Title: Race, nation, and citizenship in post-colonial Africa. The case of Tanzania
Abstract: This neatly structured and sophisticated book undoubtedly contributes to a better understanding of one of Africa's exemplary nationalisms – the Tanzanian nationalist struggle and nation-building project. In a well-documented narrative the author addresses a general audience, which is one of the strengths of the volume, while at the same time contributing to the growing scholarly literature. Aminzade highlights and connects the parts that constitute the nation-building context, thus providing an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complexity of national identity formation. The book uses a ‘temporal scheme that identifies colonial, state socialist, and neoliberal eras’ and discusses ‘critical turning points’ (p. 26) signalling the change of contexts in which leading political actors contested the major items on the agenda: race, citizenship, equality, self-reliance, neo-liberalization, and the place and role of the nation state in the global economy. The book is divided into three parts and consists of eleven chapters, together with a useful chronology of events (1885 to 2010). The author thoroughly analyses the struggle for independence and the efforts to establish a national political community, which can finally cultivate the feeling of belonging to a nation. One of his stated aims is to document ‘conflicts among nationalist leaders over the meaning and boundaries’ of this belonging (p. 8). Taking a dialectical approach the author explores the dynamics of contention via certain contradictions between ‘economic and political processes – between capital accumulation in a global economy and political legitimation in a nation-state’ (p. 10). Compared to its neighbours, Tanzania seems to have remained on a unique development trajectory, possessing lasting political stability, largely thanks to visionary founding President Julius Nyerere, who was ‘staunchly committed to racial equality and to the quest for modernity and economic development’ (p. 18), in which he encouraged contributions from everyone, ranging from locals to Asians and other foreigners. As Aminzade explains, Africanization to Nyerere meant ‘the employment of local people of any race’ (p. 80). The distinctive Tanzanian approach derives from a specific political culture that is linked to the characteristic values, attitudes, behaviours, and aspirations of people that comprise the Tanzanian state.