youth and citizenship in east africa || the young pioneers and the rituals of citizenship in...

The Young Pioneers and the Rituals of Citizenship in Revolutionary ZanzibarAuthor(s): Thomas BurgessSource: Africa Today, Vol. 51, No. 3, Youth and Citizenship in East Africa (Spring, 2005), pp.3-29Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4187666 .

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The Young Pioneers and the Rituals of Citizenship in Revolutionary Zanzibar Thomas Burgess

Inspired by Eastern European precedents, Zanzibar's revolutionary regime in the 1960s and 1970s established the Young Pioneers as an institution through which to inculcate the sort of discipline perceived as necessary for nation building. I argue that through an emphasis on Pioneer parades, revolutionary elites allowed themselves to be persuaded by forms and appearances. They prized marching bodies of young men and women more for their visual effect than for the discipline they produced. Parades provided periodic evidence of good citizenship and conformity; they functioned as a strategy of display and a ritual of citizenship, more than as a discipline in the Foucauldian sense. This distinction explains how a rare accumulation of power on the part of a postcolonial elite in Africa could be both spectacular and ephemeral at the same time.

Introduction

The Zanzibari Revolution of 1964 put into power a regime that placed nation building at the top of its agenda. Party elites defined nation building in part as the full development of the nation's productive capacities-development that required the proper mobilization of all national, and especially human, resources. To mobilize such resources, the regime sought to inculcate social discipline. Under presidents Abeid Karume (1964-1972) and Aboud Jumbe (1972-1984), discipline emerged as an anchoring principle, from which all individual habits and deeds could be assessed in light of perceived national interests: it was an ethic of work, service, and production; it demanded renunciation of selected patterns of leisure and consumption. For over a decade, nationalists in Zanzibar exalted the labor power of the body, and regarded the possession of discipline as essential for full citizenship. According to Foucault, modern techniques for imposing discipline first appeared in Europe during the Enlightenment as a series of scattered minor processes "to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply"



(1977:208). Disciplinary institutions evolved certain common methods, such as distributing ranks, imposing examinations, carefully measuring time, and performing physical exercises. The art of surveillance developed as a means by which to record and evaluate individuals' movements and conduct. Schools, hospitals, prisons, factories, and army encampments were at first islands of discipline, which in the eighteenth century began to develop into a general network and formula of domination. According to Foucault, the spread of techniques through which to inculcate discipline coincided in the West with economic takeoff: they became rooted "in the most important, most central[,J and most productive sectors of society. They became attached to some of the great essential functions: factory production, the transmission of knowledge, the diffusion of aptitudes and skills, the war machine" (1977:211).

Foucault made his distaste for the new disciplines clear: they insidi- ously objectify individuals; they were "petty cruelties" and "small acts of cunning" (1977:308); he nevertheless conceded, however, that individuals are not repressed, altered, or "amputated" by such techniques, but are instead "carefully fabricated" (1977:217). The general formulas of disciplinary power, moreover, can "be operated in the most diverse political regimes, apparatuses[,] or institutions" (Foucault 1977:221). Europeans applied such formulas at various times and with varying effectiveness in colonial Africa. According to Achille Mbembe, "Colonialism was, to a large extent, a way of disciplining bodies with the aim of making better use of them, docility and productivity going hand in hand" (2001:113). Although Mbembe and others have recognized discipline as a colonial project, it was also one shared by socialists quite serious about enhancing their societies' productive capacities. Reflecting upon the power, wealth, and knowledge of socialist societies in the twentieth century, many nationalists in Zanzibar became convinced their apparent success was partially a consequence of their advanced methods for inculcating youth discipline, methods that went beyond the nexus of school, factory, army, and prison discipline observed by Foucault.

For many nationalists, socialist conscription of youths reflected the authority structure of an ancient social order in Africa, in which seniors to varying extents controlled the labor of juniors. Nationalists found in associations such as the Young Pioneers a series of disciplinary procedures, rituals, and innovations that gave modern institutional form to historical memories of patriarchal control. Socialist youth mobilization could be viewed as simply a more formal and secular means by which to extract labor service than invoking the prestige of village patriarchs. Gerontocratic discourse in fact shared with socialist tradition a common emphasis on "the moral economy of the gift," in which, according to Jeffrey Brooks, the Soviet state was "presumed to dispense necessary goods and services, and the tremendously beholden citizens were obligated to provide their labor in return" (2000:xv, xvi). The labor provided by younger citizens, however, needed to be tamed, collectivized, and rendered more efficient: while their mobilization borrowed legitimacy from both socialism and local

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gerontocratic discourse, its purpose was unique in island history. National- ists in Zanzibar supported a nation-building agenda with few precedents in the precolonial world, an agenda that depended on increases in productivity only attainable, they believed, through the adoption of a series of disciplinary techniques imported from overseas.

The Zanzibari case, and that of the Young Pioneers in particular, suggests "the meaning of development [in Africa] reflected the engagement of local mobilization with global discourses, and of local discourses with global structures of power" (Cooper 1997:85). I wish to illustrate in the following how local and global discourses, in general agreement about the relationship between nation building, youth discipline, and the moral economy of the gift, informed nationalist practice in East Africa. The history of the Young Pioneers in Zanzibar can be read, however, in other ways than as merely a revealing episode in the intellectual history of nationalism: it demonstrates how a nationalist state sought to produce power. Through a series of rituals and exercises, officials called upon youths periodically to provide evidence of their good citizenship and conformity. I argue these efforts were by no means trivial or peripheral to the state's nation-building agenda; instead, nationalist elites regarded such spectacles as compelling visual arguments for the legitimacy and sustainability of the revolution. A typical Young Pioneer parade submitted, as bodies of evidence, thousands of uniformed young people, whose synchronized movements were supposed to demonstrate the sort of discipline, unity, and regimentation upon which officials believed nation building relied. They momentarily affirmed the feasibility of what was intended to be a revolution in island society in attitudes toward service and productivity. Marches were intended as expressions of the vigor and animation of the new state, of the emergence of a deep yearning for progress among its youngest citizens. As in fascist Italy, "rituals became ends in themselves, at once reality and symbols" of a new spirit that animated the bodies of citizens (Falasca-Zamponi 1997:113). Merely formal acceptance and execution of such gestures was sufficient; a well-ordered march was "the external tangible proof that people were following the rules" (Falasca-Zamponi 1997:116) and ready to build the nation: "The content was derived from the form" (Falasca-Zamponi 1997:117).

