Journal of Eastern African Studies

ISSN: 1753-1055 (Print) 1753-1063 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjea20

Revisiting Ujamaa: Political Legitimacy and the

Construction of Community in Post-Colonial
Tanzania

Dr Emma Hunter

To cite this article: Dr Emma Hunter (2008) Revisiting Ujamaa: Political Legitimacy and the
Construction of Community in Post-Colonial Tanzania, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2:3,
471-485, DOI: 10.1080/17531050802401858

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17531050802401858

Published online: 10 Oct 2008.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 1131

View related articles

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjea20
Journal of Eastern African Studies
Vol. 2, No. 3, 471
485, November 2008

Revisiting Ujamaa: Political Legitimacy

and the Construction of Community in
Post-Colonial Tanzania
EMMA HUNTER
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

ABSTRACT Tanzania’s post-colonial social and economic policies, often referred to with the shorthand
term of ujamaa and variously translated as ‘familyhood’ or ‘African socialism’, have attracted the
attention of scholars since their inception. While the first analysts were interested in these policies
primarily as strategies of development, historians have recently begun to focus on the importance of
ujamaa and related political metaphors, particularly those of ujamaa na kujitegemea (ujamaa and self-
reliance), wakupe (ticks) and mirija (straws) as a set of discursive strategies aimed at constructing state
legitimacy in a post-colonial context. This article builds on these developments, but argues that
focussing on discourse produced at the centre has its limitations. It is suggested here that attention to the
use of ujamaa vocabulary on the periphery and by non-official actors in the months after the Arusha
Declaration demonstrates that it could be employed to argue about social and economic morality in a
way which necessarily engaged with a broader national discourse. It is also further argue, however, that
there were limits to the power of nationalist discourses to construct political legitimacy rhetorically, and
that discourse must be examined in interaction with the material challenges facing the post-colonial
state. Methodologically, this approach has the potential to offer a richer view of political life in the
post-colony.

On 2 September 1967, a letter bearing the title ‘Don’t be a tick, rely on yourself ’ and
written by Damas Anthony and Joseph Machami Mambo, was published in the
newspaper Kusare, the weekly newsheet of the Kilimanjaro District Council.1 Six months
after the Arusha Declaration
which had stated that henceforth the virtuous Tanzanian
citizen would build ujamaa and reject the parasitic behaviour of the wakupe (tick) living
from the labour of others
such titles were commonplace in the letters pages of national
and local newspapers. The Declaration had introduced a new set of political metaphors
into the public arena.2
Yet these correspondents were not adding voices of support to the Arusha Declaration,
as many others had done throughout that year. They were critical both of the terms and
of the uses to which they had been put. They felt that words like kupe and kujitegemea
(self-reliance) had been turned into insults. Though they had argued ‘we Wachagga of
Kilimanjaro have always loved one another, for we eat together and drink together as
family or as friends, and in this way in general we rely on ourselves’, many were beginning
to say ‘don’t be a tick, rely on yourself ’. The old man who was a few cents short would ask

Correspondence Address: Dr Emma Hunter, College Lecturer in History, Gonville and Caius College, Trinity
Street, Cambridge CB2 1TA, UK. Email: elh35@cam.ac.uk

ISSN 1753-1055 Print/1753-1063 Online/08/030471
15 # 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17531050802401858
472 E. Hunter

for money and be told ‘rely on yourself old man, don’t be a tick’. The worker who was
short of money would be similarly condemned.3 Their letter ended with an appeal to
fellow readers to think carefully about these words in order that they did not end up in a
state of civil war or believing that self-reliance meant destroying the country. In short,
these correspondents considered these words to be divisive, not unifying.

Framing Ujamaa
The social and political history of post-colonial Africa has often been reduced to a history
of oppression and resistance. In this vein, the literature on the politics of rural areas in
post-colonial Tanzania long centred on the Arusha Declaration of February 1967 and the
possibilities and failings of ujamaa, translated variously as familyhood, community and
socialism, and more generally as ‘development’, as idea and practice.4 Much of this
literature was framed around a separation of rural and urban areas, in which the rural
areas might have been celebrated in Tanzania African National Union (TANU)
nationalist ideology but in reality were populated by varying degrees of resisting,
obdurate or ‘uncaptured’ peasants, waiting to be acted upon by state and party.5
More recently, as historians have adopted the decade after independence in 1961 as
part of the legitimate realm of historical enquiry, they have focussed on ways in which the
new TANU government and its leader, Julius Nyerere, strove to provide new and
compelling national narratives.6 Within this framework, the Arusha Declaration and the
principle of ujamaa has acquired a particular importance, less as a development strategy
to be judged according to its economic successes (or, more accurately, failures), than as a
key political turning point which introduced a new lexicon of political metaphors.
Thus, as James Brennan has argued, the ujamaa policies which were first aired in 1962
and were given added centrality by the Arusha Declaration of 1967 were intended to serve
as an antidote to the problem of unyonyaji na mirija (sucking with straws), or
exploitation.7 Within the political discourse of urban Tanzania, particularly that of Dar
es Salaam, purge categories were developed over the course of the 1960s as some groups,
notably South Asians, were rejected from the ‘ujamaa family’. Yet the government was
never entirely able to control popular nationalist discourse and an ‘unofficial’ vocabulary
was developed from below. Alongside the virtuous Tanzanian farmer who was the focus
of nationalist discourse, this alternative narrative introduced the figures of naizi and
kabwela, the former permitting a moral critique of those Africans reaping the fruits of
independence, and the latter serving as a basis from which poor Africans could claim the
right to live in town.8
The discussion here examines a similar set of political metaphors but seeks to move
this method of analysis beyond the city and into the countryside, through looking at these
metaphors within a very different context, that of a local newspaper from a geographically
peripheral region of Tanzania, Kilimanjaro. Taking the Arusha Declaration as a key
moment in Tanzania’s political history which sought to redefine and re-establish the basis
of legitimacy of the post-colonial state, it looks in detail at the letters published in Kusare
over the six-month period following the Declaration.
These sources, analysed with an attentive eye to their problems and limitations, serve to
complicate the picture given by a focus on nationalist literature and newspapers produced
in Dar es Salaam. The argument made in this article is that the first political scientists
analysing Nyerere’s thought in the early 1960s were right to argue that it was fluid enough
 Revisiting Ujamaa 473

