When does a 'subject' become a 'citizen'?

The making of ‘modern’ as opposed to ‘traditional’ citizenship in colonial Africa was primarily based on race. It should be noted that colonialism was a product, or rather a by-product, of the discourse of scientific racism that had roots in earlier Euro-American thoughts and which became a bedfellow with the ideology of capitalism/imperialism. In line with patriarchy they created a discourse, or rather a myth, of ‘virgin’/‘fertile’ land for colonial conquest/settlement.

The tragedy of Sarah Baartman, for instance scandalously illustrates the development of these racial and colonial notions and how they generally turned the African/black into a subject, that is, made him/her uncitizen. Her story epitomised what happened within the context of British early colonialism in Africa. It thus set the stage for segregation and subjection of Africans.

As Mamdani aptly noted in 1996 in Citizens and Subjects: Decentralised Despotism and the Legacy of Late Capitalism, segregation was not a South African invention but, rather, it was an idealised form of rule that the British Colonial Office dubbed ‘indirect rule.’ It was the Briton Lord Lugard who pioneered indirect rule in Uganda and Nigeria three decades before Jan C. Smuts applied it in South Africa. As a pioneer of a form of indirect rule that Mamdani refers to as 'decentralised despotism', the British theorised the colonial state as more of a cultural one than a territorial construct. This shift from a focus at the repudiation of the customary to confirmation of tradition and from civilizing/rejuvenating to conserving/preserving colonised society began in India. By the time Britain came to Africa with its wealth of experience in colonising India it was ready to complete this shift to prevent what it had to cure in its then ‘precious colony’ of India.

Thus in order to prevent the dissolution of society in colonial Africa, which would render it virtually uncontrollable, the British focused on the customary as both a binding and dividing legal and cultural construct. It was binding in the sense that it held together members of a given ‘tribe’ by subjecting them to certain form of authority that made it easy to contain them. Yet it was dividing in the sense that it separated a number of invented ‘tribes’ by subjecting them to their respective authorities that made it easy to divide and rule them.

These authorities came to be known as Native Authorities and the law that they used came to be known as Customary Laws. But their jurisdiction only applied to those categories of (African) natives and (African) strangers-cum-natives. As Mamdani correctly stated in 1998, they could not apply to those who did not have a ‘customary’ home, that is, an ‘ethnic’, ‘tribal’ or ‘native’ home in Africa. In other words, since those categories of (Euro-American) settler and (Asiatic/Arab) settler were defined in racial rather than ethnic terms, they could not have a respective Native Authority and its associated Customary Law. The policy and legal implications of these dichotomies is thus sharply captured:

‘The colonial state divided the population into two: races and ethnicities. Each lived in a different legal universe. Races were governed through civil law. They were considered as members, actually or potentially, of civil society. Civil society excluded ethnicities. If we understand civil society not as an idealised prescription but as a historical construct, we will recognise that the original sin of civil society under colonialism was racism. Ethnicities were governed through customary laws. While civil law spoke the language of rights, customary law spoke the language of tradition, of authenticity. These were different languages with different effects, even opposite effects. The language of rights bounded law. It claimed to set limits to power. For civic power was to be exercised within the rule of law, and had to observe the sanctity of the domain of rights. The language of custom, in contrast, did not circumscribe power, for custom was enforced. The language of custom enabled power instead of checking it by drawing boundaries around it. In such an arrangement, no rule of law was possible.’

It is not surprising, then, that in the case of colonial Tanganyika, as elsewhere in colonial Africa, race – and thus racism – was the primary criterion for determining social, political and economic status. Before independence, as the author of Who are Indigenous Tanzanians? Competing Conception of Tanzanian Citizenship in the Business Community, Bruce Hailman, correctly noted in 1998, Tanganyika was segregated into three distinct racial groups.

The first group, which was primarily Euro-American, enjoyed full privileges of British citizenship. Most Asians comprised the second group and were treated as second-class citizens i.e. British-protected persons. The last group, the natives or Africans (read blacks), were more subjects than citizens. Needless to say, this preferential treatment fermented resentment. To put it crudely, it ignited racial struggle. Even the social-cum-political organisations were coloured by race. There was an African Association and an Asian Association.

However, in the 1950s, as Chachage S.L. Chachage noted in 1986 in his unpublished PhD dissertation entitled Socialists Ideology and the Reality of Tanzania, it became clear to the African/black nationalists who were fighting for independence that Euro-Americans and Asians had a major role to play in making Tanganyika have political stability based on a rapidly expanding economy. Tellingly, their agitation for uhuru was not couched in the language of customs or tradition. Rather, it spoke the language of civics and rights. Thus the last years of the 1950s, Chachage further notes, witnessed the attack by Nyerere and his fellow nationalists on racialism in its scientific guise and other forms.