The history of Young Pioneer exercises does not conform to the negotiation paradigm by which contemporary scholars commonly inter- pret the relationships among citizens, subjects, and the state in Africa. Evidence available to this researcher suggests, rather, that party elders willingly expended considerable resources on a ritual of citizenship like the parade because it imparted pleasure as an example of a fairly neat, one- dimensional, top-down assertion of state power, free of visual hints of irrepressible individualism, resistance, or negotiation. In official eyes, the beauty of the parade was that it offered little space for revision or sponta- neity. In revolutionary Zanzibar, the parade did not encourage contested visions; its intended message was unambiguous and obvious for all to see. While the Young Pioneers provoked considerable opposition in Zanzibari

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society, it was characterized by silence and indifference. Most of all, it was offstage. The rituals of citizenship in Zanzibar were limited in their potency by such agency, and by time: the state could not guarantee young people who marched before their eyes would demonstrate, in their typical routines the next day, the same sense of discipline and solidarity. Like most rituals, what efficacy the parade did possess was transitory: some young people may have enjoyed the excitement of merging into a marching mass, but they did not necessarily leave the parade ground as new individuals.

In understanding the power relations manifested in the parades of revolutionary Zanzibar, Foucault offers valuable insights. He considered parades innovative techniques to expose bodies to maximum surveillance in order to increase their utility and efficiency. Each march was an education in the efficient gestures of industrial society. Each parade was "an ostentatious form of the examination. In it the 'subjects' were presented as 'objects' to the observation of a power that was manifested only by its gaze" (Foucault 1977:188). Foucault contrasted the parade in this respect with a monarch's triumphal procession, in which he placed himself on grand display for all his subjects to see. The parade therefore produced an inver- sion of visibility that marked it as a departure from the costly and violent disciplinary techniques of the past, toward the invisible and more effective means of the present. The contrast was between "a triumphant power, which because of its own excess can pride itself on its omnipotence," and "a modest, suspicious power, which functions as a calculated, but permanent economy" (Foucault 1977:170). To extend Foucault's insights further by employing his own criteria more rigorously, I argue the innovation of the parade ought to be categorized as a transitional moment between old and new techniques. This was because the march, while locating bodies in a field of surveillance, did not classify or impose hierarchies. The parade was not "a machinery that assures dyssymetry [sic], disequilibrium, difference" (Foucault 1977:202). The greatest limitation on the power of the parade was its objectification of the collective, and not the individual. Collective objectification permitted individuals to remain anonymous in an undif- ferentiated mass. Their freedom from analysis and intelligibility reduced the "visible brilliance" (Foucault 1977:185) of the official gaze. Appearing identical in movement and appearance thwarted attempts to extract and constitute knowledge about individuals, to assemble a "meticulous archive" (Foucault 1977:189). In revolutionary Zanzibar, the parade ground was thus a field of surveillance-but a space of neither differentiation nor documenta- tion. The constitution of knowledge-power relations was frustrated by the parade's very nature as a spectacle of mass conformity.

Foucault wrote that modern techniques of discipline abolish the crowd, "the compact mass," in favor of "a collection of separated individu- alities" (1977:201). For discipline truly to emerge, a new individual, and not a crowd, must be carefully fabricated. And yet taking their techniques from the socialist world, nationalists in Zanzibar sought not to abolish crowds, but to produce them. Marching bodies of young men and women were

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prized more for the visual effect of discipline than for the discipline they actually produced. The parade functioned primarily, therefore, as a ritual, a ceremony of sovereignty, rather than as a discipline in the Foucauldian sense. This distinction explains how a rare accumulation of power on the part of a postcolonial elite in Africa could be both impressive and ephemeral at the same time. Young Pioneer exercises displayed all the power and limitations of rituals.

The Rise of the Young Pioneers

Frederick Cooper has described efforts by the British in Zanzibar in the first two decades of the twentieth century to employ the legal and penal apparatus of the state to enforce the work habits and discipline of industrial society in the islands. Vagrancy, drunkenness, adultery, and "traditional" dancing were targeted for harassment and state intervention. The British attempted to compel Africans to abandon what the British considered "their irregular and unruly habits." Former "slaves had to be made fit for an orderly society and taught self-discipline" (Cooper 1987:69). By the 1920s, however, the British lost interest in imposing discipline through the court system. Start- ing in the 1940s, they invested instead in a growing network of disciplinary institutions geared specifically toward Zanzibari youth. The Boy Scout organization, already by World War II well established in Zanzibar Town, expanded rapidly after the war into rural areas of Zanzibar's two principal islands, Unguja and Pemba. The British also multiplied their investment in the construction and staffing of colonial schools. By 1959, 35 percent of the boys and 22 percent of the girls of the islands were studying in colonial primary schools, learning the Roman alphabet and English as a second language (Bennett 1978:244). More students than ever before were also able to attend tertiary institutions overseas: in 1963, more than 300 Zanzi- baris were studying in the United Kingdom alone (Education Department 1963). In the early 1960s, an estimated additional total of approximately 500 Zanzibari students earned scholarships to colleges and universities in socialist nations.' These students benefited from the sudden discovery of the strategic importance of Africa by nations of the Second World engaged in the Cold War. They sought to introduce socialism to colonial territories such as Zanzibar, and gave scholarships a high priority. Like Christian mis- sionaries, socialist nations focused their efforts on African youth, and were convinced the school was their most effective proselyting tool.

Such scholarships to the East were arranged by and channeled through leading Zanzibari socialists, such as Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu and Ali Sultan Issa, who were themselves members of the postwar student diaspora. Ali Sultan Issa set out at the age of nineteen in 1951 on a quest to see the United Kingdom, traveling as a seaman to India, South Africa, Japan, and Canada before arriving in London in 1953. There, he attended evening courses and became an active member of the British Communist Party. He

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attended the Moscow Youth Festival of 1957. He returned to Zanzibar the following year, and served as a leading grassroots organizer of the Zanzibar Nationalist Party. He drew upon a seemingly endless reserve of socialist patronage to attend conferences and official ceremonies, and to receive political and military training in China, North Vietnam, Czechoslova- kia, East Germany, and the USSR. Through this patronage, he arranged scholarships for many aspiring Zanzibari students (Issa forthcoming).