to carry a range of meanings organised around the broad themes of social and economic
justice.9 This fluidity had two implications: first, that political metaphors introduced by
TANU with the intention of framing political legitimacy could be employed to discuss a
range of questions, not all of which engaged directly with the state but which, by virtue of
the language within which they were discussed, necessarily located local social and
political thinking in a relationship with a broader national community; and second, that
these political metaphors could also be employed as a weapon with which to hold the
state to account. Given that discourse always works in dialogue with material factors,
discourse alone was not sufficient to establish political legitimacy. When the government’s
rhetoric of reclaiming control of a new national community from nefarious foreign
influences was challenged by factors it could not resolve, such as finite land resources or a
fluctuating global coffee price, their rhetoric had the potential to be turned against them.
This serves as a reminder to historians that we not only need to take discourse seriously,
but that we need both to look beyond discourse produced in Dar es Salaam and to set it
in its economic context.10

Kusare
In 1967, the Kilimanjaro Region housed two principal ethnic groups, the Chagga and
the Pare. It included a fairly cosmopolitan urban component in the form of Moshi
town, which suffered from many of the social problems plaguing other urban settings,
particularly those caused by young men and women without paid employment.11 It
also included the rural areas in the shape of the mountain slopes of Kilimanjaro,
which had seen a substantial increase in cash income due to the successful planting of
coffee over the preceding forty-five years. Over that period, the number of coffee
planters had increased from 3,300 in 1923 to 65,000.12 Wealth and access to education
had seen a particular local identity develop which stressed the area’s progress in
relation to the rest of the country.
Yet this relative wealth was set against a backdrop of increasingly bitter competition for
land. High rates of primary school enrolment meant large numbers of young people,
male and female, were leaving school with no access to further education, employment or
sufficient land to benefit from coffee in the way in which their elders had done. Beyond
these structural factors, the independent government seemed unsympathetic to the
particular needs of the region. Rumours spread that the intention of Dar es Salaam was to
hold areas like Kilimanjaro back, to allow others to catch up. These were denied by
government leaders and thus when Oscar Kambona visited the region in April 1967 he
spoke out against the idea that Kilimanjaro had moved far ahead of the rest of the
country and ‘that development was being halted in order to wait for other parts of
Tanzania’. This he said was ‘an empty rumour without foundation’. Indeed it would be
impossible for any leader to think in this way because ‘the people who live in Kilimanjaro
are Tanzanians’. Turning to the particular grievance that Kilimanjaro’s traditionally high
spending on education should be cut back, he refuted the suggestion that the central
government wanted the local council to stop spending money on education. The council
should continue to educate children but ‘should be careful not to use all its income on
education alone’.13 If 75 per cent of the budget was being spent on education, little was
left for other areas of expenditure of more direct use for increased agricultural
production, such as improving access to water to reduce farmers’ dependency on rain.
474 E. Hunter

Rumours that Kilimanjaro was ill-served by the TANU government may have been
without foundation, but they were powerful, and complicated many people’s enthusiasm
for seeing themselves as members of a national community with a place within the
national narratives being produced at the centre. This is not to suggest a region seeking to
separate itself from a broader national discussion however. To see why, we will now turn
to the newspaper which will be the focus of discussion.
The weekly Swahili-language newspaper of the Kilimanjaro District Council from
which the letters discussed below are taken began life as Komkya in 1953, changing its
name to Kusare in 1961. It had a circulation of around 2,000 copies, a figure which, to
more closely reflect its true audience, should be considerably enlarged to include those
who read other people’s copies or had parts of the newspaper read to them. Although the
original intention had been that it should be independently funded and run, it remained
throughout its life under the fairly tight control of the local government authorities,
something which shaped greatly its form and subjects covered.14 Letters were often
followed by a note from the editor, reiterating the ‘party line’ on the matter under
discussion. Though newspaper reading in many rural areas was not as widespread as in
Dar es Salaam, Kusare seems to have been widely distributed around the mountain. A
1967 survey found that in the Kilimanjaro region, which received newspapers from the
capital daily by air, 37 per cent of respondents claimed that they had last read a newspaper
‘today or yesterday’ and 55.6 per cent within the last week, in contrast to 59.9 per cent
citing ‘today or yesterday’ in Dar es Salaam.15 Beyond its place within the Kilimanjaro
public sphere, Kusare was, judging from the addresses of correspondents, also read by
people who hailed from the area but who lived and worked elsewhere, particularly in
Arusha and Dar es Salaam.
Beyond the question of how important newspapers were in the political life of the
region, a further important limitation is our restricted knowledge of the identities of
those whose letters appear in the newspaper. As in all places and at all times, the self-
selecting group who for their own reasons decide to write to newspapers and for other,
perhaps unrelated reasons, have their letters published, cannot be taken as representative
of the population as a whole. Basing his observations on his own experience as a
journalist, Robert Darnton pointed out some years ago that the content and form
reproduced within newspapers is a product of the conventions of the genre.16 The same is
undoubtedly true of letters pages.
More broadly, individual newspapers develop particular tones, reflected in their letters
pages as elsewhere in the text. Kusare bears more resemblance to a tabloid than to a
broadsheet or party paper, and thus the letters printed suggest a very different world to
that of broadsheets like The Standard or the party papers like Uhuru or The Nationalist.
This is a world of fears and tensions of all sorts, where racial, gender and class identities
are unstable and uncertain, where the answer to prostitution is the death penalty and the
breakdown of marriage is deemed to be at the root of society’s ills.
Local newspapers are therefore no more likely to help us reach a ‘true’ account of the
complexities and contradictions of social and political thinking in post-colonial Tanzania
than are government records or oral history, nor should we expect them to. Yet what this
newspaper and particularly its letters page can do is offer a useful complement to other
sources, insofar as they demonstrate the potential for contesting the meaning of words.
Reproduction of language promoted by elites and the apparent absence of directly
oppositional language can, on one level, suggest that the state has won the contest for
 Revisiting Ujamaa 475

discursive space. Conversely however, looking closely at the ways in which language is
used at a local level can allow us to explore the ways in which this language provides a
means of continuing long-running discussions about a just society, as well as being used
to make claims on the state.

