Serenity and Strife in Swahili East Africa: Contrasting Urban Creole Histories of Mogadishu and Dar

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Serenity and Strife in Swahili East
AfricaContrasting Urban Creole Histories of
Mogadishu and Dar es Salaam

• Deborah Fahy Bryceson
• 7 November, 2008
• Development Studies Association Conference
• London

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Contrasting Urban Histories

• Methodology spatial comparison of social change
• Objective study of East African urban ethnicity
  in relation to patterns of political harmony vs.
  conflict
• Basic question Why is Mogadishu so violent and
  Dar es Salaam relatively tranquil given common
  Swahili creole legacy?

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Swahili Society

• Origins of Swahili society
• Characterization of Swahili society
• Civilization (Horton Middleton)
• Process of creole fusion
• Creolization
• W. Indies identification
• Definition historical melding of two or more
  cultures giving rise to a hybrid society of
  common cultural identity amidst marked class
  stratification ranging from slaves to a ruling
  gentry
• Rural-Urban differentiation

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Mogadishu Template for Swahili Coastal Towns

• Long urban tradition considered to be the
  northern boundary gateway to the Swahili
  littoral, 800-1100
• 9th century male Arab migrants to the Benadir
  coast
• Blurring rural-urban boundaries as Islam spread
  in the countryside

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Golden Age of Mogadishus Swahili Urban Order,
1300-1600

• Coastal trade thrived Mogadishu was largest
  city on coast under the Muzzafar dynasty
• Site of religious scholarship and training for
  rest of coast
• Export of cotton cloth
• Afro-Arab ethnic history of Sab Rahanweyn who
  married into the dynasty in Mogadishu

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Demise of Muzzafar/Ajuraan Dynasty, 1500-1700

• External threat Portuguese sea power
• Christian-Muslim tensions emanating from Ethiopia
• Internal threat
• Descent of Cushitic Oromo (Galla) Somali
  pastoralists
• Hawiye Abgal settlement in Mogadishu
  inter-married with Ajuraan
• End of Swahili mercantile state
• Legend of Hawiye assassination of Ajuraan imam

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Mogadishus Clan Politics

• Domination of Hawiye clan inward looking
  pastoralist economy with decline of Mogadishu
  foreign trade
• Siad Barres regime, 1969-1991
• championed expansion of the Somali tribal nation
• fueled internal clan enmity
• Collapse of regime brought about Hawiye internal
  conflict within the city

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Current State of Conflict

• Islamic Court Union (ICU) against clan warlordism
• Triggers US fear of Islamic terrorism
• Ethiopian troop intervention with US backing from
  Northern Kenya allied with national government
• ICU and clan warlords join forces and escalation
  of violence
• Mass exodus of city population

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Dar es Salaam Creole Mélange

• Dars establishment as a cosmopolitan city
• Centuries of coastal trade
• Swahili Afro-Arab creole population
• Kiswahili language
• Zaramo/Shomvi/Arab continuum

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Ethnicity, Urbanization Nationalism Dar es
Salaam Creolism

• Cultural mixing through inter-marriage, market
  relations common hybrid language
• Tranquil city unique to East Africa
• Relatively easy transition to nation-state
• - Kiswahili as a national language
• - non-tribal, non-racial policy of
  post-independent nation-state with unproblematic
  leadership succession

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Urbanization Ethnic Nationalism Mogadishu

• Mogadishu - clan not creole politics
• Breakdown of rural-urban divide in 16th century
• Segmentary clan structure and territoriality
  dominate
• Political instability of city nation-state
• Fractious history of pastoral people facing
  natural resource constraints
• Citys strategic location at the fracture line
  between Islam and Christianity
• Contentious nationalism clan segmentation

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Mogadishu street on the Green Line, January
1993 Source Wikipedia, Anarchy in Somalia,
14/7/08
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Hidaya Mosque attack in Mogadishu, 21 April,
2008 Source BBC new Clerics killed in Somali
mosque attack, http//news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/
7358198
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Sources Mombasa Potts 2005, 99
All other cities UN Population Division 2005
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Dr. Polly WildingCentre for Development
Studies,University of LeedsP.Wilding_at_leeds.ac.uk
DSA Conference 2008

• Cities in an Insecure World
• Overshadowing Gender in the Debate on Urban
  Violence Comparative Notes on Brazil and the UK

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Overview

• Analytical and practical divide
• private and gender-based violence
• violence and public security
• Gender analysis vs. social justice
• Police, media, institutional attention
• ? implications?

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Case study Rio de Janeiro

• High death rates young, poor, black male
• Womens roles?
• Overshadowing impact on womens agency and
  choices
• Apply analysis to new contexts?
• neglect of gender-based violence (within the
  wider debate on violence)
• the need for public violence to be seen through a
  gender lens (and how this impacts upon women).

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Public / private distinction

• Artificial construct
• Gender gap
• Gender analysis domestic violence
• Social justice urban institutional violence
• Prioritisation of visible, yet
• Forms, actors, incidents overlap
• Link with poverty, exclusion and inequality
• Bridging the gap

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Initial comparative notes Brazil and UK

• Attention to race
• Complexity
• Overt reference
• E.g. role models
• Attention to girls and young women
• Female criminality
• Range of roles
• Overt reference

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Visualising target groups
http//direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Yourchildshealthan
dsafety/WorriedAbout/DG_171325 http//www.comunida
desegura.org/?qpt/node/36023
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Comments and questions arising

• Need to address
• construction of race
• explicit focus / reinforcement?
• masculinities and femininities
• range of roles
• interplay with sexuality
• range of stances
• condoning, supporting, rejecting, subverting
• interlinkages between forms of violence
• need for context specific analysis
• how young people perceive acts of violence
• as starting point

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The Thorny Road to Sustainable Peacethe
mutation of violence in post-conflict cities

• Nasser Yassin
• American University of Beirut

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May 2008
Source nytimes.com
Source telegraph.co.uk
Source guardian.co.uk
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• The three incidents share a commonality of being
  in a similar context of post-conflict or
  post-political transition or relative peace.
• They highlight the problematic of sustaining
  peace in cities that emerge from conflict and/or
  major political transition and illuminate the
  vulnerability of cities to acts of violence.

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Aim Argument

• The paper examines the transformation of violence
  in post-conflict cities from violence associated
  with protracted warfare and prolonged civil
  strife into new forms.
• The paper argues that post-conflict societies in
  general and post-conflict cities in particular do
  not move from conflict into peace and normality
  in a linear path but rather in a traversal/zigzag
  manner. Political and communal conflict and
  violence mutate into new forms.

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• Violence, seemingly, does not end as peace or
  better call it relative peace is reached.
• It continues albeit with noticeable distinction
  between war times and peace times what
  Schepher-Huges and Borgois (200419) call it the
  blurring of categories and distinctions between
  wartime and peacetime violence
• It is a violence continuum.

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Characteristics of Post-Conflict Violence

• violence in post-conflict societies and cities in
  particular mutates into different and new forms.
  It changes in nature, number of fatalities,
  duration, contexts, victims, and actors or
  perpetrators.
• It changes
• from protracted intensive into sporadic
  low-intensity
• It happens sporadically and in between or during
  periods of relative normalcy
• from large number of fatalities from direct
  fighting and battle-deaths into less numbers from
  single incidents although the number might
  add-up
• from fighting between mostly well-identified
  groups and camps into other forms such as gang
• It takes place in societies with minimum state
  authority albeit weak and fragile.

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Typology of post-conflict urban violence

• Three types
• Terrorizing violence that targets the city
• Social and economic
• Communal

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Violence is a result of

• Legacy of war
• Dynamics of Peace

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As a legacy of war

• violence can be seen as a consequence of the
  fractured institutions that continue to be weak
  and ineffective in the post-conflict phase
  (criminal inertia)
• Culture of violence

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As Dynamics or Nature of Peace

• Linked to the practiced liberal approach to
  post-conflict nation-building.
• Alienation of segments of society
• Social Exclusion

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City not only a backdrop

• What happens in and at the scale of cities is
  vital to any understanding of the dynamics of
  conflicts and peace at the larger context.
  Violence in post-conflict cities is indicative of
  the overall peace process and transition from
  conflict into peace.

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The 4 myths of current intervention in
post-conflict cities
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Myth 1 States make peace, cities are marginal
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Myth 2 supersize the projects, commit to markets
and peace is inevitable
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Myth 3 Build walls, make them high and guard
them with private security
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Myth 4 Fractured communal relations will
self-heal
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Confronting Urban Displacement

• Lessons in Mobilization and Participation from
  Kurasini, Dar Es Salaam
• Michael Hooper
• Stanford University / University of Oxford

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Question

• What motivates slum dweller participation in
  urban social movements?
• In other words, who participates and why?

