Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T21:06:31.178Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

FROM ‘MIGRANTS’ TO ‘REFUGEES’: IDENTITY, AID, AND DECOLONIZATION IN NGARA DISTRICT, TANZANIA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2015

JILL ROSENTHAL
JILL ROSENTHAL*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article argues that international aid to Rwandan refugees in Ngara district during decolonization unfolded as part of a broader project of nation-state formation and regulation – one that deeply affected local narratives of community and belonging. While there is an extensive scholarship on decolonization and nationalism, we know less about the history of the nation-state as a refugee-generating project, and the role of international aid agencies therein. The history of Rwandan refugees in Ngara district, Tanzania, reveals the constitutive relationship between nation-building and refugee experiences, illustrating that during decolonization local political imaginations congealed around internationally-reified categorizations of the ‘refugee’ and the ‘citizen’.

Keywords

TanzaniaRwandadevelopmentnation-statesrefugeestransnational
Type
Crafting Political Identities in the Era of Decolonization
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , July 2015 , pp. 261 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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.)

Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by the Institute of International Education’s 2011–12 Dissertation Fellowship, and the Emory University History Department’s Joseph J. Mathews Fellowship. Clifton Crais, Kristin Mann, David Newbury, Derek Peterson, Thaddeus Sunseri, Chris Siegel, Marcia Wright, and three anonymous JAH reviewers generously commented on drafts of this article. Bernard Gwaho provided research assistance in Ngara district. To retain anonymity, I use pseudonyms to identify interview participants. Author's email: [email protected]

References

1 Following mainland Tanganyika’s union with Zanzibar on 26 April 1964, the Republic of Tanganyika became the United Republic of Tanzania. For the purposes of this article, the word ‘Tanzania’ is generally used for clarity.

2 State ‘territorialization’ refers to the naturalization of identity among people, place, and nation. See Malkki, L., ‘National geographic: the rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees’, Cultural Anthropology, 7:1 (1992), 24–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (hereafter UNHCR), ‘UNHCR Global Report 2013’, UNHCR, (http://www.unhcr.org/gr13/index.xml), 2014.

4 On the idea of borders as ‘theatres of opportunity’, see Nugent, P. and Asiwaju, A. I, ‘Introduction, the paradox of African boundaries’, in Nugent, P. and Asiwaju, A. I. (eds.), African Boundaries: Barriers, Conduits and Opportunities (London, 1996)Google Scholar, 11.

5 Ibid. 10.

6 The Great Lakes region, or interlacustrine region, for the purposes here includes Burundi, Eastern Congo (DRC), western Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda. Populations throughout this area share similar cultures based on the primacy of bananas as a subsistence crop, the association of cattle keeping and agriculture, and a ‘common universe of origin myths’. See Chretien, J. P., The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History (New York, 2003)Google Scholar, 348.

7 For early independence development campaigns, see Eckert, A., ‘Useful instruments in participation? local government and cooperatives in Tanzania, 1940s to 1970s’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 40:1 (2007), 97–118Google Scholar; Pratt, C., The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945–1968 (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar; and Schneider, L., ‘Colonial legacies and postcolonial authoritarianism in Tanzania: connects and disconnects’, Africa Studies Review, 49:1 (2006), 93–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 The incomplete nature of nation-state formation in Tanzania is exemplified by the fact that unification with Zanzibar only occurred in 1964. In many ways the process of nation-state formation remains unfinished, as recent anti-government protests in Zanzibar make clear. For continuities in the late colonial and early postcolonial administrations, see Burton, A. and Jennings, M., ‘Introduction: the emperor's new clothes? continuities in governance in late colonial and early postcolonial East Africa’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 40:1 (2007), 1–25Google Scholar. On shifting Tanzanian nationalist discourses, see Brennan, J., ‘Blood enemies: exploitation and urban citizenship in the nationalist political thought of Tanzania, 1958–75’, The Journal of African History, 47:3 (2006), 389–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For an introduction to the vast scholarship on colonialism and ethnicity in Rwanda, see Newbury, C., The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860–1960 (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; and Prunier, G., The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York, 1995)Google Scholar.

