Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:43:22.613Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

HEROES OF THE ROAD: RACE, GENDER AND THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY TANZANIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2013

Joshua Grace
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article follows the careers of two African drivers in social environments that circumscribed their movement and access to technology. It begins with Vincent Njovu, whose memoir, The First Driver of Tanganyika, describes the driver's ability to navigate racial hierarchies of movement and technology, including the unlikely circumstances in which he fell in love with an ideal colonial machine. It then explores post-colonial cultures of gender and modernization by using the unpublished memoirs of Hawa Ramadhani, a woman who used automotive skills learned among nuns in the 1940s to become Tanzania's most respected driver. Paired together, the life histories of these drivers challenge historical narratives in which movement and technology (roads and motor vehicles, in particular) are used to discuss Africa's marginalization and decline. Instead, they show how transgressive practices of mobility can be used to challenge social and political orders and inspire new ways to think and act at uncertain historical junctures. Roads in these narratives are defined less by their danger than by their potential to turn unlikely individuals into heroes.

Résumé

Cet article suite la carrière de deux chauffeurs africains dont les déplacements et l'accès à la technologie ont été délimités par l'environnement social. Il commence avec Vincent Njovu, dont les mémoires intitulées The First Driver of Tanganyika, décrit la capacité du chauffeur à composer avec les hiérarchies raciales du mouvement et de la technologie, y compris la situation improbable dans laquelle il est tombé amoureux d'une machine coloniale idéale. Il explore ensuite les cultures postcoloniales du genre et de la modernisation en se servant des mémoires non publiées de Hawa Ramadhani, la conductrice la plus respectée en Tanzanie qui a appris à conduire alors qu'elle était dans les ordres dans les années 1940. Ensemble, ces deux récits de vie remettent en question les récits historiques qui utilisent le mouvement et la technologie (routes et véhicules à moteur notamment) pour débattre de la marginalisation et du déclin de l'Afrique. Ils montrent au contraire comment les pratiques de mobilité transgressives peuvent servir à remettre en cause l'ordre social et politique et inspirer de nouvelles façons de penser et d'agir à des moments incertains de l'histoire. Dans ces récits, les routes se définissent moins par les dangers qu'elles représentent que par leur capacité à transformer des personnes en héros improbables.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , August 2013 , pp. 403 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adas, M. (1989) Machines as the Measure of Men: science, technology, and ideologies of Western dominance. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Akrich, M. (1992) ‘The de-scription of technical objects’ in Bijker, W. and Law, J. (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society. Cambridge MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1988) ‘Hierarchy in its place’, Cultural Anthropology 3 (1): 36–49.Google Scholar
Barber, K. (2006) ‘Introduction: hidden innovators in Africa’ in Barber, K. (ed.), Africa's Hidden Histories: everyday literacy and making the self. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, K. (2009) ‘The art of truck modding on the Nile (Sudan): an attempt to trace creativity’ in J.-B. Grewald, S. Luning and van Walraven, K. (eds), The Speed of Change: motor vehicles and people in Africa, 1890–2000. Boston MA: Brill.Google Scholar
Burton, A. (2005) African Underclass: urbanization, crime, and colonial disorder in Dar es Salaam, 1916–1991. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, W. W. (1928) East Africa by Motor Lorry: recollections of an ex-motor transport driver of the 1914–19 campaign in German East Africa. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. W. (1977) Womunafu's Bunafu: a study of authority in a nineteenth-century African community. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. W. (1985) ‘Doing social history from Pim's doorway’ in O. Zunz, D. W. Cohen et. al. (eds), Reliving the Past: the worlds of social history. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, D. and Atieno Odhiambo, E. S.. (1989) Siaya: the historical anthropology of an African landscape. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Clarsen, G. (2008) ‘Machines as the measure of women: colonial irony in a Cape to Cairo automobile journey’, Journal of Transport History 29 (1): 44–63.Google Scholar
Cooper, F. (2005) Colonialism in Question: theory, knowledge, history. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cowan, R. S. (1983) More Work for Mother: the ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave. New York NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Cresswell, T. (1999) ‘Embodiment, power and the politics of mobility: the case of female tramps and hobos’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24 (2): 175–92.Google Scholar
