State, law, and vigilantism in northern Tanzania

The spontaneous development of community-based policing in central Tanzania in the early 1980s in the sungusungu movement and the subsequent incorporation of such groups into administrative structures over wide areas of Tanzania poses problems for how to conceive of the state in East Africa. This article deals with the circumstances which prompted the emergence of the movement and its late development among the Kuria of Mara Region in the 1990s. It argues that in ceding significant powers to local communities a ‘quiet revolution’ has taken place, reversing the centralism that was a noted aspect of the Tanzanian post-colonial state. In so doing, it has opened up a divide between the different branches of government, with the political and administrative wings supporting the groups and the institutional innovation they represent in the face of opposition by the police and judiciary. In the praxis of government in the rural areas, the anomalous legality of sungusungu groups is by no means to the disadvantage of the administration but raises the issue of how one can harmonize national and local systems of law and justice.