Dmitri M.

Bondarenko
Institute for African Studies
Russian Academy of Sciences
Moscow
dbondar@hotmail.com

Nation-Building and Historical Memory in Postcolonial States:

Tanzania and Zambia Compared

Abstract
The paper is based on field research conducted among Tanzanian and Zambian university
students. Its immediate aim was to find out their attitude to the colonialism-born non-
African (European and South Asian) minorities. The evidence gives reason to argue that
the level of tolerance among Zambian students is higher than among Tanzanian. The
most significant reasons for that are those related to the two countries’ history since the
pre-colonial time, the memory of it, and this memory’s use and abuse by the post-colonial
states. The greatest difference between the two cases lies in the existence since pre-
colonial time of the Swahili culture and language at minimal number of expansionist
centralized polities as the background for autochthonous peoples’ unity in Tanzania and
lack of such a background till colonial period in Zambia. The Tanzanian situation is
generally exceptional for Africa, while Zambian is typical. The theories based on the
European historical experience prompt that Tanzania has better prospects for nation-
building. However, we admit that in the wake of multiculturalism and profound shift in
comprehension of nation as social reality in contemporary world, Zambia’s position can
be even more favorable for multicultural nation-building and creation of the postcolonial
nation-state than that of Tanzania.

INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL PECULIARITY AND NATION-BUILDING IN

THE POSTCOLONIAL STATES

Postcolonial societies are a unique event in world history. Their appearance in the mid-
20th century did not result from centuries-old internal social processes, but was directly
determined by the formation, short-lived (by historical standards) existence and
disintegration of the European colonial empires. The colonial borders reflected first of all
the relation of forces between the metropolitan powers in this or that region, but not the
preceding course of the region’s own political, social, economic, and cultural history.
With rare exceptions, many different peoples were forcibly united within a colony. Not
only kinship but also cultural affinity among those peoples was often absent. At the same
time, the colonial borders divided one people or tore historically established regional
systems of economic and cultural ties not less infrequently. Likewise the colonialists
forcibly united peoples that had never formed regional political and economic systems,
had different levels of sociocultural complexity, and sometimes did not even know about
each other or were historical enemies, on the one hand. At the same time, historically and
economically connected peoples and societies were often separated by the colonial
borders. These features were supplemented by stadial and civilizational heterogeneity of
the colonial societies. The elements of capitalism, implanted by the Europeans in
different spheres, did not synthesize with a set of pre-capitalist features of the local
societies. There also was little intersection between the autochthonous and new sectors of
public life, in which basically different value systems dominated.
The artificial complexity of cultural and societal composition, stadial and
civilizational heterogeneity remained fundamental features of most of the colonial society
throughout their existence and were inherited by postcolonial societies together with the
colonial borders. Postcolonial states are a legacy of colonialism in the sense that when the
colonizers were going away, the world was already ‘global’. As a matter of fact, it
became so due to the Europeans’ endeavors since the Age of Discoveries. The sovereign
nation-state is the form of political organization that today allows a country to be a full
subject of international law. It is so because contemporary international law is based on
recognition of the nation-state as the basic unit of international relations and world
politics. Thus, postcolonial countries simply had no alternative to declaring themselves
sovereign nation-states.
In the postcolonial situation, the problems born by colonialism have acquired new
dimensions, connected, in particular, with the necessity to substitute colonial states with
sovereign nation-states. Respectively, formation of national unity, at which national
identity would be more important for the citizens than belonging to any smaller group
(regional, ethnic, religious, etc.), has become an important task. In Europe, it took
centuries for realization of internal prerequisites for ripening of the nation as the form of
cultural unity in the civil society and of the nation-state as the form of its political
organization. As a result, in nation-states, cultural and political borders were brought into
conformity (Gellner 1983), while due to the formation of the civil society, a gap between
the society and the state was bridged (Breuilly 1993; 2005). In most postcolonial states, it
became necessary to form civil societies, nation-states, and national cultures as fast as
possible on the basis of in many ways random and heterogeneous conglomerate of
cultures and societies. Note also that nation and nation-state are essentially European
phenomena, in the sense that internal dynamics of the African and Asian societies did not
push them in that direction. Many postcolonial states are still groping for a way to
internal organicity, to sociocultural, national integrity.
So, the specificity of society and state in postcolonial countries is a consequence of
their unique way of formation. They began to form in the colonial period and that is why
reproduced the forms of political institutions and legal norm of the Modern-Time West.
However, the postcolonial state could not internalize automatically their content, attached
by the civil society that rose independently in Europe but not in Africa or Asia
(Bondarenko 2014). The most significant feature of nation-building in postcolonial
countries is the initially leading role of the state, not society. As the civil society did not
form in African and Asian countries in the colonial period, only the state could take on
the integrating role in them. Thus, nation-building in postcolonial countries was initiated
and directed by an external to the society force that stood over it. This determines the
specificity of not only process but also current results of postcolonial nation-building. In
particular, it explains why there remains a significant gap between society and the state,
why the impact of the former on the latter is insufficient. At the same time, the
postcolonial state has turned out much more stable and capable of adapting to changes at
the global, regional, and national levels than it used to be supposed by scholars just a
decade ago (see: Nugent 2011; Young 2012). Although formation of the civil society
institutions and the increase in their role in recent decades is an indisputable fact in many
African and Asian countries, the central role of the state in them, its priority over social
and economic institutions (i.e., the ability not just to serve and direct, but also shape them
and the very system of social relations) usually preserves. Without internal preconditions
for formation in the present borders and having an originally Modern European political
system, the postcolonial countries more and more often can remain viable only at a big
(compared to the liberal West) role of the state, including its ‘constructivist’ role in
nation-building. The real problem of these countries is not that the role of the state in
them is much bigger and more decisive than in the West. Their real problem is that the
postcolonial states often turn out ineffective in terms of their own historical and
sociocultural logic (Chabal, Skalník 2010).
The historical past plays not only a significant but also a dual role in postcolonial
nation-building. On the one hand, real historical facts and processes objectively promote
or hinder nation-building, can make an effect on the directions of nations’ current
development. On the other hand, collective historical memory is not a ‘verbatim quote’, a
‘cast’ or a ‘photo’ of a people’s true history: passed through a filter of social
consciousness again and again with each generation, the past is intricately refracted and
even often distorted in it. The peoples’ historical memory was an ideological battlefield
on which colonialists and activists of the liberation movements struggled (see, e.g.:
Werbner 1998). In the postcolonial situation, an appeal to the historical past is important
for identities construction (see, e.g.: Lentz 2006; Bondarenko et al. 2014). The state has
especially great opportunities for manipulating the citizens’ historical memory for the
sake of achieving these or those goals, including formation of the national unity.

