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Life Imitates Art: the Student Expulsion in Dar es Salaam, October 1966, as Dramatic Ritual

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

John Carthew
John Carthew
Affiliation:
Principal Lecturer in Literature, Teesside Polytechnic, Middlesbrough
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Extract

On 22 October 1966, 393 students, all but 70 of them from the University College, demonstrated in Dar es Salaam against the Tanzania Government's proposals for National Service to be compulsory for students completing their education at Form VI level and above.1 Marching through the streets of the capital to show their disapproval, and carrying banners some of which read ‘Colonialism was Better’2 they were diverted to State House, where they had to deliver their ultimatum to the President, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, in person. Flanked by his Ministers, he listened to their demand that unless the terms of the National Service were changed they would not accept the scheme in spirit: ‘Let our bodies go, but our souls will remain outside the scheme’. In his reply, the President made it clear that he had no intention of forcing anyone into National Service against his will. But since these students were unwilling to serve the nation, they should be returned immediately to their parental homes. Whereupon the demonstrators were rounded up by waiting (and obviously prepared) police, finger-printed, and despatched under armed guards to their homes throughout the country.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 541 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

page 541 note 1 See Proposals of the Tanzania Government on National Service as Applied to University Graduates and School Leavers (Dar es Salaam, 1966).Google Scholar Those affected would serve for two years: six months in camp, followed by 18 months at their normal jobs, but with salaries reduced to 40 per cent of their contractual level, the remainder being taken as a contribution to the National Service.

page 541 note 2 The mainland, Tanganyika, had become independent in December 1961.

page 541 note 3 The Standard (Dar es Salaam), 15 10 1966.Google Scholar

page 541 note 4 At a National Service Passing-Out Parade, Dar es Salaam, 25 November 1966.

page 542 note 1 Gluckman, Max, Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (London, 1963), p. 111.Google Scholar

page 542 note 2 van Gennep, A., translated by Vizedom, Monika B. and Caffee, Gabrielle L., The Rites of Passage (London, 1960), p. 182.Google Scholar

page 542 note 3 Cornford, F. M., The Origin of Attic Comedy (London, 1914).Google Scholar

page 543 note 1 See, for example, Rossiter, A. P., English Drama from Early Times to the Elizabethans (London, 1961);Google ScholarHolloway, John, The Story of the Night: studies in Shakespeare's major tragedies (London, 1961),Google Scholar esp. ch. VIII, ‘Shakespearean Tragedy and the Idea of Human Sacrifice’; Lidz, Theodore, Hamlet's Enemy: madness and myth in ‘Hamlet’ (London, 1976);Google Scholar as well as Gilbert Murray in his British Academy Lecture of 1914, ‘Hamlet and Orestes, A Study in Traditional Types’, reprinted in The Classical Tradition in Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1927).Google Scholar

page 543 note 2 Ijimere, Obotunde, The Imprisonment of Obatala and other Plays (London, 1966),Google Scholar English adaptation by Ulli Beier.

page 543 note 3 See Lloyd, P. C., ‘Sacred Kingship and Government among the Yoruba’, in Africa (London), XXX, 3, 1960.Google Scholar

page 544 note 1 Sunday News (Dar es Salaam), 23 10 1966.Google Scholar

page 544 note 2 Quoted in Cornford, op. cit.

page 544 note 3 This reference to The Merchant of Venice reminds us that Nyerere had translated another of his favourite plays by Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, into Swahili.

page 544 note 4 £380 was the amount of salary which would be left after the National Service element had been deducted. The annual income per capita of Tanzania was then about £20.

page 544 note 5 Sunday News, 23 October 1966.

page 544 note 6 Shakespeare, William, The Winter's Tale, edited by Pafford, J. H. P. (London, 1963),Google Scholar Act III, Scene 2, lines 214–16. All subsequent references are to this edition.

page 545 note 1 Ibid. Act III, Scene 2, lines 216–18.

page 545 note 2 There were then two English-language dailies in Tanzania: The Nationalist, controlled by T.A.N.U., and The Standard (with its companion, Sunday News), then independent, but later nationalised by the Government.

page 545 note 3 Rashidi Kawawa, Second Vice-President, to the National Assembly; The Standard, 17 December 1966.

page 545 note 4 The Nationalist, November 1966. (Ironically, this was the swansong of the Students' Union, banned on 20 November 1966.) Cf. Wilson, Monica, Divine Kings and the ‘Breath of Men’ (Cambridge, 1959), p. 9,Google Scholar writing of the Nyakyusa of southern Tanganyika: ‘The anger of a father or other senior kinsman which brings illness or sterility to an erring son is always legitimate; if he were angry without cause his anger would be ineffective’.

page 545 note 5 My own notes of a meeting between President Nyerere and the staff of the University College of Dar es Salaam, 16 December 1966.

page 545 note 6 The Standard, 31 October 1966.

page 547 note 1 Peacock, James L., Rites of Modernisation (Chicago and London, 1968), p. 6.Google Scholar

page 547 note 2 The Standard, 5 October 1966, reporting on the winding-up debate.

page 547 note 3 Ranger, T. O., ‘Students and the Nation’, First Inter-Disciplinary Seminar, University College of Dar es Salaam, 27 10 1966.Google Scholar

page 547 note 4 ‘But if I let them [the students] come back sooner, I think I'd reverse or stop the rethinking which is taking place. It's a question of judgement. But I am convinced that good can come out of the evil of 22nd October’. Meeting between President Nyerere and the staff of the University College of Dar es Salaam, 16 December 1966.

page 548 note 1 ‘Can't we do at the beginning what Dubcek thought he could do at the end – establish socialism with a human face?’ Meeting between President Nyerere and the students of the University College of Dar es Salaam, 1969.

page 548 note 2 See, for example, ‘Ujamaa – the Basis of African Socialism’, reprinted in Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity/Uhuru na Umoja: a selection from writings and speeches, 1952–1965 (Dar es Salaam, 1966), pp. 162–71.Google Scholar

page 548 note 3 The Standard, 19 April 1967.

page 548 note 4 Ibid.

page 549 note 1 ‘Rituals of Rebellion in South East Africa’, reprinted in Gluckman, op. cit.