Faith-based Organizations, the State and Politics in Tanzania

Abstract

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) are central actors within broader civil society in developing countries, especially in Africa. From a certain perspective, one might argue that FBOs have long pre-dated other civil society organizations (CSOs) in that they either appeared with the evangelization of African societies in the nineteenth century or the Islamization of the East Coast of the continent much earlier. Civil society, of course, can be de?ned very broadly as the space in which self-organizing and relatively autonomous groups, movements and individuals attempt to articulate values, to create associations and solidarities, and to advance interests and occupy the space between an individual and the government (Linz & Stepan, 1996). In this ‘broad church’, there are, among others, voluntary groups that may be very well organized as well as those not so well organized; and there may be CSOs which assist members to interact in a manner that is bene?cial in different ways – politically, socially, economically – and so on. CSOs might generally be categorized as formal or informal, or as organized or more loosely organized. The former would include such organizations as labour unions, which adhere to codi?ed rules, may formally represent certain groups and need governmental sanctions to operate, among other conditions. Informal organizations may consist of groups of individuals who co-operate in different ways for the bene?t of their own communities: for collective action, ?nancing, and the provision of services (e.g. neighbourhood vigilante groups, user groups, and informal support groups such as burial solidarity groups). Many FBOs in Tanzania may be categorized as organized according to the criteria above. There are, however, signi?cant numbers of more community-based FBOs, which operate at a lower level and at a smaller scale, and also differ in the amount of resources – human, ?nancial and material – with which they operate.