Ujamaa: Genealogy of an Idea

Nyerere’s employment of the term ujamaa and its use as a key political metaphor in
Tanzanian discourse can be framed around two turning points, a 1962 pamphlet and the
Arusha Declaration of February 1967.17 In this way, the history of an idea serves as a
narrative crux around which to structure an account of his own intellectual and political
development in the years following independence. In this reading, Nyerere became aware
of high expectations of what the approaching independence would mean, whether
economic expectations that taxes would cease to be levied or that a new abundance of
clerical jobs would see education finally rewarded as it should be: in short that the fruits
of independence would soon be available for all to share.18 He worked hard to reframe
such expectations in terms which emphasized that such changes would not appear
overnight, and rather than stress uhuru alone, Nyerere, TANU and local officials began to
emphasize uhuru na jasho, freedom and work.19 After independence in December 1961
and aware of the loss of momentum experienced by all nationalist movements once their
goal was achieved, Nyerere withdrew from public office to return to the grassroots and
create ‘a strong political organization active in every village’.20 During this time, he wrote
a pamphlet defining his vision of what a virtuous, national community should look like
under the title ‘Ujamaa’.
Negotiating the tightrope of achieving economic development in a Cold War world
remained a challenge following his return to the centre of government in December 1962
as President however. Seeking both to assert independence internationally and to
maintain dominance over would-be rivals internally, in 1967 Nyerere reasserted his
leadership over his party and country with the Arusha Declaration, putting ujamaa at the
centre of state policy.21 Henceforth, membership of TANU would not be open to all, but
only to those who subscribed to the ideals of the Arusha Declaration in general and
ujamaa in particular.
Tracing the history of the moments at which the term ujamaa acquired importance
and emphasizing that these tended to be moments of political fragility demonstrates that
strict definitions of the term, as for example ‘African socialism’, give little sense of the
term’s importance. Throughout the 1960s, and particularly so in the first months of 1967
which form the focus of this article, ujamaa and related political metaphors emphasized
in the nationalist rhetoric of the Arusha Declaration were important because they offered
a vocabulary for talking about community, one which reached to the heart of the political
priorities on the basis of which Tanzanians sought to hold their newly independent state
to account.
As Frederick Cooper has argued, economic justice was central both to expectations of
independence and to critiques of post-colonial states.22 Both in the 1962 pamphlet and in
the context of the Arusha Declaration of 1967, ujamaa provided a means for Nyerere to
talk about proper economic and social behaviour, both internally and externally. The aim
was both to build a nation which would rely on itself and not be dependent on the
vagaries of international hand-outs, and to ensure that within this nation wealth was
476 E. Hunter

allocated justly. It therefore set out a moral vision within which to debate a just ordering
of society. But we can do more with this set of words than think about Nyerere and
official nationalist discourse. The introduction of new political metaphors provided a
vocabulary with which this discussion could be continued at all levels of society. It is for
this reason that studying local appropriations of these terms as new weapons in old
arguments is so important if we are to reach a richer reading of the post-colonial state.

Political Metaphors in Practice

The ideas and policies of ujamaa, as presented in early 1967, thus sought to redefine the
national project and offer new ways of discussing virtue, injustice and exploitation. At the
local level, as represented in Kusare, these metaphors were employed as a new language
for talking about matters which had long been a focus of discussion.
Analysis of such discussions on the basis of evidence from Dar es Salaam has
emphasized the importance of ujamaa metaphors in framing discussion of race. Attempts
by the state to describe what ujamaa meant inevitably sought to simplify, and race was
but one way in which categories of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’, along with ‘oppressor’ and
‘victim’, could be easily depicted. Thus, the 1967 TANU booklet ‘Lessons on the Arusha
Declaration and TANU’s policy on Ujamaa and Self-Reliance’ used white characters to
represent a variety of exploiters, including a local employer dressed smartly in a white
shirt, pinstripe trousers and shiny shoes giving orders to three workers, and a foreign
capitalist holding a sword behind his back in one hand while offering money with the
other.23 As James Brennan has argued, Asians in Tanzania were frequently a target of
accusations of immoral economic behaviour, and rejected as of the Tanzanian ujamaa
family. Practitioners of bad business practices were likewise criticized in Kusare for
behaving in exploitative ways contrary to the spirit of ujamaa and were at times labelled
by the shorthand ‘Patel’.24
In the case of Kusare however, the word ujamaa and its associated metaphors of
ticks and parasites were not simply a way of performing racial identity or of defining
national identity in racial terms. Within the letters pages of Kusare, ujamaa continued,
as it had since 1962 and before, to serve as a more general marker of positive
behaviour.25 Negative actions deemed to be destructive of community were held to be
contrary to the spirit of ujamaa. But the application of these markers remained in
question. The great variation of contexts in which these terms were used demonstrates
this point very clearly. For example, a correspondent working in Arusha complained
of the difficulties he faced in finding a house to rent because many landlords would
not rent to unmarried men. He asked rhetorically: ‘My friends, is this civilization? Is
this ujamaa?’26 Bus companies which overcharged or which failed to deliver
passengers to their destination were similarly charged with acting in a manner
contrary to the spirit of ujamaa.27 Similarly, police who abused passengers on buses
were asked if this behaviour was congruent with the sentiments of the Arusha
Declaration.28 One correspondent complained about thieves and distillers of illegal
alcohol in Kilema. Which declaration were they fulfilling, the author asked, ‘that of
Arusha or that of the Boers?’29 None of these uses were directly connected with the
state and its development efforts, but they effectively brought the state and the moral
legitimacy of Nyerere and TANU into play to critique practices deemed to be unjust
and to demand improvement.
 Revisiting Ujamaa 477

