/Tanzania/Barabaig/Lethal Violence – Inclusive Human Learning (IHL) Group

Country: Tanzania

Group: Barabaig

Date: October 26, 2023

Team: Natasha Chandra (lead), Emily Allan, Esha Kubavat, Gordon Kok, and Hannah Lux

Content Warnings: alienation, abuse, assault, burnings, shootings, destruction, desecration, forced eviction, beatings, imprisonment, electrocution, rape

Approximate Time Period: 1969-Present

The Barabaig are Nilotic-speaking cattle pastoralists living in north-central Tanzania. Their population is around 30,000 people (Minority Rights Group, 2015). They have lived in plains around Mount Hanang in Tanzania for the last 150 years and are struggling over loss of lands to the Tanzanian government (Minority Rights Group, 2015). The Barabaig people perform various rites when someone dies, including building a mound for the spirit to inhabit and planting a holy tree beside it for the person’s descendants to pray (Monbiot, 1994). The Barabaig migrations revolve around the locations of these mounds, as they avoid land with no spirits in them (Monbiot, 1994).

The Barabaig people are facing multiple situations of aggression and lethal violence. In 1968, 70,000 hectares of Barabaig land was taken over by a government-owned enterprise, the National Agriculture and Food Corporation (NAFCO) to grow commercial wheat on seven state farms (Fratkin & Wu, 2010). The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) funds the wheat project. Since 1969, the Barabaig have been in dispute with the Tanzania Canada Wheat Project. This dispute has alienated more than 400,000 hectares of the best grazing land in the Hanang district of Tanzania (Minority Rights Group, 2015). The dispute has led to abuses against Barabaig, including assault, house burnings, shooting and confiscation of cattle, destruction of rights of way, and desecration of sacred sites, including the destruction of graves by plowing (Minority Rights Group, 2015). When Barabaig tried to return to their land, they were forcibly evicted, beaten up, fined, and imprisoned (Monbiot, 1994). Barabaig villages were burnt down, dams were destroyed, and the mounds of ancestor spirits dragged under the plough (Monbiot, 1994). Even if Barabaig cattle stepped onto fields, their herders were arrested and imprisoned, where they received “twelve strokes of the cane” (Monbiot, 1994). The NAFO workers beat and electrocuted a Barabaig man who tried to gain his land back (Monbiot, 1994). In addition, women who are caught by NAFCO farm workers have been raped and beaten with sticks (Monbiot, 1994).

In 1981, the Barabaig challenged the legality of their land alienation in Tanzanian courts (Fratkin & Wu, 2010). Years later, however, on September 13, 2018, 18 bomas, or livestock enclosures, belonging to Barabaig pastoralists in Vilima Vitatu village, Babati District, were burnt to the ground, which the district commissioner allegedly ordered due to an anthrax outbreak. However, the Tanzanian government was forcibly and violently evicting these 18 Barabaig families to make room for the tourist company UN Lodge en Afrique Ltd (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2019). Unfortunately, since June 2022, Tanzanian authorities have engaged in abuse and unlawful tactics including beatings, shootings, sexual violence, and arbitrary arrests to forcibly evict residents from their land (Human Rights Watch, 2023).

The data quality is rated 3/3 because there is a multitude of evidence that the Barabaig people face lethal violence; the evidence comes from reputable sources.

Sources