EVIDENCE AND METHODS

In this article I discuss the results of my comparative research among university students
in Tanzania and Zambia, two neighboring African countries which are independent states
now and used to be British possessions in the past. In both countries the overwhelming
majority of the population (over 99 per cent) is formed by people of numerous local
ethnic groups who co-exist with compatriots of different non-African origins, whose
communities, although small in number, are well visible in Tanzania's and Zambia's
economic and social life. Our immediate goal was to study the attitude of the most
advanced, educated and, hence, socially prospective part of the African youth, that is
university students, to those non-African minorities that formed in the time of and due to
colonialism – to the so-called ‘Europeans’ and ‘Indians’.2 We based our choice of the
reference group on the assumption that a sufficiently high degree of the population’s
general education is a necessary condition for nation-building, in the process of which in
postcolonial countries the role of highly educated citizens is especially important (Nkulu
2005). The particular problem I was concerned with is whether African university
students consider and are eager to perceive their compatriots with completely different
ethno-cultural backgrounds and group histories, as well as a specific position in
contemporary society, as parts of the Tanzanian and Zambian nations. Thus, I trace not
only how the minorities' present position in the respective societies influences the
students' attitude to them, but also the way the historical memory of the pre-colonial and
colonial past, its image in the young people' minds, formed not without participation of
its canonic interpretations within the framework of the postcolonial states' ideologies,
influence their attitude to the diasporas that would have hardly ever formed in a situation
other than colonial.3
In the course of research a questionnaire was distributed among students of the
largest, most prestigious and definitely the best higher education institutions of the two
countries – the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the University of Zambia
based in the capital city of Lusaka (see Appendix 1). The students represented a great
variety of the Universities schools and departments, from Engineering to Sciences to
Social Sciences to the Humanities. In Zambia the questionnaire was available in
English, the country's only official language and the language of instruction at the
University, while in Tanzania it was offered in English and Swahili (both of which are
used in many spheres of life, including education). As a result, 167 questionnaires were
filled in by the students of the University of Dar es Salaam and 146 by their peers from
the University of Zambia (although, as it usually happens, not all the respondents
answered all the questions). The questionnaires were processed and finally the evidence
they contain took the form of three electronic databases: Tanzanian, Zambian, and
integral. Their statistical analysis via the IBM SPSS Statistics 19.0 computer program
paved the way for qualitative interpretation of the collected evidence.
Besides, structured interviews with university teachers, student organizations
activists, etc. were conducted – 21 in Dar es Salaam and 15 in Lusaka (see Appendix 2).
As it could be predicted safely, their transcripts turned out very helpful in clarifying
many points of our interest.
Finally, some evidence and conclusions of the research I conducted in the 2000s on
the cultural stereotypes and intercultural relations in different strata of the Tanzanian
society have also appeared relevant for this study.
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

