ABSTRACT
With more than three million US dollars from the UNDP and UN-Habitat alone, Tanzania’s Urban Authorities Support Unit (UASU) has led the effort to extend the Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) framework from its pilot program in Dar es Salaam out to all of Tanzania’s municipalities. Its longest andmost arduous efforts in this extension have been directed at Zanzibar city, some sixty kilometers northeast of Dar es Salaam in the Indian Ocean. UASU’s initial efforts, in Zanzibar and the other cities, apparently did ‘‘not
go down well with other sister municipalities’’ that resented its intrusion, ‘‘bearing in mind that they were not answerable to it’’ (Kitilla 2001, p. 87). Later programs in a half-dozen mainland cities have received funding from the Danish International Development Agency (Danida), and the money clearly raised the profile of the solid waste management programs directed by the Sustainable Cities offices in these cities, particularly Arusha, Moshi, Iringa, and Mwanza. This aid has not flowed to Zanzibar. Not only has Danida not funded any similar project in the city, but a whole host of other donors have shied away from supporting the Zanzibar Sustainable Program. Even the United Nations and German aid moneys that have kept the program afloat have come and gone in comparatively small amounts. The total aid over time to the whole program is less than 500,000 US dollars – less than one-tenth of the aid to the Hanna Nassif Community Infrastructure Program in Dar from Ireland Aid alone. ‘‘In Zanzibar,’’ UASU Director Martin Kitilla sighed, ‘‘the political will is just not there.’’ In examining the Zanzibari case in this chapter, I suggest that the problems
have gone well beyond the issue of political will. I analyze the case in the context of neoliberalism, sustainable development, and good governance rhetoric, as well as a time of very bitter politics of cultural difference. Rather than emerging as a tool for creating a more inclusive city with deliberative planning processes, in the hands of the Zanzibar Sustainable Program the EPM framework has been at best an additional ball introduced onto a soccer
pitch in mid-game: a goal might be scored here and there, while ignoring the bloody and unjust match being played on the rest of the field with the other, weightier ball. Before I turn to the deeper analysis, I first introduce Zanzibar city and the
Zanzibar Sustainable Program in the section below. Zanzibar’s unique stature, given its name redolent with many imaginary representations it only thinly deserves, requires a certain amount of demystification and normalization, which I seek to do here, even while articulating why this is still an important case to examine.
