Issa Shivji

Intellectuals pride themselves as producers of knowledge. They are also articulators of ideologies, a role they do not normally acknowledge. Respectable universities worth the name call themselves sites of knowledge production.

It was 1973. My sequel to the first essay Tanzania: The Silent Class Struggle, called “The class struggle continues” (which later became Class Struggles in Tanzania) was making rounds of comrades “underground” in a mimeograph form.

It was 1973. My sequel to the first essay Tanzania: The Silent Class Struggle, called “The class struggle continues”(which later became Class Struggles in Tanzania) was making rounds of comrades “underground” in a mimeograph form.

“Dear Hildita, Aleidita, Camilo, Celia and Ernesto,

If you read this letter one day, it will mean that I am no longer alive. You will hardly remember me, and the smallest among you will have entirely forgotten me.

[Keynote address to the International Seminar on The Global South – From Bandung to the XXI Century (September 28-30, 2015), Universidade Federal Sāo Paulo.]

AFRICA IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: THE BASICS

I grew up in the eastern region of Tanzania, where I did my primary school. All my secondary school I did in Dar es Salaam—actually, living in this very apartment. So I grew up here. Then in 1966 I completed my high school, and in 1967 I joined the university.