Cresswell, T. (2005) ‘Mobilizing the movement: the role of mobility in the suffrage politics of Florence Luscomb and Margaret Foley 1911–1915’, Gender, Place and Culture 12 (4): 447–61.Google Scholar
Cresswell, T. (2010) ‘Towards a politics of mobility’ in Pieterse, E. and Edjabe, N. (eds), African Cities Reader II: mobilities and fixtures. Cape Town: African Centre for Cities.Google Scholar
Deutsch, F. (2007) ‘Undoing gender’, Gender and Society 21 (1): 106–27.Google Scholar
Edwards, P. (2003) ‘Industrial genders: soft/hard’ in Lerman, N., Oldenziel, R. and Mohun, A. (eds), Gender and Technology: a reader. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Featherstone, M. (2004) ‘Automobilities: an introduction’, Theory, Culture and Society 21 (4/5): 1–24.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. (1999) Expectations of Modernity: myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Franey, L. (2001) ‘Ethnographic collecting and travel: blurring boundaries, forming a discipline’, Victorian Literature and Culture 29 (1): 219–39.Google Scholar
Franz, K. (2005) Tinkering: consumers reinvent the early automobile. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Freed, L. (2010) ‘Networks of (colonial) power: roads in French Central Africa after World War I’, History and Technology 26 (3): 203–23.Google Scholar
Freed, L. (2011) ‘Every European becomes a chief: travel guides to colonial Equatorial Africa, 1900–1958’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 12 (2).Google Scholar
Galbraith, J. (1972) Mackinnon and East Africa 1878–1895: a study in the ‘new imperialism’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Geider, T. (2002) ‘The paper memory of East Africa ethnohistories written in Swahili’ in Harneit-Sievers, A. (ed.), A Place in the World: new local historiographies from Africa and South Asia. Boston MA: Brill.Google Scholar
Geiger, S. (1997) TANU Women: gender and culture in the making of Tanganyikan nationalism, 1955–1965. Portsmouth MA: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Gewald, J.-B. (2009) ‘Motor vehicles and people in Africa: an introduction’ in Gewald, J.-B., Luning, S. and van Walraven, K. (eds), The Speed of Change: motor vehicles and people in Africa, 1890–2000. Boston MA: Brill.Google Scholar
Giblin, J. (2005) A History of the Excluded: making family a refuge from state in twentieth-century Tanzania. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Grace, J. (forthcoming 2013) ‘Modernization Bubu: cars, roads, and the politics of development in Tanzania, 1870s to 1980s’. PhD thesis, Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Hansen, K. T. (1992) ‘Introduction: domesticity in Africa’ in Hansen, K. T. (ed.), African Encounters with Domesticity. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Headrick, D. (1981) Tools of Empire: technology and European imperialism in the nineteenth century. New York NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hecht, G. (1998) The Radiance of France: nuclear power and national identity after World War II. Cambridge MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Hecht, G. (2012) Being Nuclear: Africans and the global uranium trade. Cambridge MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Hodges, G. (1986) The Carrier Corps: military labour in the East African campaign, 1914–1918. Westport CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, D. and McCurdy, S. (2001) ‘Introduction: wicked women and the reconfiguration of gender in Africa’ in Hodgson, D. and McCurdy, S. (eds), ‘Wicked’ Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Huxley, E. (1956) The Sorcerer's Apprentice: a journey through East Africa. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
Ivaska, A. (2011) Cultured States: youth, gender, and modern style in 1960s Dar es Salaam. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Klaeger, G. (2009) ‘Religion on the road: the spiritual experience of road travel in Ghana’ in Gewald, J.-B., Luning, S. and van Walraven, K. (eds), The Speed of Change: motor vehicles and people in Africa, 1890–2000. Boston MA: Brill.Google Scholar
Lal, P. (2010) ‘Militants, mothers, and the national family: Ujamaa, gender, and rural development in postcolonial Tanzania’, Journal of African History 51 (1): 1–20.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2000) ‘When things strike back: a possible contribution of science studies to the social sciences’, British Journal of Sociology 51 (1): 107–23.Google Scholar
