Search

Independent Tanzania became a prominent frontline state in the struggle against white minority regimes in the early 1960s and remained committed to the total liberation of Africa until South African repatriations in the early 1990s. For three decades the country was a hub of Pan-Africanism and saw an extraordinarily high involvement of Tanzanians in supporting the southern African liberation movements in ways that went beyond TANU/CCM's primary directions. While some research has been done on the daily interactions, relationships and tensions in the ANC/MK and SWAPO settlements and military training camps as well as in the nearby towns and villages that hosted them, this article shifts the focus from the camps and their surroundings to the forging of solidarity and transnational connections in urban leisure spaces, particularly the music scene. It seeks to bring to light both the enduring and fleeting intimate relations and everyday forms of conviviality between South Africans and Tanzanians which were produced in Dar es Salaam's nightclubs. The central argument is that artistic collaborations with South Africans outside the camps not only amplified and solidified Tanzanians' ability to transcend the idea of the national, but were key to the shaping of a specific form of grassroots pan-Africanism that I will call 'convivial transnational solidarity'. The latter is intended as a practice rather than as an ideology. As I will show, the urban soundscape was central to its emergence. The article first charts how national politics – a key aspect of which was the duty to embrace transnational solidarity – extended into the lower echelons of Tanzanian society through the airwaves, the press and liberation songs. Following the trajectory of the Tanzanian band Afro-70 and its leader Patrick Balidisya, it then examines the everyday acts of welcoming that unfolded in Dar es Salaam's music scene during the brief historical juncture between 1969 and 1977, which coincided with ujamaa and with Afro-70's rise and demise. The last part of the article problematises the process of total liberation and the idea of transnational solidarity by exposing their fragility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides the history of Tanzania with total of ethnic groups that identify themselves as Indigenous Peoples. It highlights similar problems in relation to land tenure insecurity, poverty and inadequate political representation; also focuses on the Indigenous Peoples access to land and natural resources, basic social services and justice.

Copyright of History in Africa: A Journal of Method is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article relies on archival and oral sources to examine ideas about religious health care, empire, and Christian-Muslim relations in Western Tanzania from the 1920s to the 1960s. Ideas about religion and empire have attracted attention from historians and anthropologists with varying viewpoints. While acknowledging the scholarly attention to issues regarding religion and empire, this study seeks to show how religious health institutions shaped the course of colonial imperatives and the relations between Christians and Muslims in the region. This article focuses on Catholic health institutions of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (commonly referred to as the White Sisters), Medical Missionaries of Mary, and Daughters of Mary to show the place of women missionaries in shaping ideas in relation to empire and changing relationships between Christians and Muslims in Western Tanzania. Keywords: Religious Health Care, Empire, Christian-Muslim Relations, Western Tanzania, 1. Introduction This article uses religious health institutions of Catholic women missionaries as an illustrative case to examine ideas about empire and Christian-Muslim relations in Western Tanzania from the mid-1920s [...]

