Neighborhood Groups in African Urban Society : Social Relations and Consciousness of Swahili People of Ujiji, a Small Town of Tanzania, East Africa.

Abstract

This paper is based on materials which were collected by myself during my anthropological research from 1964 to 1966 at Ujiji; a small town, the population of which counted 12,011 in 1957's census. The paper deals with social relations among neighborhood groups of Ujiji, in order to analyze social structure of this town. I regard African towns as a poralization of development of African tribal societies which, constitute intertribal relations in an extended regional society. The growth of a town may be regarded as a transposition of the varied tribal relations that have already developed in a regional society composed of a number of indepedent tribal societies. From my aims and standpoint, I selected Ujiji town as a type of pure African native town which had come into existence before the era of European colonial rule. Presently we can observe clearly the existence ,of six stratified groups in Ujiji. 1) Swahili people: Islamic, transtribal Africans. 2) Ha-tribesmen: Manual workers from a region north of Ujiji. 3) Wageni (guests): Mostly government employees sent by Tanzania government from other regions of Tanzania. 4) Arabian merchants. 5) Indian merchants. 6) European missionaries. Swahili people function as the core group at Ujiji. They number nearly 80% of the entire-population of Ujiji. They engross basic occupations which maintain daily life of this town; for instance, peasants, fishermen, craftsmen, shopkeeper, Islamic teacher called mwalimu and so on. They occupy the most part of the resi dental region of town. Other inhabitants occupy only the peripheral part of town territory. Therefore the analysis of social structure of Swahili group means nothing but that of Ujiji society. According to the areal extension of neighborhood relations of Swahili people, we may find the following five kinds of neighborhood groups. (1) ua moja group; the primary neighborhood group. The residence of Swahili inhabitants consists of a set of a house and its backyard (ua) enclosed by a tall hence. The smallest group of neighborhood is a group of 3〜6 families which co-use their ua opening hences to each other. Members of this group have very intimate relations through daily co-operations and interdependence. They think the seco-operations are very good customs of Islam.