10 Chretien, The Great, 299.

11 For the role of the Catholic Church and post-1945 changes in Belgian politics which affected this transition, see Linden, I., Church and Revolution in Rwanda (New York, 1977)Google Scholar.

12 There is not the space here to examine the competing influences within and among these national ideologies.

13 Refugee attacks against the Paremehutu regime took place from bases within all of Rwanda's neighboring nation-states, particularly Burundi and Uganda. See Watson, C., Exile from Rwanda: Background to an Invasion (US, 1991)Google Scholar.

14 Geschiere, P., The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship & Exclusion in Africa and Europe (Chicago, 2009), 171–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Ibid. 26.

16 Cooper, F., ‘Possibility and constraint: African independence in historical perspective’, The Journal of African History, 49:2 (2008), 167–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Quoted in Kibreab, G., ‘Revisiting the debate on people, place, identity and displacement’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 12:4 (1999), 386CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 John Kelly and Martha Kaplan elucidate a post-Second World War nation-state system ‘made obligatory globally … as a tool not only for the expression of national will but as a means to radically limit national aspirations’. Kelly, J. D. and Kaplan, M., ‘“My ambition is much higher than independence”: US power, the UN world, the nation-state, and their critics’, in Duara, P. (ed.), Decolonization: Perspectives from Then and Now (London, 2004)Google Scholar, 134.

19 Irial Glynn notes that although the definition of ‘refugee’ has constantly evolved, international refugee law remains tethered to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Glynn, I., ‘The genesis and development of Article 1 of the 1951 Refugee Convention’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 25:1 (2012), 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Chaulia, S., ‘The politics of refugee hosting in Tanzania: from open door to unsustainability, insecurity and receding receptivity’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 16:2 (2003), 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 For some African leaders this was not always the case, particularly during the early years of decolonization. For the political possibilities during decolonization, see Cooper, ‘Possibilities’; and Iliffe, J., ‘Breaking the chain at its weakest link: TANU & the colonial office’, in Maddox, G. and Giblin, J. (eds.), In Search of a Nation: Histories of Authority and Dissidence in Tanzania (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar, 192. In Tanzania, President Nyerere was ‘personally very much opposed … to the breaking up of large states into smaller inviable [sic] units’, although he was sympathetic to the idea of federations. UNHCR Fonds II Series II 1-7-5/68, ‘Meeting with President Julius Nyerere on 5 Aug. 1966’, 22 Aug. 1966.

22 Ravi Kapil in Khadiagala, G., ‘Boundaries in East Africa’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 4:2 (2010), 268CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Ibid. 266.

24 Kushner, T., Remembering Refugees: Then and Now (Manchester, 2006)Google Scholar, 6; Marfleet, P., ‘Explorations in a foreign land: states, refugees, and the problem of history’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 32:2 (2013), 14–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Panayi, P. and Virdee, P., ‘Preface: key themes, concepts and rationale’, in Panayi, P. and Virdee, P. (eds.), Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, vii.

25 Kushner, Remembering, 1.

26 For examples, see Newbury, D., Kings and Clans: Ijwi Island and the Lake Kivu Rift, 1780–1840 (Madison, WI, 1991)Google Scholar; Packard, R., Chieftship and Cosmology: An Historical Study of Political Competition (Bloomington, IN, 1981)Google Scholar; and Schoenbrun, D. L, A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the 15th Century (Portsmouth, NH, 1998)Google Scholar.

27 The scholarship on African frontiers and borders is vast. For an introduction, see Kopytoff, I. (ed.), The African Frontier: the Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington, IN, 1987)Google Scholar.

