individuals, tribe and tribe, chief and chief, etc. even in spite of war.
Another important aspect of the African culture is our mental attitude to problems presented by life in general. Whereas the Westerner is geared to use a problem-solving approach following very trenchant analyses, our approach is that of situation-experiencing. I will quote from Dr. Kaunda to illustrate this point:
“The westerner has an aggressive mentality. When he sees a problem he will not rest until he has formulated some solution to it. He cannot live with contradictory ideas in his mind; he must settle for one or the other or else evolve a third idea in his mind, which harmonises or reconciles the other two. And he is vigorously scientific in rejecting solutions for which there is no basis in logic. He draws a sharp line between the natural and the supernatural, the rational and non-rational, and more often than not, he dismissed the supernatural and non-rational as superstition…
“Africans, being a pre-scientific people do not recognise any conceptual cleavage between the natural and supernatural. They experience a situation rather than face a problem. By this I mean they allow both the rational and non-rational elements to make an impact upon them and any action they may take could be described more as a response of the total personality of the situation than the result of some mental exercise.”
This I find a most apt analysis of the essential difference in the approach to life of these two groups. We as a community are prepared to accept that nature will have its enigmas which are beyond our powers to solve. Many people have interpreted this attitude as lack of initiative and drive yet in spite of my belief in the strong need for scientific experimentation, I cannot help feeling that more time also should be spent in teaching man and man to live together and that perhaps the African personality with its attitude of laying less stress on power and more stress on man is well on the way to solving our confrontation problems.
All people are agreed that Africans are a deeply religious race. In the various forms of worship that one found throughout the Southern part of our continent, there was at least a common basis. We all accepted without any doubt the existence of a God. We had our own community of saints. We believed – and this was consistent with our views of life – that all people who died had a special place next to God. We felt that communication with God, could only be through these people. We never knew anything about hell – we do not believe that God can create people only to punish them eternally after a short period on earth.
Another aspect of religious practices was the occasion of worship. Again we did not believe that religion could be featured as a separate part of our existence on earth. It was manifest in our daily lives. We thanked God through our ancestors before we drank beer, married, worked, etc. we would obviously find it artificial to create special occasions for worship. Neither did we see it logical to have a particular building in which all worship would be conducted. We believed that God was always in communication with us and therefore merited attention everywhere and anywhere.
It was the missionaries who confused our people with their new religion. By some strange logic, they argued that theirs was a scientific religion and ours was mere superstition in spite of the biological discrepancies so obvious in the basis of their religion. They further went on to preach a theology of existence of hell, scaring our fathers and mothers with stories about burning in eternal flames and gnashing of teeth and grinding of bone. The cold cruel religion was strange to us but our fore-fathers were sufficiently scared of the unknown impending anger to believe that it was worth a try. Down went our cultural values!
Yet it is difficult to kill the African heritage. There remains, in spite of the superficial cultural similarities between the detribalised and Westerner, a number of cultural characteristics that mark out the detribalised as an African…
The advent of the Western culture had changed our outlook almost drastically. No more could we run our own affairs. We were required to fit in as people tolerated with great restraint in a western type society. We were tolerated simply because our cheap labour is needed. Hence we are judged in terms of standards we are not responsible for. Whenever colonisation sets in with its dominant culture, it devours the native culture and leaves behind a bastardised culture. This is what has happened to the African culture. It is called a sub-culture purely because the African people in the urban complexes are mimicking the white man rather unashamedly.
In rejecting Western values therefore, we are rejecting those things that are not only foreign to us but that seek to destroy the most cherished of our beliefs – that the coner-stone of society is man himself – not just his welfare. Not his material well being but just man himself with all his ramifications. We reject the power-based society of the Westerner that seems to be ever concerned with perfecting their technological know-how while losing out on their spiritual dimension. We believe that in the long run the special contribution to the world by Africa will be in this field of human relationship. The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving an industrial and military look, but the greatest gift still has to come from Africa – giving the world a more human face.
“Deep down, every liberationist is an optimist.” – Steve Biko
Steve Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist and organizer who was murdered by the secret police in 1978. He was 32 years old when he was tortured and beaten, resulting in his death. “I Write What I Like” is a collection of writing by Biko and includes some commentary.
The collection is defined by radicalism. Biko was a believer in the mantra that freedom cannot be given, only taken. In this idea lies the core of why the liberal solution to South African apartheid remained incomplete, resulting in a highly unequal, racialized capitalist society. This is the difference between “equality” under the law and true liberation.
