Origin and Inheritance of the Tanganyika African National Union

On July 7, 1954 (the day known as Saba Saba — the seventh day of the seventh month), TANU was founded in Dar es Salaam. Within four years, it had become overwhelmingly the dominant non-governmental political organization in the country. In 1960, TANU formed a "responsible government" with Julius Nyerere as chief minister; on December 9 of the following year, Tanganyika gained its independence, and Nyerere led the new TANU government as the first Prime Minister of Tanganyika. A new Constitution was framed at the end of 1962, and Julius Nyerere was elected the first President of Tanganyika. Thus in eight years, the President of TANU had become the President of an independent Tanganyika.

Tanganyika's progress to independence under the leadership both of TANU and of Julius Nyerere is one of the most dramatic stories of African postwar history. Tanganyika's evolution in the 1950's has generally been described against a background of earlier political quiescence. However, as more information is gathered on the history of political organizations which predate TANU, it appears that before World War II there was greater political activity among Tanganyika Africans than had been assumed.

Pre-TANU Political Organizations

Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanganyika, did not become the major administrative, political, and economic center of Tanganyika until well into the period of British rule. Under German rule, which lasted from the late 1880's until the defeat of Germany in World War I and the subsequent loss of her colonial territories in East Africa, it was merely one among several centers. The Germans in East Africa looked West towards the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi and set up a large administrative center in Kigoma on the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika which was intended as the great railhead for German East Africa. (The outbreak of the First World War disrupted German plans for this.) Tabora in central Tanganyika was also a major center and railhead under both the Germans and the British. Tanga, in the extreme northeastern part of Tanganyika, was another city equally as important as Dar es Salaam in German times; an advanced government school was located there, in which the German East African administration trained its African civil servants. Tanga was more exposed than the capital to the influences of missionaries and white settlers; and it was nearer to the more economically developed areas of Kenya and the cluster of sisal plantations and coffee estates in northern Tanganyika.

Because the capital city did not overshadow all other towns, political activity was not concentrated within it. In fact, the first voluntary association founded by Africans — the Tanganyika African Civil Servants Association — was formed by government employees in Tanga in 1924. This Association pursued the interests of African government employees and introduced into public life some of Tanganyika's educated Africans. Although a few of these people reappeared later in the Tanganyika African Association (TAA) from which TANU itself was formed, none of them figures prominently in the current Tanganyikan political scene.

Two other significant voluntary associations were formed in the interwar period; both were based in Dar es Salaam. The Tanganyika African Welfare and Commercial Association (TAWCA) was formed in the mid-1930's. Despite its title, which suggested non-political aims, it was considered by the British administration to be more political than the TAA, which began sometime between 1927 and 1929 and at first seemed to have no political ambitions. Sir Harold Mac-Michael, British governor from 1934 to 1938, referred to TAWCA members as "semi-literate, politically minded, mission trained youth"; but he allowed the organization to operate because he realized that it would be a mistake to stamp on all such activities. Attempts were made to merge it with the TAA before World War II, but they were largely unsuccessful; and TAWCA never did emerge as the parent of a major political organization.

The TAA'S history was quite different. For some time it functioned chiefly as a mutual benefit organization for urban Africans. Sir Donald Cameron, Governor from 1925 to 1931, described the TAA to the Colonial Office as happily "a social rather than a political organization" whose members constituted "some of the better-educated natives who are employed in Government service or engaged in business and trade in Dar-es-Salaam." There were about 120 members "many not Tanganyika nationals ... and though a reasonable and respectable society it did not profess to be representative." But no organization could hope to have a national impact in Tanganyika if it remained solely an urban phenomenon; in order to succeed, it was essential to make contact not only with the small towns, but with the villages as well. After World War II, the TAA became increasingly political, as it extended its sphere of influence into the rural areas. From an urban-based interest group, the TAA was developing into a national movement. Its new connection with the countryside had apparently been effected through tribal unions.

Tribal unions developed among the Chagga of Kilimanjaro, the Haya of West Lake around Bukoba, the Zaramo of the Coast and Dar es Salaam, the Sukuma of East Lake Region, and the Sambaa in northeastern Tanganyika, close to Tanga. These tribal unions usually had little connection with one another, but some were acquainted through membership in the TAA. In some instances, the tribal unions even competed with the TAA. In 1951, for example, the colonial government accepted the demand of the Kilimanjaro Chagga Citizens' Union (KCCU), a tribal union of the Chagga, for the election of a paramount Chagga chief. At that time, a branch of the TAA in Moshi, the capital of the region inhabited by the Chagga, took the name of the Chagga Congress, both to indicate its local affiliation and in order to compete with the KCCU. The tribal union dominated the election nonetheless; and after the KCCU'S winning candidate, Thomas Marealle, became paramount chief, the TAA branch was absorbed into the KCCU.

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