28 Arendt, H., The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1966), 275–80Google Scholar; Malkki, L., ‘Refugees and exile: from “refugee studies to the national order of things”’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24 (1995), 495–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 On migration in South Asian nationalist history, see Panayi and Virdee ‘Preface’; Pandey, G., Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zamindar, V., The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories (New York, 2007)Google Scholar. For recent scholarship on refugees and nationalism, see Chatty, D., Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar; and Gatrell, P., The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For examples of explorations of refugees within Great Lakes regional politics, see Daley, P., ‘The politics of the refugee crisis in Tanzania’, in Campbell, H. and Stein, H. (eds.), Tanzania and the IMF: the Dynamics of Liberalization (Boulder, CO, 1992), 126–46Google Scholar; Lemarchand, R., Rwanda and Burundi (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Malkki, L., Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago, 1995)Google Scholar; and Jackson, S., ‘Sons of which soil? the language and politics of autochthony in Eastern D. R. Congo’, African Studies Review, 49:2 (2006), 95–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Within Tanzania scholarship, authors from fields such as political science, geography, sociology, and law have examined refugee policies, see Kamanga, K., ‘The (Tanzania) Refugees Act of 1998: some legal and policy implications’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 18:1 (2005), 100–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Marfleet, P., ‘Refugees and history: why we must address the past’, Refugees Survey Quarterly, 26:3 (2007), 140Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.

32 Mbembe, A., ‘At the edge of the world: boundaries, territoriality, and sovereignty in Africa’, Public Culture, 12:1 (2000), 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 What Malkki refers to as refugees’ ‘alternative, competing nationalist metaphysic’. Malkki, ‘National’, 36.

34 Malkki, Purity.

35 UNHCR's three ‘durable solutions’ to refugee crises remain repatriation, integration in a first and resettlement nation, and resettlement within a second asylum nation. As Nevzat Soguk posits, humanitarian aid to refugees addresses a problem within the system of sovereign states, while simultaneously becoming ‘the site of statist practices that … endeavor continuously to rearticulate the statecentric imagination of life possibilities’. Soguk, N., States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft (Minneapolis, MN, 1999)Google Scholar, 206.

36 While recognizing that ‘Ngara’ district is in many respects a colonially-derived political construct, for the sake of simplicity I refer below to both Subi and Hangaza as ‘Ngarans’.

37 University of Dar es Salaam Library, Hans Cory archives, Dar es Salaam (hereafter UDSM) 168, Hans Cory, ‘The Report on Busubi’, 20 Sept. 1944. The salience of the terms ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ has changed across time and space in the region. In general, the socioeconomic designations indicated by this ‘ethnic’ terminology were more fluid in Ngara than in Ruanda-Urundi. von Hoyweghen, S., ‘Mobility, territoriality and sovereignty in post-colonial Tanzania’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 21:1 (2002), 313n14Google Scholar.

38 Bukoba Station Officer's letter to the Governor, 17 Mar. 1902, in Chretien, J. P., ‘The slave trade in Burundi and Rwanda at the beginning of German colonisation, 1890–1906’, in Medard, H. and Doyle, S. (eds.), Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa (Athens, OH, 2007)Google Scholar, 217; and Newbury, D., ‘Precolonial Burundi and Rwanda: local loyalties, regional royalties’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 34:2 (2001), 265CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 International commissioners who travelled the area noted the similarities of people and cultures on both sides of the border they created. Tanzania National Archives, Dar es Salaam (hereafter TNA) 19784/925, Anglo-Belgian Boundary Commission (Ruanda-Urundi) 1922–4, ‘Ethnological and anthropological notes’, n.d.

40 Monetization likely occurred unevenly in Ngara, although pervasive taxation existed by 1926. TNA 460/541/11/1, ‘A Report on migrant labour entering Uganda’, 26 Sept. 1949.

41 Additional factors that led to labor migration included increased demand for consumer goods and, to a lesser extent, insecure land tenure laws. UDSM 353, Hans Cory, ‘Memorandum on the draft Bugufi (Ngara District) land rules, 1951’.

42 The migrants were mainly men, although a few families did travel. Richards, A. I., ‘The travel routes and the travelers’, in Richards, A. I. (ed.), Economic Development and Tribal Change (Cambridge, 1954), 52–76Google Scholar. In 1948, officials estimated that out of a population of 104,706, 18,818 (primarily male) Ngarans migrated to Uganda. TNA FA/D.10/6, ‘Report on migrant labour entering Uganda’, 26 Sept. 1949.

43 Interview with A. Nzuri, Rulenge, 25 June 2012. This paragraph is based on interviews conducted with Hangaza and Subi elders in Ngara district.

44 Interview with Edward Teadi, Mugoma, 12 July 2012. According to government sources, between 1940 and 1948 Ngara's population increased from 64,000 to 112,000. TNA 460/541/11/1, L. R. Ray, Assistant Labour Officer, ‘Report on the tour of immigrant labour routes in Tanganyika and South West Uganda’, 7. Some reports noted problems between Rundi ‘settlers’ and locals, particularly following the Burundian Mwami Mwambutsa's 1949 claim to Bugufi. TNA 460/541/1, ‘A report on migrant labour entering Uganda’, 26 Sept. 1949.

45 The colonial government used recruiters to employ migrant laborers on European enterprises such as mining and agriculture. TNA 460/541/11/1, ‘Minutes of a meeting held at Kisenyi on the 24 and 25 November 1948, to discuss the employment of Ruanda-Urundi labour in Tanganyika and Uganda’.

46 Former migrants often recalled that they chose to work in Uganda as there was ‘no money in Tanzania’ (interview with Venance Munyaru, Mbuba, 19 July 2012), that there was ‘more development there [Buganda] than Tanzania’ (interview with Peter Kaherere, Shanga, 9 July 2012), that to work in Tanzania was to be seen as a ‘low person’ (interview with Samuel Rwanzi, Shanga, 9 July 2012), and that people in Tanzania were forced to ‘work like slaves’ (interview with Joseph Bwizi, Shanga, 20 June 2012).

47 A former migrant noted that he choose to work in Uganda as ‘there were not many wazungu [Europeans]’, and as a result African laborers in Uganda ‘got money early’. Interview with Sukuma Chendero, Keza, 17 July 2012.

48 As one Busubi resident explained, the culture of the Ganda ‘resembles here, not like other parts of Tanzania’. Interview with Rachel Celestine, Rulenge, 28 June 2012.

49 On the subject of cash crops, which the colonial government introduced ostensibly to improve conditions in Ngara, most former migrants agreed with the sentiment that: ‘Britain forced people to cultivate cash crops for their own industries, we got back very little money … whatever they did they did for themselves.’ Interview with Bwana Rwagaba, Ngara, 21 July 2012. During colonialism, Ngarans despised coffee cultivation, see UDSM 98, Mrs. E. B. Dobson (ed.), Hans Cory, ‘Hangaza law and custom by H. Cory’, re-edited from 1944, n.d.

50 Interview with Mary Justin Bamenya, Mugoma, 24 July 2012.

51 Examples were provided in interviews with John Karsurahaba, Mtamriheza-Muyenzi, 11 June 2012; Gahinyuza Ntole, Ntobeye, 21 June 2012; and Cyprien Rwatametage, Kanyinya, 28 June 2012.

52 For instance, interview with Bernard Simi, Nyakahira, 25 July 2012.

53 Interview with Samwel Rwanzi.

54 Interview with Peter Banzi, Runzenzi-Ntobeye, 25 July 2012.

55 Interview with Mary Bamenya.

56 On nostalgia in Tanzanian historiography, see Fair, L., ‘Drive-in socialism: debating modernities and development in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’, The American Historical Review, 118:4 (2013), 1079n9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 As Michael Jennings notes, ‘the dominant discourse … was one in which socioeconomic advancement, the nation state, and the articulation of national citizenship, revolved around the fulcrum of national development. A “citizen” … shared these developmental aims and objectives’. Jennings, M., ‘“A very real war”: popular participation in development in Tanzania during the 1950s & 1960s’, International Journal of African Studies, 40:1 (2007), 71–2Google Scholar.

58 The British first introduced tobacco as a cash crop in Busubi in 1947. It was not until after independence that Subi began growing the crop: the number of households cultivating tobacco increased during 1960–3 from 32 to 2,022. Tanzania National Archives, Mwanza (hereafter TNA-Mwanza) 19/25/C/Tob/Fic, ‘Crop figures for four years as per District’, 15 June 1964.

59 TNA-Mwanza 19/25/C/Tob/Fic, letter from the Officer in Charge, District Agricultural Office, Ngara to the Regional Agricultural Officer, WLR, ‘Tobacco marketing’, 31 Aug. 1967.

60 TNA 600/FA/D.10/6, ‘Minutes of the West Lake Regional development commission’, 7 May 1963, 7.

61 TNA 197/P.1/2, ‘West Lake regional development committee’, 5 Jan. 1963. Self-help schemes included the construction of feeder roads, dispensaries, and classrooms.

62 Although many people noted that their lives did not materially change after independence, they also expressed gratification for the demise of chieftainships, which were widely seen as unequal and exploitative institutions. Interview with Peter Kato, Keza, 17 June 2012. Others posited that with the end of chiefly power, social equality between Hutu and Tutsi became a reality. Interview with Bernard Simi.

63 Chretien, The Great, 305.

64 For a recent analysis of the historiography and the role of refugees in the crisis in the Eastern Congo (DRC), see Lemarchand, R., ‘Reflections on the recent historiography of Eastern Congo’, The Journal of African History, 53:3 (2013), 417–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 While Tanzanian authorities viewed the military ambitions of Rwandan refugees as a threat to the state, they generally supported those of refugee ‘freedom fighters’ from Southern Africa who they perceived as fighting against foreign, ‘colonial’, regimes. Chaulia, ‘The politics’, 156.

66 Eckert, ‘Useful’; Jennings, ‘A very’; Schneider, ‘Colonial’.

67 At independence, 96 per cent of the Tanganyikan population lived in rural areas, with two-thirds residing on one third of the country's land mass. Rweyemamu, A., ‘An overview of nation-building: problems and issues’, in Rweyemamu, A. (ed.), Nation-Building in Tanzania: Problems and Issues (Nairobi, 1970)Google Scholar, 7. While the 1957 census reported Ngara's population density to be 92.9 persons per square mile, most of this population was concentrated in northern Bugufi, and officials viewed Busubi as a particularly depopulated area. TNA, Bukoba District Book, ‘West Lake Province, annual report-1960 by E. M. Martin, esq., Provincial Commissioner’, 3.

68 See, for example, TNA-Mwanza 19/532/62/T/LAN/ST/NU, letter from Isaac Laiser, Field Officer, Muyenzi Settlement to the Officer in Charge, Agriculture, Ngara, n.d.

69 TNA 64/WL/C.5/6, ‘Minutes of the provincial team meeting held on 31 July 1961’. West Lake Province was renamed West Lake Region in 1962.

70 TNA 64/WL/C.5/6, ‘Minutes of the provincial team meeting held on 7 Nov. 1961’, 1.

71 Ibid. 4.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid. 5.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid. The idea of villagization was not new to either Tanzania or Ngara district. In Ngara, colonial officials had planned to resettle part of the population near Keza in Busubi. TNA 71/3/2, ‘Minutes of the West Lake regional development committee held on 7 Jan. 1965’. Refugee settlements were in many respects ‘pilot’ projects of later ujamaa villages, see Turner, S., ‘Under the gaze of the “big nations”: refugees, rumours and the international community in Tanzania’, African Affairs, 103:4 (2004), 232CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 TNA 290/G/35, letter from the Regional Extension Officer, West Lake Region to the Director of Development, Ministry of Agriculture, 15 Oct. 1962.

77 TNA 527/C.5/23, ‘Minutes of a meeting of the West Lake provincial team’, 26 Aug. 1960.

78 TNA 529/A.4/2V. I, letter from G. P. Allsebrook to District Commissioner, Ngara, 21 Mar. 1962.

79 In 1961, local officials agreed ‘that the only practicable method for settling permanently the majority of refugees is by absorption’. TNA-Mwanza 19/65/WL.A/3/10, ‘Record of the meeting of the national resources committee on 28 Dec. 1961’.

80 League of Red Cross Society (LRCS) officials estimated that there were 10,600 refugees in Muyenzi by Oct. 1963. TNA 290/G/35, letter from Agriculture (W. D. and I. D.), Bukoba to Agriculture, Dar es Salaam, 11 Oct. 1963.

81 TNA 208/LG.48/0127, ‘Development plan Ngara District’, 6 Jan. 1962.

82 For example, the Tsh 100,000 donated by the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief for tsetse bush clearance in refugee settlement areas proved insufficient. TNA 600/ FA/D.10/6, ‘Minutes of the West Lake development committee held on 29 Sept. 1963’, 6.

