Socioeconomic Effects on the Traditional Family Unit

The Sukuma People of Tanzania migrated to their current home in the Northern part of the country around 1300 A.D. Their strong oral traditions, strict matrilineal royal descent patterns, patrilineal dominated society and arranged marriages to avoid inter-clan marriage have kept their culture and traditions strong over the centuries. Even when under colonial rule, the British and Germans all respected the Chieftain’s rule over the people and little change came to them. However, the uniting of the country of Tanzania after WWII and globalization has affected the traditional family or clan unit of the Sukuma.

Traditionally, the Sukuma people would live on homesteads with other factions of their clan, strictly monitoring marriage to keep the bloodlines strong. Families would work together to raise crops and feed themselves, with the goal of growing enough food to feed themselves for a year. They are also traditionally cattle herders, even using the dung of a cow in their worship of ancestors. In fact, their worship of and interaction with their ancestors demonstrates how strongly their family ties are and how important traditions are to them. In the traditional family unit, the man is the head of the household and the woman would care for the children and take care of her husband’s needs, as well as helping with the crops and cattle when necessary, though boys would generally take the cattle to graze. Everything in the traditional family unit is done with the survival of the family in mind, namely by maintaining a constant source of food. Men would work on the farms, but occasionally find a paying job in a nearby town. Woman would spend their days gathering firewood, getting water from the well, making their staple food, ugali, getting supplies from the market and grinding corn. Children help their mother with her various duties.

However, with globalization and the insurgence of a new capitalistic economy, new city centers are beginning to arise, with one of the most thriving, Mwanza, right in their backyard. As a result, many Sukuma men are moving from their traditional farming to the new, thriving industries cropping up around the cities such as shipping, communications, health industries, transportation, banking, and mining. Women now not only work full time jobs but also provide for all the family’s traditional needs. Children, instead of helping their mothers, are found in schools learning to write and read Kiswahili because since the country was united, they must now speak two languages—their traditional tribal language and the country’s national language of Kiswahili. 

Yet this socioeconomic pull on the families to move from their rural homes to cities and from farming to the emerging industries is not affecting their culture in a negative way. In fact, it seems that there has been a resurgence of traditional culture. Instead of economic growth and globalization eclipsing the old ways, it is helping to preserve them and propel their culture into the new order of things. Many of the Sukuma have a renewed interest in their traditional dance, as well as traditional medicine, artists, and chiefs. Not all Sukuma people are following the trend of globalization and moving to the city centers to the emerging industries, either—there is still a large faction of the Sukuma population that farm, build and follow the ancestral ways of life.

            A traditional Sukuma Proverb said, “The wind does not break the tree that bends.” The Sukuma people clearly hold this dear as though they do preserve their traditional culture, they have also started acclimating themselves to the new world order as globalization begins to take hold in their ancestral homelands. However, they do not let the new industrialization taking place in their country overrun their culture; they use it to help traditional culture and values prosper.

Bessire, Mark H. C.

Sukuma Culture and Tanzania. Electronic Document, http://philip.greenspun.com/sukuma/intro.html, accessed November 4, 2013.

Kwekudee

2013. Sukuma People: Tanzania’s Largest Tribe with Unique Bugobobobo (Snake Dancing) Culture. Electronic Document, http://kwekudee-tripdownmemorylane.blogspot.com/2013/03/sukuma-people-tanzanias-largest-tribe.html, accessed November 4, 2013.