As British expatriate officials rapidly withdrew after the revolution, President Abeid Karume's regime depended to a great extent on the services of Zanzibaris with overseas education and experience; in 1965 Karume appointed Ali Sultan, for example, Minister of Education, Youth and Culture. Some who returned from the East, such as the new minister, had become familiar with an array of socialist disciplinary techniques that were every bit as intent on building character, discipline, and civic-mindedness among the rising generation as the Boy Scouts and colonial schools had been. In some cases, socialist disciplinary institutions eventually surpassed their Western analogues in terms of both the rigor of their techniques and grandiosity of their objectives. The Soviet Union's Young Pioneers were in the 1920s a direct imitation of the Boy Scouts, but they evolved their own series of procedures, innovations, and rituals: they developed their own uniforms, badges, and salutes; they organized games, festivals, and work projects, and published newspapers, books, and pamphlets (Harper 1929:66; Riordan 1989:19, 23). Such methods were designed to fabricate a new kind of individual, a socialist New Man. In the construction of a society of maximum cooperation and material abundance, socialism depended on citizens who were nonmaterialistic "in consumption, but highly material- istic in production" (Gilson 1975:174). Soviet theorists in the Khrushchev era argued that a new generation of socialist men and women would engage in "purposeful achievement for societal ends rather than self-indulgence or private hedonism"; they would possess only "reasonable needs," and would regard work as essential a condition of life as air or water (Gilson 1975:33, 171, 175). A new socialist could create

a society of the greatest order, and the highest organization and discipline. But this order, this organization and discipline will not be guaranteed through the state and its administra- tive organs, but will be founded on the high consciousness of the members of society.. . .They will enter into the heart and soul of the people, becoming a living need of the members of communist society. (Gilson 1975:171)2

Such passages give an impression of the general ambitions that motivated youth leaders: the Pioneers were meant to organize youth leisure hours around a host of structured activities and exercises that encouraged work, discipline, and civic-mindedness. According to literature the German Democratic Republic sent to Zanzibar in the 1960s, the Pioneers

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educate "pupils to love study and work, to respect any kind of work and the working man": they "talk about political affairs, discuss how to keep the laws of Pioneers, how to improve discipline and performance at school"; they find ways "to strengthen the unity of the socialist fraternal countries and to deepen the friendship with children of the whole world" (German Democratic Republic n.d.). Pioneer leaders regarded children and youth as unusually pliant and promising material with which to fashion a new kind of individual. The call for discipline among the younger generation was something about which the entire family of socialist nations could readily agree: the project distilled the essence of the socialist master narrative to a series of essential messages to be passed on to the next generation.

Although the record remains somewhat murky, it appears in 1962 a group of African youth in Zanzibar Town spontaneously began to march and parade with sticks, and to build small hut-encampments in vacant areas of the town. They did so in reference to British soldiers stationed in the islands to maintain order during a period of declared "emergency" following Zanzibar's June 1961 election riots.3 What might have been construed as a not altogether unknown incident in colonial annals of local imitation, appropriation, or, as appears less likely here, subtle mockery of European ways, was read instead as an act of overt resistance by colonial officials and/ or African nationalists. An official history of the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), Zanzibar's ruling party after the revolution, claimed the British were "hell- bent" on destroying this potentially "dangerous movement": they sent police to scatter and beat the youth and set fire to their huts; undeterred, the youth continued to "march around the town wearing iron helmets and car- rying imitation wooden rifles" (Afro-Shirazi Party 1974:193). Following the revolution in 1964, local branch leaders of the ASP Youth League, founded in 1959, asked for advice from party elders about what to do with these children. Probably in consultation with dozens of socialist experts who arrived in Zanzibar immediately after the revolution, the Youth League established the Young Pioneers as an association specifically for the recruitment of children and youth of school age (Young Pioneers 1965a; Mhagama 1966).4 The Youth League expanded rapidly after the revolution in terms of its mandate and institutional profile, and the Young Pioneers were one of several new departments opened in the mid-1960s, including those responsible for adult education, national customs, culture, and youth labor camps.

Abdulla Said Natepe, a member of the Revolutionary Council, was appointed chairman of the new organization in March 1964, and Aboud Talib, a government teacher, was appointed secretary. Talib related how he and other Young Pioneers leaders were invited in 1964 and 1965 to East Germany and the USSR to receive training in how to establish their new youth organization; they attended conferences and studied the literature of various socialist youth groups (Talib 1996). The purpose of these official tours was clear and supported by everyone concerned. In a Youth League discussion in 1965, Seif Saleh asserted that representatives of the Young Pioneers "should be sent outside the country so that they may see for

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themselves with their own eyes how these things are managed in order that they may return with new wisdom to provide us for our benefit" (Youth League 1965a). More experienced socialists like Ali Sultan Issa, who had already obtained training overseas, were fully aware of the significance of such tours in shaping the revolution in Zanzibar. He recalled:

I wanted to send [Youth League leaders] outside so they could see for themselves, and then want on their own to try and implement here in Zanzibar what they saw in socialist countries. So when we sent delegations to socialist countries after the revolution, I discussed with the diplomats from these countries what they would see. I requested they be shown this, this, and this, to impress upon the youth delegates certain things, so when they came back to Zanzibar, they would try and imitate the good things from socialist countries. (Issa forthcoming)

These tours had a predictable and profound influence on Young Pio- neer founders, who became informed about socialist conceptions of the ideal child and model citizen, and the importance of the Young Pioneers in the construction of a socialist state. Rajab Kheri, the Youth League's Prin- cipal Secretary, spoke in 1965 to a student audience in the following way:

Our problem is that we are backward, and we have to be in harmony with our friends who are the long time founders of these children development programs. Now, their children have achieved high development levels. We have to construct a bridge of friendship with them and unite with them. In this way we can achieve that same level of development. Hence we have adopted Pioneer groups. Through this union we can exchange ideas and strategies for guiding our children and our grandchildren towards a higher standard of living. (Young Pioneers 1965a)

The sense of urgency that comes through in these lines, derived from nationalists' enthusiastic embrace of modernization, motivated party leaders in the next few years to establish Young Pioneer branches throughout Zanzibar. The Young Pioneers opened their ranks to boys and girls from the ages of six to twenty. Kweupe, the government newspaper printed in Swa- hili, reported on 23 November 1965 that Talib toured Unguja Island in 1965, visiting schools and explaining the need for students to join the Pioneers and build the nation (Kweupe 1965c). Pemba Island waited until 1967 to adopt the new association, because it had given only limited support to the ASP before the revolution, the party organization was consequently weaker there. Rural districts lagged behind the capital in recruitment and branch activity. Kweupe claimed on 8 March 1967 an estimated total Pioneer

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membership of 8000 (Kweupe 1967a). In 1973, the organization claimed a membership of 14,135 (Afro-Shirazi Party 1974:197). Then, in a speech at Amaani Stadium in early March 1974, President Aboud Jumbe admonished all children over the age of six to join the Pioneers. The numbers of Pio- neers doubled over the next year to 28,801, roughly one-third the number of primary and secondary students in the islands (Youth League 1975a).

A combination of factors was responsible for the steady expansion of the Pioneers. One was nationalist sentiment. In September 1964, ten teachers employed at schools in or near the capital, such as in Gulioni, Darajani, and Bububu, requested they be given the chance to organize the leisure hours of their students in order to prepare them to "defend their republic." The teachers observed children were the parents of tomorrow, and that "many times a child has nothing to do after studying." "In these circumstances we should control them through a plan of instruction of various kinds, like in other nations" (Regional Commissioner's Office 1964). They quoted the Swahili saying, undongo upate ulimaji, meaning "it is necessary to add water early to shape clay properly." They requested financial assistance, uniforms, equipment, and the authority necessary to organize student leisure hours. They asked the state do something about the Boy Scouts, which they regarded as an ethnically exclusive association, indifferent toward the revolution. As evidence, they cited the nonappear- ance of Scouts at official events, as when President Karume returned from visits overseas. They claimed the Scouts were only for "children who are not natives of this land," who want only "to benefit themselves." They called upon the state to "feel the anguish of our country" and "help us eradicate this disease." They suggested the abolition of the Scouts would "benefit ourselves, the natives, in order that we may move forward" (Regional Commissioner's Office 1964).

