Browsing by Author "Kangalawe, Hezron"

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    Plantation forestry in Tanzania : a history of Sao Hill forests, 1939-2015
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03) Kangalawe, Hezron; Swart, Sandra; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis uses plantation forests from the colonial to the postcolonial period as a lens to explore the history of Tanzania between 1939 and 2015. The thesis discusses transitions within plantation forestry by using the changing history of the Sao Hill, the biggest plantation forest in Tanzania. The thesis weaves together the varied factors that led to the establishment of the Sao Hill plantation, first during the colonial period, when it was established as a means of ameliorating the micro-climates around tea farms and white commercial farms. Secondly, during the postcolonial period, it was part of implementing Basic Industrial Strategy (BIS) policy aimed at introducing industries that could reduce imports from 1967. While the colonial government compensated the customary land owners to get land for afforestation, the postcolonial government did not compensate as it resettled under the rubric of African Socialism, famously known as Ujamaa villages, between 1973 and 1976. Moreover, the thesis demonstrates that, due to the weak economy, the state resorted to the World Bank to get a loan. The World Bank loan, issued in 1976 and renewed in 1982, influenced subsequent state-driven afforestation behaviour and management in Tanzania. A Biodiversity paradigm (stemming from the 1980s) on forestry conservation attracted international donors to fund more natural forests than plantations. From the late 1980s, economic liberalization was implemented which caused some of the land owners to use ‘weapons of the weak’ to resist the means used by the state to take their customary land. This thesis ends by exploring the means deployed by the government to curb fire outbreaks and encroachment cases at the Sao Hill plantation. While the plantation forest management protected the plantation forest by adhering to some elements of the participatory forest management, a practice more common in the natural forests management, the state tried to control encroachment cases and boundary conflicts with the Sao Hill forest between 1986 and 2013. While participatory methods reduced fire outbreaks, neither the commissions of inquiry nor the participatory measures succeeded in solving encroachment in some villages like Mapanda where two private companies and individual woodlot developers had bought almost three quarters of the village land. Therefore, this thesis argues that the plantation forestry in Tanzania is a product of many factors which can be summarized into environmental and economic ones.