Since last year, when thousands of Maasai face eviction, the Ngorongoro Nature Reserve [l’aire de conservation du Ngorongoro est une zone protégée située dans le bord de la Tanzanie] makes the news.
The Maasai’s presence in Ngorongoro has been of concern to environmental authorities, NGOs, tourism companies and the Tanzanian state for decades, accusing them of damaging Ngorongoro’s natural beauty. .
In the name of the fight for the environment
It is certainly not the first time that the inhabitants of Ngorongoro have lived under the threat of relocation, but this time the Tanzanian government is apparently determined to dislodge thousands of Masai herders in the name of environmental protection.
To better understand why the Masai are perceived as a threat to Ngorongoro, we must look at the history of environmental protection in Tanzania, which remains linked to colonization.
By moving the Masai from the Serengeti to Ngorongoro in the 1950s (where other Masai were already living before the creation of the Serengeti National Park), the British colonial administration and international conservation groups sought to protect the Serengeti shepherds. In doing so, they had promised the Masai that they would never be expelled from the Ngorongoro Highlands.
At the time, the colonial administration and Western environmentalists apparently did not understand how absurd the protection of the Serengeti was since the populations in question had precisely led to the creation of the famous plains of the Serengeti thanks to their practices of protection. land use and environmental management.
For the European colonizers, the displacement of the Massais was not only a good thing for nature, but also for the expelled populations themselves.
Even today, people living around Tanzania’s protected areas continue to be treated in a profoundly paternalistic way by the state, which perceives them as backward people in need of modernization and development.
The country’s largest source of foreign currency
The state reasserts its colonial discourse as a civilizing mission whenever Masai or other herders are dislodged in the name of “protection” and you “development” in Tanzania. While this colonial legacy persists today, what has changed since the end of colonial rule is the primary role of the tourism industry in today’s Tanzania.
At the time of the establishment of protected areas in Tanzania, tourism was still a fledgling economic sector and was poorly integrated into global tourist circuits. Furthermore, in the socialist Tanzania of Nyerere [président de la République de 1964 à 1985]the role of tourism had been hotly debated and deeply contested, as shown in Issa Shivji’s 1973 book titled Tourism and Socialist Development (unfortunately sold out today).
Did Africans have to lend themselves to these “extremely humiliating submissive attitudes based on ‘memsahib’ and ‘sir’” in order to “creating a hospitable climate for tourists” in exchange for foreign currency? In other words, could the economic promise of tourism offset the price of“cultural imperialism” ? These questions were central fifty years ago – questions that seem almost totally obsolete today.
Since the liberalization of the Tanzanian economy in the 1980s, the state has worked closely with Western conservation NGOs, donors and private tourism companies to develop the tourism sector in Tanzania. Today, tourism funds environmental projects across the country and is a source of wealth and power for Tanzania’s political and economic elites.
In 2017, nearly 650,000 tourists visited Ngorongoro, earning around $56 million. [53 millions d’euros] in entrance fees. Before the pandemic, tourism’s direct and indirect contribution to Tanzania’s GDP was nearly 11%, and the tourism sector was the country’s largest foreign exchange earner.
Tourism has become a trap
The protection of natural environments is therefore no longer tenable without a dynamic international tourism sector. At the same time, tourism depends almost entirely on safeguarding Tanzania’s flagship species – primarily its elephants and lions – in some of the world’s most famous nature reserves, such as the Serengeti and Ngorongoro.
It is this collusion between the protection of natural heritage and tourism that allows Tanzanian political and economic elites to justify their displacement of rural populations. The more prosperous Tanzania’s tourism sector is, the more desperate the state tries to protect its cash cow from any potential risk. Tourism has thus become a trap. The State cannot do without it, while some of its inhabitants suffer from it.
Because of this questionable role of tourism, the state treats rural people living around protected areas as elements of biodiversity whose contribution as citizens is judged primarily on their value to the tourism-environment complex.
An organized dispossession
Through advertisements and tourist brochures, the Masai are visually portrayed and applauded as exotic nature protectors as they attract more tourists. On the other hand, when they undermine the tourism potential, they are not spared from media campaigns.
Ultimately, the state and natural heritage management authorities regard as economic saboteur any group whose land use practices are seen as a risk to international tourism windfalls.
In Ngorongoro, once people were perceived as a threat, a slow process of marginalization and “insidious dispossession” was set in motion to seize their land and displace local people.
This murky relationship between the state, environmental protection and tourism, as well as the patronizing attitude towards rural populations, should not be overlooked – or worse, overlooked. This is something to consider when discussing environmental protection, when concerned about the state of wildlife, or when planning our next trip to Tanzania’s nature reserves.
In other words, we must not forget that “tourism perpetuates a colonialist political economy in a postcolonial world”. Tourists visiting Tanzania indirectly contribute to reinforcing this status quo and therefore bear a certain responsibility. Whether they like it or not, foreign tourists who visit Tanzania’s world famous protected areas are complicit in this natural heritage management policy.
Tanzania is not an unfenced zoo
What can we do ? The efforts of Tanzanian civil society to end evictions must be supported. Environmentally conscious people must reconsider their donation practices and stop funding environmental organizations that support – directly or indirectly – the rigid model of natural heritage protection in Tanzania and elsewhere.
Tourists planning to visit Tanzania can also do their part by requiring tour operators to present Tanzania as a country populated by people and wildlife, not as an unfenced zoo where evictions. Tourists may also consider boycotting protected areas whose operation and conservation are linked to the dispossession of people living in or near these areas.