Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape

Front matter

SWEET DEAL, BITTER LANDSCAPE

GENDER POLITICS AND LIMINALITY IN TANZANIA’S NEW ENCLOSURES

YOUJIN B. CHUNG

Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Note on Currency

Introduction 1. The Making of a Sweet Deal . The Making of a Bitter Landscape

3. On Being Counted: Gender, Property, and “the Family” 4. Governing Liminality: The Bio-necropolitics of Gender 5

Conclusion

Glossary of Swahili Terms Notes

Index xiii

123 149 169

187 189 217 243

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the trust, kindness, and generosity of many individuals and families in Tanzania who welcomed me into their lives. There are not enough words to describe my gratitude to them. In Bagamoyo, I had the good fortune of working with Francis Shang’a, whose formal title was research assistant but who did so much more, serving as a friend, interlocutor, and confidant with whom I shared both the challenging and rewarding moments of fieldwork. Christine Noe was a supportive and trusted mentor, and I thank her for facilitating my research affiliation with the Department of Geography at the University of Dar es Salaam. I am grateful for the friendship of Marjorie Mbilinyi, whose feminist scholarship and activism I admire deeply; Marge and the late mzee Simon took me in as family in Dar es Salaam and visited me in Bagamoyo, providing me with a sense of home away from home. Lussaga Kironde at Ardhi University graciously shared his expertise on land issues, particularly involuntary resettlement and compensation, and introduced me to key informants in the government in the early days of my research. I also benefited from exchanges with other scholars investigating land deal politics in Tanzania, including Chambi Chachage, Linda Engström, Richard Mbunda, Sina Schlimmer, and Emmanuel Sulle. I also thank the following individuals and activists for offering their wisdom and assistance at various points in my research: Stephen Chiombola, Gidufana Gafufen, Wilhelm Gidabuday, Lembulung M. Ole Kosyando, Magareth Maina, Sabrina Masinjila, Godfrey Massay, Samwel Mesiak, Elias Mtinda, Mary Ndaro, Valentin Ngorisa Olyang'iri, Ester Rwela, and Naomi Shadrack. I also thank the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology, the Tanzania National Parks Authority, and local and regional government authorities for granting permission to conduct this research, as well as the Tanzania National Archives staff in Dar es Salaam for their patient assistance.

At Cornell University, where research for this book began, I had the special privilege of working with Wendy Wolford. Her commitment to agrarian justice and insistence on theoretical and methodological rigor continue to inspire me and my approach to research, teaching, and advising. Phil McMichael, Rachel Bezner Kerr, and Rick Schroeder were invaluable mentors; their sustained encouragement and critical observations pushed me to refine my arguments and better articulate the broader significance of my work. Each one of them and their scholarship influenced my thinking in more ways than I can imagine, and I feel so x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS blessed to have had the opportunity to learn from them. I also valued conversations with Garry Thomas at Ithaca College. He was a tireless advocate of my work and generously donated his Tanzania library collections to me in retirement, a gift that I hope to pass on to my students someday.

I was fortunate to have Asha Best, Meg Mills-Novoa, and Sunaura Taylor as my fellow junior faculty colleagues at Clark University and the University of California at Berkeley. They offered immeasurable moral support as we juggled the demands of our positions and navigated the seemingly daunting process of writing a book. Alice Beban, Andrew Curley, Madeleine Fairbairn, Michael Mascarenhas, James McCarthy, Kasia Paprocki, Nancy Lee Peluso, Sara Smith, and Wendy Wolford provided important advice at different stages of book publishing. I thank my senior colleagues at the Energy and Resources Group and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, especially my departmental mentors, Isha Ray and Rachel Morello-Frosch, for their wisdom and encouragement.

Across the Berkeley campus, Leo Arriola and Martha Saavedra warmly welcomed me to the African studies community and invited me to present a chapter at the UC-wide interdisciplinary Africanist Workshop. I thank them and other workshop participants, especially discussant Derick Fay, for their thoughtful engagement and constructive comments. The graduate students who enrolled in my Agrarian Questions seminar in the spring of 2020 and fall of 2021 also deserve recognition. Their reflections and lively discussions, particularly on agency, moral economy, and resistance, motivated the writing and rewriting of chapter 5. I also had the opportunity to present draft chapters at the George Perkins Marsh Institute at Clark University, the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley, and at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association and the American Association of Geographers. Much appreciation to Joanny

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

Bélair, Aharon de Grassi, Ashley Fent, Marie Gagné, Alicia Lazzarini, and Sina Schlimmer for inspiring generative conversations about global land investments in Africa at these conferences.

Funding for this research came from the Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship and the Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship. Various institutions and programs at Cornell University also provided financial support for research and writing: the Institute for the Social Sciences (Theme Project on Contested Global Landscapes), the Institute for African Development, the Office of International Programs at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (Initiative on Advancing Women in Agriculture through Research and Education), the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Department of Development Sociology, the Graduate School, the Center for the Study of Inequality, the Polson Institute for Global Development, the Society for the Humanities, and the Institute for Comparative Modernities. Clark University and UC Berkeley also provided funding for additional data collection, analysis, writing, and editing. Open access publishing was made possible by the generous support from the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative sponsored by the UC Berkeley Library, the Berkeley Excellence Accounts for Research Program, and the Energy and Resources Group.