My central argument is that the difference in the young educated Africans' attitude to the
colonialism-born minorities in contemporary Tanzania and Zambia can be explained by
significant dissimilarities in their real pre-colonial and colonial historical fortunes, on
the one hand, and in the ways history is used and abused in the post-colonial state
ideologies, on the other. Indeed, although our research shows that in general the attitude
of both Tanzanian and Zambian students to their European and South Asian compatriots
is tolerant (what is important to make clear at the outset), it is evident that some of them
do not perceive these minorities as groups of people who, notwithstanding cultural
differences, share the same basic national values and who live for the benefit of the same
country: four per cent of Tanzanian and one per cent of Zambian students expressed
negative attitude to Europeans and fourteen and four per cent, respectively, to Indians.
So, on the one hand, the students' attitude to the two migrant communities is not
completely the same (it is better to Europeans than to Indians in both cases, what is
typical not only for students but for the local population in general [Bondarenko 2008]),
while on the other hand, the attitude to each of the communities is better among Zambian
students than among Tanzanian.
These conclusions are analogous to those made by the present author earlier about the
perception of non-African communities by Tanzanians of all education levels. This
means that differences between people of different education level are manifested not in
their general, at present mostly tolerant, attitude to the minorities. Nevertheless, a
remarkable fact attracted attention during previous research: the Afrotanzanians with a
higher education level take an unconditionally benevolent attitude more rarely, that is
they more rarely chose ‘completely positive’ as the answer to the question ‘What is your
attitude to non-African minorities?’ (Bondarenko 2008: 96–100, 103). Evidently, some
decrease in positive attitude to non-African minorities among educated Afrotanzanians
reflects greater typicality for them of cultural nationalism, that, in its turn, presupposes a
greater maturity of national consciousness.
The fact that South Asians are not always treated cordially by native Africans is quite
well-known to Africanists (see, e.g., Bharati 1972: 149ff.; Dyatlov 1994; Brown 2006:
112–148; Bondarenko 2008; Usov 2010: 171–181), so the primary aim of this article is to
offer an explanation to the previously undiscovered (as to my knowledge) fact that
Zambian students are more tolerant to the non-African diasporas than Tanzanian, in
particular that they treat better both the Europeans and South Asians. This is reflected
vividly in the collected evidence – the respondents' answers to not only the direct
question about their attitude to the minorities, but also to such questions as: ‘What is your
attitude to the culture of the Tanzanian/Zambian Europeans/Indians’, ‘How would you react
if your child marries a Tanzanian/Zambian European/Indian?’, ‘Have you any friends
among Tanzanian/Zambian Europeans/Indians?’, and ‘Do you think that Tanzanian/Zambian
Europeans/Indians are well integrated in the Tanzanian/Zambian society?’ (Bondarenko et
al. 2013: 78–82).
In view of these results, it may seem illogical that there are more Tanzanians than
Zambians (35 vs. 21 per cent) who believe that there is really a single national culture in
their country, formed and shared by all the respective countries nationals, including the
European and South Asian minorities. However, the higher percent of positive answers to
the question about the existence of the integrated national culture among Tanzanian
respondents is interrelated with the smaller percent of those who preferred to answer that
in terms of culture their country is a mere composition of separate ethnic cultures (45 vs.
59 per cent for the Zambians) than of those who agree with the argument – in fact, most
unpleasant for diasporas – that a single autochthonous culture opposes the cultures of
migrants: 20 per cent in each state. In other words, this result indicates that the originally
non-African migrants' inclusion in or exclusion from the Tanzanian or Zambian nation is
determined by factors that are more general and inclusive than those related just to the
interactions between, and mutual attitudes of the originally African and non-African
citizens of the two states. One can soundly approach the situation with the non-African
diasporas and discuss it as a very particular but yet a special case of a more general
problem of formation of nations as supraethnic civil communities based on common
cultures, especially on shared systems of values and national mythologies.
Thus, the fundamental and vitally important for African countries problem of
national unity sets a context for our subsequent discussion of the Tanzanian and
Zambian students' attitude to the European and South Asian minorities in their states. In
fact, the whole socio-cultural ‘space’ of the discussion, from the very appearance of
migrants from Europe and South Asia in what is today Tanzania and Zambia, to the
existence of universities and students there, to the problem of nation-building in the
polities once created violently and artificially, is rooted directly in the colonial past.
However, as it will become clear from what follows, the account of both the pre-colonial
legacy of the Tanzanian and Zambian peoples and the manipulations with their
historical memory by the postcolonial states are no less important for understanding of
the contemporary situation, including providing an explanation of the similarities in and
differences between the attitude of the Tanzanian and Zambian university students to
their compatriots of the European and South Asian origins.
The analysis has revealed that a number of factors which, according to initial
suppositions, could influence the students' attitude to the European and South Asian
minorities in reality are of minor importance. These factors are the respondents' religious
affiliation (Christian or Muslim), coming from a larger or smaller ethnic groups and
settlements, and perhaps, financial position. The factor that does matter is the degree of
secularism/religiosity. For testing the relation between it and the respondents'
tolerance/xenophobia, I have compared answers to the question ‘How often do you
pray?’ (those not observing the dogma are regarded as people with more secularized
consciousness than those who observe) with generalization of answers to the question
about the attitude to European and Indian Tanzanians and Zambians. Basing on the result
of the comparison, it can be argued that secularization (to some extent also meaning
Europeanization, especially in Africa), related to the education growth, plays a
ambiguous role in shaping the Africans' attitude toward the originally non-African
minorities: while it promotes their better attitude to the Europeans (what can be regarded
as a factor of the Africans' general preference of Europeans to Indians, specific for this
social layer), it also leads to some decline in general ethno-racial tolerance. Less
secularized respondents are more tolerant; of the Zambian and Tanzanian students that
pray according to the dogmas only one per cent labeled as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ their
attitude to the Europeans and five per cent to the Indians while the respective figures for
the less religious students are four and fourteen per cent. My previous research
(Bondarenko 2008; 2010) has also revealed that the secularization growth, related
directly to raising the standard of education, leads to increase in interreligious and
decrease in interethnic and interracial tolerance, as secularization makes religious
commonalities and differences less important for a person by transferring his/her self-
and others identification center of gravity from the transcendental and universalistic
values of monotheistic religions to the ‘terrestrial’ and local ethno-cultural values.
In the meantime, I have expected less tolerance on the side of the respondents most
attached to traditional culture and its values. As the indicators of the ‘degree of
traditionalism’ I have considered answers to several questions, especially to the one
reflecting the very basis and key value of traditional African world outlook and religion
(e.g., Fortes 1966; Bondarenko 1996; Grinker et al. 2010: 283–322): ‘Do you think that it
is necessary to make offerings to the deceased ancestors' spirits, at least on important
occasions?’ As it could be predicted, there really are quite traditionally oriented young
intellectuals but they are few: in average, about one-third of the respondents in the two
countries, but there are more such people among the Tanzanian students. Indeed, among
those not devoted to the traditional values there are still slightly more of those whose
attitude to the non-African minorities is positive. So, traditionalism is a predictor, though
not strong, of the autochthons' perception of the diasporas.
In our opinion, the most significant fact explaining the differences in the students'
attitude to the colonialism-born minorities in the two post-colonial states, is that
contrary to Zambia, in Tanzania what today serves as the socio-cultural background
common for the overwhelming majority of its population formed long before the
establishment of the colonial regime (first, from 1885, German and then, in 1919–
1961/63, British). This background is the Swahili culture with its written language (Prins
1967; Mazrui and Shariff 1994; Middleton 1994; Horton and Middleton 2000; Knappert
2005). Thus, the growth of national consciousness and feelings can manifest itself mainly
(although not exclusively, of course) at the ethno-racial, not just ethnic level. Indeed,
only in the nineteenth century, the Swahili culture and language initially belonging to
even now relatively small-numbered coastal people, began to spread widely in the depth
of the continental part of the country (Mainland),4 while before that being generally
limited to the coastal stripe. Besides, it is not a completely African culture but a synthesis
of an original local culture with numerous and significant Arab cultural elements.5
However, today the vast majority of the Afrotanzanians irrespective of ethnic origin
and religion are proud of belonging to this culture and consider it as African and pre-
colonial, and hence not owing its emergence to colonialism, integrating people of
different African ‘tribes’ in the Tanzanian nation atop (not instead of) their particular
ethnic (‘tribal’) origins (Bondarenko 2008; Ivanchenko 2013). In fact, the Tanzanians
usually know the origin (not only ethnic but regional as well) of their friends, neighbors
and colleagues, what some of our European and Indian respondents in both countries
liked to emphasize arguing that the Tanzanian or Zambian nation is a fiction. But to know
does not inevitably mean to give priority; as a black Tanzanian professor told us, ‘We
[Afrotanzanians] are ethnically blind in some sense. …If you want to lose people's
respect, repeat every time from what ethnic group or region you are. Finally someone will
dare to ask you: “So… So what?’” For Afrotanzanians the Swahili culture, including
language, is the root, source, and background of the Tanzanian nation, which hence does
not owe its origin to the Europeans and European colonialism to a great extent. It is also
the pledge of generally peaceful relations between different Bantu peoples of the country
(Gerasimov 2008), although some of our older respondents, comparing the situation in
the first decades of independence and now, argued that today ethnicity is actualizing due
to economic or political reasons. During the survey undertaken in 2005, 77 per cent of
our 994 respondents coming from all social layers indicated Swahili as their mother-
tongue, while only six persons claimed for the Swahili ethnic origin.
These are several of many typical statements on this matter of the Tanzanians of
various ages and levels of education: ‘There is the Tanzanian nation and it is single, as we
all speak the same language – Swahili. There are more than 120 tribes in Tanzania but the
Swahili language unites us all…’ (a worker in his thirties); ‘Yes, there is the Tanzanian
nation. Swahili is not ethnicity. Notwithstanding if a Tanzanian is a Gogo, or Luguru,
or someone else by origin, we are united by the fact that we all speak the Swahili
language’ (a driver in his mid-forties); ‘To be a Tanzanian means to be able to speak
Swahili’ (a college student); ‘I believe that there is a single Tanzanian nation, because we
have a common language – Swahili’ (an elderly linguist); ‘We all speak Swahili, we are
all brothers and sisters’ (an Anglican bishop of approximately 45 years of age). Although,
as some respondents told me and what I had chances to notice myself (see also Ochieng
2015: 29–30), in the elite strata of society English can be the prestigious first language of
communication, as Gromova (2008: 92) argues (and many interviews do prove that she is
right), in general