The teachers may have simply been seeking access to official patronage, yet their comments should be taken seriously as reflecting the nationalist rhetoric the ASP produced in the 1960s. From surviving photographs, it is clear the Boy Scouts were not ethnically exclusive; their ranks, however, reflected the disproportionate representation enjoyed by Asian and Arab students in Zanzibari secondary schools of the time, and so the Boy Scouts may have suffered in some eyes from the stigma of being a "non-African" association. In consideration of the emphasis placed in official Scout rhetoric on service and respect for authority, it is also unclear to what extent they posed an actual threat to the new regime. The perception of ethnic chauvinism, combined with the harmful capitalist instincts that members of minority ethnic communities were said to possess in revolutionary Zanzibar, was, however, deadly to the organization. The Boy Scouts, with various other associations far more obviously ethnic in nature,5 were abolished to make room for new party-sponsored organizations, which would make themselves fully available for participation in official rituals and ceremonies.

The Young Pioneers thus emerged, alongside sports teams, as the only legal youth organization in the islands, attracting young people interested in

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structured activities during their leisure hours. The Young Pioneers became institutionalized in most primary and secondary schools, and teachers in government pay were expected to give their time after school hours to the supervision of Young Pioneer functions. Young Pioneers who distinguished themselves as leaders and enthusiastic volunteers earned credentials and revolutionary merit, rewards that enhanced their access to employment in the expanding army and bureaucracy. In the Karume and Jumbe years, a record of unblemished service in the Young Pioneers, youth labor camps, and the Youth League were as important as school performance in deter- mining a young person's access to government employment and patronage. In the mid-1970s, furthermore, membership in the Young Pioneers was often enforced. The reputation of the state's extensive security apparatus for harassment and intimidation encouraged families to send their sons and daughters of school age to the Pioneers. The fear of punishment was often as important a motivating device as the anticipation of rewards.

Cultural Revolution

The rhetorical and institutional support of the ruling party was crucial to the growth of the Young Pioneers. The motto appearing on Youth League stationery in these years was "Self-Sacrifice, Discipline, Service and Tolerance." The Youth League had several stated purposes, such as "to increase respect and discipline and good works of youth," and "to help and lead youth to learn thoughts, ideas and actions that promote cooperation between themselves and the elders in building and leading a socialist and self-reliant nation" (Youth League 1975b). Reports of youth conduct were studied at Youth League headquarters, and their behavior was discussed in the chambers of the Revolutionary Council. For party elders, the issue was the promotion of good citizenship, a project that required an assault on truancy, delinquency, and drunkenness; most troubling, however, was the steady stream of thousands of young people who in the 1960s and 1970s fled the islands for the African mainland or beyond.6 Although not typically mentioned in official speeches or news reports, this was a major subtext for the urgency with which Young Pioneer leaders sought to capture youth in Zanzibar, to win hearts, minds, and bodies, or to lose them altogether to the developing economies of other nations.

Party notables therefore held political rallies, gave speeches and radio addresses, and were seen in the 1970s in television shows emphasizing the need for careful supervision of children and youth, on the part of both parents and the state. Since nationalists conceived the state as the ultimate patriarchal authority, its intervention in the maturation process was justified. Seif Bakari, Chairman of the Youth League, said in 1975 the Youth League should be prepared to look after the children of the nation, because "there are some complaints that the elders don't raise children properly.. .. The state has its role, not to oppress people, but when things go wrong, the state must interfere" (Bakari 1975a). No other voice was more authoritative

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than that of President Karume, whose legitimacy was derived at least partially from the false claim that he was the mastermind of the revolution in 1964.7 His advanced physical age, relative to other members of the Revolu- tionary Council, was also a source of legitimacy. He commanded deference as the nation's mzee, or elder, and sometimes dispensed kindly advice to parents on how to raise their children; at other times, he discussed parenting in almost apocalyptic terms, as a struggle against the forces of decadence, evil, and social disintegration: young people, he claimed, should not be left "to loiter about like goats that have no shepherd. The army, the police force and the security should be teachers who teach our youths beneficial work. As soldiers we should not wait until the shooting war breaks out.... This is our war[,] and we must be ruthless about it" (Karume 1972).

The conflict to which Karume referred centered on the virtue of work as a primary function of good citizenship, which justified the use of force and punishment. In an age of permanent mobilization, youths could not be allowed to develop an unhealthy leisure instinct, or an aversion to "voluntary" nation-building assignments. Rajab Kheri pleaded with parents to raise their children to be good citizens. This meant careful regulation of their leisure hours, and the inculcation, from a very young age, of a deeply felt need for work and productivity:

No doubt some parents, I think, will ask themselves, "If we stop them from playing, how can we keep them busy?" "Can we stop the children's games?"

It is very difficult to stop the children from playing, especially the children who are aged from five to seven years. A child at that age can plant flowers around the house, in a beautiful garden. just buy him some flower seeds, a small hoe and other tools for planting flowers. . . . If you are a fisher- man, why don't you show him how to mend fishing nets? If you are a good farmer, why don't you show him how to break furrows? ...

Measures will be taken against those parents who don't care about their children's life. (Young Pioneers 1965a)

Through their seriousness about the need for modernization and greater productivity, youth leaders were not unwilling to voice criticisms of local cultural practices, especially if they possessed associations with Zanzibar's Arab cultural heritage. Kheri stated in 1965:

Let us take an example of a phrase that our parents took to heart: a) It is not permissible for girls to mingle with boys; and: b) A girl must wear a buibui and veil her face when she passes in front of the people, etc.

If you analyze these words you will realize that they have been brought by the nations which have made no progress in their countries, because these customs are a hindrance for

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collective development. These customs are a product of their jealousy and laziness in working with their hands.

