The Rubondo Experiment: Laboratory Insularity and Nature Politics in the Decolonisation of East Africa

Why did the post-colonial awakening in East Africa - the "revolt against the West" (Geoffrey Barraclough) - not also include a rejection of Western concepts of nature and its protection? How did decolonisation affect the treatment of the natural environment, and what role did nature policy initiatives play in the configuration of post-colonial conditions? I seek exemplary answers to these questions by taking a close look at the history of Rubondo Island, the oldest and largest nature conservation island in Africa, located in the south-western part of Lake Victoria.

The case gains particular significance from the fact that Rubondo's transition from a fishing island to a nature conservation island took place during the transition phase from late to post-colonial rule: on the eve of Tanganyika's independence (1961), British-colonial gamekeepers planned to relocate rhinos from the surrounding savannahs to Rubondo in order to protect them from the uncontrolled hunting that was feared in the post-colonial period. The authorities designated the people living there, the Banyarubondo, for the settlement of the alien animals, which began in 1963. From 1966, the German zoologist Bernhard Grzimek expanded the animal settlements to include chimpanzees, elephants and other species with funds from the "Frankfurt Zoological Society" in order to profile Rubondo as a "Noah's Ark" for endangered wild animals and thus remove it from non-ecological use. With the consolidation of the one-party system, the Nyerere government finally declared the island a national park in 1977 - not least in order to valorise it for the national tourism industry.

The study of the often neglected ecological level of decolonisation contributes to a better understanding of the effects of historical upheavals on the natural environment. Viewing the decolonisation process from the perspective of its natural-political facets also helps to gauge the depth of the caesura for the history of East Africa and to make nature comprehensible as an influencing factor in political and social contexts. As the first monographic account of the history of Rubondo Island, the study also includes nature policy measures on the island during German colonial rule and is positioned at the intersection of historical research on decolonisation in East Africa, environmental history, human-animal studies and historically oriented island research.

_{Picture: Rubondo Island in March 2015 © Felix Schürmann}