Penal code (No 11 o f 1930) section 166 (2) and (4).

[the] begging habit. It is necessary to do everything possible to root out this growing evil.’ His counterpart at the Tanganyika Standard concurred. ‘One of the nuisances which come under public notice’, he wrote in 1935,

is the growing habit o f children to beg on the streets. It is not haphazard; the children clearly have been taught. They make a very cautious approach and inform the passer-by that they are hungry. Others may be seen methodically turning out dustbins. It is an uncomfortable thought that any child in Dar es Salaam should go hungry, but if there are any who do they must not be left either to beg or to hunt for food amongst the rubbish. We do not suggest that in the first instance it is a matter for the Police, though to judge from the proceedings o f the Magistrate’s Court quite a number eventually do make the acquaintance o f members o f the Force in their official capacity. It is the prevention o f this growing evil that must be sought.37

Early the following year, in response to a request in the Legco by Mr. Adamjee for control to be exercised over the increasing number of beggars in Dar es Salaam, the Provincial Commissioner reported that there were ‘twenty Natives... who have no means of subsistence and beg for a living.’38 He complained that ‘the religious custom of distributing, indiscriminately, alms to door to door supplicants on Holy days, which prevails amongst Mahomedan and other communities, tends to encourage a class of professional beggars.’ He recommended the organisation of a central fund through which ‘deserving cases’ could receive alms and begging could be controlled. Nothing was done, and the situation continued to deteriorate. The following year Municipal Secretary Huggins informed the Commissioner that the town was ‘full of mendicants, the lame, the halt, the lazy, the unemployable.’39 By this time there were forty habitual mendicants (including fifteen women) residing in the town. In addition there was ‘a large number of destitutes who come in periodically to beg.’40 Of the forty, twelve were blind, the others ‘paralysed, deformed and deficient of limbs.’ The majority were aged. ‘The conditions under which they now live are pitiable’ commented Huggins. ‘Those who cannot obtain lodging from some charitable organisation sleep in temporary shelters and forage in the garbage and refuse of markets and eating houses.’ Periodically they had been charged and convicted. They were unable to support themselves except through begging, however, and repatriation was not possible in most cases as they had no surviving relatives. In the circumstances they were only warned and, according to Huggins, ‘[t]he Police now direct

36 TH, 17th July 1934, p.9.

37 TS, 25th May 1935, p.6.

38 PC, EP to CS, 30th January 1936, TNA/61/261/Vol.II. 39 MS to PC, EP, 8th March 1937, T N A /61/261/Vol.II. 40 MS to PC, EP, 15t!l October 1937.

their efforts to keep these people away from the residential and commercial quarters of the town where in the past they have been accustomed to wander on Sundays and Fridays in search of charity.’

It was recognised that such a state of affairs could not be allowed to persist, and in the late 1930s, on the instigation of the Township Authority, a paupers’ camp was built at Kipawa, eight miles from the town centre. Here, reported Pike in 1939, ‘the deformed beggars who were such a pest and an eyesore in Dar es Salaam have been sent.’41 The camp received scant resources, however. Just three years after its establishment, DC Revington declared it was ‘squalid and uncared for and should be entirely rebuilt.’42 Whilst seventy men, women and children were housed in the camp this did not appear to have had a significant influence on the numbers of destitute and disabled persons to be found in the town centre. ‘ [T]he number of natives in Dar es Salaam who by reason of old-age, ill-health or physical incapacity are forced to eke out a precarious livelihood by begging appears to be increasing’, the Solicitor General told the Chief Secretary in 1942. ‘I am informed that a shop-keeper can reckon on being accosted by thirty to forty such natives who parade the streets, particularly on Fridays and Sundays.’ It must be recognised by now’, he continued,

even by the extreme die-hards, that the obligation to remove this social evil rests on the Government. Such a view is in accord with the Atlantic Charter which stipulated that every person, however humble, is entitled to live in freedom from want. It is idle to seek to rely on the social sense o f responsibility among natives in a detribalised area like Dar es Salaam. A camp should be established where such persons could be fed, clothed, accommodated and provided with a little pocket money. In return they should be required to do such work as they are able. Only if such accommodation is available, is it legitimate for the police to prosecute such persons for begging.43

However, the only response to what was described at the end of WWII as the ‘swarm of beggars perambulating from house to house and shop to shop... to the annoyance of the public’44 was the tightening of Police control.45 In July 1946, 24 beggars were rounded up and charged with vagrancy 46 Three weeks later, the President of the Township Authority, Mr. Bryant, thanked the Police ‘for the good job carried out by them recently