Biko understood that racism and apartheid were not simply technical problems. “One needs to understand the basics before setting up a remedy,” he writes. “A number of organizations now currently ‘fighting against apartheid’ are working on an oversimplified premise. They have taken a brief look at what is, and have diagnosed the problem incorrectly. They have almost completely forgotten about the side effects and have not even considered the root cause. Hence whatever is improved as a remedy will hardly cure the condition.”
Biko’s philosophy of Black Consciousness was built on undermining both the political structures that upheld apartheid as well as the internalized inferiority and superiority that still characterize race relations in many locations worldwide. He rejected integration for its own sake, recognizing that mainstream integration ideas are “white man’s integration—an integration based on exploitative values. It is an integration in which black will compete with black, using each other as rungs up a step ladder leading them to white values… these are the concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s [sic] mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-Cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds.”
He aimed to uphold African cultural values as important, writing “The easiness with which Africans communicate with each other is not forced by authority but is inherent in the make-up of African people… this is a manifestation of the interrelationship between man and man [sic] in the black world as opposed to the highly impersonal world in which Whitey lives.”
He understood that oppressive systems maintain their power primarily by the consent of the oppressed, which is gained via coercion, psychological tricks, propaganda, fear, and so on.
This is the reason that Biko was confident in the ability of non-violent aboveground political organizing to liberate South Africa. He was not a pacifist, and spoke in favor of the militant organizations (ANC and the PAC) that operated underground during his most active years.
These organizations had limited effectiveness in that context, but Biko strove to forge multi-generational alliances regardless, recognizing the primacy of shared goals. His approach to other groups was “tough, even aggressive language” tempered “with a basically friendly underlying spirit.”
Biko was a leader, but not an authoritarian. He promoted initiative rather than centralization. This proved to be key when many figures within various resistance movements were banned from participation in public life or sent to prison on the remote Robben Island.
He was a highly effective organizer, as one passage from his friend Aelred Stubbs C.R. makes clear. “Although Steve could hold no office in BPC because of his banning order he was constantly being consulted. It was amazing how much he knew… more than once he warned me not to get too close to certain people, white or black, whose contacts were less than desirable. He was always right. He never spoke against anyone if he could possibly help it. Even when he did, it was always in a particular context… There was this fierce integrity about them all. If you were with them you were in, and everything was given and taken. If in any way you were furthering your own ends, or trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, you were out.”
Biko, like all historical figures, was no saint. His behavior was frequently sexist, and he derided feminism as an irrelevance—not an uncommon attitude at the time (or today), but inexcusable in someone fighting for justice. Like with other historical figures, we can learn from his weaknesses as well as his strength. In 2018, those lessons are still as relevant as ever.
Four Baka – two women and two men – were beaten up by eco-guards in the Republic of Congo last week. The Baka had just returned to their village, after spending the day in the forest, when a squad of eco-guards arrived and accused them of hunting elephants.
Survival has received reports that the two Baka men were arrested and are now in prison, even though the eco-guards found no evidence that they had been hunting.
A similar case of abuse was reported in a neighbouring community a week earlier, around 23 February: a group of Baka were coming out from the forest when eco-guards beat them up and arrested them.
Eco-guards are patrolling huge swathes of north-east Congo Republic, including regions which are not officially recognized as “protected” areas. They are funded and equipped by WWF and according to several sources, are spreading terror among Baka in the name of conservation.
A Baka man told Survival: “They always do that kind of abuse, especially to Baka. They need to beat people to show they are doing a good job.”
Eco-guards are also involved in other cases of abuse, harassment, torture and arrest of innocent Baka people. One case, in early 2017, was described as a “catastrophe.” The guards made Baka men, women and children strip to their waists, get to the ground and “crawl like snakes” while the guards kicked and whipped them with their belts.
“The eco-guards came here to abuse us for nothing. Every time it is beatings and whippings–and they break our radios, and pierce our cooking pots,” says one Baka man.
Today the Baka say they do not feel free to move around and live in their ancestral land. The climate of fear is so strong that they feel unable to hunt, fish and gather plants to feed their families, with serious consequences for the Baka’s health and well-being.
These abuses are not just illegal: they are harming conservation. Targeting tribal hunters diverts action away from tackling the true poachers–criminals conspiring with corrupt officials–and harms conservation.
Moreover, the big conservation organizations are partnering with industry and tourism and destroying the environment’s best allies. Like many tribal peoples, the Baka know better than anyone else how to take care of elephants and other wildlife in their forests.