Lawrance, B., Osborn, E. and Roberts, R. (2006) ‘Introduction: African intermediaries and the “bargain” of collaboration’ in B. Lawrance, E. Osborn and Roberts, R. (eds), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African employees in the making of colonial Africa. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Lerman, N. (2003) ‘Industrial genders: constructing boundaries’ in Lerman, N., Oldenziel, R. and Mohun, A. (eds), Gender and Technology: a reader. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Livingston, J. (2005) Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lorber, J. 1995. Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lydon, G. (2009) On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic law, trade networks, and cross-cultural exchange in nineteenth-century western Africa. New York NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, P. (1970) ‘The trade of Loango in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ in Gray, R. and Birmingham, D. (eds), Pre-Colonial African Trade. New York NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Masquelier, A. (2002) ‘Road mythographies: space, mobility, and the historical imagination in postcolonial Niger’, American Ethnologist 29 (4): 829–56.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2001) ‘Ways of seeing beyond the new nativism: introduction’, African Studies Review 44 (2): 1–14.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2002) ‘African modes of self-writing’, Public Culture 14 (1): 239–73.Google Scholar
McShane, C. (1994) Down the Asphalt Path: the automobile and the American city. New York NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, H. and Vaughan, M. (1994) Cutting Down Trees: gender, nutrition, and agricultural change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890–1990. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Njovu, V. (1981) Dereva wa Kwanza Tanganyika. Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House.Google Scholar
Nyerere, J. (1980) A Time of Struggle. Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Government Printer.Google Scholar
Oldenziel, R. (1997) ‘Boys and their toys: the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild, 1930–1968, and the making of a male technical domain’, Technology and Culture 38 (1): 60–96.Google Scholar
Oldenziel, R. (1999) Making Technology Masculine: women, men, and the machine in America, 1880–1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Orde Browne, G. St J. (1946) Labour Conditions in East Africa. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Osborn, E. (2003) ‘“Circle of iron”: African colonial employees and the interpretation of colonial rule in French West Africa’, Journal of African History 44 (1): 29–50.Google Scholar
Pirie, G. (2011) ‘Non-urban motoring in colonial Africa in the 1920s and 1930s’, South African Historical Journal 63 (1): 38–60.Google Scholar
Pirie, G. (2013) ‘Automobile organizations driving tourism in pre-independence Africa’, Journal of Tourism History 5 (1): 1–19.Google Scholar
Pratt, M. L. (2008) Imperial Eyes: travel writing and transculturation. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Prichard, A. (2013) ‘“Let us swim in the pool of love”: love letters and discourses of community composition in twentieth-century Tanzania’, Journal of African History 54 (1): 1–20.Google Scholar
Rockel, S. (2000) ‘Enterprising partners: caravan women in nineteenth century Tanzania’, Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines 34 (3): 748–78.Google Scholar
Rockel, S. (2006) Carriers of Culture: labour on the road in nineteenth-century East Africa. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Roitman, J. (2005) Fiscal Disobedience: an anthropology of economic regulation in Central Africa. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Roome, W. J. W. (1930) Tramping Through Africa: a dozen crossings of the continent. London: A. and C. Black Ltd.Google Scholar
Scheele, J. (2012) Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara: regional connectivity in the twentieth century. New York NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Setel, P. (1999) A Plague of Paradoxes: AIDS, culture, and demography in northern Tanzania. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Siegelbaum, L. (2008) Cars for Comrades: the life of the Soviet automobile. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Tripp, A. M. (1997) Changing the Rules: the politics of liberalization and the urban informal economy in Tanzania. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Tsing, A. (1993) In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: marginality in an out-of-the-way place. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tsing, A. (2005) Friction: an ethnography of global connection. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
van der Vleuten, E. (2004) ‘Infrastructures and societal change: a view from the large technical systems field’, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 16 (3): 395–414.Google Scholar
Vansina, J. (1966) Kingdoms of the Savannah. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Weiss, B. (1993) ‘Buying her grave: money, movement and AIDS in north-west Tanzania’, Africa 63 (1): 19–35.Google Scholar
White, L. (1990) The Comforts of Home: prostitution in colonial Nairobi. Chicago IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
White, L. (2000) Speaking with Vampires: rumor and history in colonial Africa. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar