Monumental ruins, baobab trees and spirituality: perceptions on values and uses of built heritage assets of the east African coast

The cultural built heritage assets are priceless and non-renewable properties. On account of this international and national strategies have been developed to safeguard them. For instance, the legal and institutional frameworks guide how to protect the heritage assets alongside improving local people’s awareness and livelihood for sustainable conservation and management of the heritage assets. Regrettably, the implementation of such strategies in Tanzania has faced serious conflicting interests between Government conservators and local people living in and near the built heritage regarding perceptions and uses of the properties. On the one hand, the former claim the local people are ignorant of the built heritage importance and that their activities pose dangers to these assets. On the other hand, the latter maintain that the Government conservators disturb their day-to-day interactions with the built heritage landscapes including values and uses. This situation is not worthwhile for the sustainable protection of the heritage landscape within which built heritage properties and baobab trees form a part. Against this background, this thesis aimed to: historicise the built heritage of the central Indian coast in Tanzania; document the conflicting perceptions of local people on the values and uses of the built heritage properties and their surroundings; establish what local people believe on the assets and; propose interventions that would result in sustainable conservation and management of the built heritage properties alongside improving local people’s awareness and livelihood inter alia. To this end, the study employed landscape and integrative approaches to advocate compatibility of built heritage and other aspects of the landscape for the assets sustainability and socio-cultural and economic well-being of the local people. Whereas a review of documents and physical surveys were employed to gather quantitative data, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and personal observations collected qualitative data on the research problem. The results indicate that the central coast of Tanzania has a significant number of decaying built heritages close to the baobab trees. To locals, these properties and their surroundings have multiple uses ranging from being clinics to social problems, spiritual and pilgrimage centers, to providing economic opportunities that earn them income to improve livelihood. Moreover, the assets act as disciplinary centers and sites of justice. These locals’ perceptions and uses of the built heritage assets, baobab trees, and their surroundings indicate synchronous and symbiotic relationships. Such dealings are between monumental ruins and baobab trees on the one hand and spiritual practice, religious beliefs and myths on the other. The thesis argues that the dependence of local people on these properties could influence decision-making for investments and management plans to protect and use the built heritage assets and their surroundings. Towards resolving the problem of conflicting interests among the stakeholders, this thesis proposes that any intervention upon these assets including their conservation and management must, first and foremost, incorporate the concerns of local people who are forgotten all the time. Let the local people be primus inter pares–first amongst equals.