Nyerere was a President, Diplomat, Politician and also a Teacher

108 Priya Lal
in urban centers avidly read the Little Red Book, with students at the University of Dar es Salaam gathering outside of the classroom to discuss related texts such as Mao’s “On Contradiction” in weekend study groups.31 The Little Red Book also inspired African imitations. In the autumn of 1967, the State Publishing Corporation released a Swahili pamphlet prepared by the Political Department of the Zanzibar Contin- gent of the Tanzanian People’s Defence Forces, entitled Mateuo ya Rais Karume (Quotations from President Karume). Consisting of fifty pages of quotations from speeches given by Tanzania’s First Vice-President and Zanzibar’s leader Abeid Karume in 1965, the pamphlet measured six inches by four and one-half inches, and was known informally as the “little blue book.”32 Across the continent in Ghana, a pamphlet entitled the Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah, containing eighty-five quotations from Nkrumah’s writings grouped under headings such as “African Revolution” and “African Unity,” was published at roughly the same time. The layout and content of these texts unquestionably invoked Mao’s Quotations.33
On the whole, radio was a more effective medium than text for reach- ing large segments of the Tanzanian population, and the Chinese were active in this sector as well. Broadcasts in Swahili from Beijing began in September 1961. By 1967, Radio Peking was transmitting twenty-one hours weekly in English to East Africa, with transmissions occurring every day between the hours of six and nine in the evening, and program- ming consisting of news and commentary interspersed with intervals of recorded music. The impact of Radio Peking was circumscribed by the fact that in rural areas radio ownership remained a relative luxury, and qualified by the popularity of other foreign radio stations, including the BBC and Radio Cairo.34 Yet the Chinese also played a role in Tanzania’s domestic radio operations, assisting with the reconfiguration of the colonial-era Tanganyika Broadcasting Corporation as Radio Tanzania, donating radio equipment, and even supplying technical training to radio
31 Karim Hirji, ed., Cheche: Reminiscences of a Radical Magazine (Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, 2010).
32 US National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. State Department records. Box 2513, Central Foreign Policy Files 1967–69, Political and Defense. “‘Blue Book’ of Karume Sayings Issued.” October 12, 1967: American Embassy Dar es Salaam.
33 FCO 31/155. “Socialist Concepts in Zambia, East Africa, and Ghana.” African Section, Joint Research Department, June 21, 1967.
34 George Yu, “Dragon in the Bush: Peking’s Presence in Africa,” Asian Survey 8.12 (1968), pp. 1018–26; James Brennan, “Radio Cairo and the Decolonization of East Africa, 1953–1964,” in Christopher Lee, ed., Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and its Political Afterlives (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010).
 
Sky Eclat said:
China as both a model of the correct path of self-reliance and an illustra- tion of the concrete benefits of pursuing such a developmental path.
Click to expand...
'Section' hii hapa ndio iliyotuletea matatizo makubwa. 'Discipline' ya mchina sisi tungeitoa wapi, lakini angalia sasa wenzetu walikofikia.
Msekwa si huyo hapo! Kamuulize leo habari za 'kujinyima' na kuweka pesa kuikopesha serikali, wapi na wapi kwa hulka zetu hizi.

Wale 'wabenz' na watoto na wajukuu zao hadi leo hii ndio wanaolaani siasa za 'kujitegemea'.
 
Kalamu1 said:
'Section' hii hapa ndio iliyotuletea matatizo makubwa. 'Discipline' ya mchina sisi tungeitoa wapi, lakini angalia sasa wenzetu walikofikia.
Msekwa si huyo hapo! Kamuulize leo habari za 'kujinyima' na kuweka pesa kuikopesha serikali, wapi na wapi kwa hulka zetu hizi.

Wale 'wabenz' na watoto na wajukuu zao hadi leo hii ndio wanaolaani siasa za 'kujitegemea'.
Click to expand...
Hii tabia ya kujinyima ndiyo tabia ya Wachina. Hao ni shida kubeba kiporo cha wali kama kitamsaidis kutokununua chakula. Hapa issue si pesa anaweza kuwa MD
 
109
staff. Additionally, though television access was minimal in Tanzania, the Chinese used film to advertise the depths of the Sino-African relationship and extol the benefits of Maoism. The Chinese embassy in Dar es Salaam applied for permission to build a cinema adjoining their ambas- sador’s house, but this request was refused. Nonetheless, Chinese and Chinese-themed films were screened in Dar es Salaam cinemas alongside Bollywood movies and select Western features; these included a 1965 color documentary of Nyerere’s visit to China (dubbed in Swahili), a Chinese feature film entitled Youth in the Flames of War, and propaganda shorts praising China’s doctors, such as The Reattachment of a Completely Severed Hand.35 Outside of the cinema, theater, dance, and musical events captured the attention of urban elites. In 1967, for instance, Chinese cultural troupes performed The East is Red to audiences com- posed of members of the public and TANU leaders.
The image of Mao himself also became a charged symbol of Tanzania’s radical inclinations. In a bit of political theater in late 1967, officials in neighboring Kenya “called for the immediate closure of the Chinese Embassy in Nairobi,” charging that Chinese officials “had been trying to persuade Kenyans to ‘study the thoughts of Mao Tse-tung’” and “engag[ing] in ‘gross interference in Kenya’s internal affairs’.”36 At the same moment, TANU leaders staged their own counter-theater by speaking out in favor of the distribution of badges emblazoned with Mao’s portrait in Tanzanian secondary schools; Nyerere announced that “the Government will not tolerate attempts by any foreign country to try and influence the policies of the United Republic but it will not draw iron curtains around Tanzania to stop foreign propaganda.”37 The Nationalist issued a response to the Ministry of Education’s reported attempt to prohibit the wearing of foreign badges by Tanzanian schoolchildren, asking, “how does a whole Ministry of the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania panic over badges of Mao Tse Tung when there is not a single Chinese teacher in Tanzania as compared to . . . hundreds of American Peace Corps teachers and others from foreign countries?”38 Letters to the editor, similarly, questioned the assumption that “to refrain from wearing a foreign badge proves loyalty to Tanzania and vice versa,” asking, “what about those thousands of Christians who wear
35 DO 213/100. Extract from “Communist Activities in Africa.” December 1965.
36 “Close Down Chinese Embassy – Mboya,” The Nationalist (September 1, 1967).
37 “Mwalimu Warns Against Foreign Influence . . . but Assures: No Iron Curtains Around
Tanzania,” The Nationalist (August 22, 1967).
38 Editorial: “Foreign Badges,” The Nationalist (September 21, 1967).
 
badges – medals if you like – bearing the heads of Jesus Christ (a foreigner), Virgin Mary (a foreigner) – are they disloyal to Tanzania?”39
That Tanzanian schoolchildren were wearing badges featuring Mao’s image is hardly surprising given the range of Chinese cultural and political resources in circulation in Dar es Salaam in the late 1960s. Moreover, debates over Maoist adornment reflected the emergent politi- cization of dress in Tanzania more generally, as TYL militants embarked upon a number of cultural policing campaigns that became known in some circles as Tanzania’s own “cultural revolution.” TANU launched Operation Vijana (Youth) in late 1968 to eradicate symbols of “cultural enslavement” among Dar es Salaam residents; the operation particularly targeted items of female adornment including miniskirts, wigs, tight pants, and cosmetics, but ostensibly condemned all signs of “imperialist” behavior, comportment, and dress. While the focus of these campaigns in Tanzania, unlike in China, was the revival and restoration of traditional African cultural practices, the Tanzanian “cultural revolution” was also accompanied by initiatives to purge national culture of indigenous elem- ents deemed insufficiently compatible with socialist modernity – such as Operation Dress-Up, which forced Maasai citizens to wear “proper” clothing.40 Officials and press reports referred to the TYL policers as “Green Guards”; just as the Chinese Communist Party struggled to regain control over the students, workers, and activists emboldened and authorized by Mao’s call for Cultural Revolution, the senior TANU leadership began to express anxiety about the increasing numbers of unsanctioned beatings and arrests staged by Youth Leaguers in the name of Operation Vijana.41
Tensions and translations
While ujamaa and Maoism overlapped ideologically, they also generated similar patterns and contradictions as they unfolded in practice. The tension between inciting and managing popular activism in the name of cultural reform and agrarian reorganization was a recurring theme in
39 Mwana-wa-Mkulima, Dar es Salaam, letter to the editor, “Ban on Foreign Badges,” The Nationalist (September 29, 1967).
40 Leander Schneider, “The Maasai’s New Clothes: A Developmentalist Modernity and its Exclusions,” Africa Today 53.1 (2006), pp. 100–31.
41 Andrew Ivaska, Cultured States: Youth, Gender, and Modern Style in 1960s Dar es Salaam (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); James Brennan, “Youth, the TANU Youth League, and Managed Vigilantism in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 1925–1973,” Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute 76.2 (2006), pp. 221–46.
 
both national contexts, and manifested itself especially clearly in Operation Vijana and Operation Vijiji (the latter also entrusted TYL militants with its implementation). In both China and Tanzania, con- cern over cultural policing campaigns in cities bled into broader official anxieties about urban unemployment. TANU officials, drawing in part upon older colonial “repatriation” policies, urged young urban- dwellers without formal employment to “return” to the countryside throughout the 1960s; this strategy was designed not only to emphasize the rural orientation of Tanzanian socialism – to “counteract” the likelihood “that the towns might attract more people from rural areas and thus discourage effort in nation-building”42 – but also offered party leaders an effective means of defusing unrest in cities. In this respect periodic urban removal campaigns in ujamaa-era Tanzania mirrored the “sent-down” (xia fang) rustication movements in Mao’s China. TANU also adopted a national service program designed to introduce young people to military training and require them to spend time farming in ujamaa villages. After growing accusations of elitism among students at the University of Dar es Salaam (paralleling Mao’s con- cerns about the cultivation of “bourgeois” mentalities among Chinese intellectuals) the party made national service compulsory for all sec- ondary school graduates. These policies targeted young women as well as men; however, as in China, national policy toward matters of gender and family remained ambiguous and often paradoxical during the 1960s. The concept of ujamaa itself – like the Maoist vision of socialist egalitarianism – theoretically called for the socialization of household functions; however, both Tanzanian and Chinese policies continued to preserve the centrality of the nuclear family structure and assign women the double burden of fulfilling reproductive (or domestic) and productive duties.43
Some Tanzanians pointed out these contradictions of official policy to criticize Nyerere’s regime, leading to presidential mandates to ban or detain opposition groups or activists such as the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front and Oscar Kambona. Similarly, the Sino- Tanzanian relationship, like the project of Afro-Asian solidarity more broadly, was punctuated by points of friction and acts of dissent. Reports
42 Tanzania National Archives, Prime Minister’s Office, Dodoma. RARD/UV/U24. “TANU National Conference 1969. May 30, 1969.”
43 Priya Lal, “Militants, Mothers, and the National Family: Ujamaa, Gender, and Rural Development in Postcolonial Tanzania,” Journal of African History 51.1 (2010), pp. 1–20.; Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
 
Priya Lal
of labor trouble at the Friendship Mill began as early as 1965, consisting of a range of “complaints about unfairness and discrimination in Mill personnel policies.”44 Other rumors pointed to popular disillusionment concerning the terms and conditions of Chinese aid, ranging from disap- pointment at the quality of donated machinery to frustration with the importation and conduct of Chinese laborers. Some Tanzanians bristled at what they saw as unwelcome Chinese propaganda. “Only recently I listened to the Kiswahili Service of Radio Peking about the work which was being done by the Chinese doctors here in Tanzania,” one Dar es Salaam resident wrote in a letter to the editor of Ngurumo, a popular Swahili newspaper. “Perhaps Radio Peking forgot that in our country we have our own President and our own Party.” The author claimed that Chinese doctors “inject the sick people and present them with the gift of small red books,” although Tanzanians “do not want any propaganda,” noting that “it will be better if they sincerely treat the sick people and not mix their medical profession with Chinese politics.”45 A number of residents of the mainland, like this angry letter-writer, also expressed dismay over Zanzibar’s seemingly immoderate embrace of brash revolu- tionary rhetoric and policy, often manifested in what appeared to many to be an excessive tilt toward China.
This wariness could be compounded by logistical challenges hindering Sino-Tanzanian communication and expressions of solidarity. Despite the work of interpreters and language-exchange programs among Chinese and Tanzanian students, linguistic differences created a social barrier between citizens of the two countries, and could easily lead to instances of confusion or misunderstanding. In May 1967, the American embassy in Dar es Salaam reported a benign case of mistranslation that nonetheless hinted at the potential for larger problems in communica- tion. Describing “a big-character banner draped on the front of the Chinese Communist Embassy,” the memo wryly noted that “since there are no tigers in East Africa, and thus no word for ‘tiger’ in Swahili, the translation appearing below the Chinese ideographs solemnly declares that ‘Imperialism and all enemies of progress are paper leopards’.”46 In this case, the essential meaning of Mao’s maxim had been preserved though its referents had been modified; in other instances, however,
44 DO 213/100. Telegram 1242, August 9, 1965, from Dar es Salaam to Commonwealth Relations Office.
45 Idi Yusufu, Dar es Salaam, letter to the editor, “Wageni Wangu” [Our Guests], Ngurumo (June 10, 1969).
46 NARA: Box 2513, Central Foreign Policy Files 1967–69, Political and Defense. “This Week in Tanzania, May 29–June 4, 1967,” American Embassy Dar es Salaam. A-310.
 
counterparts, falling into a condition of economic decline and deepening indebtedness to foreign donors.
In the 1980s, Tanzania (under the leadership of Nyerere’s succes- sor, Benjamin Mkapa) succumbed to these pressures by submitting to the austerity measures and liberalization regimen prescribed by IMF and World Bank-imposed structural adjustment policies. Meanwhile, the Chinese rejection of substantive socialism during the 1980s and 1990s so thoroughly transformed the country’s political and economic position that by the late 1990s the Chinese “return to Africa”47 had completely reversed the ideological and material terms of the Sino- Tanzanian relationship during the 1960s era of Third World anti- imperialist solidarity. Whereas earlier Chinese aid built factories such as the Friendship Textile Mill to strengthen Tanzanian manufacturing capacities for Tanzanian gain, and railroads such as the TAZARA for the purpose of pan-African integration, Chinese capital now employs casualized Tanzanian labor in enclaves of industrial produc- tion, resource extraction, and infrastructure construction on unfavor- able terms that conform precisely to ujamaa conceptions of capitalist exploitation.
The breadth and depth of the earlier connection between the two countries, however, is evidenced in the durability of popular memories of Mao’s example and ujamaa-era Chinese aid – which hold continued appeal among Tanzanians as varied as former national officials in Dar es Salaam and elderly villagers in the peripheral region of Mtwara. Popular experiences of neoliberalism over the past few decades have produced a growing nostalgia among many Tanzanians about the utopian promise of the ujamaa period; even while sentiments of fear and resentment toward contemporary Chinese managers and workers spread among rural and urban publics, a widespread appreciation of previous Chinese aid and the Maoist developmental model persists. In contemporary Tanzania, thus, resurgent socialist idioms of self-reliance, hard work, and exploitation can have paradoxical connotations and uses – ranging from invoking a sense of continuity and solidarity in Chinese–African relations to critiquing policies of privatization and labor casualization at the hands of foreign capitalists.48
47 Ching Kwan Lee, “Raw Encounters: Chinese Managers, African Workers and the Politics of Casualization in Africa’s Chinese Enclaves,” The China Quarterly 199 (2009), pp. 647–66 at p. 647.
48 Priya Lal, “Self-Reliance and the State: The Multiple Meanings of Development in Early Post-Colonial Tanzania,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 82.2 (2012), pp. 212–34.
 
Chinese capital now employs casualized Tanzanian labor in enclaves of industrial produc- tion, resource extraction, and infrastructure construction on unfavor- able terms that conform precisely to ujamaa conceptions of capitalist exploitation.

Wale mnaolalamikia manyanyaso kwenye viwanda vya Wachina, this is their Motto
 
Sky Eclat said:
Hii tabia ya kujinyima ndiyo tabia ya Wachina. Hao ni shida kubeba kiporo cha wali kama kitamsaidis kutokununua chakula. Hapa issue si pesa anaweza kuwa MD
Click to expand...
Lakini si Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, na hata Malaysia kuna wachina, mbona wao wako/walikuwa tofauti? Na hata hawa wa leo, wamebadilika, ndio maana watakunyang'anya kila kitu ukizubaa tu!

Eeenh, sema kujinyima; wale machinga wa kichina wa Kariakoo wanaochuuza bidhaa mitaani, utamlinganisha kweli na mmchinga wetu wa hapa? Mmachinga wetu akishaziweka mfukoni utadhani ni Rockefeller kashuka toka New York!
 
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