83 A 1963 telegram to the Ngaran police force read: ‘President Nyerere [is] disturbed by presence inyenzi and other subversive elements’ who attempted to achieve the ‘violent overthrow’ of the Rwandan government. TNA 527/A.4/I/III, telegram from Makarua, DSM to Police, Ngara for Campcom, 22 Feb. 1963. The word ‘inyenzi’ was used to describe Rwandan Tutsi rebels and became a derogatory word used against Rwandan Tutsi.

84 Interview with Daniel Baranzi, Kanyinya, 19 July 2012.

85 For instance, see TNA 529/A.4/2/V.1, letter from District Commissioner, Biharamulo to Provincial Commissioner, West Lake Province, 29 Dec. 1961.

86 TNA 290/G/35, telegram from G. P. Allsebrook, Administrative Secretary for Regional Commissioner, West lake Region, 5 Dec. 1962.

87 TNA 64/668, letter from Regional Extension Officer, West Lake Region to Regional Commissioner, West Lake Region, 21 Jan. 1963. Refugees who were ‘not properly absorbed’ in other districts were often transferred to Muyenzi. TNA 71/3/2, ‘Minutes of the West Lake regional development committee held on 29 Nov. 1962’.

88 On the scarcity of trained government staff, see TNA 71/3/2, ‘Minutes of the regional meeting held on 12 Mar. 1962’.

89 TNA 527/A.4/1/III, letter from G. P. Allsebrook, Administrative Secretary, WLR to Area Commissioners, Ngara and Karagwe, ‘Memorandum on a proposal by the Tanganyika government to enlist the aid of the U.N.H.C. R. to transfer the administration of refugees to a voluntary agency’, 18 May 1965.

90 According to government sources, refugee dispersal into settlements was ‘done before an opportunity to prepare local people for their reception’ with results that were not ‘uniformly successful’. Lutheran World Federation (hereafter LWF) W. S. 1.2, Director, General by Countries, Tanzania, 1964, Film Projects, G. P. Allsebrook, for Permanent Secretary to George Farquharson, Programme Director, Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service, ‘Part A: a water development programme for Ruandan refugee settlements in the West Lake Region of Tanganyika’, 29 Feb. 1965, 1.

91 TNA 290/G/35, letter from the Regional Extension Officer, WLR to the Regional Commissioner, WLR, ‘Refugee resettlement, Ngara District’, 21 Jan. 1963.

92 Scholars have argued that as Tutsi, many of the refugees were pastoralists who were unused to, and uninterested in, farming. Daley, P., ‘From the Kipande to the Kibali: the incorporation of refugees and labour migrants in Western Tanzania, 1900–1987’, in Black, R. and Robinson, V. (eds.), Geography and Refugees: Patterns and Processes of Change (London, 1993), 23Google Scholar. While this was certainly true for the refugee elite, including the leadership, and while Rwandan Tutsi did have ‘slightly more access to cattle than Hutu’, many Tutsi were also agriculturalists during the colonial period. D. Newbury and C. Newbury, ‘Bringing the peasants back in: agrarian themes in the construction and corrosion of statist historiography in Rwanda’, The American Historical Review, 105:3 (2000), 867. For socioeconomic cleavages within the Muyenzi population, see Daley, ‘From’, 23.

93 Contributing agencies included, among others, USAID, UNICEF, Swedish Inter-Church Aid, the United Nations Association for Great Britain, the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of North-West Tanganyika, and the Catholic Church.

94 TNA 290/G/35, letter from Tributary, Bukoba to Water, Dar es Salaam, 25 Aug. 1962.

95 Ibid.

96 TNA 290/G/35, D. W. Edwards, ‘Notes on water supplies-refugee settlement areas’, n.d. Edwards suggested that if the international community insisted on donating to refugee settlements, the funds should have been used to benefit ‘local settlers’ as well. Ibid.

97 Ibid.

98 LWF W. S. I.2, Director, General by Countries, Tanzania, Film Projects … 1964, ‘Financial request from G. P. Allsebrook’, 29 Feb. 1964.

99 TNA-Mwanza 19/532/62/T/LAN/ST/NU, letter from G. B. R. Nyombi, Field Officer, Agriculture to the Regional Agricultural Officer, West Lake Region, ‘Report on refugee settlement scheme’, 25 Mar. 1963.

