Tanzania: Rise of Nationalism (1945-1961) (continued)

The consequence was that the colonial government found it increasingly difficult to deal with social upheavals such as protests and riots without the intermediation of TANU. Nor were there any alternative political organisations that the colonial government could develop as a more docile alternative to TANU. Neither the United Tanganyika Party (UTP), formed in 1958 by land owning white settlers as a counter TANU, nor the African National Congress (ANC), which split from TANU in 1958, were able to position themselves as rivals to TANU (Chachage 2003, Peter 2000).

In truth, TANU's only potential rival, the emerging trade union movement, was not susceptible to cooption in this way by the colonial government. After the 1959 elections conflicts between TANU and the trade union movement began to emerge. TANU would not endorse the series of strikes that were called among sisal, communications and mineworkers in various parts of the territory, while trade unionists for their part found the lack of support from the major party in the Legislative Council incomprehensible (Chachage 2003).

In the first Legislative Council elections in 1959 TANU and its Asian and European compatriots won all the elective seats. Independence for Tanganyika became difficult for Britain to gainsay (Government of Tanzania undated, PBS Foundation Undated). For her part Britain had little to gain from blocking independence. There were few white settlers in Tanganyika, and only a fraction of these were British. Moreover Britain had slight economic interests in the colony and those they had could be served as well under local as under British rule. The upshot was that self rule was granted in December 1959 and independence followed shortly in December 9, 1961 (Temwende 2004, 1).

In Zanzibar political developments paralleled those on the mainland. The dockworkers strike of 1948 signalled the beginning of a period of trade union formation and by 1956 about thirty trade unions had emerged which formed themselves into the Federation of Zanzibar and Pemba Trade Unions (ZPFL) (Mbwana undated).

In December 1955 the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) was created to represent the interests and striving of the Arab elite (Othman 2004). The African Association and the Shirazi Association merged to form the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) on February 5, 1957 to represent the Shirazi and African majority (Othman 2004, Temwende 2004, 1, US State Department 2005).

The first election of representatives to the Legislative Council took place in July 1957. The ASP won half of the elected seats, the balance going to independent candidates. However the ASP split shortly thereafter and the breakaway Zanzibar and Pemba People's Party (ZPPP) emerged as a rival to the ASP. In the subsequent election of 1961 British manoeuvrings ensured that the ASP was able to win less than half the seats, despite winning the bulk of the popular vote. This enabled the ZNP and the ZPPP to form a governing coalition acceptable to Britain (Government of Tanzania undated, Karume 2005).

It was to this coalition that Britain handed over power to in December 1963 when the archipelago became independent. The government, constituted against the wishes of the general population and dominated by the Sultan and the land-owning Arabs elite, was overthrown in a popular uprising led by the ASP two months later (Temwende 2004, 1, Karume 2005).

References

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