Why Important?

• Growing focus on participatory and bottom-up
  approaches to development
• With low government capacity and insecurity -
  considerable hope placed in grassroots social
  movements
• Tacit assumption the poor will participate in
  bottom-up action. Some people participate, but
  who?

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Project Setting

• Examined participation in the Tanzanian
  Federation of the Urban Poor (TFUP)
• A savings group-based movement associated with
  Slum Dwellers International
• Specifically looking at participation in costly
  movement activities
• In particular, enumerations (geographic and
  population census) of at-risk communities

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Kurasini

• Goal of enumerations - use data to lobby
  government for grant of land for resettlement
• Kurasini - unplanned, informal settlement of
  35,000 people built amongst infrastructure of Dar
  Es Salaams port
• Evictions to expand fuel storage facilities in
  the port, beginning in late 2007 and 2008
• Organizers believe payoffs important to
  participation as an enumerator. Since renters
  not compensated, intended as primary
  beneficiaries of any land grant and this
  motivates participation

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Research

• Analytic narrative - combining formal hypothesis
  testing with textual analysis of qualitative
  interviews with 102 enumerator and non-enumerator
  slum dwellers
• Six formal hypotheses - based on literature and
  field work
• 1) Payoffs
• 2) Movement identification
• 3) Social Networks
• 4) Connection to Place
• 5) Sense of Political Significance of Community
  Challenges
• 6) Belief in Efficacy of Action

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Results

• Do not coincide with a priori expectations
• Most frequent participants in costly social
  movement activities
• Owners
• 90 of all enumerators were owners
• Not renters, as expected by TFUP organizers

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Explaining Results

• Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts
  shows owners favoured by
• Payoffs
• - Different payoffs operate than those expected
  by organizers
• - Owners and renters have different payoffs
• - Renters participate to gain grant of land
  through successful enumeration
• - But, owners participate to improve accuracy of
  enumeration, to influence compensation process
• Owners participate most because they are the
  people who benefit most. Owners are responsible
  for the value of their house and the enumeration
  secures value. - interviewee

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Explaining Results

• Why are owners more likely to pursue their
  payoffs?
• Ownership significantly related to
• Connection to place
• -Owners have lived for significantly longer in
  their settlement,
• -Are significantly more likely to consider their
  settlement home,
• -Are Significantly more likely to conceive of
  challenges facing community over the long term
• Renters are seen, and see themselves, as
  temporary residents with less responsibility. -
  interviewee

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Explaining Results

• Qualitative analysis of interview transcripts
  shows owners also favoured by
• Belief in efficacy of action
• - More likely to feel that their opinions and
  concerns matter
• - Inspired by compensation to believe that their
  claims can yield results
• Most owners participate because they have
  confidence. And their confidence comes from
  their property. Renters lack this confidence -
  confidence that their actions will bring returns
  and benefits because they lack property. -
  interviewee

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Theory Exit-Voice-Loyalty

• Results coincide with Hirschmans
  Exit-Voice-Loyalty model
• Two Options in dealing with declining performance
  of a state, firm, or organization Voice or Exit
• Two factors lower cost of pursuing voice
• Belief in efficacy of action, gained through
  positive past experience
• Loyalty (spatially akin to connection to place)

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Policy Implications

• Kurasini shows risks in mobilization
• Mobilization of unintended groups
• Inequitable or unrepresentative mobilization
• To ensure effective mobilization grassroots
  organizers and policy makers should
• Recognize that not everyone participates
• Ensure assumed payoffs are those actually
  motivating participation
• Understand which cleavages in community are
  relevant for participatory decision making (do
  all face same payoffs?)
• Understand which factors influence decisions to
  pursue payoffs

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Policy Implications

• In an age of increasingly participatory
  development policy
• Payoffs are important
• But most importantly, ownership is likely to be a
  vital cleavage around which decisions to
  participate are made
• Findings likely to hold more broadly since,
  theory suggests, ownership lowers the cost of
  pursuing voice
• Owners have greater connection/responsibility to
  place
• Owners have greater belief in efficacy of action