…the ethno-linguistic situation in Tanzania is characterized by noticeable

predominance of the Swahili language and by its use in all the key functions of
 communicative sphere. The languages of relatively large ethnic groups, such
as the Sukuma, Nyamwezi, Haya and some others that preserve compactness
of residence, are not in such a threatening situation as the languages of small
ethnic groups that can disappear in the non-distant future under the influence
of mobility and dynamics of the contemporary Swahili language (see also
Yoneda 2010).

The Swahili language is spoken fluently not only by the Afrotanzanians but also by
almost all descendents of the non-African migrants, although it is the first language for
only a small part of them.6 Indeed, as our interviews show, a long life among Africans
has really changed some of the migrants' habits and customs (see also Oonk 2004).
Besides, again judging by our interviews, it made them realize the truth of the aphorism
‘When in Rome, live like the Romans do’. Finally, several Europeans and Indians told us
that precisely in most recent time their communities have become more open to various
forms of communication and co-operation with the indigenous Africans. Now some
Indians even provide arguments for the necessity of ‘dediasporization’, that is of favoring
the ‘Afroindian’ identity at the expense of ‘Indian’, and of maximal integration into the
Tanzanian sociocultural community (Oonk 2007a; 2007b). However, our interlocutor, a
recent Indian migrant to Tanzania with thus a fresh look at the situation, would be
supported by the majority of both Africans and non-Africans in her estimation of the
interrelations between particularly the ‘Indian’ and ‘Tanzanian’, that is Swahili, cultures:

The Indian and the Tanzanian cultures are of the kind that, even if there is a
blend to a certain stage, they cannot blend completely because these are two
different civilizations, each with a long history. They [Indo- and
Afrotanzanians] live, they work together – they are together and they will
continue being together, but I don't think the customs can ever blend to that
extent that they could become one [culture].

