Diminishing Communal Grazing land In Mbulu District: The Case study of Gunyoda Village as an element of Social Change.

1. Introduction
Social change is among the most significant phenomena present in societies all over the world. The human beings and non-human being have being undergoing change very gradually but these changes have been so instrumental. The main reason for such change is to balance its force internally and externally. In many cases, these changes brought by social change has been desirable while others regard them as an alien way of doing things This paper is intended therefore to define the meaning of social change, basing on different scholars, it will point out different types and causes of social change as part one. The second part of this paper is on the case study regarding Diminishing grazing land in Tanzania,in Mbulu District the case study of Gunyoda village in particular being an element of social change in the rural setting . Thereafter, there will be a conclusion..
2. The Meaning of Social Change
Different authors have defined social change in different ways. Below do the different authors on social change put some definitions forward.

Soil change is the transformation of culture and social Institutions over time.1
That is to say, the human culture as social component and social institutions are being transformed with time
Another definition of social change say social Change is basically related to the changing trends with in a society like economical trends, political trends, Social
trends and technological developments. These are related to the evolutionary paradigm of Social Change of any society2.
However, the evolutionary paradigms of Social Change impacts on the Social culture of every society and the various cultures existing in it. Amongst the various evolutionary paradigms of Social Change, let’s try to evaluate the evolutionary3
The term can encompass concepts as broad as revolution and paradigm shift to narrow changes such as a particular cause within small town government. The concept of Social change implies the measurement of some characteristics of this group of individuals, while the term is usually applied to changes that are beneficial to society.4
Basically, there are two type of social change, the planned and unplanned social change. The former is directed as Ujamaa villages in Tanzania while the former is pushed by circumstances.
There are two main perspectives regarding the cause of social change. Materialistic perspective regard technology is the cause of it. 5 However, the idealistic perspective regards the cause of social change to be due to values and belief both religious and secular. 6 These have motivated people to work hard and the habit of frugality encouraged them to save which help them in investment. However, these two perspectives depend on which corner one view the cause of social change.

3. Diminishing Communal Grazing Land in Mbulu District:The case
of Gunyoda village as an element of Social change.
Gunyoda is one of the villages of Mbulu District in Manyara region. It is one of the three villages that compose Masieda ward, having 3 villages namely: Endahagichan, Masieda and Gunyoda which is the ward Headquarters. It is 15km west of Mbulu Township. The village has total population of 3528 people, out of which female are: 1028, and male are 2500(Village population report: 2007)
The village has three primary schools, namely Gunyoda having 773 pupils, Gedamar having 527 pupils and Qalieda having 345 pupils. There is also one secondary school, having 227 students (Village Report: 2007)
In the village, it is a common practice to set aside communal grazing land for he sake of cattle which are regarded as assets in he village. Moreover, almost everybody was having cattle. This practice has been passed along the generations in the village. This practice enforced people to set part of their land as common property. And it is this land, which is quarantined after rain season so that the pastures grow well and the community to have good pastures during the period of dry season. That is between July through October. As it is normality people to heard their cattle in this communal grazing land including cattle throughway. (Thornton, J.Robert:1980) p.37. Usually the neighbors cooperate in the maintenance of these pasture as these are the most important element n their livelihood as cattle were regarded as a social bank and play several social and economic functions including: to pay bride price, as a fine, sacrifices, as sources of food. Thus, community was obligated to set some portions of their land for communal welfare without question.
According to (PRA report: 2007) carried in the village, the inhabitant’s are agro-pastor lists. They are mainly involved in both crop production and livestock keeping. The major food crops grown include: maize, beans, and sorghum. Cash crops grown include: Finger millet, beans, and sorghum. In total the village has total arable land of 4998 square kilometers; where as the grazing land is only 500 square kilometers. (Padep Report: 2007a.) This indicates that areas for grazing are quite minimal and insufficient. Whereby the village has 30,000 cattle, 20,000 goats and 5000 pigs. (Village report: 2007)

According to Village PRA Report,( 2007) the village is faced by lack of communal grazing land as a main reason for a poor living condition amongst the people. In this village Livestock keeping is one of the important economic activity which support their livelihood.
Nevertheless, the fiasco began as a result of 10 years drought which hit the village i.e. from late 1980s to late 1990s. People were forced to practicing a kind of transhumance by moving their herds of cows for search of pastures. They had to move to over 30 km away leaving behind their families for over 4 months. It was this movement and trouble to live in the bush for couple of months, which made the young men to refrain from the activity. They started to query the reason for communal grazing land at their expense, as they had no land. In the area, it is a customary Land, which is applicable, and as an order of the area it is until one marries then he can claim for piece of land from the village. (Personal Communication with Village chairperson 2007)
Then, in 1999 a tug of war emerged in the village, as young men started to encroach the communal grazing land. As usual, the village leadership and elders had to summon the meeting to save the communal grazing land from the peril prevailing. (Village Minutes Meeting, 1999). The debate at the meeting was extra ordinarily hot and the village leaders and elders were overwhelmed. The point was they had no cows; the cows had destructed extremely the environment and above all they argued that everybody should zero graze his cattle so that they get land so that they may earn a living. It was a big blow in the history of the village, that there should be no longer a communal grazing land. Indeed that was a turning point for community in Gunyoda village to enjoy a common mans property one of which is grazing land. Now, they have no free woodland for firewood and building materials as they use to do in the past.



4. Conclusion:
Impact of the decision has been an improvement in environmental care as very piece of land is fenced and taken care of, also, as the free natural benefits were cut the people have started to reduce numbers of cattle, and above all there are initiatives of tree planting as source of firewood and building materials. But, the argents of all these changes, which took place, are few young people who were daring to start an alternative line of lifestyle. However, the change has a positive aspect on saving land from land degradation it was caused by heads of cows roaming from one point to another in the village particularly on no mans land. The present practice for sure will make the people responsible for their land, which is their asset and the only resource which support their livelihood. The only shortcoming of abolishing communal grazing land is the prevalence of selfish use of resources and the communal common bond is falling apart as a normal life in western societies. So, from the above fact, it is true that social change is there to balance external and internal forces of communities in any point of time.














References:
Gunyoda village PRA Report in 2007
Gunyoda Village General Annual meeting minutes on 25th October 1999.
Gunyoda village population report 2007
http://cwx.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/macionis7/chapter24/objectives/deluxe-
content.html, Accessed on 28th Nov 2007
http://www.termpapergenie.com/theoryofsocialchange.html accessed on 28th Oct 07
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_change accessed on 5th Nov. 2007 http://husky1.smu.ca/~evanderveen/wvdv/social_change/causes_of_social_change. htm Accessed on 5th Nov 2007
Thorton,J, Robert( 1980) Space, Time and Culture among the Iraqw of
Northern Tanzania, Academic Press, New York
URT (2007) Padep Report.