This article addresses dissent at the time of the encounter between communities and missionaries in Western Tanzania. It centers on the land question and culture as sources of contention between the people and missionaries. It shows that the people's opposition to eviction from their land and opposition to missionaries' interference of their culture called for dialogue between the people, missionaries, and imperial authority, and, accordingly, benefitted the parties involved. Using the perspective from below, the article contributes to the scholarship on dissent to show how ordinary peasants responded to the need of missionaries for land and control of the cultural aspects. The article also builds on the idea of 'long conversation' from studies on the encounter between communities and missionaries to show how dissent called for mutual discussion between communities, missionaries, and imperial authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By focussing on two objects originating from the former German colony in East Africa, this article showcases an entangled Tanzanian- British-German history. The objects in question are human remains; or, to be more precise, a skull and a tooth. Firstly, the article traces their itineraries. Secondly, it demonstrates how human remains, which were taken as colonial trophies, could become objects of faith and attain their own ›life‹ in Europe. Their interpretation as objects of faith is supposed to challenge the prevailing understanding of the collection of human remains as part of a history of knowledge. Instead, the article offers a different reading which emphasises an African-European dialogue of meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere. It examines the main ideas that propelled his decision to become a full-time politician (1954) and establish a political party - The Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and use it to mobilize the people of Tanganyika to demand independence from the British. The article examines a number of related issues and themes in the history of Tanzania and Nyerere’s contributions to it. It starts with a section on Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere - the person , where it shows who Mwalimu Nyerere himself said he was, the ideas and principles he stood for, and the way he elaborated and used them to mobilize the people of Tanzania for independence. It notes the sacrifices he made in keeping with what he said he was, for instance by resigning from important positions of responsibility for different reasons at different times. The paper then elaborates on Nyerere’s fundamental principles and beliefs: that people (men and women) are the purpose of society, and that modern states could and should be established on the basis of the principles of the traditional African society. In the last section, the paper elaborates on the type of nation Nyerere wanted to build and provides reflections on Nyerere’s achievements and disappointments as leader of an African country in the early independence period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on the assessment of community awareness and challenges facing Zanzibar National Archives (ZNA). The study utilised convenient sampling to collect data from the members of the public (93 respondents) in Stone Town in Zanzibar. Data were augmented through interviews with the staff of the Zanzibar National Archives (10 respondents) and the general public from Zanzibar (93 respondents). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis and Microsoft excel. The findings indicate that the public has very little awareness about archives and its functions. At the same time the ZNA is facing a lot of challenges, including theft and lack of modern equipment for conservation purposes. The study recommends provision of education programs to the community, allocation of more funds for acquisition of modern conservation facilities, and staff training to ensure better management and conservation of the records in Zanzibar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, a network of young urban migrant men created an underground pulp fiction publishing industry in the city of Dar es Salaam. As texts that were produced in the underground economy of a city whose trajectory was increasingly charted outside of formalized planning and investment, these novellas reveal more than their narrative content alone. These texts were active components in the urban social worlds of the young men who produced them. They reveal a mode of urbanism otherwise obscured by narratives of decolonization, in which urban belonging was constituted less by national citizenship than by the construction of social networks, economic connections, and the crafting of reputations. This article argues that pulp fiction novellas of socialist era Dar es Salaam are artifacts of emergent forms of male sociability and mobility. In printing fictional stories about urban life on pilfered paper and ink, and distributing their texts through informal channels, these writers not only described urban communities, reputations, and networks, but also actually created them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The interaction between the Swahili Coast of the present-day Tanzanian coast and other parts of the Indian Ocean world dates back to the first millennium AD. This commercial communication resulted in the rise of several coastal city-states (stonebuilt towns), some of which date back to the tenth century. Unfortunately, some of these states started to collapse during the second half of the second millennium and the majority of them is in a ruinous state. These material remains, which according to the Tanzania’s Antiquities Act of 1964 deserve legal protection, have not been studied comprehensively mainly to establish their conservation history. The current article addresses this problem, and by analysing documents, it establishes the conservation history of monuments and historic buildings of the Swahili Coast in Tanzania. Research results indicate that some built heritage sites started decaying during the fourteenth century AD. Because of recognising the importance of these built heritage sites, communities of the region embarked on strategies to care these built heritage sites. This observation contradicts the European conventional wisdom maintaining that, in Africa, conservation of built heritage sites such as monuments and historic buildings began in the nineteenth century and was propagated by European colonialists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of African Studies Review is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An essay is presented on sleeping sickness concentrations in Tanzania from 1933 to 1946. It offers information on sleeping sickness or trypnosomiasis which a deadly disease affecting both humans and animals and was first diagnosed in Tanzania in 1929. The British government reportedly forced residents of the Kagera area to move to other settlement sites to control the epidemic. Also examined are the political motivations of the resettlement and the historiography of trypnosomiasis.

The article examines the history of inland African trade desires in Ruvuma Region, Tanzania from the 16th to 20th centuries. Ruvuma Region is reportedly the hub of inland trade during the period. The commercial choices, trade, and aesthetic aspirations of Yao language speakers are explored as well as the changes in the regional emphasis of brass metal by elite groups, Africans' relationship with Portuguese, and material desires in the ivory and slave trading eras.

Copyright of Comparativ: Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und Vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung is the property of Leipziger Universitaetsverlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the 1960s, there was an upsurge in national liberation movements in Africa. Newly independent Tanzania and Zambia urgently needed a railway transportation line to link the two countries in order to achieve true independence and self-strengthening. Using archival materials, this paper shows that the Chinese government decided to support construction of this railway in response to Tanzania’s request for aid, despite China’s own economic underdevelopment. In the face of US and British policies to thwart the railway construction, China overcame Zambian suspicion and ultimately facilitated the signing of a tripartite agreement with both Tanzania and Zambia. China’s assistance in the construction of the Tanzania–Zambia railway during the Cold War had great strategic significance. This project helped China break out of its international isolation, and it became a turning point in China’s gradual formulation of its own independent Africa policy. Moreover, it promoted national emancipation and economic construction in Africa and broadened the influence of the Chinese developmental path there. However, this project also created a financial burden for China, and its underlying model of cooperation proved unsuitable for sustaining the railway’s long-term operation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of History in Africa: A Journal of Method is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Analysis of the voluntary sector in sub-Saharan Africa has tended to focus on the role of the NGO, and the types of relationships this institution establishes and maintains with donors, national governments and the communities with which they work. The voluntary sector in Africa is therefore usually defined through, and often treated as synonymous with, the institution of the NGO. As a result, the boundaries of understandings of the 'third sector' space occupied by the vast number of NGOs - its origins, the nature of the relationship of voluntary sector actors to the state, the types of organizations that characterize the sector - have tended to reflect a narrow concern with the NGO type and its experiences. This article suggests that this view is too narrow in its gaze. The voluntary sector was not a creation of a post-colonial (and especially post-1970s) development crisis. It emerged from an evolving relationship between colonial-era non-state (voluntary) actors and governments determined to demonstrate that they were meeting their commitments to the welfare of Africans under their charge. Missions and mission welfare services, expanding across much of rural sub-Saharan Africa by the beginnings of the twentieth century, and increasingly coordinated from the late 1920s and early 1930s, created the foundations for the emergence of sub-Saharan Africa's formal voluntary sector as it exists today. This matters for more than just historical accuracy. To understand the constraints, challenges and opportunities faced by NGOs, we need to move beyond a narrow focus on the institution of the NGO itself, and look in addition to the environment in which it operates: its history, its evolution and the shifts that created those conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing interest in citizenship among political theorists over the last two decades has encouraged historians of twentieth-century Africa to ask new questions of the colonial and early post-colonial period. These questions have, however, often focused on differential access to the rights associated with the legal status of citizenship, paying less attention to the ways in which conceptions of citizenship were developed, debated, and employed. This article proposes that tracing the entangled intellectual history of the concept of ‘good citizenship’ in twentieth-century Tanzania, in a British imperial context, has the potential to provide new insights into the development of one national political culture, while also offering wider lessons for our understanding of the global history of political society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study focuses on hospitality in Tanzania, as a topic of historical importance. Although there are many references to hospitality within both primary and secondary sources and anecdotal accounts, hospitality is effectively unexplored in the historical scholarship for any part of sub-Saharan Africa. Looking at southwestern Tanzania between 1600 and 1900 as a case study, this work aims to make hospitality, for the first time, primary focus of historical study rather than a peripheral and passing allusion. Towards that end, I examine why and when some societies chose to extend hospitality to outsiders and strangers. In southwestern Tanzania between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, extending hospitality to guests, strangers, and ‘foreign residents’ was a paramount value and social expectation, which could result in inclusion of outsiders. Hospitality towards newcomers became a cultural norm. I contend that direct, immediate, and personal gain was far less important than a circulation of hospitality. In the long term social and political institutions were buoyed by this moral expectation. In order to demonstrate these claims, I employ proverbs, oral traditions, and explorers’ accounts as historical evidence for hospitality's enduring salience in shifting contexts in southwestern Tanzania from precolonial times into the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite an abundance of mineral wealth and an ancient history of gold trading, Tanzania is a relative latecomer to the experience of being a mineral-dominated national economy. Both the British colonial state and Nyerere's post-colonial state avoided encouraging, and only reluctantly provided support to, large- and small-scale mining. Farming constituted the livelihood for the vast majority of the population and peasant agricultural exports provided the main source of foreign exchange for the country. Now, however, Tanzania has become one of Africa's main gold producers and the number one destination for non-oil foreign direct investment after South Africa. This article traces the development of gold mining and urban growth in Tanzania with the aim of identifying if, when and where these two processes interact with one another. It explores the triggers, mechanisms and durability of their fusion and synergies over time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of the Tanzanian political party the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) and intellectual history, nationalism, and postcolonialism in Tanzania as of 2012. It discusses the unpublished Swahili-language text of Tanzanian nationalist Lameck Bogohe as a reflection of the Tanzanian political society authored by an individual who was, the author argues, marginalized from power in postcolonial Tanzania. The author states that the text also examines the efforts of TANU founder Julius Nyerere to establish and maintain the party.

In Meru, Tanzania local initiatives were instrumental in establishing a gravity irrigation system in the 1890s. The original property rights institutions governing furrows were characterised by de facto communal ownership and management combined with private temporary user rights. Over the last 12 decades farming systems in Meru have experienced changing land/labour ratios, overall technological and institutional change as well as increased demand for irrigation water. The furrow system has been extended and due to general agricultural intensification access to water has become an important pre-condition for production in the current local system of agricultural production. However, it is argued that in the midst of drastic overall change in the area, irrigation furrows have experienced no significant change in either technology or property rights institutions. It is found that institutional continuity is explained by the natural characteristics of water, property rights embeddedness in socio-economic structures, and challenges of managing it as a common-pool resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate data from Empakaai Crater in northern Tanzania, covering the last 1200 years, are related to the establishment, development and decline of the ancient irrigation system at Engaruka. New dates for the system are linked to reconstructed climatic variations and historical data on long-distance and regional trade and migration patterns. A shift from a comparatively humid climate to drier conditions in the 1400s prompted the establishment of irrigated agriculture at Engaruka, and a flourishing long-distance trade increased its value as a water and food source for passing caravans. Once established, the land-use system at Engaruka was sufficiently resilient to survive and even intensify during much drier climate from c. 1500 to 1670 CE (Common Era) and during the decline of caravan trade between c. 1550 and 1750. The ancient land-use system probably reached its maximum extension during the humid conditions between 1670 and 1740, and was deserted in the early to mid 1800s, presumably as a result of the added effects of climate deterioration, the Maasai expansion, and change of livelihood strategies as agriculturalists became pastoralists. Towards the end of the 1800s irrigated agriculture was again established at Engaruka, in part driven by the transfer from pastoral to agricultural livelihoods caused by the Rinderpest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 15 December 1965 Tanzania broke off diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom (UK) because of Harold Wilson's policy towards Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). Although Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere took this course of action to comply with a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Organisation of African Unity, he made the support for Rhodesian independence a central pillar of Tanzania's nation-building project. Since 1967 human dignity, African liberation and opposition to racialism and colonialism became central tenets of both Tanzania's foreign policy as well as the Ujamaa socialist policy implemented internally by its government. The loss of a British £ 7.5 million loan notwithstanding, Tanzania's unyielding criticism of British policy towards UDI strengthened Nyerere's national and international legitimacy and reinforced the Tanganyika African National Union's hegemony over the national political space. Relations between Tanzania and the UK were finally restored in July 1968, after the other African governments had re-established them. Nyerere felt sure that this policy reversal would not put at risk his government's political legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion of politics and government in Tanzania as of October 2009. It focuses on the tactics used by the Revolutionary Party of Tanzania (Chama Cha Mapinduzi, or CCM) to maintain its one-party rule. It is said that the CCM has never faced a serious electoral challenge, due to its proactive and unscrupulous attempts to marginalize any opposition. The CCM's political opponents are described as easy to marginalize, as they are best known for squabbling amongst themselves and choosing unelectable leaders.

The current discourse and practice of international development rest on the assumption that community-based participation is an essential component of efforts to facilitate change across the global South. Such participation is thought not only to ensure efficiency and sustainability, but also to accelerate broader structural transformation by empowering individuals to exercise agency in relation to development. This article seeks to contribute to critical participation studies by analysing the broader processes and structures that shape participatory opportunities in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The author argues that by promoting community-based organizations (CBOs), national and transnational development actors have produced and legitimated a system of popular participation that, in contrast to their claims, disempowers local citizens. Paradoxically, these CBOs have further contributed to the exclusion of the majority of community actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of scientific forestry and the labor question in early colonial Tanzania. Germans came to Tanzania with a vision of scientific forestry derived from European and Asian templates of forest management that was premised on the creation of forest reserves emptied of human settlement. The landscape and human environment was not amenable to established practices of rotational forestry. German foresters were forced to compromise their forestry blueprint because of a general labor dearth and resistance from Tanzanian peasants and labor migrants. The backdrop of the Maji Maji rebellion of 1905 led German authorities to back away from the use of force to muster labor for forest work, and land abundance in most of the colony stymied the introduction of taungya methods of forest squatting as practised in Asia. In the early stages, priority was given to managing mangrove forests for revenue generation which further undermined established precepts of scientific forestry. The persistence of demand from an African and Asian consumer for mangrove poles and fuel wood subverted a vision of rotational forestry based on timber milling. Furthermore, problems of labor procurement and retention undermined efforts to demarcate and conserve inland dry canopy forests, and obviated the expansion of managed forestry into woodland savannahs.

Describes changing post-colonial land management in the North Pare Mountains of Tanzania by drawing on archival sources and oral histories. Independent state's transformation of colonial institutions and its failure to maintain colonial common property regimes for water source, irrigation and forest management; Farmers' response by enroaching upon and dividing the commons; Indirect effect of Tanzania's socialist policies on environmental conditions in North Pare after 1967; Ambiguity and negotiability of resource entitlements; Material, social and cultural legacies of the processes.

Examines the process through which the Battle of Mgodamtitu in southern Tanzania and migration to the valley was reconstructed over time. Interaction between chiefly elites and their German allies in the late pre-colonial period; Accounts of the Bena migration; Imposition of Bena political authority in the Kilombero from the late 19th century.

Asserts the modern awareness that the museum is more than an exhibition center and that science is a personal process by examining the tale of King Mkwawa's skull during the German conquest of that part of East Africa which was later renamed as Tanzania. King Mkwawa and the Hehe resistance; German destruction of Kalenga; King Mkwawa's skull; Return of the skull.

Reports that in the Dodoma Region of central Tanzania the people called Wagogo name a famine that struck between 1917 and 1920 the Mtunya, or the Scramble. Occurrence of the famine after both German and British military requisitions had drained the arid region of men, cattle and food; Ways in which this famine made the Gogo dependent on the colonial economy; Loss of autonomy for the Gogo.

Focuses the political context of the novel "Dying in the Sun," by Peter Palangyo. Importance of making a clear distinction between the two phases of postindependent governmental policy in Tanzania in understanding the novel; Persistency of criticisms on the town life; Contention of the author that the material difference between both groups of the populations the only thing the citizens criticize; Current political situation of the country.

The article critiques the domination of African labor migration historiography by South African models through a discussion of labor migration patterns and work culture in German colonial Tanzania. The author argues that the focus on migration from the kraal, or southern African agricultural settlements, to European plantations within southern African historiography does not provide an adequate way to understand colonial Tanzanian labor migration. More specifically, the author notes differences between Tanzanian and southern African migration in the areas of capital penetration, peasant involvement in local economies, women's labor migration, and white settlers' ability to implement colonial agricultural policy.