Abstract
British Colonial governments in eastern Africa became deeply involved in the protection and conservation of Protected Areas, zones of high value for natural history and wildlife. Often such areas were created without consideration of community interests and management expertise. Centralized power and decision-making militated against local engagement. This trend was accompanied by parallel developments in the heritage sector, which initially focused on the creation of institutions to facilitate the preservation of sites declared as national monuments in the respective colonies. Such institutions were given the mandate to ensure the security and conservation of the monuments, to investigate the history/archaeology of the respective colonies, and to provide permits to researchers. These institutions continue to document and preserve heritage sites and issue permits, but their strong application of central control has diminished local attempts to manage and develop heritage sites. Using Tanzania as a case study, this paper examines how the Division of Antiquities has come to mimic the Division of Wildlife’s failure to respond to community needs and initiatives—part of the colonial legacy of central control and maintenance of institutional interests before service to public concern.
Highlights
Setting the Scene The recounting of positive results from participatory community projects is encouraging and adds significantly to our experimental knowledge of what methods do and do not work in Africa
Some states have modified laws inscribed during the colonial era, but such changes often ignore deep systemic issues that arise from a heritage of direct state control
We present an analysis derived from the Tanzanian experience, which captures, more broadly, how eastern Africa as well as the continent of Africa came to be littered with legacies that militate against successful approaches to the conservation and judicious governance of material culture and intangible heritage
Summary
Regardless of this explicit principle codified in law, those responsible for heritage protection have privileged private ownership above public interests, as witnessed in the attempts of the DoA to lease the important and sensitive religious and historic Kunduchi Swahili site north of Dar es Salaam to commercial tourism interests—a venture that failed because of stiff local opposition that included destruction of infrastructure built without consulting the community (Masele 2012) as well as neglecting intangible heritage embedded in monumental ruins and nearby baobab trees (Ichumbaki 2015).
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