In the language of an inclusive Tanganyikan citizenship based on human rights rather than racial privileges they urged immigrants of other nationalities – whether (Asiatic/Arab) settlers or (Euro-American) settlers – to regard themselves as Tanganyikans. To that end in the 1958 campaigns for the general elections non-Africans were even invited to address meetings of Tanzania African National Union (TANU) supporters even though TANU’s membership was by then restricted to Africans. In his address to the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa (PAFMECA) in September 1959, the chairperson of TANU, Julius K. Nyerere, thus pragmatically affirmed his stance on equal rights of all citizens regardless of race:

‘Here we are, building up sympathy of the outside world on the theme of human rights. We are telling the world that we are fighting for our rights as human beings. We gained the sympathy of friends all over the world – in Asia, in Europe, in America – people who recognise the justice of our demands for human rights… Are we going to turn round then, tomorrow after we have achieved independence and say, ‘To hell with all this nonsense abut human rights; we were only using that as a tactic to harness the sympathy of the naive’? Human nature is sometimes depraved I know but I don’t believe it is depraved to that extent. I don’t believe that the leaders of the people are going to behave as hypocrites to gain their ends, and turn round and do exactly the things which they have been fighting against. I say again to my friends the non-Africans in East Africa, that when we say we want to establish the rights of individuals in our countries, irrespective of race, we mean it.’

What Nyerere and his fellow African nationalists were articulating was not a form of racial blindness. Rather, it was an tacit acknowledgement that through the Lugardian doctrine of divide and rule, Africans had been constructed as an assortment of ethnicities which, although collectively seen as ‘black’ and thus the quintessential opposite of the ‘white’ race, had not fully enjoyed the privileges then associated with a racial identity. In other words, theirs was a call to be admitted into the concert of humanity and comity of nations which was then defined racially. In this regard it makes a lot of sense to conceptualise their nationalism in Mamdanian phraseology as ‘a struggle of natives to be recognised as a transethnic identity, as a race, as ‘Africans,’ and thus – as a race – to gain admission to the world of rights, to civil society, which was a short form for civilized society’.

Interestingly, as Chachage noted in his PhD, by 1959, through a newspaper then known as the Tanganyika Standard, some non-Africans were calling on TANU to open its membership to them. It was accordingly opened in 1960 whereby two Asians and one European were named to its new executive committee as a parliamentary party. When that new legislative council met for the first time in October of the same year after Tanganyika was granted ‘responsible government’, it had 81 members. Out of these 52 were Africans, 16 Europeans, 11 Asians, one Arab and one Goan. The racial struggle did not disappear even though, according to a researcher, to ‘many observers, racialism had practically vanished from the political scene by 1959; and the tendency was to regard everybody as a Tanganyikan, as a result of which Asians did not see any necessity for minority privileges politically’. In fact as Chachage himself notes, that legislative council was divided on the issue of Africanisation. The then chief minister’s ‘address in reply’ to the issue of the ‘Africanisation of the civil service’ on 19 October 1960 reveals how the issue of race elicited deep-seated racial sentiments.

Nyerere – as documented in his 1966 Freedom and Unity – who happened to be that chief minister – started by stating that it is important for them to know what that government meant by Africanisation, a statement that implied there was no consensus on its definition. Then he abruptly switched to the discourse of the settler and native. ‘Tanganyika is an African country’, he affirmed, and went on to claim that ‘though there are communities of other races settled here, some of whose members certainly have a legitimate claim and a genuine claim to be regarded as ‘Tanganyikans’, the vast preponderance of the population of Tanganyika is indigenous African’. What followed is the following natively/racially charged statement that captured his message, which he admitted was little alarming and hoped it won’t sound alarming to many people:

‘It is therefore naturally the intention of the government that, in the long term, and I want to emphasise the phrase ‘in the long term’, the composition of the civil service should broadly reflect the racial pattern of the territory’s population as a whole and thus the great preponderance of posts should be held by indigenous Africans. Indeed, anything else would be artificial and unhealthy…’

Even though Nyerere loaded his address with normalising nativist terms such ‘naturally’ and ‘indigenous’ it seems he did so to placate the champions of indigenisation/nativism, which is why he reiterated that ‘in the long term’ disclaimer. That pacifying emphasis must have been a way of addressing the so-called nationalists on the back benches who questioned the pace of Africanisation at the time. According to Chachage, TANU had earlier promised to carry out a programme of Africanisation as quickly as possible. However, the time that legislative council convened, it was voiced that TANU believed in localisation rather than Africanisation only, whereby the former was defined on the basis of preference for local people of any race as opposed to the latter that was defined strictly on the basis of preference to local people who were Africans/blacks. In Mamdanian terms, the champions of Africanisation were simply stating that the local people of other races – particularly those categories that are referred in this essay as (Euro-American) settler and (Asiatic/Arab) settler – are neither ‘native’ nor ‘native settler.’

This pressure for Africanisation which, according to Chachage’s PhD, began as far back as 1958 during the TANU conference that grappled with the controversial issue of racial parity in the election. The divisive deliberation resulted in the formation of the splinter group then known the African National Congress (ANC). Tellingly, the motto of that group was ‘Africa for Africans’. Of course by that phrase they meant ‘Africa for blacks’ for to them there was no ‘Asiatic/Arabic African’ or ‘Euro-American African.’ Another racial issue that furthered differences in that ‘maiden’ council is that of introducing school integration in order to abolish the separate school system. Thus the 1960 council set the precedence for racial struggle in future council sessions.

On 18 October 1961, just before Tanganyika became ‘completely independent’, the division on the race question was so deep to the extent that the Citizenship Bill was considerably opposed in the National Assembly in a language heavily laden with anti-Commonwealth and racialist/nativist sentiments. The then Prime Minister, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, spoke emotionally against racialism and opponents who sought to base citizenship on colour rather than loyalty to our then country of Tanganyika. He warned that 'because of the situation we have inherited in this country, where economic classes are also identical with race, that we live on dynamite, that it might explode any day, unless we do something about it’. The following brief from Chachage’s PhD sums up the terms of that legislative debate:

‘The government had proposed that citizenship be granted automatically to any adult person who was born in Tanganyika, and any born of one or both parents neither of whom was born in Tanganyika was to be given two years to decide if he or she wished to become a Tanganyika citizen. The system of dual citizenship was to be ended. The opposition wanted to withhold citizenship from all non-Africans; even if their parents were Tanganyika – born they wanted them to apply on individual basis for citizenship. The opposition was profoundly suspicious of Europeans and Asians.’

The government proposal passed. Africanisation continued in government terms. However, paradoxically, on 7 January 1964, just three month before the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Nyerere, then the President of Tanganyika, issued a policy circular (also reproduced in 1966 in Freedom and Unity) which significantly departed from what was agreed in 1961. After noting that the two years period of grace for those who had to renounce citizenship of another nation in order to become sole citizens of Tanganyika had ended, and that since 9 December 1963 Tanganyikans had known exactly who are the citizens of that country by right of birth, he went on to reiterate that our most important basic principle as a nation has been our appeal to the morality of human equality regardless of colour, race, or country of origin. Then tactically acknowledging that Africanisation was a necessary compromise to this principle, he thus declared the end of the discourse of citizenship based on the dichotomy of the settler vis-à-vis the native:

‘Two years ago we introduced a form of racial discrimination into the civil service. For both recruitment and promotion we gave Tanganyika citizens of African descent priority over other Tanganyikan citizens. There were good reasons for this action then, which we fully explained. It was necessary to counteract the effects of past discrimination against citizens of African descent so that our civil service could develop a ‘local look’, and there was also an unavoidable uncertainty about which people of non-African descent were really committed to Tanganyika. The time for this compromise with principles has now past. The reasons which were valid in 1961 are not valid in 1964. Most of all, there is no longer any doubt about who is a citizen of the Republic of Tanganyika. It is natural that we should distinguish between those who are, and those who are not, citizens of our country. But it would be quite wrong for us to continue to discriminate between Tanganyika citizens on any grounds other than those of character, and ability to do specific tasks. We cannot allow the growth of first and second class citizenship. Each Tanganyikan citizen must accept all the duties, and receive all the rights, which our citizenship implies. All must be governed by the same laws, must receive the same respect from his fellows, and have the same opportunities to earn a living and to serve the nation of which he is a member. Anything other than this would now mean intolerable hypocrisy. The distinction between citizens of African descent and citizens of Non-African descent must now be ended…The only distinction which can in future be accepted is that between citizens and non-citizens…This action is not taken ‘for the sake of people with brown or white skin,’ but for Tanganyika. It is essential in order that every citizen of our country – whether at home or abroad – can hold his head high without hypocrisy, or attempts at ‘explanations’

On paper this policy is what came to define what it means to be a citizen, rather than a subject, in post-colonial Tanganyika and subsequently in Tanzania for in a significant way this policy was extended to the 1964 Union for the key issues regarding citizenship were thus included in the Article of Union between the Republic of Tanganyika and the Republic of Zanzibar: ‘(VI) There shall be reserved to the Parliament and Executive of the United Republic the following matters … (f) Citizenship. (g) Immigration…’ In theory therefore the then colonial subject had thus become a post-colonial citizen. But in practice did every Tanzanian become a (full) citizen?

Among other incidents, the case of the Appellate Court’s upholding a ruling in favour of the eviction of the Maasai in Mkomazi Game Reserve on the ground that ‘white’ investors came there before them and that of upholding a ruling in favour of the alienation of the Barbaig’s land in Mulbadaw Village on the grounds that they could not prove that they were natives shows how the incomplete reform of the dual/bifurcated state characterised by the ‘customary law/native space’ vis-à-vis the ‘civil law/civic space’ systemise the denial of the privileges of citizenship.

* Read the first article in this series: When do ‘settlers’ or ‘natives’ become ‘citizens’?
* This article is based on a paper titled When Does a Native or Settler Become a Dual Citizen? presented at the 3rd European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) held at Leipzig, Germany (4 - 7 June 2009)
* Chambi Chachage is an independent researcher, newspaper columnist & policy analyst, based in Dares-Salaam, Tanzania.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/.