And today we say no. We the children of this generation do not like these foreign

customs. We want good customs for the future generations. We have seen, in some of the countries that are ahead of

us in terms of development, that boys and girls work together and study together. (Young Pioneers 1965a)

It was now the responsibility of youths to bring development and to continue to reject "backward" customs of the past, as well as Western or capitalist "decadence." The cultural revolution in Zanzibar was, in fact, a fairly systematic attempt, spearheaded by the Youth League, to erase evidence of selected cultural practices defined as either backward or decadent. Since films provided Zanzibaris their most direct access to the West, the Youth League sought to impose strict censorship policies, and attempted to halt the attendance of children and youths at the cinema. The Youth League regarded movies from the West as destructive, not only for their scenes of violence and sexuality, but for displaying an endless and enticing array of consumer commodities, suggesting the pleasures to be obtained from acquiring material goods. ASP officials were convinced the economy of desire the films promoted was a destabilizing force and undermined nation- building consciousness among young people. Like early twentieth-century moralists and politicians in France, Italy, and the United States, Zanzibari nationalists worried over "the relation between fantasy and social duty, the consequences of a commercial culture that stimulated the imagination" (Falasca-Zamponi 1997:139).

Since the ASP regarded bodily display as a political act, the hair and clothing styles that "imperialist" cinema popularized were also suspect. Jumbe declared in 1975 that foreigners, "by various methods like cinema," had introduced clothing styles into Zanzibar "for the purpose of destroying our youth," and to entice them to "follow depraved matters and cultural ways that are not relevant" (Jumbe 1975). To resist fashions that evoked images of decadent youth and their underproductive bodies, the Youth League periodically rounded up, detained, and physically punished Zan- zibaris wearing bell-bottoms, miniskirts, or big afros (Burgess 2002:301). The party also mobilized against disco dancing and Western music. It banned sports such as boxing, cricket, and golf as allegedly too dangerous, as cover for political meetings, or as alien, colonial sports. Both Karume and Jumbe for temporary periods even banned soccer, by far the most popular youth pastime in Zanzibar, as too violent or too much of a distraction from youthful obligations to build the nation (Burgess 2001:384-385).

The ASP even sought to impose control over taarab, probably Zanzi- bar's most established and popular musical genre (Burgess 2001:377-383; Fair 2002:78-80). Taarab lyrics were objectionable because they expressed the endless passion, caprice, strife, and animosity embedded within

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romantic relationships. For state agents, this was a huge distraction from the ideal values of officialdom; in their ears, taarab lyrics displayed the reasons why Zanzibaris had yet to obtain dramatic material progress. Nationalists wanted music in the islands to deprivilege the world of competitive personal desires and instead to exalt a new collective spirit, to discuss love less than to pay tribute to the revolution. That is why a Youth League committee declared in 1965, "we decide on how to correct non-modern songs and games and to make them relevant to modern things, like to praise agricul- ture.... We have no choice but to correct our recreational activities in the modern fashion because many of the old-fashioned things do not fit us" (Youth League 1965b). That is why the ASP expected state-sponsored taarab groups to give priority to official functions over private wedding parties, to participate in mobilizing rituals over those that celebrated the lifecycle transformations of ordinary citizens. Fair observes that in response, Zan- zibari women, who before the revolution had comprised the large majority of taarab performers, withdrew or deserted, rather than engage in protest or continue to perform (Fair 2002:70-71).

How the regime in Zanzibar responded to taarab illustrates to what extent socialism in the islands, as on the Tanzanian mainland, was "the dominant frame of reference" in shaping cultural policies, even more so than nationalist demands for cultural authenticity (Askew 2002:190). ASP notions of modernity more often than not trumped "traditionalism." Party officials were convinced the public rivalries and provocations engaged in by taarab performers and their audiences were a threat to the social unity considered necessary to sustain revolutionary momentum. Socialism was not only a renunciation of "backwardness" and "decadence," but a unique view of the world, which Pioneer leaders sought to cultivate among children and youth through a large literature admonishing children to be good citizens:

A pioneer loves creatures like animals, birds, creeping and flying creatures that are harmless in the country. He tries to stop naughty children who throw sticks and stones at such creatures.... As for creatures like spiders, they are helpful to us; they help to eradicate insects that transmit diseases like flies and mosquitoes.

Plants and trees are the natural cover of the land in this country. Also they make the land look beautiful. The eyes of a Pioneer like to see this beauty everyday. That is to say he is annoyed by the act of cutting down trees recklessly and caus- ing the country to become a desert. (Young Pioneers 1965a)

Not only were socialist children expected to conserve their environment, they were supposed to conform to various checklists and codes of conduct that outlined official conceptions of the ideal child:

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Who will apply home manners? Who obeys their parents? Who respects their elders? Who sympathizes with their small brothers and sisters? Who carelessly destroys things? Who applies school manners? Who obeys their teacher's orders? Who always goes to school early? Who goes to school clean, their body and clothes washed? Who loves their schoolmates? Who works hard in their studies? Who applies manners related to all people? Who respects every one? Who politely greets the people they meet? Who starts scolding other people and destroying other

people's properties? Who helps and sympathizes with old people, the disabled and

sick people? Who loiters about in the streets? (Young Pioneers 1965a.)

These excerpts might give an impression that Young Pioneer leaders sought to simply conserve traditional values and the natural environment, and to reinforce respect toward parents, teachers, and elders. The demands of nation building were in part founded upon the old moral prescriptions and gerontocratic discourses. Young Pioneer leaders also, however, sought to inscribe in the habits and values of youth a new kind of discipline and virtue. They sought to do so through a spreading network of institutions meant to extend the disciplinary formulas of the school and army into the late afternoon hours. After classes were over, teachers organized Young Pioneer exercises so students could provide evidence of their good citizenship. They sought the participation of young people in nation-building work assignments and in the visual and bodily rituals of a new revolutionary culture.

Parades and Work Projects

As youth leaders drew up plans to establish Young Pioneer branches, they agreed that "to parade is a major responsibility." Every classroom of 41 students would form its own Young Pioneer group, and would select a student leader. They would parade in five rows consisting of eight children, with the student leader marching on the side, giving commands (Young Pioneers 1965b). The parade soon became the common denominator of each newly established Young Pioneer branch. If other activities were neglected, the parade was not. In Pemba, for example, twelve of sixteen schools by 1969 had established Young Pioneer branches, yet despite efforts to initiate a variety

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of Young Pioneer activities, only the parade had taken root (Education Department 1969). From official correspondence, it appears this particular exercise, more than any other, attracted considerable spontaneous interest among children and youth, and drew the support and blessing of parents, teachers, and party elders. Many Zanzibaris were in fact aware of the Young Pioneers for no other reason than their parades.

In 1969 and 1970, more than 7000 students in Pemba passed through a program that for two months taught them how to parade like a Young Pioneer (Young Pioneers 1971). On 30 January 1970, Kweupe published a message that a student at their graduation ceremony read aloud. After two months of training, he exulted:

we are able to participate in long expeditions and remain in the sun for any period of time, the same as our soldier brethren.... [Through political lessons received during this period,] we learned how the colonialists conspired in order that the citizens of these islands would not live together in love and cooperation. We agreed with one heart to get rid of tribalism and to stop quarrelling and to live together in comradeship without regard for religion or color.

Parade instruction strengthened our faith to always serve our nation without regard for sun, rain, hunger, or adversities. ... Mzee [Elder], before we received training in parade, many of us had many minor sicknesses that caused the stirring up of the passions of our bodies. Today, mzee, every youth that obtained these lessons now walks in cleverness and bravery because his body has been purged of sicknesses.... Whenever we pass, we are able to hear our elders [praise us], and especially our junior comrades, who are so pleased with us and rejoice over us, and this shows that the instruction that we received is wonderful and in behalf of our nation....

We promise to study harder and to build the nation, . . . and we will not allow ourselves to be deceived by foreigners into obtaining a passport in order to run away from the country. We will stay here with our elders and will give our sweat to our nation in order that we may bring development and we will never ask how much we will be paid. (Kweupe 1970a)

The origins of this message are unknown, and it is unclear the extent to which it accurately reflects the attitude of the majority of students for whom it claims to speak. If taken at face value, however, it suggests on what levels the parade could be meaningful to young people and those for whom they marched. First, the parade reinforced visually and corporeally the need for and blessings of unity, regimentation, and egalitarianism. Each student wore the same style of uniform and performed a task equal in status and identical in function to the next. The same standards and expectations

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applied to all. Conformity to these standards produced the impressive effect of a powerful mass of young people marching in order and symmetry. For many performers and observers the parade provided evidence of the abolition of inequality and prejudice, a message for which there was considerable enthusiasm in Zanzibari society. The students expressed gratitude in their message to the government for mixing students from rural Pemba with those from Zanzibar Town; they even claimed that "right now," after two months of intensive training, "there are no differences at all of ideas and actions between teachers and students": the parade, in effect, amounted to "socialism through synchronization and standardization" (Askew 2002:215).

Second, the parade could be deeply satisfying as an exercise in inclu- sion. Each student's movements had meaning and significance only in relationship to the whole. By coordinating all their efforts with those of their fellows, individuals could earn onlookers' favorable gaze. Marching encouraged the belief that students were potentially as important and as useful in building and defending the nation as soldiers, workers, and farm- ers. By accepting rigorous tasks, young people gained respect as socialist citizens ready and willing to contribute to the nation. The approval of elders and comrades perhaps even encouraged some young people to resist the urge to escape the deprivations of existence in the islands to pursue their own interests elsewhere. By remaining in Zanzibar and accepting hardships, they could earn periodic acknowledgement of their service. Some were convinced there could be moments, like during a parade, of temporary ful- fillment. David Apter observed that states in Africa and Asia in the 1960s employing comparable "mobilization systems" offered their citizens "puri- fication in belongingness, comfort in comradeship, democracy in loyalty, brotherhood in membership" (1963:85).

Third, the parade was meant to inculcate discipline. Although the precise nature of the training the students underwent is unclear, to a certain extent it required obedience, physical stamina, and mental toughness. Through such training, young people were supposed to develop robust health necessary for the performance of the tasks of citizenship. Such training could be appealing to youth on an emotional level; it also appealed to officials, since the precision and tight economy of bodily gestures could be taken as visual evidence of increasing productivity. Parades were signs revealing the character of Zanzibar's youngest citizens.8 According to Fou- cault, the march introduced a "collective and obligatory rhythm.... The act is broken down into its elements. . . . To each movement are assigned a direction, an aptitude, a duration; their order of succession is prescribed. Time penetrates the body and with it all the meticulous controls of power" (1977:152).

While it might be tempting to discount the student declaration above as merely a reflection of official rhetoric, William McNeill insists on the efficacy of drill and parade in cementing group ties. Speaking of his personal experience as a soldier in World War II he writes, "words are inadequate to

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describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involved. A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; more specifically, a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life" (1995:2). Through an assessment of the power of moving together in time among diverse world societies, McNeill attempts to convert his subjective experiences into broad historical conclusions; he argues that since "feelings are inseparable from their gestural and muscular expression" (McNeill 1995:152), rituals that emphasize the collective repeti- tion of physical tasks may possess the power to arouse powerful feelings of solidarity among otherwise semirandom assortments of individuals, as in a well-trained army of peasant recruits, or a shift of factory workers in Japan practicing group calisthenics. Such exercises provide emotional elevation, and encourage a sense of comradeship able to displace outside social ties.9

Simon Pascal Mkude, a lecturer at the State University of Zanzibar, recalled that as a Young Pioneer in the mid-1970s "I was ready to sacrifice everything for parade. ... I dreamed of the day when I could parade and wear my uniform.... Even though we waited in the sun for hours and hours for our time to come, I cannot express in words the feeling of parading in Amaani Stadium" (Mkude 2004). All of this is a long way away from negotiation, and yet nothing better explains the spontaneous appeal of the parade among youths in Zanzibar, even before the revolution and any Young Pioneer branches were established. The emotional power of repetitive, "muscular" exercises helps explain what archival documents suggest: as a Young Pioneer ritual in Zanzibar, the parade was supreme; it drew upon official patronage and appealed to a certain physical logic. The sense of empowerment this involved in no way undermined, but rather supported the patriarchal order of revolutionary Zanzibar. Kweupe reported on 6 March 1970 that a Young Pioneer parade through Zanzibar Town pleased President Karume and other assembled ASP officials very much (Kweupe 1970b); at its conclusion, the Young Pioneers read a declaration thanking their party leaders for getting rid of imperialists, capitalists, and feudal landowners. In 1975, the Young Pioneers drew up plans to strengthen the "discipline of junior youth," by setting aside one hour in the school day for students to learn how to parade (Young Pioneers 1975). The parade was a feature of revolutionary festivals. Kweupe reported on 8 March 1967 that the Young Pioneers celebrated its third anniversary with a procession through Zanzibar Town that eventually presented a burning torch to Karume (Kweupe 1967). Karume told the assembled Young Pioneers, "The torch is a symbol of our unity and cooperation, and it is a symbol feared by all enemies" (Kweupe 1967).

Revolutionary festivals grew in scale and complexity as the era pro- gressed, and in fact are decent indicators of the Young Pioneers' growing organizational maturity. Annual celebrations of the birth of the Young Pioneers in the mid-1960s centered almost entirely on parades; by 1972, however, the festivities included speeches, football games, choir and ngoma (dance) performances, and "voluntary" labor in the construction of a new

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school at Mfenesini (Young Pioneers 1972). The decennial celebrations of the Young Pioneers in March 1974 included all of the above, as well as three and a half hours of work for each Young Pioneer in a hospital, or cleaning up litter in streets around the capital: they assisted in the construction of apartments at Michenzani, and in state-owned soap, cigarette, and shoe factories. Young Pioneers gathered to read poems that praised ten years of the progress of their association, and gave public readings promising their continued readiness to serve the nation. Youths received awards for show- ing great honesty, for passing their school exams with distinction, or for being members of the Young Pioneer branch that showed the most progress. Youths who reached the age of 18 received official ASP membership cards (Young Pioneers 1974a). It is interesting to note that during what was intended to be a period of cultural revolution, so many of these activities, aside from ngoma, were of obvious foreign provenance: parades, factory labor, and football games. Zanzibar's cultural managers apparently intended through such juxtapositions to shape and frame a nationalist identity in the islands that was both conservative and experimental, both intensely proud of Africa's cultural heritage and open to new ideas and techniques from overseas.'0 The very idea of revolutionary festivals was also of at least partial socialist origins. By the 1970s, Zanzibar's largest were taking place in the massive Chinese-designed Amaani Stadium, and in both form and content betrayed their overseas antecedents. As in the Soviet Union, "the performance promoted the [socialist] way of life as unique and exceptional, and at the same time as the object of the natural striving of honorable people throughout the world" (Brooks 2000:xvi, xviii). Festivals were also massive displays of the order and discipline of a new era. Thousands of uniformed citizens marching together, performing synchronized calisthenics, or carefully executing massive flag demonstrations suggested the irresistible power of islanders in their pursuit of nation building, and the collective will of a "mobilized" population.

"Voluntary" labor became, like the parade, a fundamental ritual of citizenship. Foucault observed that work is "a principle of order and regu- larity[:] ... it bends bodies to regular movements, it excludes agitation and distraction" (1977:242). The Young Pioneers organized tasks that, at least for some observers, served no other logic than that of a convincing visual display of physical obedience; it is true, however, the regime came to rely on the mass mobilization of the "voluntary" labor of thousands of citizens to build new apartment blocks, or to cultivate state-owned farms. Such efforts did in fact save the government on labor costs, yet for children and youth of school age, the emphasis was likely as much on the performance of a social duty as actual results. Official rhetoric repetitively emphasized that performing unpaid labor was an obligation for all citizens benefiting from the "gift" of the revolution. For nearly a decade, Kweupe, through anonymous editorials and reprints of official speeches, called on youths to serve the elders and to build the nation. Bakari said in 1975 that youths "are like an elephant that can be trained to follow rules, orders; then he can perform,

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and he can make money, and the money that is obtained goes to the people" (Bakari 1975b). It was not enough for Bakari and others to exhort citizens to work harder; they organized citizens to perform tasks collectively, consider- ing their labor as a unit more conducive to observation and discipline than the exertions of individuals. Labor organized on a massive scale could be synchronized, coordinated, and rendered more efficient.

As early as 2 January 1965, Kweupe reported that Young Pioneers sang nation-building songs while they cleaned up city streets, as part of a "war against disease in the nation" (Kweupe 1965a). In the same year, the Young Pioneers received their own farm at Mtoni north of Zanzibar Town to cultivate collectively. On 24 August 1965, Kweupe commented, "In the past it was clear the youth never cooperated in progressive matters like this, they only followed their own individualistic instincts. Youth now have revolutionary ideas and a passion for building the new nation" (Kweupe 1965b). Over the next decade, party leaders made repeated demands that Young Pioneer groups assemble for various nation-building tasks on farms, in factories, and around town. In 1967, for example, a system was established for schoolchildren to report every Saturday on a rotational basis to assist in the construction of new apartments at Kilimani (Young Pioneers 1967). On one weekend in May 1968, five thousand students from all over Zanzibar walked to the village of Dole to cultivate cassava. Students who did not report for such assignments, worked only after great "commotion" (dharura), or expressed contempt for voluntary labor, were punished with as many as five additional days of work (Talib 1968). An idea of the kind of standards to which ordinary citizens were exposed, and the extent to which the revolutionary state laid claim to citizens' bodies, can be gained from the following rather chilling Youth League declaration from 1967:

A person does not have the right to go anywhere or do any [personal] work for the day at 3:00 P.M., and in case a person does not come at this time [to do "voluntary" work] without any important reason he will be breaching the unity of the youth.... If a person ignores the rules, the League will consider him an opponent of ideology and development, and he deserves to be punished in front of the people, a punishment dictated by all. (Youth League 1967)

In the more active branches, Thursday was the day for Young Pio- neers to wear their scarves to school and gather afterward for instruction, games, and work (Young Pioneers 1974b). Young Pioneers learned stories and riddles, and were introduced to new competitive games, like netball; they received instruction in the politics and history of the party, went on picnics, and visited historical sites. In such branches, they had school gardens, where they grew peas, cassava, bananas, and yams. They built shelters for the elderly, and helped harvest cloves. They taught literacy to children not attending school, and they used school holidays and weekends

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to repair roads and volunteer in hospitals, factories, and cooperative farms (Afro-Shirazi Party 1974:193-197; Young Pioneers 1965a; Youth League 1976a). In some branches, choirs were organized and were a major emphasis: students learned "traditional" songs, with the lyrics changed to praise work and skilled trades (Manyaga 1975). The Young Pioneers organized official inspections, and periodically held kwaya tournaments, in which groups competed from across Zanzibar. For the decennial- anniversary celebrations in 1974, each was ranked according to their entrance and exit, posture, uniforms, the way in which they observed the choir leader, the quality of the lyrics, and the sweetness of the voices (Youth League 1974b).

The mid-1970s were probably the period of greatest activity for the Young Pioneers, and yet what reports remain from those years suggest that in many districts the Young Pioneers barely functioned, if at all. They sometimes suffered from poor organization, and never gained the support of indifferent party functionaries, for whom their activities were silly. Among ordinary citizens, the Young Pioneers provoked opposition, which often reflected the partisan, ethnic, and class categories of Zanzibari society, rendered violent by the revolution in 1964. Many people remained intensely suspicious of the regime, and sought as much as possible to dis- tance themselves and their families from its reach. On a day-to-day level, participation or nonparticipation in the Pioneers was a key index of acquies- cence. It was distasteful for some parents to allow their daughters to spend less time at home, and to come under the supervision of party agents. In areas of continued hostility to the revolutionary regime, parents refused to permit even their sons to attend Young Pioneer meetings. For many islanders who lived through the violence of 1964, whose property had been looted or confiscated, or for years afterwards endured petty harassment and constant shortages, it was disturbing to imagine their children parading in uniform, or singing tributes to the revolution. Party uniforms were often unpopular because they "identified the wearer as an avid, largely uncritical, supporter of the new regime's social and cultural policies" (Fair 2002:77). Young people often participated out of fear or the anticipation of rewards; the rituals, outings, and exercises meant little to them, except perhaps as a way of socializing, relieving boredom, or spending less time at home. For some young people, it was pure drudgery, yet necessary to avoid punishment and exclusion from patronage. Young people were furthermore discouraged when, as in many cases, they never received official scarves and uniforms (which were popular among some), or when, as in Pemba in 1971, thieves stole their hoes and ripening crops (Young Pioneers 1971). They were also sometimes afraid the parents of their fellow Young Pioneers were witches (Youth League 1976b).