100 Ibid.

101 The withdrawal of food rations and other services led to refugee ‘fake compliance’, such as planting sabotaged seeds. Gasarasi, C. P., ‘The mass naturalization and further integration of Rwandese refugees in Tanzania: process, problems and prospects’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 3:2 (1990), 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 TNA 71/WL.R4/16E, Tanganyika Police Message from CampCom, 12 July 1962. Both archival and oral sources included accusations of refugee thievery and violence.

103 TNA-Mwanza 19/532/62/ T/LAN/ST/NU, C. J. H. Rogers, Acting Officer, Land Planning to the Director, Development Division, Ministry of Agriculture, ‘Resettlement Rulenge-final report and summary’, 26 Aug. 1965.

104 TNA-Mwanza 19/532/62 T/LAN/ST/NU, G. B. R. Nyombi, Field Officer Agriculture, Muyenzi Camp to the Regional Agricultural Officer, WLR, ‘Fortnightly report on refugee settlement scheme’, n.d.

105 LWF W. S. I.2, Director, General by Countries, General Correspondence, 1963, Tanzania, Joint Service Program, letter from Rachel Yeld to Mr Kirkley, Administrative Secretary (WLR), 26 Apr. 1963.

106 TNA-Mwanza 19/532/62/T/LAN/ST/NU, G. Nyombi, (F. O. Muyenzi Camp) to the Regional Agricultural Officer, WLR, ‘Fortnightly report’, 7 May 1963.

107 Interview with Daniel Baranzi. Violence allegedly occurred in Muyenzi camp during 1963, see LWF W. S. 1.2, Director, General by Countries, Tanganyika, Karagwe Dispensary … 1963, B. W. Neldner and J. Thompson, ‘Tanganyika refugee survey’, Sept. 1963.

108 LWF W. S. 1.2, Director, General by Countries, Tanzania-CCT … 1964, letter from Bishop, Diocese of Victoria Nyanza to Bruno Muetzelfeldt, 9 Apr. 1964.

109 Interview with Jacob Kanani, Rulenge, 25 June 2012. In 1966, officials reported an armed incursion into the Kibungo area of Rwanda from ‘military’ camps in Ngara. UNHCR Fonds II Series I 15-TAN-RWA/260, cable from Hordijk, Bujumbura to Hicomref, Geneva, received 27 June 1966.

110 The government relocated refugees who were more amenable to settlement to Karagwe district. Van der Meeren, R., ‘Three decades in exile: Rwandan refugees 1960–1990’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 9:3 (1996), 260CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 According to Charles Gasarasi, most refugee leaders belonged to the Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR) political party. C. P. Gasarasi, ‘The Mass’, 95. Nevertheless, the leadership was divided between a ‘traditional conservative Tutsi elite’ who favored the restoration of the monarchy, and ‘educated Tutsi’ who favored democratic reform. Both groups were intent on repatriation and opposed dispersal in various settlements. Van der Meeren, ‘Three’.

112 R. Yeld, ‘Rwanda: unprecedented problems call for unprecedented solutions’, Refugee Studies Programme Occasional Paper (Oxford, 1996), 2.

113 Ibid.

114 See UNHCR T/PET.3/L.133, ‘Petition from the Abanyarwand M'Abarundi Abadahemuka’, 23 Oct. 1961.

115 Refugees, for instance, refused to plant tobacco in Ngara based on a ‘tribal custom’ that forbid the growing of ‘tobacco when they are on flight’. TNA-Mwanza 19/532/T/LAN/ST/NU, G. B. R. Nyombi, ‘Report on refugee settlement scheme’, 25 Mar. 1963.

116 UNHCR is a ‘non-operational’ agency. For the UNHCR, ‘the Rwanda refugee situation would offer … a welcome opportunity to find out in practice what the office can usefully do’ along the lines of ‘meeting the basic vital needs’ of refugees, and helping them to achieve ‘self-sufficiency’. The Rwandan refugee crises was thus an early UNHCR experiment in refugee aid. UNHCR Fonds II Series I 15-SA/529, ‘Attitude of the High Commissioner in new refugee situations’, 29 Mar. 1963.