More specifically, new terms were frequently used to discuss societal conflicts centring
on questions of identity, in two areas in particular. The first was the application of such
political metaphors to women deemed to be dependent on men’s labour, and the second
the use of metaphors to encourage young people to move off the mountain and seek land
elsewhere. Looking at these two case studies in particular demonstrates that the
appropriate application of the political metaphors of ujamaa were contested.
We might begin with the use to which the new political metaphors associated with
ujamaa were put in negotiating and reframing gender conflicts. Terms describing
parasites and other exploiters were frequently applied to women who were deemed to be
in various sorts of relationships dependent on men. But these terms could be put to very
different ends. Thus, as Andrew Ivaska has shown with reference to Dar es Salaam, the use
by young men of such terms at times served to reflect young men’s sense of insecurity as
women increasingly moved to towns and successfully competed for jobs to which young
men felt a sense of entitlement. 30 Yet elsewhere, these terms appeared in the context of a
conservative discourse which sought to blame women for wider ills within society. The
problem of loose women was argued not to be a problem restricted to the towns, but one
which had spread throughout the region.
Writing under the title ‘Cut the straws and rely on yourselves’ on 1 April 1967, J.
Solomon Minjason argued that while the leadership in Moshi should be praised for its
February 1967 statement that those girls in town without work should be returned home,
this was not simply a problem of the towns but of the villages too. He had, he claimed,
found many cases of women renting rooms from which they would only emerge in the
late afternoon, as men returned from work. They made their living by extracting money
from men in ways which were not wholly understandable. He referred to the ‘devilish
ways’ by which men were drawn into this extraction and came to forget their wives and
children.
This scapegoating of groups of women was indicative of a wider malaise related to both
the past and the future. Having described the difficulties caused, Minjason spelt out the
implications: ‘The development of the country does not progress, tax does not appear as
it should, the country remains poor’
all this because the countryside was overrun by this
category of female exploiters. Similarly, Engeni Sirili Tilya wrote in praise of the
government’s actions in arresting those in town without jobs. He blamed women who
were behaving like ‘ticks’ and roaming the town looking for men for increasing poverty in
Moshi. There was no reason why these women could not go to farm.31
But that this was a sphere of debate rather than the simple application of new purge
terms to well-known purge categories is indicated by the difficulties of defining which
women precisely were deserving of the labels of exploiter or parasite. In August 1967,
N. E. Richard Mafuwe wrote that the problem of prostitution was not limited to the
towns, but existed in the countryside too, particularly among those girls who were
brewing beer. The government should also seek out these women and return them to
their parents or to ten-cell leaders. This way they would be able to help combat hunger
by helping their parents ‘instead of roaming the streets looking for wealthy Africans
[manaizi]’.32 One correspondent agreed wholeheartedly with this renewed attack on
prostitution, though offering added nuance by stating that men bore some
responsibility, and suggesting that, given the growing importance of various degrees
of prostitution as a means of survival, it was unlikely to cease unless punished by
death.33 But another disagreed with Richard Mafuwe’s definition of prostitution.
478 E. Hunter

Prostitution was indeed a scourge on the nation, but brewing beer was not. It was a
respectable undertaking, conceived to earn a living.34
Although most of these correspondents were male, this is not to suggest that all men
were in agreement and working to remove women from particular lines of work.
Frequently, criticism of young women’s behaviour was included alongside criticism of
young men who were behaving in a similarly inappropriate manner by living in town
despite having no work. This was a discourse about respectability, in which all could agree
that virtue lay in behaving in a productive manner, but in which arguments continued
around the definition of who qualified for such respectability.
The second area in which new political metaphors were put to work was in debating
whether the more virtuous path lay in land ownership on Kilimanjaro at all costs, or in
seeking land elsewhere. Just as colonial representations of African life had tended to
celebrate the rural over the urban, Tanzanian nationalism as envisioned in the Arusha
Declaration encouraged Tanzanians to pick up a hoe and build the nation.35 One group
in particular seized on this new government-sanctioned set of metaphors as a means of
promoting the choices they had made and trying to sell this choice to others. This group
were correspondents representing the settlers who had responded to calls that
Kilimanjaro was full and that those without land should move elsewhere. Kusare had
long attracted correspondents, both young and old, who used its letters pages to
encourage others to move. What the ujamaa rhetoric did was to provide a newly
compelling language with which to do this. In this vein, P. L. M. Mirakuo Mmasi labelled
as ‘ticks’ and ‘exploiters’ those who refused to move. He attacked ‘these sorts of people
and those who are called kupe who do not want policies of Ujamaa and self-reliance, and
who continue to exploit elders of 45
70 years old’.36 But while they may have had the
power of state-sanctioned language behind them, many remained unconvinced, as is
evident both from their letters and from others.
Thus another letter from P. L. M. Mirakuo Mmasi engaged with wider debates about
what it meant to leave the mountain, and whether it was possible to live a virtuous life
away from the mountain. The way that his letter was phrased is suggestive of the debates
going on away from the newspaper. He argues that moving away is not equivalent to
being like a manamba, referring to the tradition of labour migrancy to the plantations.
Crucially, he argued, it would not mean that you could not leave land to your children to
inherit. There was, he said, no point in staying on the mountain with a tiny amount of
land, insufficient to pay taxes, when there was an abundance of land elsewhere in
Tanzania. Those who did so were not the virtuous citizens they felt themselves to be, but
‘ticks who do not rely on themselves’.
In a similar vein, a correspondent who identified himself as living in Musoma, but who
claimed a right to participate in debates going on in Kilimanjaro by referring to ‘we
natives of Moshi District’, adding the word ‘Mzalendo’ or ‘patriot’ after his name, sought
to reframe notions of what ‘self-reliance’ meant. Although many young people were
indeed living in rural areas, staying there to marry and not going to town in search of
work, he denied that these young people were practicing self-reliance. They were
dependent on the coffee farms of their parents which were themselves very small.
Moreover there was little for them to do on these farms, only engaging in ‘hard work’
(kazi ya jasho) for the short time of the coffee harvest.37 Again, this letter is indicative of
deeper discussions of what it would mean to leave the mountain and seek land elsewhere.
For Lyamuya, this invoked the image of Moshi’s people as being hard working and
 Revisiting Ujamaa 479

industrious, as well as being in keeping with their reputation for openness to new ideas,
and so did not simply promote an adherence to ‘the ways of the ancestors’. The longer-
term history of political discussion in this local newspaper, as elsewhere, thus suggests
that Lyamuya was responding to a counter argument that true virtue, and achievement of
ideals of masculinity, can only be achieved through remaining on the mountain and
eventually achieving ownership of a kihamba (plural vihamba) or homestead plot.
The political metaphors associated with ujamaa could thus be used as a means of
debating moral issues in a way which would transcend narratives of domination and
resistance. Some used these metaphors to support Nyerere and TANU’s efforts to reframe
national narratives, others simply did not engage with them. The crucial point to make is
that these political metaphors served to open up a space for discussion about what a
moral society should look like. It also allows us to see some of the ways in which local
people could insert themselves within broader national narratives, as they clearly did. As
Gregory Maddox has written with reference to a different sort of post-colonial text,
Ernest Kongola’s historical work was ‘distinctly postcolonial’, arising out of ‘the
nationalist movement of the 1950s and its Tanzanian elaboration in Ujamaa’ and serving
to ‘‘imagine’’ the Wagogo and their history as part of Tanzania’.38 Similarly, by employing
the words promoted as part of government attempts to legitimize their role beneath the
banner of a redefined national narrative, individuals could both work within and seek to
redefine the nature of that national narrative. In short, this was a space for argument
which should be considered alongside other uses of these political metaphors. Yet there
were limits to the extent to which argument could take place without engaging very
directly with the state’s ability to back up narratives and discourses with the material
results it promised, and it is to these limits that we now turn.

On the Limits of Narrative

As suggested above, the Arusha Declaration should be seen as an intervention to re-
establish the political legitimacy of the post-colonial state on new, firmer, bases. The
discourse of ujamaa na kujitegemea, or ujamaa and self-reliance, provided a new narrative
which sought to demonstrate to Tanzanians that they could help Tanzania take control of
its destiny and achieve the economic justice anticipated since the pre-independence
period. On a national level, the path to virtue and international respect would not lie in
attracting help from abroad, but in working hard to achieve slow and steady growth from
within. On an individual level, leaving school and not going on to further education or
salaried employment was not failure; virtue lay rather in the commitment to national
development involved in developing the nation’s agricultural wealth. In this way, a new
definition of virtue was proposed which drew on many of the themes which Nyerere had
written and spoken about since independence and before, but which were now presented
as an all-encompassing package of solutions, intended to unite a sceptical nation behind
his leadership and squeeze out competitors among his colleagues.
Seeking this redefinition was particularly important in Kilimanjaro where, as we saw
briefly earlier, shortage of land and limits on the ability to provide the levels of education
demanded seemed to be threatening core aspects of local identity and ideals of virtue and
respectability. Locally, the official TANU line from independence up to the Arusha
Declaration was that most young people would not leave school and walk into salaried
jobs; their future would lie in farming. But those who did not have access to land on the
480 E. Hunter

mountain were to seek land elsewhere and should not stay on the mountain without land
to farm
nor should they flock to the towns. Such injunctions had been made, often in
very strong language, throughout the 1960s. In March 1962, for example, the new
Regional Commissioner had said that he would be visiting the mountain in the days
ahead and that if he found any person who had neither work nor land he would want to
know why he was not farming in the lower areas. This came shortly after he informed the
public meeting that if people continued to refuse to pay tax the police would be used to
force them to do so. The strong arm of the state was, rhetorically at least, very much in
evidence soon after independence.
The Arusha Declaration offered a package which explained the problems facing
Tanzania and offered new solutions which relied on picking up a hoe and farming as a
means of building an ujamaa society. Virtuous citizenship was redefined as rooted in
obeying these strictures and engaging in farm work. Those who failed to engage in this
national project were ticks living off the sweat of others. On one level, this new narrative
seemed dramatically compelling. In early 1967 and continuing over the next few months,
many Tanzanians, particularly young people were driven to make elaborate gestures in
support of the Arusha Declaration. The Kilimanjaro Regional Office kept a file called
‘Demonstrations of Confidence’ to record the various walks undertaken, overtime
worked and plans for monuments drawn up under the inspiration of the Declaration.39 It
seemed to have reinvigorated many who had begun to feel that the post-colonial state
could not provide for them. But behind the enthusiasm and pledges to join TANU in
building an ujamaa society frequently lay an expectation that the new vocabulary could
be used to make claims on the state and demand the economic justice that had seemed
lacking. Young people wrote to Kusare of their enthusiasm for the idea of self-reliance and
their commitment to this principle. As James Mungai wrote from Sanya Juu: ‘We
understand that we should rely on ourselves (we should not be ticks). But if you have no
work how can you rely on yourself?’40 The editor responded by reiterating that only 4 per
cent of Tanzanians worked for wages; the rest depended on farming. Land was Tanzania’s
greatest asset, and Mungai should recognize that.41
Agreeing that the new policies were excellent, and that the party and state should help
Tanzanians to fulfil them by providing the necessary land, educational facilities or jobs
was one way in which ujamaa vocabulary was used. Elsewhere, however, close reading of
the letters sent to Kusare suggests unease with the new narrative’s ability to address
underlying economic and social contradictions. These letters did not adopt the language
as a means of demanding that the state provide jobs or land, but rather hinted that
solutions were inevitably more complex.
Thus Oleti L. Massawe explained that when young people reached a certain age they
were told by their fathers that the time had come to ‘rely on themselves’. They wanted to
do this, and they were sure that there were vacancies in companies caused by ill health or
retirement, but no jobs were ever available. They were encouraged to farm, but matters
were not as simple as TANU seemed to think, for people were either poor or rich. Those
who were poor did not have sufficient land, and how then could they rely on
themselves?42 In this case, the editor’s response was familiar and brief: ‘Tanzania is not
just Kilimanjaro . . . Tanzania is large and has many fertile areas, so move.’43
Another letter also focussed on land, and particularly the issue of land sales. In April
1967, Richard Kisanga wrote under the heading ‘The sale of vihamba has increased’. He
began by describing the shame invoked by the fact that each week an entire page of Kusare
 Revisiting Ujamaa 481

was filled with announcements of vihamba sales, and that the courts were filled with such
cases. What, he asked, did this mean for a country like Tanzania which sought to ‘rely on
itself ’? In moving on to the causes of the problem, he first described the problem of
drunkenness, as many correspondents did. But there was more to it than that. ‘Not many
years ago’, he wrote, ‘coffee was selling for 2 Shs. a pound’. What was the price now?
Moreover, at that time school fees were cheap. Now, schooling was expensive and coffee
was cheap; this fundamental economic contradiction should be recognized by fellow
citizens and political leaders. In a powerful indictment Kisanga wrote:

Parents strive to educate their children, even selling cattle and land to do so, then
those youths reach Standard VII and return home, and Government wants them to
return home, but their parents no longer have a home, they have already sold their
land and are now just renting. Why then should children not go to town? Where
will they live? Parents rent, why should I not rent in town?

His letter ended not with advice to the government as to what should instead be done,
but rather with a criticism of parents who sold their vihamba. But this sense that
government was failing to offer convincing solutions to underlying economic problems
appears elsewhere too. Frequently, this focussed on instability of the coffee price and the
fact that it seemed to be losing its value. One correspondent claimed he was witnessing
the largest fall in price since he began planting coffee ten years previously. What were the
alternatives, since sisal would not grow in such chilly and wet conditions? Again, the
falling coffee price was linked to a broader unravelling of development and progress, as
children were sent home from school for lack of school fees.44 A similar note was struck
by Joseph Machami Mambo who claimed that coffee was now selling for only 1 TSh. per
pound. By the time that tax, school fees, TANU dues and inputs provided by the KNCU
were paid, there was nothing left. He called on political leaders to do something to raise
the coffee price.45 But the editor’s response was discouraging. There was, simply, too
much coffee on the world market, and thus the price had fallen. The only solution was to
plant other crops which were still in demand.
To some extent, this was certainly true. The price of coffee had peaked in 1954, but
output continued to increase, globally and within Tanzania. In Tanzania itself, output
doubled in the period 1961
66, reaching 48,600 tons. Its value was limited by the
country’s membership of the International Coffee Agreement, which only permitted
around half of Tanzania’s production to be sold at the agreed price, with the rest at much
lower prices. Only in December 1967 was Tanzania’s quota substantially increased
from
440,000 to 700,000 bags.46 On another level, the government was disingenuous and
through reducing the levy exported clearly did have some power to alter the coffee price.
But with few fiscal options, coffee was an important export earner for the Tanzanian
government.
Equally, in the case of education, the expansion of secondary schooling expected
and hoped for by many Tanzanians and promised by TANU in its rhetoric of the late
1950s could not be delivered; indeed problems had exacerbated since independence. In
1964, 14,000 primary school leavers failed to find a place at secondary school, of
which total 11,000 were in the Kilimanjaro region. As David Morrison described the
situation:
482 E. Hunter

Field officers in Moshi had to face an especially exhausting and frightening

experience. Day after day during December, January, and February, queues formed
outside the Regional Education Office, sometimes a hundred or more people
long.47

To the extent that the TANU government was able to offer solutions, these focussed on
telling people to move away from Kilimanjaro and, more surprisingly, on encouraging the
development of small factories. Regional Commissioner B. J. Maggid responded to the
claim that government was failing to help Standard VII leavers by saying that he was well
aware of this problem, and something had to be done. The answer lay, he suggested, in
the establishment of small artisanal factories. This same emphasis on a two-pronged
attack, land elsewhere for would-be farmers and small industrial undertakings for others
(especially those who already had a small amount of land), reappeared in the regional
branch of TANU’s response to the challenge of building ujamaa, in a document laying
out their strategy published in 1974.48 This unsatisfactory set of solutions emphasized
government’s relative powerlessness in the face of international markets and limited fiscal
resources: in short, government could not please all of its citizens all of the time. If the
Arusha Declaration was in part an appeal to citizens to unite behind a compelling
national narrative, showing that Tanzania could, after all, have some control over its own
destiny, its success was more limited than appearances might suggest.

Conclusions
In recent years our understanding of the colonial state much improved, largely due to the
attention paid to social history. Reading sources colonial state sources against the grain
has provided a better means of understanding the dynamics of power within society, and
using these sources in combination with oral history has permitted a more complex view
of the colonial state than was offered by an earlier nationalist historiography perceiving
the colonial period in one-dimensional terms.49 There is a danger that, in turning to the
post-colonial period, an excessive focus on nationalist discourse could produce similarly
one-dimensional results.
This article has suggested that one way of moving forward in thinking about the post-
colonial state is to take seriously political discourse produced in arenas other than the
centre of state power and look closely at the ways in which political metaphors produced
by the ruling party and intended to mobilize the nation behind one particular national
vision were employed in practice. In so doing, it has demonstrated that new metaphors in
part served as a new means of debating the questions of virtue and respectability
discussed in most societies at most times. But in using metaphors shared with ruling
elites and with other members of one national community, they were at one level taking
part in a national conversation, with important consequences for precisely the sort of
‘nation-building’ in which TANU felt itself to be engaged. Yet this article has also
suggested the limits on the power of such metaphors to achieve these goals. In common
with many of its neighbours, the Tanzanian state faced the challenges of state-building in
a difficult material context. Post-colonial states in Africa had promised and were expected
to deliver much in the way of education and material wealth. Yet they were constrained in
their ability to deliver on such promises by economic weakness, the challenges of taxing
effectively and a difficult international environment, both politically and economically.
 Revisiting Ujamaa 483

Moreover, while they could seek to assert power over the vagaries of international politics
and economics, and thus try to avoid some of the dangers of reliance on foreign aid, they
could not eliminate their structural dependence on cash crops. Party and state thus
shaped the discursive space, but they could not entirely dominate nor, insofar as they did
so, could they entirely solve the problem of political legitimacy.

Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the participants of the African Studies Seminar in Oxford, John Lonsdale and Charles West
for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes
1
Letter from Damas Anthony and Joseph Machami Mambo, ‘Usiwe Kupe Jitegemee’, Kusare, 2 September
1967, 3.
2
The term ujamaa had been present in popular nationalist discourse since 1962, but as Burke notes, it was little
used by politicians in speeches and appeared rarely in Kusare before 1967. Burke, ‘Tanganyika: The Search for
Ujamaa’, 196.
3
‘Kusema kweli tangu neno hilo lianze mpaka sasa latumika kama dharau au tukano. Hivi sasa watu
wamelizoea sana na wengi hatujui maana yake. Zaidi ya hayo kuhusu neno hilo kwa upande wetu sisi
Wachagga wa Kilimanjaro tangu zamani twapendana kwani tunakula pamoja na tunakunywa pamoja kijamaa
au kirafiki, hivyo kwa ujumla tunajitegemea.’ The letter ends with the injunction: ‘Tuchungue sana wenzangu
juu ya hilo neno tusiwe hatarini ya vita vya ndani ndani wala si kujitegemea nikuangusha nchi yetu’. Letter
from Damas Anthony and Joseph Machami Mambo, ‘Usiwe Kupe Jitegemee’, Kusare, 2 September 1967, 3.
4
On development see in particular Jennings, ‘We Must Run While Others Walk’; and Schneider, ‘Freedom and
Unfreedom in Rural Development’. For a useful summary, see Burton and Jennings, ‘The Emperor’s New
Clothes?’
5
This point is made by Maddox, Practicing History in Central Tanzania, 14. For a summary of the Ujamaa
literature, see Sheridan, ‘Environmental Consequences of Independence and Socialism’, 92. The phrase
‘uncaptured peasantry’ is that of Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania.
6
Maddox and Giblin, In Search of a Nation; Giblin, A History of the Excluded.
7
Brennan, ‘Blood Enemies’, 398.
8
Ibid, 408
13.
9
Burke, ‘Tanganyika: The Search for Ujamaa’, 194.
10
For recent examples of works which have similarly sought to consider the locality in relation to the central
state, see Maddox, Practicing History in Central Tanzania; and Giblin, A History of the Excluded.
11
See Burton, African Underclass.
12
Howard and Millard, Hunger and Shame, 217.
13
‘Waziri huyo alilaumu fikara mbaya kuwa ati Kilimanjaro imeendelea sana na kwamba maendeleo
yanasimamishwa ili kungojea sehemu nyingine za Tanzania. Huo ni uvumi mtupu usio na msingi. Mawazo
kama hayo hayawezi kufikiriwa na kiongozi yeyote Tanzania kwani watu walioko Kilimanjaro ni Watanzania.
Halmashauri ni budi iendelee kuwaelimisha watoto ila tu iwe macho kuona kuwa haitumii mapato yake yote
kwa elimu pekee. Ni lazima pia halmashauri iwapatie wananchi maji ili waweze kuendeleza kilimo wakati
wowote ule bila ya kutegemea mvua.’ ‘Halmashauri ya Wilaya Yakutana’, Kusare, 22 April 1967, 1.
14
‘Kumbukumbu za Mkutano wa Gazeti la Wachagga Uliofanyika Chagga Council Tarekh 3.12.52’, Tanzania
National Archives (TNA) 5/10/21, f. 29.
15
Sturmer, The Media History of Tanzania, 117.
16
Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette, 60
93.
17
In a 1969 pamphlet Nyerere put these two texts together, framing these interventions in terms of his
intellectual progression. Blommaert, State Ideology and Language in Tanzania, 42.
18
On the ‘expectations of independence’ in a neighbouring context, see Macola, ‘It means as if we are excluded
from the good freedom’.
19
Sadleir, Tanzania: Journey to Republic, 227
30, on a five-week ‘Uhuru na Jasho’ campaign undertaken in
September 1959 in Arusha and Moshi in his role as a public relations officer.
484 E. Hunter
20
Nyerere, ‘Resignation as Prime Minister’, 158.
21
Pratt, The Critical Phase in Tanzania.
22
Cooper, Africa since 1940, 85
90.
23
TANU, Mafunzo ya Azimio la Arusha na Siasa ya TANU juu ya Ujamaa na Kujitegemea, 6, 14.
24
Brennan, ‘Blood Enemies’, 404.
25
For examples of earlier uses of the term see Hunter, ‘Languages of Politics’, 149
50, 228
34.
26
‘Jamani huu ni ungwana? Je huu ni ujamaa?’ Letter from H. H. E. Richard, ‘Ubaguzi wa Nyumba za Kupanga
Kaloleni Arusha’, Kusare, 8 April 1967, 3. Young single men faced similar difficulties in Dar es Salaam, about
which see Brennan, ‘Blood Enemies’, 412.
27
See for example Letter from Felix K. Lyaro, ‘Wenye Magari ya Abiria Moshi to Arusha Wapinga Siasa ya
Ujamaa’, Kusare, 8 April 1967, 3; Letter from G. K. Robert Makange, ‘Abiria Wanateseika ‘‘Uru’’’, Kusare, 29
April 1967, 3.
28
Letter from M. M. S. Tesha and D. M. Adolf, ‘Polisi Kuwatesa Abiria’, Kusare, 26 August 1967, 3.
29
‘Hawa wezi wanatekeleza ‘‘Azimio’’ gani? La Arusha ama azimio la Mkaburu?’ Letter from Silvester Robert
Limo, ‘Wezi Wamechacha Mlimani Kilema’, Kusare, 24 June 1967, 3.
30
Ivaska, ‘Anti-Mini Militants Meet Modern Misses’, 589
90.
31
Letter from Engeni Sirili Tilya, ‘Heko Majizi Kukamatwa Mjini’, Kusare, 15 April 1967, 3.
32
Letter from N.E. Richard Mafuwe, ‘Umalaya Wachukiza Raia Wema’, Kusare, 5 August 1967, 3.
33
Letter from Rogers M. Ngaja, ‘Umalaya Wachukiza Raia Wema’, Kusare, 29 August 1967, 3.
34
Letter from Eshikaely N. Mmarison, ‘Umalaya Wachukiza Raia Wema’, Kusare, 2 September 1967, 3.
35
Ivaska, ‘Anti-Mini Militants Meet Modern Misses’, 591
92; Brennan, ‘Blood Enemies’, 391, 400
01.
36
‘Watu wa namna hiyo na wale wanaoitwa kupe ambao hawataki siasa ya Ujamaa na Kujitegemea, na wanazidi
kunyonya wazee wa miaka 45
70, jamani ninaomba tutekelze Azimio la Arusha kwa kujenga nchi yetu
kwa kilimo bora Shambani.’ Letter from Peter L. M. Mirakuo Mmasi, ‘Uvivu Wapigwa Ziii!’, Kusare, 22 April
1967, 3.
37
Letter from Josph N. Lyamuya (Mzalendo), ‘Jinsi ya Kutekeleza Azimio la Arusha na Siasa ya Ujamaa na
Kujitegemea’, Kusare, 13 May 1967, 3.
38
Maddox, Practicing History, 17.
39
TNA 548.C.10/6.
40
‘Tunafahamu ati tujitegemee (tusiwe kupe). Basi kama huna kazi unaweza kujitegemea namna gani?’ Letter
from James Mungai, ‘Darasa la 7 na 8’, Kusare, 1 July 1967, 3.
41
‘Mbona wewe hutaki kutambua kuwa ardhi ni utajiri mkubwa kupita yote?’, Editor, Kusare, 1 July 1967.
42
Letter from Oleti L. Massawe, ‘Darasa la 7 na 8’, Kusare, 15 July 1967, 3.
43
Mhariri, ‘Darasa la 7 na 8’, Kusare, 15 July 1967, 3.
44
Letter from K. Colly Lucas R. Mfoi, ‘Zao Lipi Lafaa Kulimwa Kilimanjaro?’, Kusare, 29 April 1967, 3.
45
Letter from Joseph Machami Mambo, ‘Bei ya Kahawa Imeshuka Chini’, Kusare, 23 September 1967, 3.
46
International Monetary Fund (IMF), Surveys of African Economies, 219
26.
47
Morrison, Education and Politics, 200.
48
TANU, Mwelekeo wa Maendeleo ya Kijamaa Mkoani Kilimanjaro.
49
Burton and Jennings, ‘Emperor’s New Clothes?’, 1.

