If you look at one of those world maps that show where Covid-19 cases are currently spiking, you will notice that the United Republic of Tanzania is usually represented without color. This is because Tanzania stopped publishing case tallies on April 29th. By June 8th this year, President John Pombe Magufuli declared that the coronavirus has been eliminated from the country. Breaking a 2020 electoral trend, Tanzanians will vote on 28th October in elections that has little to do with how the government has handled the pandemic. They will choose between Magufuli, running as the incumbent, and fourteen opposition candidates, including Tundu Lissu, in elections that are being framed as a referendum on Magufuli’s anti-imperialist development plan.
One of the key and more controversial issues being contested in this week’s elections is “ubeberu” or “imperialism.” Beberu means billy-goat in Kiswahili and it is easy to understand why the word aptly describes imperialists. Billy goats butt their heads aggressively as a way to bully, establish dominance, fight, and mate. Julius K. Nyerere, the country’s first president, popularised the term beberu when he used it to describe European nations and the United States. In his 1972 speech, “Binadamu Wote in Sawa” (“All People are Equal”), Nyerere condemned racism and the war in Vietnam, viewing both as symptomatic of a dehumanising, Euro-American imperialism.
One of the key and more controversial issues being contested in this week’s elections is ubeberu or imperialism.
In recent speeches and campaign events, Magufuli has brought “beberu” back into currency. He has accused Lissu and other opposition leaders of working for imperialist forces. He cites the example of an opposition lawmaker who told the World Bank to withhold funding from Tanzania until the government addresses its human rights violations. They are imperialist “puppets,” according to the President, and he insists that the opposition’s business-friendly policies on mining harken back to the days of colonial exploitation.
Although beberu has entered political speeches only in recent months, Magufuli has long relied on the language of decolonisation to frame his record as the leader of Tanzania’s government. Imperialism, for Magufuli, is responsible for a range of things, including the recommendation to wear masks during the Covid-19 pandemic, the unfair terms of tanzanite and gold exports, and Tanzania’s status as a “low income” country.
In many ways, the return of anti-imperialist discourse is apt. When Magufuli was elected to the presidency in 2015, he ushered in a new kind of politics that questioned the preceding two decades of neoliberal economics that encouraged vast privatisation and increased Tanzanian dependency on foreign multinational corporations. His reinvention of decolonial politics pervaded daily conversations during the time I lived in Morogoro, Tanzania from 2016-2019, when I conducted research about human-animal sensing technologies.
Magufuli has long relied on the language of decolonisation to frame his record as the leader of Tanzania’s government
During my time in Tanzania, I found that Magufuli’s willingness to stand up to mining companies was extremely popular. The lab technicians and animal trainers I worked with praised his efforts to compel foreign companies to renegotiate their contracts with the government under new mining and prospecting laws. They particularly liked that Magufuli ordered that walls be built around tanzanite mines so that the government can better monitor the flow of precious metals. For far too long, people told me, foreign mining companies have exploited Tanzanian minerals and workers at low prices only to make huge profits when the minerals were processed and sold elsewhere. They have stolen from Tanzania, they said. A similar critique of the roles played by Western and rising Asian economies in underdeveloping Tanzania infuse many of Magufuli’s speeches, and he used them frequently to justify the government’s industrialisation plans. These plans require that foreign companies process the minerals within the country before export.
In May 2018, Magufuli visited Morogoro, and the city was awash with anticipation. He had just come from officiating the newly-built Kilombero bridge, and he made a pitstop at the Sokoine University of Agriculture to listen to students and deliver a speech. On the day of his highly anticipated visit, the enthusiasm and excitement were palpable. My colleagues at the animal training site left work to attend his speech right after morning tea. I followed them, and later, joined a jovial crowd of people who had gathered in a field to listen to Magufuli. He was charismatic, deftly weaving together jokes and policy, each time garnering laughs and cheers from a rapt audience. “Why do we grow cotton here, then send the raw materials abroad, [where they make and] wear the clothes, and then they send it back to us second-hand? How can this be?” he asked the crowd, and then added after a pause, “What if instead we grow cotton, we manufacture clothes, we wear them, and then we send the second-hand clothes to Europe?” The crowd laughed, cheered, and clapped as Magufuli outlined his vision for development.
Through these and other repeating themes in his speeches, Magufuli portrayed himself as a champion for Tanzanian interests in a world that continues to look down on the country and calls it poor. One of my interlocutors, who also lives in Morogoro, sings Magufuli’s praises in this way. “Before Magu, if you go to a government office, no one respects you and you wait for a long time in line unless you have money or if you know someone. Today, I go to get my [organisation’s] license and I am treated like every other Tanzanian,” he said, highlighting the president’s efforts to reduce corruption, favouritism, and embezzlement among civil servants. Neighbours and young entrepreneurs with whom I chat told me that they welcomed Magufuli’s plan to transform Tanzania into an industrialised, middle-income country, which would solve the unemployment challenges that many young people in the country face.
What if instead we grow cotton, we manufacture clothes, we wear them, and then we send the second-hand clothes to Europe?
In the last five years, as part of this industrialisation plan, Tanzania has embarked on a dizzying array of infrastructural projects. In under three years, I travelled through a new airport terminal, rode over several new bridges and road expansions, and saw the construction of a four hundred-kilometre high-speed railway.
