1 - Social Origins of Women’s Claims to Land: Gender, Family and Land Tenure in Arusha

Summary

This chapter situates women's legal claims to land in their social context. Arusha region has been the location of intense struggles over land since pre-colonial times. These struggles, which continued throughout the colonial period and following Tanzania's political independence, have shaped both the rural and urban landscape and social tenure relations that underpin many contemporary claims to land. The recognised ways in which land may be acquired in a society has significant implications for the degree of autonomy and control that an occupier has over its use and disposition. In the context of land held according to local patrilineal land tenure practices this creates gendered and intergenerational social relations over the land. This chapter explores the ways in which these gendered social relations form the basis of many women's claims to land in Arusha today.

ARUSHA: PEOPLE, LAND AND LIVELIHOODS

Struggles over the land

Arumeru is the heartland of the Arusha and Meru peoples. Spear (1997) provides the most detailed account of the history of Arusha and Meru farmers on Mount Meru until 1961 and their relations with the pastoralist Maasai and Chagga of nearby Kilimanjaro. He traces the history of farming on Mount Meru back to the 17th century when Kichagga-speaking Meru from Kilimanjaro established new farming settlements on the south-eastern slopes of the mountain. The Arusha (or Ilarusa as they are also known) were originally inhabitants of the semiarid plains of Arusha Chini (Lower Arusha) and traded with the Maasai and Swahili caravans on their route to Kenya. The conquest of the south-eastern Maasai plains by the Kisongo Maasai led some Arusha to relocate to the south-western slopes of Mount Meru in the 1830s. However, the Kisongo Maasai and Arusha maintained close relations through the Kimaasai language, age-set ceremonies, intermarriage and cooperation in pasturing animals and agricultural production.

According to Spear, in the mid-19th century, as both Meru and Arusha populations increased and cleared forest a reas on the mountain slopes for cultivation, they eventually came into contact and conflict with each other before joining together in raids, forcibly removing people as well as cattle from Kilimanjaro. By the 1890s the Arusha had grown to dominate the mountain through more intensive farming practices, displacing Kisongo pastoralists, and assimilating many Meru, Chagga and Maasai into Meru clans.