The Research and Education for Democracy in Tanzania project is based at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam. This is the second in a series of publications documenting scholarly opinions and research findings. Issues relating to Tanzania's political trends are discussed, with a focus on the political environment and processes that surrounded the run up to the October 1995 general elections. It brings together analytical discussions on why Tanzania is yet to establish an enlightened civil society, the weaknesses and prospects of the new political parties, and the gender imbalances and disadvantaged position of women as political actors.

This volume explores the specific political orientations of Tanzania: attitudes toward the political system and its various parts, and attitudes toward the role of the self in the system.

Since its founding in 1964, the United Republic of Tanzania has used music, dance, and other cultural productions as ways of imagining and legitimizing the new nation. Focusing on the politics surrounding Swahili musical performance, Kelly Askew demonstrates the crucial role of popular culture in Tanzania's colonial and postcolonial history. As Askew shows, the genres of ngoma (traditional dance), dansi (urban jazz), and taarab (sung Swahili poetry) have played prominent parts in official articulations of "Tanzanian National Culture" over the years. Drawing on over a decade of research, including extensive experience as a taarab and dansi performer, Askew explores the intimate relations among musical practice, political ideology, and economic change. She reveals the processes and agents involved in the creation of Tanzania's national culture, from government elites to local musicians, poets, wedding participants, and traffic police. Throughout, Askew focuses on performance itself—musical and otherwise—as key to understanding both nation-building and interpersonal power dynamics.

This book provides a fascinating, up-to-date overview of the social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes of Tanzania. In Culture and Customs of Tanzania, author Kefa M. Otiso presents an approachable basic overview of the country's key characteristics, covering topics such as Tanzania's land, peoples, languages, education system, resources, occupations, economy, government, and history. This recent addition to Greenwood's Culture and Customs of Africa series also contains chapters that portray the culture and social customs of Tanzania, such as the country's religion and worldview; literature, film, and media; art, architecture, and housing; cuisine and traditional dress; gender roles, marriage, family structures, and lifestyle; and music, dance, and drama.

In Performance and Politics in Tanzania, Laura Edmondson examines how politics, social values, and gender are expressed on stage. Now a disappearing tradition, Tanzanian popular theatre integrates comic sketches, acrobatics, melodrama, song, and dance to produce lively commentaries on what it means to be Tanzanian. These dynamic shows invite improvisation and spontaneous and raucous audience participation as they explore popular sentiments. Edmondson asserts that these performances overturn the boundary between official and popular art and offer a new way of thinking about African popular culture. She discusses how the blurring of state agendas and local desires presents a charged environment for the exploration of Tanzanian political and social realities: What is the meaning of democracy and who gets to define it? Who is in power, and how is power exposed or concealed? What is the role of tradition in a postsocialist state? How will the future of the nation be negotiated? This engaging book provides important insight into the complexity of popular forms of expression during a time of political and social change in East Africa.

Full parliamentary democracy did not come quickly or easily to Tanzania. In 1962, the first constitution of Tanzania as an independent republic shifted power from parliament to the executive: specifically to the presidency. In 1965, the interim constitution further eroded the powers of parliament in favour of a one party state, controlled by the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). Parliament became little more than a token, rubber-stamping organisation. This multi-contributory study traces the development of multi-party democracy in Tanzania from the appointment of the first two chiefs to Tanganyika's colonial Legislative Council in 1945 to the present day. It highlights the struggle for supremacy between parliament and the executive during the period from 1968 to 1992, when parliament began to assert itself as a vibrant multi-party institution.