But all of Magufuli’s accomplishments are overshadowed by an increasing authoritarianism. Under new media and information laws, radio stations and newspapers were disbanded or suspended for alleged false reporting, as determined by a governmental agency. Opposition leaders, journalists, and political activists often face physical violence, death threats, kidnapping, and imprisonment. Indeed, Tundu Lissu, the leading opposition presidential candidate was shot 38 times in an assassination attempt in 2017, the week I arrived in Tanzania. Attendees at several of Lissu’s political rallies were tear-gassed these past few weeks. On the eve of the elections with many Zanzibaris already casting their vote, Tanzanians are experiencing widespread disruption to social media and online communication platforms. Since this morning, I have not been able to reach people in Tanzania.
Over the years, I noticed that people have gradually become less willing to talk openly about politics. In 2016 and 2017, I remember listening to political debates and jokes over morning tea about leaders in government, including President Magufuli. Friends and co-workers argued whether he was just a fierce (mkali) leader or a cruel (mkatili) one. In 2018, when the news about attacks and arrests of Magufuli’s critics began to circulate, these conversations became more discreet and altogether disappeared. Those who shared their reservations questioned how much Magufuli’s personality dominated his politics. My neighbour, a school teacher, questioned the amount of money the government spent purchasing eleven new planes for the country’s revived national flag carrier, Air Tanzania. “Could this money be spent to better equip schools?” he asked, noting that none of his students have access to lab equipment for their science practical. Another friend, who works in a private bank, worried whether Magufuli’s rhetoric against “imperialist” foreigners might feed the fires of xenophobia.
Much of the international press and organisations like Amnesty International have focused on the government’s repression of freedoms, including those of expression and peaceful assembly. The question animating many foreign observers is whether Tanzania’s elections would be free and fair. To be clear, any violence against political opposition, activists, voters, and journalists are wrong. But the focus on the freedom and fairness of Wednesday’s elections portrays a limited view of politics in Tanzania. It dismisses the anti-imperialist talk as mere rhetoric.
Tanzania’s elections present an instance of “decolonising” as an ethnographic category by itself
At a time when anthropology is reckoning with its racist and colonial past, and when “decolonising” as a method and reflexive mode become integral to anthropological scholarship, Tanzania’s elections present an instance of “decolonising” as an ethnographic category by itself. Through condemnations, denials, and accusations of ubeberu, or imperialism, Tanzanian politics become a crucial site for figuring out what decolonisation might mean and what implications it might entail in terms of policies and practice for the economy, trade, natural resources extraction, and foreign relations.
In a retort to Magufuli’s accusation that he is an imperialist stooge, Tundu Lissu, the frontrunning opposition candidate for the republic’s presidency, denied being an imperialist and questioned the crowd at one of his campaign rallies, “Who is the real imperialist?”
Debates about decolonisation in Tanzania grapple with the practical realities of challenging a global economy that still clings on to colonialist distributions of wealth and power
“Is it the USA? It is the US after all that trained and paid for the training for our police,” he said, making a reference to the unfair way that the police have treated Lissu and his supporters. “Do we have the courage,” he went on, “to call these same countries ‘imperialist’ when we ask them for aid? Do we label those who sign mining contracts or those who own mines ‘imperialists’?”
Such debates about decolonisation in Tanzania grapple with the practical realities of challenging a global economy that still clings on to colonialist distributions of wealth and power. To attend to such debates goes beyond what Ryan Jobson (2020) calls the “decolonial fix.” Rather than focusing on inclusion and redistribution, Tanzanian anti-imperialist practice aims to change how the world is currently structured, with foreign mining companies accumulating wealth in the former and emerging metropoles of empire.
These debates suggest that anthropologists, much more than insisting on decolonising research, might also ethnographically treat “decolonisation” as a social and political practice for wielding and contesting power. What does it mean for postcolonial, multiethnic countries like Tanzania to decolonise in today’s world? What kinds of solidarities does it imply and require? How are understandings of race, gender, sexuality, and class being challenged through decolonial politics? Which global, economic, political, and state structures need to be dismantled to forge anti-imperialist development?
Anthropologists, much more than insisting on decolonising research, might also ethnographically treat “decolonisation” as a social and political practice for wielding and contesting power.
As Juno Parreñas and others (Parreñas 2020; Al-Bulushi, Ghosh, and Tahir 2020) recently cautioned, applying decolonial writing beyond North America may itself be culturally imperialist. They question whether decolonial debates in Euro-America can faithfully attend to the political economies of places like Tanzania. It is in fact more insightful and important, I think, that anthropologists pay attention to how decoloniality is being envisioned, enacted, and reimagined in postcolonial places. Such attention will be crucial, too, if anthropology is to be critical of autochthonous claims that fuel the dangerous politics of ethnonationalism (see also Nyamnjoh 2016).
On 28th October, it is unlikely that we would know who the real imperialists are but at least we will know if Magufuli’s version of decolonial politics will last five more years.
References:
Al-Bulushi, Samar, Sahana Ghosh, and Madiha Tahir. 2020. “American Anthropology, Decolonization, and the Politics of Location.” Public Anthropologies (Online). Accessed October 8, 2020. http://www.americananthropologist.org/al-bulushi-ghosh-and-tahir/.
Jobson, Ryan Cecil. 2020. “The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019.” American Anthropologist 122 (2): 259–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13398.
Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2016. #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa. Mankon, Bamenda: Langaa Research & Publishing CIG.
Nyerere, Julius K. 1974. “Binadamu Wote Ni Sawa.” In Binadamu Na Maendeleo, 117–21. Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press.
Parreñas, Juno Salazar. 2020. “6. from Decolonial Indigenous Knowledges to Vernacular Ideas in Southeast Asia.” History and Theory 59 (3): 413–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12169.
Featured image by Paul Kagame (Courtesy of Flickr – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