References
Blommaert, Jan. State Ideology and Language in Tanzania. Cologne: Köppe, 1999.
Brennan, James R. ‘‘Blood Enemies: Exploitation and Urban Citizenship in the Nationalist Political Thought of
Tanzania, 1958
1975.’’ Journal of African History, 47:3 (2006): 389
413.
Burke, Fred. ‘‘Tanganyika: The Search for Ujamaa.’’ In African Socialism, edited by W. H. Friedland and Carl G.
Rosberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press , 1964: 194
219.
Burton, Andrew African Underclass: Urbanisation, Crime and Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam. James Currey:
Oxford, 2005.
Burton, Andrew and Jennings Michael The Emperor’s New Clothes? International Journal of African Historical
Studies , 40:1 (2007): 1
25.
Cooper, Frederick Africa since : The Past of the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940, pp. 2002.
Darnton, Robert The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History. London: Faber and Faber, 1990.
Giblin, James A History of the Excluded: Making Family a Refuge from State in Twentieth-Century Tanzania.
Oxford: James Currey, 2005.
 Revisiting Ujamaa 485
Howard, Mary and Millard. Ann Hunger and Shame: Child Malnutrition and Poverty on Mount Kilimanjaro.
London: Routledge, 1997.
Hunter, Emma Languages of Politics in Twentieth-Century Kilimanjaro. Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge,
2008.
Hyden, Goran. Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980
International Monetary Fund (IMF). Surveys of African Economies. Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1968
77.
Ivaska, A ‘‘‘Anti-Mini Militants Meet Modern Misses’: Urban Style, Gender and the Politics of ‘National Culture’
in 1960s Dar es Salaam.’’ Gender and History, 14:3 (2002): 584
607.
Jennings, Michael. ‘‘‘We Must Run While Others Walk’: Popular Participation and Development Crisis in
Tanzania, 1961
9.’’ Journal of Modern African Studies, 41:2 (2003): 163
87.
Macola, Giacomo. ‘‘‘It means as if we are excluded from the good freedom’: Thwarted Expectations of
Independence in the Luapula Province of Zambia, 1964
1967.’’ JAH, 47:1 (2006): 43
56.
Maddox, Gregory. Practicing History in Central Tanzania. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006.
Maddox, G. H., and James L. Gibblin, eds. In Search of a Nation. Histories of Authority & Dissidence in Tanzania.
Oxford: James Currey, 2005.
Morrison, David. Education and Politics in Africa: The Tanzanian Case. London: Heinemann, 1976.
Nyerere, Julius. ‘‘Resignation as Prime Minister.’’ In Freedom and Unity, edited by Julius Nyerere. London: Oxford
University Press, 1967.
Pratt, Cranford. The Critical Phase in Tanzania: 1945
1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Sadleir, R. Tanzania: Journey to Republic. London: Radcliffe Press, 1999.
Schneider, Leander Freedom and Unfreedom in Rural Development: Julius Nyerere, Ujamaa Vijijini, and
Villagization. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 38:2 (2004): 344
92.
Sheridan, Michael . ‘‘The Environmental Consequences of Independence and Socialism in North Pare, Tanzania,
1961
88.’’ JAH, 45:1 (2004): 81
102.
Sturmer, M. The Media History of Tanzania. Mtwara: Ndanda Mission Press, 1998.
TANU . Mafunzo ya Azimio la Arusha na Siasa ya TANU juu ya Ujamaa na Kujitegemea. Dar es Salaam: TANU,
n.d., 1969.
*** . Mwelekeo wa Maendeleo ya Kijamaa Mkoani Kilimanjaro. Moshi, 1974.
Tanzania National Archives (TNA) . ‘‘Demonstrations of Confidence.’’ TNA 548.C.10/6.
*** . ‘‘Kumbukumbu za Mkutano wa Gazeti la Wachagga Uliofanyika Chagga Council Tarekh, 3 March 1952.’’
TNA 5/10/21, f. 29.