The Swahili culture serves not only as substratum for formation, but also as a means
of construction of the Tanzanian nation: the official ideology based on the ‘Ujamaa
theory’ elaborated by the first President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere, has contributed a lot
to the citizens' vision of the Tanzanian nation as not a legacy of colonialism (what, as I
have stressed above, is actually the point, although just in the colonial period the Swahili
culture and language acquired the all-regional spread, prominence and recognition):
 …the nation, which in Ujamaa theory carries the national culture transmitted
through Swahili, is in fact the state. Thus state ideology and National Culture
become synonymous – an unjustified synonymy which has allowed the
confusion between ‘objective’ Swahili culture (the historical culture of the
coastal societies) and ‘subjective’ political Swahili culture (that of
contemporary Tanzania)… (Blommaert 2006: 18; emphasis in the original).

The language policy is also aimed at strengthening the Swahili's positions as the
official national language within the framework of state ideology (Blommaert 1999;
2005; 2013; Topan 2008; Kanana 2013). This way the language policy contributes to the
Tanzanians’ collective self-perception as of a long existing and independently formed
nation. From the very birth of the sovereign state, Nyerere insisted on treating Swahili as
the national language of Tanzania what was enshrined in law in 1967. 7 Indeed,

[w]ith regard to deliberate attempts at promotion in both formal and informal

areas of life and the creation of a true national and official language, the post-
independence spread of Swahili among the population of Tanzania is regularly
noted to be a remarkably successful example of African national language
planning in a multi-ethnic context. Now, following considerable extended
efforts from the 1960s onwards, Swahili is extremely widely known in
Tanzania and used in education, government administration, and inter-ethnic
communication throughout the country (Simpson 2008: 10).

While Tanzania is a lucky exception to the rule, Zambia, as well as most of post-
colonial African states, does not have such an ‘objective’ – originally pre-colonial, at least
partly – background for unity to build a national ideology. None of the local cultures is
able to play this role; only in colonial time and due to colonialism the integration of
rather different, previously often unrelated (or related loosely, or conflicting) peoples of
contemporary Zambia began, so it is only the colonial socio-cultural legacy, including the
English language, that can serve as the historical and cultural background for the
formation of the Zambian nation. Some Zambians pointed out in their interviews that
peoples of Zambia ‘have similarities in cultures and traditions’, ‘speak similar languages’
and so forth but, of course, none of them could argue that they belong to one particular
autochthonous culture in the sense in which the Tanzanians coming from different ethnic
groups share the Swahili culture. There should be no doubt that just the existence of the
Swahili culture in Tanzania and lack of its analog in Zambia caused the difference in
the percentage of respondents in the two countries who believe that there is a single
integrated national culture, on the one hand, and that there are only separate ethnic
cultures, on the other hand, notwithstanding the Zambian state's attempts since the
1990s to represent multilingualism (and hence multiculturalism) as an asset rather than an
obstacle to nation-building (Marten and Kula 2008).
Furthermore, from the standpoint of nation-building prospects, Zambia has at least
one more disadvantage compared to Tanzania. In pre-colonial time in Tanganyika
(Tanzania's continental part now called Mainland) there were no strong centralized
polities except the Shambaa (Shambala) kingdom (Winans 1962; Feierman 1974) which
in the post-colonial independent state could become centers of tribalistic nationalist
regionalism or separatism and excite the neighboring peoples' historical memory of the
former subjugation.8 Some of our respondents named the lack of tribalism as a sign of
Tanzanian nation's existence alongside with the Swahili culture and language. In the
meantime in Zambia at least four such polities rose in the pre-colonial period (of the
Bemba, Chewa, Lozi, and Lunda [Langworthy 1972; Roberts 1973; Banda 2002; Macola
2002; Mainga 2010]), and the answer of a student to the question, ‘What... must be done
in the sphere of interethnic relations?’ is symptomatic: ‘[It is necessary] to improve
interethnic relations by removal of the inferiority complex that certain people from some
ethnic cultures have towards other ethnic cultures, for example, Bembas and Lozis’.
While the Tanzanian law does not recognize the power of chiefs, the Zambian
Constitution of 1996 declares the creation of the House of Chiefs which, as its member
told me openly in 2010, tries its best to influence all spheres of social and political life in
the country at both regional and national levels, although officially its prerogatives are
limited to so-called ‘traditional issues’. Village and district chiefs are also very influential
figures at their levels of competence (e.g., as we found out during our field research, they
cannot be avoided when a mining company intends to start and successfully carry on
business in their areas).
So, while in Tanzania the national unity has the background in the autochthonous
peoples' pre-colonial cultural history (and this fact is inflated and instilled in citizens'
minds via official ideology), in Zambia the background was created (unintentionally, of
course) only by the colonial regime. The majority of university students belong to the
part of society that professes civil values and is devoted to the idea of nation and national
values. Our evidence supports the hypothesis that the Zambian students' less one-sided
and actually better perception of the minorities that formed due to colonialism can be
explained as a projection of their less negative attitude to the country's colonial past as to
the time when (contrary to the situation in Tanzania) the foundations of national unity
were laid. In particular, among the Zambian respondents as distinct from the Tanzanians
(43 vs. 25 per cent) there are much more of those who think that the foundations of the
country's unity and progress were laid in colonial times; in Zambia this opinion is
practically as popular as the idea that colonialism ‘did mainly harm’, while in Tanzania
the latter clearly dominates. In the interviews many Zambian interlocutors told
unequivocally that the Zambian nation formed or began to form in the colonial time with
the country's gaining of independence as the climax point of the process. Here is a typical
statement: the nation ‘formed after North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia were
amalgamated in 1911 to form Northern Rhodesia which was declared independent
Zambia in 1964. Since then the Zambian nation has existed well intact even if we have 72
ethnic groups’.9 In sharp contrast to Tanzania, nobody related the Zambian nation
formation to the pre-colonial period, while several intellectuals (teachers and a
businessman), whom we interviewed, argued that even at present there is no Zambian
nation at all but only a conglomerate of more than seventy ‘tribal’ cultures.
Indeed, the more positive opinion of colonialism people have, the more tolerant to
their European and South Asian compatriots they are: the percentage grows from 79 of
those positive towards Europeans and 68 towards Indians among those who perceive
colonialism as mainly an evil to 91 and 76, respectively, among those for whom
colonialism is a source of national unity and progress. However, one should also note that
the interdependence between the perceptions of the colonial past and non-African
diasporas is incomplete: as I have pointed out in the very beginning, most of the
respondents had expressed tolerant attitude to both diasporas, so even among those who
believe that colonialism did mainly harm to the peoples of their respective countries,
positive estimations of the Europeans and South Asians prevail.
I have tested and discussed a number of other, less directly ‘historical’, factors that, as
it was supposed initially, could shape the attitude of the African by origin Tanzanian and
Zambian university students to the European and South Asian diasporas in their
respective countries (Bondarenko et al. 2013: 86–91). Not all the factors to which
consideration has been given have turned out significant; it relates to such factors as
Christian or Muslim affiliation, coming from a larger or smaller ethnic group and
settlement, and perhaps, the financial position. The role of secularization is important
although rather contradictory. Among the significant unidirectional factors that promote
a greater tolerance, besides a less negative estimation of the role of colonialism, one can
point a lower degree of concentration on the values of traditional culture; these factors
contribute to the Zambian students' higher degree of tolerance compared to that of their
Tanzanian peers.
However, I attach the greatest importance to the existing since the pre-colonial times
the Swahili culture and language alongside with almost complete absence of strong
centralized polities as a background for the autochthonous peoples' national integration in
Tanzania while in Zambia before the colonial period they lacked such a background. The
importance of these facts in itself is multiplied by the states' manipulations (use and
abuse) with the historical memory. Both the Tanzanian and Zambian states appeal to the
historical memory of the peoples in attempts to rely on the historic heritage each of them
has got for the sake of construction of the nations.
These are the historically interrelated reasons why in the process of nation-building
the Afrotanzanians can feel more acutely the unity within their community and hence,
exclude their non-African by origin co-citizens more often and rigidly than the
Afrozambians do. Thus, the different socio-cultural backgrounds reinforced by
differences in the historical memory of the pre-colonial and colonial past used and abused
by the postcolonial states, to some extent underpin the students' differing (at the statistical
level) attitude to the colonialism-born non-African minorities, though these minorities'
position in the contemporary Tanzanian and Zambian societies is quite the same,
remaining very specific and in a sense ambivalent.