Parts of chapter 2 appeared as “The Grass Beneath: Conservation, Agro-industrialization, and Land-Water Enclosures in Postcolonial Tanzania,’ Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109, no. 1 (2018):1-17, copyright © 2018 by American Association of Geographers, reprinted by permission of Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group, www.tandfonline. com, on behalf of the American Association of Geographers. An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared as “Governing a Liminal Land Deal: The Biopolitics and Necropolitics of Gender,” Antipode 52, no. 3 (2020): 722-41, copyright © 2020 by John Wiley and Sons. Portions of chapter 6 appeared as “The Curious Case of Three Male Elders: Land Grabbing, Lawfare, and Intersectional Politics of Exclusion in Tanzania,” African Studies Review 64, no. 3 (2021): 605-27, reproduced with permission by Cambridge University Press. I wish to thank the reviewers and editors of those journals at the time of publication (James McCarthy, Kiran Asher, Benjamin Lawrence) for their critical feedback and guidance.

I am sincerely grateful to the editors of the Cornell Series on Land, Wendy Wolford, Nancy Lee Peluso, and Michael Goldman, for their unwavering support for my book. I am particularly indebted to Nancy for her honest and incisive feedback and for always being available for advice in-person and over the phone, text message, and email. I also thank Jim Lance, Clare Jones, Mary Kate Murphy, and other editorial staff at Cornell University Press for shepherding this book into production. The two anonymous readers of the manuscript provided the xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS most detailed, perceptive, and compelling reviews I have ever received on my writing. They saw right through the portions of the manuscript where I ran out of steam and pushed me to be clearer and more coherent in my use of theory, while making the book accessible to diverse audiences. Kathleen Kearns’s meticulous developmental editing, which involved just the right balance of criticism and affirmation, helped advance the first full draft of this book; I owe Andrew Ofstehage for introducing me to her. Many thanks to Christine Riggio for polishing and significantly improving the legibility of my maps and to Glenn Novak for thorough copyediting. Although our paths diverged, I would also like to acknowledge Amy Trauger and Jennifer Fluri, the editors of the Gender, Feminism, and Geography series at West Virginia University Press for their support, as well as the anonymous readers they solicited to review my book proposal.

My family has been my biggest fans, even if they did not always understand the particularities of academia and my research. My parents, to whom this book is dedicated, instilled in me the value of education and hard work since an early age and nurtured independence, creativity, and compassion for others. My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew kept me honest about my priorities, especially during the last two years of intense writing. My maternal grandparents, who cared for me in my early childhood years in Seoul, were proud to see me embark on an academic journey. They witnessed and lived through colonialism, war, dictatorship, developmentalism, and neoliberal globalization all within their lifetime. I wish I had the chance to learn more about their life and for them to see this work come to fruition. The Doll family has shown me nothing but love since the day I met them. They never failed to ask how the book was going, and I am delighted to finally be able to share it with them. Two important family members and contributors to this book have not read it. Wall-E accompanied me on this journey since the beginning of my PhD, and both he and our newest addition, Leo, have sat on my lap, purring their little motors, as I wrote paragraph after paragraph, day after day. Most of all, I am profoundly grateful to my life partner and husband Ross. He has read countless versions of my writing with the utmost care and thoughtfulness. His brilliant intellect and warm companionship have sustained me throughout the years of writing this book. He cheered me on every day, tempered my perfectionist tendencies, and always reminded me to smell the roses. This is as much his accomplishment as it is mine.

Abbreviations

AfDB ASDP BRN CCM ESIA EU GTZ

ICSID IFAD

IFI

LBS

MP NGO PAP PMO PPC

PPP RAZABA SAGCOT SBSA SEK Sekab

Sekab BT Sida TANAPA TANESCO TANU TIC

TYL

African Development Bank

Agricultural Sector Development Program

Big Results Now

Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Party of the Revolution) environmental and social impact assessment

European Union

Deutsche Gesellschaft fiir Technische Zusammenarbeit (German Agency for Technical Cooperation)

International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes International Fund for Agricultural Development international financial institutions

Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei (Leipzig Cotton Mill) Member of Parliament

nongovernmental organization

Project Affected Person

Prime Minister’s Office

People and Property Count

public-private partnership

Ranchi ya Zanzibar Bagamoyo (Ranch of Zanzibar in Bagamoyo) Southern Agriculture Corridor of Tanzania

Standard Bank of South Africa

Swedish krona

Svensk Etanol Kemi Aktiebolag (Swedish Ethanol Chemistry Limited Liability Company)

Svensk Etanol Kemi Aktiebolag BioEnergy Tanzania Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency Tanzania National Parks Authority

Tanzania Electric Supply Company

Tanganyika African National Union

Tanzania Investment Center

Tanganyika African National Union Youth League xiii xiv ABBREVIATIONS

TZS Tanzanian shilling

URT United Republic of Tanzania

USAID United States Agency for International Development USD United States dollar

WWE World Wildlife Fund

Note on Currency

This book makes references to figures in US dollars (USD) and Tanzanian shillings (TZS). Unless otherwise noted, all currency conversions are based on the historical yearly average rate between 2012 and 2022, where USD 1 was exchanged for around TZS 2,000.

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SWEET DEAL, BITTER LANDSCAPE