117 By the time of Tanganyika's official request to UNHCR for the ‘general administration of Rwanda refugees in Tanganyika’, UNHCR had donated $86,500 to the government for Rwandan refugees. LWF W. S. 1.2, Director, General Correspondence by Country, Tanganyika, 1963, Joint Service Programme, letter from Bruno Mutzelfeldt, to Carl Johansson, Executive Secretary, Federation of Lutheran Churches in Tanganyika, 22 Aug. 1963.

118 UNHCR Fonds II Series I 15-SA/529, cable from Bukavu to Hicomref, 9 May 1963.

119 According to LWF officials, the situation in Muyenzi by Aug. 1965 was ‘very precarious’ as ‘quite a number’ of refugees refused to settle, and the group remained ‘by no means self-sufficient’. UNHCR Fonds II Series I 15-GEN-RWA/252, letter from Otto Gobius to G. de Bosch Kemper, 17 Aug. 1965. For additional factors, including tension between LRCS and Tanzanian officials, see TNA-Mwanza 19/532/62/T/LAN/ST/NU, letter from Officer in Charge, Agricultural Office, Ngara to Regional Agricultural Officer, WLR, ‘Monthly report on Rwandan refugees resettlement shceme [sic]-November 1963’, 29 Nov. 1963.

120 Many Ngarans noted that wakimbizi by definition live in camps and receive aid from wazungu (whites/Europeans). For instance, interview with Celestine Kaheri, Kanyinya, 28 June 2012.

121 TNA 290/G/35/67, R. Adams, ‘Safari report on surveys in Ngara District Sept. 16–21’. Interview with Claudian Kabogie, Muyenzi, 11 July 2012.

122 TNA 600/FA/D.10/6, ‘Minutes of the West Lake regional development committee’, 30 Dec. 1963.

123 Interview with David Natori, Rulenge, 27 July 2012; and skype interview with former Muyenzi aid worker, David Zarembka, 2 Nov. 2012.

124 See UNHCR Fonds II Series 1 15-TAN.RWA/260, ‘Note for the file, Tanzania’, 3 Feb. 1965. In 1967, refugees in Ngara were still being arrested for ‘subversive activity against Rwanda’. UNHCR Fonds II Series I HCR-TAN/857, letter from Representative, Tanzania to UNHCR headquarters, 16 Nov. 1967.

125 LWF W. S. 1.2, Tanzania, Director, General, Correspondence by Countries, 1965, letter from Brian Neldner to Bruno Muetzelfeldt, 9 Apr. 1965. Interview with David Zarembka.

126 For Tanzanian nationalist ideologies that vilified lazy, and later foreign, ‘parasites’, in addition to violations of ‘the national work ethic’ as a ‘form of exploitation’ following Nyerere's 1962 pamphlet Ujamaa-The Basis of African Socialism, see Brennan, ‘Blood’, 403. On the various meanings of self-reliance in Tanzania, see Lal, P., ‘Self-reliance and the state: the multiple meanings of development in early post-colonial Tanzania’, Africa, 82:2 (2012), 212–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127 Gasarasi noted that this word was mainly used by settlement commandants and government personnel. Interview with Charles Gasarasi, Butare, 15 July 2012.

128 UNHCR Fonds II Series I 6/1/TAN/167, letter from Representative, Tanzania to High Commissioner, UNHCR, 18 Nov. 1965.

129 These Rwandans entered WLR from Uganda. By 1967, local and national officials had still not succeeded in dislodging the group. TNA-Mwanza 19/A4/4vol.V, Area Commissioner, Karagwe to the officer i/c police, Karagwe, 18 Jan. 1967.

130 UNHCR Fonds II Series II 100-TAN.RWA/188, letter from Gunnar Kaellenius, Representative for Tanzania to UNHCR, Geneva, ‘Refugee population at Mwesi settlement’, 2 May 1972.

131 Nugent and Asiwaju, ‘Introduction’, 11.

132 Yuval-Davis, N., ‘Citizenship, autochthony, and the question of forced migration’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 32:2 (2013), 53–65, 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

133 Kushner, Remembering, 1.