Kuria cattle raiding: A case study in the capitalist transformation of an East African sociocultural institution.

Abstract

The agro-pastoral Kuria people of East Africa, whose population straddles the border between Tanzania and Kenya, are actively engaged in an illicit livestock trade in which cattle stolen in Tanzania are run across the border for cash sale in neighboring Kenya, which is a more affluent country than Tanzania, where the demand for beef is greater and beef prices are considerably higher than in Tanzania, and which lacks sufficient cattle of its own to meet the rising beef demand. The beef from these stolen Tanzanian cattle fills the butcher shops of Kenya, fuels Kenya's meat-packing and tanning industries, and is reportedly also shipped to buyers in such faraway destinations as Israel, the Scandinavian countries, and the Persian Gulf. Kuria cattle raiding is by no means a new phenomenon, but it has undergone a profound transformation in the course of this century--from its precolonial roles of demonstrating the mettle of new warriors and enlarging the community cattle herd to an illicit, ofttimes quite violent, cash-market-oriented enterprise--in response to the pressures exerted by the colonial economy, capitalist penetration, and the policies of the post-colonial Tanzanian state. This dissertation, based on field research carried out in a Kuria village in the Tarime District lowlands, in northern Tanzania, between 1994 and 1996, endeavors to document and analyze that transformation. In contrast to other research done in East Africa, notably in Kenya, which ties declining cattle populations, the monetization and diminishing size of bridewealth payments, and the commoditization of cattle to the privatization of land, the diminution of individual land holdings, and the availability of investment opportunities other than in livestock, this research reveals market-oriented cattle theft to be the driving force behind the steep, ongoing decline of this northern Tanzanian region's cattle herd as well as of the fast-diminishing hectarage of land under agricultural production in the area and of the tonnage of both food crops and cash crops being produced there as well.