CONCLUSION: WHAT AWAITS THE POSTCOLONIAL NATIONS?

So, due to better historical preconditions, today Tanzania is closer than Zambia (and most
other African countries) to formation of a nation as a community of co-citizens devoted
to single basic values, sharing common culture and identity atop local and particular, and
for whom loyalty to the nation-state is primary with respect to regional, religious, ethnic,
and other divisions. A comparison of the Afrotanzanian and Afrozambian university
students’ attitude to the compatriots of non-African origins paradoxically testifies to this.
But this comparison is tempting to think of the possible existence of one more paradox.
Its essence becomes clear when the analogy between sociocultural and economic history
of the postcolonial states is drawn. In the first decades of independence many of them
sought to implement the so-called ‘catch-up development model’, that is to create an
economic system similar to that of the developed countries. This model did not justify
itself: while the postcolonial countries tried to industrialize, the First World was already
becoming postindustrial, and the gap between it and the Third World was only growing.
Likewise in the postcolonial states was and continues to be set the task of nation-building
modeled on the European nations of the Modern Time, despite immense difficulties,
explainable, besides all the rest, by differences between the European and African (and
Asian) traditional political cultures, social institution, value systems and so on. However,
today in the West itself they have to try to move away from the concept of nation
established by the end of the 18th century, first of all due to the French revolution (see,
e.g.: Dann and Dinwiddy 1988; Bell 2001; Keitner 2007). Now, the Western states have
to seek solutions to a completely different problem – of supporting their citizens’ unity at
preservation of cultural diversity brought by migrants from all over the world. Not a
single cultural identity based on a single value system and dominating over local and
particular identities, but equitable coexistence of many cultural identities is accentuated
nowadays as a new basic national value, as a source of national development in the
present conditions of intensive globalization.1 At this, cultural nationalism is losing
congruence to patriotism: as national patriotism, it praises devotion to co-citizens as
people of the same culture and value system, while nowadays co-citizenship does not
presuppose inevitably such a unity. That is why citizenship is becoming more and more a
legal category, gradually losing cultural and national content. While in the past, nations
appeared in the result of bringing into conformity of cultural and political identities,
nowadays they may not coincide again: Today, to be a member of nation means, among
other things, to be tolerant to co-citizens with other cultures.
In such a situation, is not the position of Zambia (and postcolonial countries, like her,
which are in the majority) more promising than of Tanzania? Furthermore, in Zambia the
main dividing line runs between cultures of the autochthonous peoples, the differences
between which are not as great as between the cultures of natives and migrants – the main
‘cultural actors’ in the present-day Western countries. Today, this question does not have
a valid response, including in view of the unclear prospects of multiculturalism in the
West, which continues to play a leading role in the global socio-cultural processes.

NOTES
1
Respectively, globalization – sociocultural, political, economic – questions the
future of the nation-state as a form of political organization and of the concept of
sovereignty as the foundation of its legitimacy. It should not be overlooked that the
nation-state is a historical event, what means that it appears in specific historical
conditions and disappears with their change. In the form in which the nation-state is
known to now, it formed in Europe and North America in the Modern Time and
flourished in the 19th –20th centuries, being adequate to the realities of the world of
industrial capitalism and cultural nationalism. Other trends, related to globalization and
postindustrialism, dominate in the world nowadays. Not surprisingly, the Modern-Time
European concept of sovereignty as the main attribute of nation-state, that sees a separate
nation-state as the basic unit of international relations, is in crisis, too (see: Turner 2004:
94–97; Kapferer and Bertelsen 2012: 29–94, 163–304). Creation of the European Union
in 1993 became the first attempt (with still an unclear result) to endow transnational
institutions the supreme sovereignty (and not to create a union of sovereign states, like
the United Nations, the African Union and so forth). Evidently, in the postindustrial and
postmodern world, we will see the birth of the postnation-state, based on refusal from
national sovereignty (but not independence) as the state’s main attribute in favor of
transstate governance institutions. In parallel, a global transnational culture will be
forming, that will not abolish but unite national cultures.
2
On these communities history in Tanzania and Zambia vide stricto: Dotson and
Dotson 1968; Don Nanjira 1976; Nagar 1996; Voigt-Graf 1998; Macmillan and Shapiro
1999; Lobo 2000; Phiri 2000, 2001; Lvova 2005; Haig 2007; Twaddle 2010; Burton
2013. It is important to note that in reality those called Europeans can be English, Greeks,
Serbs or of other origins, while Indians include people of many South Asian ethnic
groups and religious communities, many of them originate not from the present-day
Republic of India but from Pakistan, or Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka; however,
notwithstanding all these and other sharp divisions and even splits (e.g., by caste among
Hindus), Africans usually consider them just as two homogeneous communities, without
making distinctions between, for example, Gujarati and Sinhalese, Hindu and Muslim
Asians.
3
For this reason we do not deal here with the students' attitude to non-African
minorities that either formed in precolonial time (like the Omani core of the Arab
community in Tanzania [see: Prins 1967; Lodhi 1986; Korotayev, Khaltourina 2008]) or
are forming actively nowadays, particularly the Chinese diaspora in both states (Hsu 2007;
Rosenberg 2013).
4
It is worth noting that the Europeans played a significant part in this process. In
particular, the Christian missionaries often preached in Swahili, and Swahili became the
language of instruction in missionary schools (Gromova 2012: 256).
 5
See, for example, Zhukov 1983; Hurreiz 1985; Allen 1993; Whiteley 1993; Horton
and Middleton 2000; Middleton 2004.
6
Mainly for the Omani Arabs – the oldest non-local community in the country that
mixes with the Afrotanzanian majority most eagerly. Furthermore, very few of them are
fluent in Arabic. The process of losing ethnic languages is on among the Indians too, but
in their case the ethnic languages are displaced by English (Oonk 2007b), while Swahili
is important for most Indians as the official language of the country and the language in
which they communicate with the Afrotanzanians.
7
Although at the same time he made efforts to prevent disappearance of English from
school curriculum and public life (see Ovchinnikov 2005: 59–61; Legère 2006: 176;
Swilla 2009: 3–4; Gromova 2010: 51–52; Hamisi 2010: 46–47).
8
The problem of Zanzibar, the successor to the slave-trade Arab Sultanate of Zanzibar
and, together with Tanganyika, a constituent member of the United Republic of Tanzania,
is essentially different, although naturally has strong direct impact on the nation building
process in the country (Peter and Othman 2006; Mwakikagile 2008; Shivji 2008;
Demintseva 2011).
9
Seventy-two is the official number of local ‘tribes’ in Zambia which hence constitute
the state’s racial majority.

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APPENDICES
The Appendices include, as examples, the Questionnaire Form and General Plan of an
Interview used in Zambia. Those used in Tanzania did not differ from them, except
natural changes of names of the countries, ethnic groups and so forth. Besides, in
Tanzania the questionnaire was available not only in English but also in the Swahili
language.

Appendix 1
Questionnaire Form
Dear Madam / Sir,
The Institute for African Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences in co-
operation with the University of Zambia is conducting a research into the intercultural
relations in Zambia. We do appreciate your help and believe that our research will be
beneficial for your people and country. Please, note that the questionnaire is anonymous
and is predestined for scholarly purposes only. Be so kind as to answer the questions
below:
1. Your sex:  Male  Female
2. Ethnic origin (e.g.: ‘Bemba’, ‘Lozi’; if mixed, please, specify, e.g.: ‘Bemba and
Lozi’) _______________________
3. Have you any relatives among people of other ethnic origins?
 Yes  No
If yes, please specify: who and of what origin (e.g.: ‘wife, Bemba and Lozi’; ‘cousin,
Bemba’) ___________________
4. Denomination (e.g.: ‘Catholic’, ‘Anglican’) _________________
5. Place of birth:  village  small town  large town (city)  Lusaka  outside
Zambia
6. How often do you communicate with your relatives living outside your home
settlement?  at least once a month
  several times a year  not more often than once a year
 I do not have relatives outside my home settlement
7. What is your mother tongue? ______________________________
8. What other languages can you speak? _______________________
9. What is your future profession? ____________________________
10. Do you think that your ethnic origin may influence your career?
 Yes, positively  Yes, negatively  Yes, either positively or negatively  No
11. How can you characterise your financial situation?  Very good  Good 
So-so  Bad
12. Marital status  Single  Married  Divorced  Widow(er)
13. Do you admit that a woman may have the right to disobey her husband?  Yes 
Yes, but only in some specific situations  No, never
14. How many children do you consider optimal for a family? ____
_____________________________________________
15. How would you react if your child marries:
an African Zambian?  Positively  Negatively
 Depends on concrete person
a Zambian European?  Positively  Negatively
 Depends on concrete person
a Zambian Indian?  Positively  Negatively
 Depends on concrete person
16. Do you have friends among:
African Zambians?  Yes, many  Yes, a few  No
Zambian Europeans?  Yes, many  Yes, a few  No
Zambian Indians?  Yes, many  Yes, a few  No
17. Whom do you communicate most often in your neighbourhood with?  People
of my ethnic group  People of other ethnic groups.
 People of my and other ethnic groups on more or less equal terms.
 People of my religion irrespective of their ethnic group.
18. Which of the statements is closer to your opinion?
 There is no single integrated Zambian culture; there are cultures of many different
ethnic groups.
 There is no single integrated Zambian culture; the cultures of originally Zambian
peoples form one culture, while the immigrants’ cultures are separate.
 There is a single integrated Zambian culture that unites cultures
of all the peoples living in Zambia.
19. Do you think that:
Zambian Europeans are well integrated into Zambian society?
 Yes  So-so  No
Zambian Indians are well integrated into Zambian society?
 Yes  So-so  No
Recent immigrants from other African states are well integrated into Zambian
society?
 Yes  So-so  No
20. What is your attitude to the culture of:
African Zambians?  Very good  Good  Indifferent  Bad  Very bad
 Zambian Europeans?  Very good  Good  Indifferent  Bad  Very bad
Zambian Indians?  Very good  Good  Indifferent  Bad  Very bad
21. Do you know traditional songs and fairy tales of your people?
 Yes, many  Yes, but not many  Yes, but very few  No
22. Do you think that it is necessary to make offerings to the deceased ancestors’
spirits, at least on important occasions?  Yes  No
Are such rituals performed in your family?  Yes  No
23. Whom would you consult in the case of disease?
 A professional doctor and, if he or she does not help, a traditional doctor
 A traditional doctor and if he or she does not help, a professional doctor
 Only a professional doctor  Only a traditional doctor
 I do not know what ‘a traditional doctor’ is
24. How often do you pray?  Never  On religious holidays only  Not every
day  Every day (please, indicate how many times a day ______ )
25. In your opinion, which of the arguments below is closer to the truth?
 Colonialism did mainly harm to the peoples of Zambia.
 Colonialism was nothing more than a short episode in the country and her peoples'
long history.
 In the colonial time the background of the present-day unity and progress of Zambia
and her people was laid.
26. What is your attitude to the Western mass culture?  Very good  Good 
Indifferent  Bad  Very bad
27. Do you think that political organisations should unite people of the same ethnic
origin?  Yes  No
28. Do you think that political organisations should unite people of the same religion?
 Yes  No
29. What, in your opinion, is the attitude of the state to your ethnic group?  Very
good  Good  Indifferent  Bad  Very bad
30. What are your sources of information?  Newspapers  Television  Internet 
Public meetings  Radio  Teachers  Friends
 Other (please indicate: ______________________________________)
31. What is your personal attitude to:
African Zambians?  Very Good  Good  Indifferent  Very Bad  Bad
Zambian Europeans?  Very Good  Good  Indifferent  Very Bad  Bad
Zambian Indians?  Very Good  Good  Indifferent  Very Bad  Bad
32. Do you think that the interethnic relations in Zambia are good today?  Yes 
No
33. What and whom by must be done in this sphere now or in the future?
_____________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Thank you for co-operation !

Appendix 2
General Plan of an Interview
I. Personal questions
 1. Can you describe your family? How long does it live in this city? Do you have
parents, brothers and sisters, spouse, children? Do they all live with you? How often do
you communicate with your close and distant relatives that live not in your home
settlement?
2. How old are you?
3. Where have you studied?
4. What is your occupation?
5. What is your mother tongue? Can you speak any other languages? If yes, what
languages?
6. What is your religion and denomination? Have you any relatives among people of
other religions or denominations? If yes, who and of what faith?
7. What is the name of your people (ethnic group, tribe)? Have you any relatives
among people of other ethnic origins? If yes, who and of what origin?
8. How do you feel in the first, second, and third place: ‘Zambian’, ‘Zambian African
(Zambian Indian, Zambian European)’, ‘Bemba (Gujarati, etc.)’?
II. Ethnic problems
9. What are the features which, in your opinion, distinguish your people from other
peoples of Zambia?
10. How do you see the role of your ethnic group in the life of Zambia in the past,
now, and in the future?
11. Do you know ethnic origins of your friends, neighbours, and colleagues? People
of what origins do you communicate most often with? In what situations?
12. How can you describe Zambians of African origin?
13. What do people usually say about them?
14. How can you describe Zambian Europeans?
15. What do people usually say about them?
16. How can you describe Zambian Indians?
17. What do people usually say about them?
18. Are there any peoples in Zambia the relations between which were in the past or
are now typically especially friendly or hostile?
19. How do you see the interethnic relations in Zambia in the past, now, and in the
future?
20. What have the state, public organizations, etc. been doing and what (else) should
be done for the intercultural relations harmonization?
21. What have the state, public organizations, etc. been doing and what (else) should
be done for the younger generations' rising culturally tolerant?
22. Do you think there is the ‘Zambian nation’? Why? If yes, when has it formed?
What are the distinctive characteristics of Zambian identity and Zambian culture? If no,
are there prospects for its formation? Is it desirable?