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Remembering Work on the Tazara Railway in Africa and China, 1965–2011: When “New Men” Grow Old

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2013

Jamie Monson
Jamie Monson*
Affiliation:
Jamie Monson is a professor and chair of the Department of History at Macalester College. She is the author of Africa’s Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania (Indiana, 2009) and the co-editor (with James Giblin) of Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War (Brill, 2010). Her area of specialization is the history of China–Africa relations during the Cold War era, and she has also published widely on East African colonial history and environmental history. Her new research concerns the relationships among work, memory, and technology transfer in Chinese development projects in Africa during the 1970s. She has been a research fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg and at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and an SSRC Humanities in China Research Fellow linked with Beijing University. E-mail: jmonson1@macalester.edu
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Abstract:

In China, Tanzania, and Zambia, state officials participate in an ongoing articulation of official memory of the TAZARA railway project of the 1970s. In high-level diplomatic relations, the TAZARA project and its construction workers are continually held up as a foundational legacy for China–African development cooperation and friendship. However, the now-retired workers who built the railway tell very different kinds of stories about their experiences. In the context of recent economic liberalization policies, retired TAZARA workers draw on individual and collective memories of railway building to achieve both recognition and material security in a world in which they feel forgotten. They seek resolution of their grievances in old age through the telling and retelling of narratives of their youth. By doing so, they claim their own right to remember in the face of ongoing official efforts to reinvent heroic pasts.

Résumé:

En Chine, en Tanzanie et en Gambie, les responsables politiques participent à un projet de commémoration de la construction des chemins de fer TAZARA dans les années 70. Pour les relations diplomatiques de haut niveau, le projet TAZARA et ses ouvriers représentent continuellement un modèle fondateur pour la coopération et l’amitié entre la Chine et l’Afrique. Les ouvriers à présent retraités qui ont construit le chemin de fer ont de leur côté des histoires bien différentes à raconter sur leur expérience de la construction. Dans le contexte des politiques récentes de libéralisation économique, les ouvriers retraités du projet TAZARA utilisent des souvenirs collectifs et individuels de la construction pour rechercher à la fois une reconnaissance une sécurité matérielle dans un monde où ils se sentent oubliés. Ils font appel à la prise en compte de leurs doléances dans leur vieil âge en racontant sans relâche les histoires de leur jeunesse sur le chantier. Ce faisant, ils réclament leur droit de commémoration face aux efforts politiques en cours de réinventer un passé héroïque.

Type
ASR FORUM ON AFRICA AND CHINA
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , April 2013 , pp. 45 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2013 

