Land use plans in Tanzania: repertoires of domination or solutions to rising farmer–herder conflicts?

Government officials and politicians constantly cite the lack of land use plans as being one of the main sources of growing violent lethal conflicts between pastoralists and peasant farmers in Tanzania. Even so, based on empirical evidence gathered through qualitative methods in Kisarawe and Rufiji districts, this paper maintains that land use plans do not practically resolve farmer–herder conflicts; they instead exacerbate them. The preparation of land use plans is shaped and mediated by powerful actors, notably the state and investors to enclose the land already occupied by peasant farmers and the minority pastoral communities in favor of large-scale farming investments. In Rufiji, for example, attempts to create land use plans contributed to the enclosure of more than half of the land that was in 2006 allotted to pastoral communities. As the concept of “repertoire of domination” would posit, therefore, land use plans in Rufiji and Kisarawe are indeed attempts by powerful actors to exert control over resources occupied by marginalized pastoral communities and peasant farmers. This intensifies land conflicts by pushing pastoralists and peasant farmers into smaller areas with close proximity to each other.