The author looks at the interplay of forces at work when the union of Tanganyika and the island nation of Zanzibar was formed in April 1964: Cold War intrigues and rivalries; Pan-African solidarity and commitment to regional and continental unity among other factors. What role, if any, did the Cold War play in facilitating the merger of the two East African countries? Was it an African initiative by the nationalist leaders of Tanganyika and Zanzibar to unite the two countries? Did Pan-Africanism and pan-African solidarity play a primary or a minor role? Or was it the prime determinant? Other factors include fear of a communist regime which could have been established in Zanzibar after the revolution, turning the island nation into what the United States and other Western powers feared would be “the Cuba of Africa”; security concerns by Tanganyika if Zanzibar, so close to the mainland, were to have a hostile regime or became unstable, thus posing a threat to the mainland; fear by Zanzibari leaders especially President Abeid Karume who was worried that his political enemies, especially the Marxist-Leninist Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu, could oust him from power and the only way he could be secure would be by uniting his country with Tanganyika for protection by a bigger and more powerful neighbour. What role, if any, did all those factors play in the unification of the two countries? Why did Zanzibari leaders such as Kassim Hanga and even Abdulrahman Babu, well-known Marxist-Leninists, support the union with Tanganyika, knowing full well that it would deprive them of their power base in Zanzibar and thus make them “allies” of their enemies, the United States and other Western powers who encouraged the merger of the two countries to neutralise them to prevent them from establishing a communist regime in Zanzibar that would pose a threat to Western geopolitical and strategic interests in the region and in Africa as a whole? And why do the leaders of Tanzania mainland want to maintain the union at any cost although Zanzibar is an economic burden on the mainland? The book includes some declassified material and interviews with senior American diplomats who were in Tanganyika and Zanzibar when the merger of the two countries took place.

The author looks at how the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar was formed to create the new nation of Tanzania. He contends that Anglo-American geopolitical interests in the context of the Cold War were not the driving force behind the merger but the initiatives taken by the leaders of Tanganyika and Zanzibar to unite their countries. He also states that the leaders who played the biggest role in forming the union were President Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika, Tanganyika's minister of foreign affairs, Oscar Kambona; President Abeid Karume of Zanzibar, and Zanzibar's vice president Abdallah Kassim Hanga - but especially Nyerere and Kambona because of the decisions they made and implemented to lay the foundation and facilitate the merger. He cites various sources to document his study. The work is a counter-thesis to the argument that the leaders of the United States and Britain, including their diplomats in the two East African countries, conceived and facilitated formation of the union to protect Western interests in the region. It is argued that they did so in order to neutralise communist influence in Zanzibar because the island nation was in danger of becoming a communist satellite controlled by the Soviets or the Chinese if it came under the leadership of Zanzibar's minister of foreign affairs, Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu, who was considered to be pro-Chinese, or Kassim Hanga who was considered to be pro-Soviet. That would have provided a base for the Soviets or the Chinese and their allies to spread communism and undermine Western interests in the region and in Africa as a whole if indeed, as it was feared by the West, Zanzibar became "the Cuba of Africa." The author also looks at the challenges the union faced when it was being formed and the other challenges it has faced and continues to face since then. The work is an updated version of the author's previous books on the formation of Tanzania, the first and only union of independent states ever formed on the continent since the end of colonial rule.

An examination of how the constitutional frameworks for autonomies around the world really work.

Originally published: Brighton, England: Book Guild, 2007.

In the late 1950s, Communists decided that Zanzibar offered them a particular favorable opportunity for expanding their influence.

Issa Shivji's book, first published in 1990 provided the first detailed analysis of the fundamental legal foundations of the union in 1964 between Tanganyika and Zanzibar which led to the birth of the United Republic of Tanzania. Used by students of law, politics and the Tanzania union as a basic reference work the book is a product of wide ranging scholarship and close analysis of legal texts that constitute the primary sources of the Union-and the author's long engagement with the morality of constitutional politics that bear on Zanzibar's status in the Union. Out of print for over a decade this second expanded edition includes a few minor revisions, comments and references have been put in square brackets to distinguish them from the original text.

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