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References

References

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Monson, Jamie. 2010. “Working Ahead of Time: Labor and Modernization during the Construction of the TAZARA Railway, 1968–1986.” In Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives, edited by Lee, Christopher, 235–65. Athens: University of Ohio PressGoogle Scholar
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Tagalile, Attilio. 2011. “Tazara Provides Best Practice for Rail Infrastructure.” Daily News, May 28.Google Scholar
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Uhuru News. 1985. “Kesi ya TAZARA: Mahakama kuu yatengua amri za wizara na PTL.” (TAZARA Case: High Court Refutes the Ruling of The Ministry and PTL.) October 28.Google Scholar
Uhuru News. 1986. “JUWATA haikushirikishwa katika kupunguza wafanyakazi TAZARA.” (JUWATA Did Not Participate in Layoffs of TAZARA Workers.) March 1.Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard. 1998. Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard, and Ranger, Terence. 1996. Postcolonial Identities in Africa, London and New York. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Yu, George T. 1980. “The Tanzania-Zambia Railway: A Case Study in Chinese Economic Aid to Africa.” In Soviet and Chinese Aid to African Nations, edited by Weinstein, Warren and Henriken, Thomas H., 117–44. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Gani, Magani. Retired TAZARA worker, Chimala, Tanzania, July 23, 2010.Google Scholar
Kihanza, Paschal. Retired TAZARA worker, Iringa, Tanzania, July 20, 2010.Google Scholar
Kiwugila, Isaya Jasho. Retired TAZARA worker, Mang’ula, Tanzania. August 2010.Google Scholar
Li, Jin Wen. Retired TAZARA worker, Tianjin, China. July 2007.Google Scholar
Mkanyago, Benedict. Retired TAZARA worker, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, August 2010.Google Scholar
Mulenga, John. Retired TAZARA worker, Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia, June 30, 2010.Google Scholar
Mutuna, Moses. Retired TAZARA worker, Mpika, Zambia, June 20, 2010.Google Scholar
Shivji, Issa. Professor of Law, University of Dar es Saalam, Dar es Salaam, 2007.Google Scholar
Yao, Pei Ji. Professor of Economics, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 2005.Google Scholar
Bodnar, John. 1989. “Power and Memory in Oral History: Workers and Managers at Studebaker.” The Journal of American History 75 (4): 1201–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Yinghong. 2008. Creating the “New Man”: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. 1987. “The Madman and the Migrant: Work and Labor in the Historical Consciousness of a South African People.” American Ethnologist 14 (2): 191–209.Google Scholar
Daily News (Tanzania). 1986. “TAZARA Dispute Taken to Court of Appeal.” January 28.Google Scholar
Daily News (Tanzania). 1995a. “TAZARA To Lay-Off 2,600.” March 8.Google Scholar
Daily News (Tanzania). 1995b. “Tazara Lay-Offs No Surprise.” March 9.Google Scholar
East African Business Week. 2012. “TAZARA Workers Demand Salaries.” February 20. http://www.busiweek.com/news/tanzania/2429-tazara-workers-demand-salaries.Google Scholar
Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Glassman, Jonathan. 1991. “The Bondsman’s New Clothes: The Contradictory Consciousness of Slave Resistance on the Swahili Coast.” The Journal of African History 32: 277–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Robert. 1977. Mines, Masters and Migrants: Life in a Namibian Mine Compound. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.Google Scholar
Harries, Patrick. 1994. Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Iliffe, John. 2005. Honour in African History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mpika Training School (Mpika, Zambia). 1976. “Principal’s Report.” October 12.Google Scholar
Monson, Jamie. 2010. “Working Ahead of Time: Labor and Modernization during the Construction of the TAZARA Railway, 1968–1986.” In Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives, edited by Lee, Christopher, 235–65. Athens: University of Ohio PressGoogle Scholar
Monson, Jamie. 2011. Africa’s Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University PressGoogle Scholar
News.china.com.cn. 2011. “Fu Ziying: China Helps Africa Purely for Friendship—Over 700 Chinese Workers Laid Down Their Lives for That.” April 26. http://www.focac.org/eng/zfgx/t820241.htm.Google Scholar
Peopledaily.com (Zambia). 2006. “Zambian Leader Apologizes to Chinese Gov’t.” September 1. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200609/01/eng20060901_298588.html.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Elizabeth. 2007. Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958. Athens: Ohio University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straker, Jay. 2009. Youth, Nationalism and the Guinean Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Strauss, Julia. 2009. “The Past in the Present: Historical and Rhetorical Lineages in China’s Relations with Africa.” China Quarterly 199: 777–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagalile, Attilio. 2011. “Tazara Provides Best Practice for Rail Infrastructure.” Daily News, May 28.Google Scholar
Trouillout, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. New York: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Uhuru News. 1985. “Kesi ya TAZARA: Mahakama kuu yatengua amri za wizara na PTL.” (TAZARA Case: High Court Refutes the Ruling of The Ministry and PTL.) October 28.Google Scholar
Uhuru News. 1986. “JUWATA haikushirikishwa katika kupunguza wafanyakazi TAZARA.” (JUWATA Did Not Participate in Layoffs of TAZARA Workers.) March 1.Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard. 1998. Memory and the Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Werbner, Richard, and Ranger, Terence. 1996. Postcolonial Identities in Africa, London and New York. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Yu, George T. 1980. “The Tanzania-Zambia Railway: A Case Study in Chinese Economic Aid to Africa.” In Soviet and Chinese Aid to African Nations, edited by Weinstein, Warren and Henriken, Thomas H., 117–44. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar