Tanzanian Mainland Research Articles

Law and order and the state in the Nyamwezi and Sukuma area of Tanzania

IntroductionThe Nyamwezi and Sukuma area of Tanzania covers about 50,000 square miles from Lake Victoria in the north to the southern edges of Tabora District. The area probably contains between 4 and 5 million people, about one fifth of the total Tanzanian mainland population. The two peoples speak regional variants of a single language—the name Sukuma simply meant ‘northerners’ originally—and they share many common social structural and cultural forms (Abrahams, 1967b).