In contrast, the Young Pioneers appear to have aroused less bitterness and resentment among Zanzibaris than other Youth League departments, since they were not empowered, as in the case of the Volunteers, to report on local and often trivial violations, such as curfew breaking (Burgess 2002). Activity in the Young Pioneers was often voluntary and consisted,

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even at its peak (in the mid-1970s), of a minority of the student population. Even among parents who had supported the losing side in the revolution, it was possible to identify with at least some of the objectives of the Young Pioneers. The values they sought to instill-respect for elders, manners, and volunteerism-promoted good citizenship and obedience in the home. Young Pioneer rituals reinforced and strengthened generational hierarchies in the family and the nation. Oral research suggests the Young Pioneers continue to evoke nostalgia: their youth programs continue to be identified with discipline as a virtue that is remembered as having been unusually abundant in the revolutionary years. Jamila Swaleh Sudi, a teacher in Man- gapwani, of non-ASP ancestry, has petitioned the government to revive the Young Pioneers (Sudi 2001).1"

Even nation-building assignments were not necessarily detested, since they were a means to imitate adults, to travel, and to socialize. The combination of work and play encouraged greater participation than a sole emphasis on labor. The scarves and uniforms, the free use of classrooms after school hours, and the songs and parades, gave children and youths a sense of "official" status and a place in the nationalist community. Many Young Pioneers leaders succeeded in pointing out a clearly articulated way, through ritual participation, for children to receive the acceptance of their parents, their elders, and the ruling party.'2 Numerous youths were not entirely opposed to the imposition of surveillance and structure on their leisure hours; the performance of such rituals was a not wholly unwelcome intrusion into their usual routines. This attitude may have reflected the inclusive and "muscular" appeal of repetitive physical tasks and exercises, and the unique desire of children and youths, at least for brief intervals of time, to perform the roles of good citizens, and in this way to gain the approval and patronage of their seniors. Without taking a position in defense of nationalist rituals, it is important to acknowledge the range and limitations of their power.

Conclusion

Colonial agents in Zanzibar had established institutions such as schools and the Boy Scouts to enculturate the younger generation, but their investments in this vein had been small in comparison to those of the postcolonial state. The taming of youth as a distinct category appeared on the official agenda only after World War II, and even then the British spent more time talk- ing about the need for youth discipline than generating actual plans for its imposition (Burgess 2001:40). After the revolution, Zanzibari nationalists, hoping to break free of colonialism and neocolonialism through the aid and guidance of the socialist world, traveled overseas to study the technologies of power. They were deeply impressed with what they were able to see, hear, and learn of the Young Pioneers.'3 They were convinced of the relationship between youth discipline and material development, and, like Aboud Talib,

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believed the Pioneers could "change the ideology of the people to a socialist ideology" (Talib 1996). They returned home to promote an ensemble of rituals and exercises that, on one level, were disciplinary techniques designed to enhance productivity in society, "to increase and multiply." They were also intended to establish the visual contours of a cultural revolution in the islands.

The case of the Young Pioneers in Zanzibar thus suggests how readily at times nationalists adopted Leninist strategies of display and mobilization, how far ideas can travel when they appear to coincide with social and economic takeoff, and how such ideas engage with local discourses.14 The Young Pioneers was premised upon generational discourse that obliged youth to serve their elders; party elders credited with bringing liberation to the islands repeatedly called upon youths to fulfill their own task as a generation to build the nation. Youths would transcend the "backwardness" of colonial society, however, only through a system of training and surveillance, the general formula for which had been worked out elsewhere over a period of decades. Parades were part of that formula. Party elders were convinced parades provided the training needed for a new kind of citizen. Parades embodied a socialist nation building a discourse of truly global scale in the 1960s, a discourse that called on all citizens to unite together in a common cause. That some Zanzibaris did not embrace the revolutionary cause does not mean they were in a position to negotiate the means by which the state sought to collect evidence of their conformity. For some, such exercises might be temporarily fulfilling, but they did not extinguish the desire to escape such regimentation, to resist official standards of good citizenship, or simply to misbehave.

Were nationalists pleased with what they saw? When the Youth League established a commission in 1975 to discuss how to "preserve small children" in the islands, one report claimed "some children have now become hardened, and callused, and don't listen to their parents. They have stopped their studies completely. Even the police cannot succeed in their work to bring up the children because they are not getting strong support from the parents" (Youth League 1975c). Only the year before, however, another evaluation published in English, and not Swahili, and meant for public consumption, was far more positive: "The youths have become dis- ciplined, obedient to their parents, and very helpful to old people in need of assistance. They help thatch roofs, wash clothes and even weed plots. They also help sick people in hospitals, clean the town, and help various building projects" (Afro-Shirazi Party 1974:196-197).

Clearly, as the revolutionary state identified itself as the guardian of youth, sharing with parents the task of raising children to be citizens prepared to meet the demands of nation building, it exposed itself to almost inevitable failure. Although Pioneer leaders might be able to engineer a perfect parade, or deliver a full complement of student laborers on the weekends, such ritual exercises did not guarantee total conformity. Though spectacular, they were ephemeral; space always remained outside the national

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stadium for the survival of indifference and resentment. Despite numerous disciplinary innovations on the part of the Youth League, the individual never fully became a case, a file, or the object of a permanent corpus of knowledge. Foucault's panopticism never fully emerged to alter perma- nently the motivational structure of individuals. In its lavish festivals, the regime continued to be persuaded by forms and appearances, rather than substance and content.

The struggle over young people's minds and bodies continued, at least through the 1970s. In the 1980s, the Young Pioneers faded out as part of the general demise of the Youth League. Aboud Jumbe withdrew support for the Youth League as the primary enforcing agency of the state and one of the most obvious examples of Karume's authoritarianism. With the collapse of the clove-based economy, the state no longer had the means to sustain such institutions as the Young Pioneers. Enforcing conformity to codes of socialist citizenship became less pressing than government solvency and the political survival of the ruling oligarchy. The idea of building the nation became far less compelling in an environment characterized more by decay than development. In an era of unprecedented levels of corruption, the idea of "voluntary" labor lost its allure. Compelled to accept political liberalization and free-market reforms, the state in Zanzibar entered the 1990s in a seriously contracted form, unable to sustain the old system of patronage based upon displays of youth discipline. An economy based now on tourism has rendered nostalgic nationalist discourse that had discipline as its anchoring principle. The state no longer seeks to fulfill a parenting role in society, and no longer feeds, as it once did, on periodic displays of good citizenship.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the three individuals who reviewed this manuscript anonymously for Africa

Today for their many thought-provoking comments and suggestions.

NOTES

1. See Issa, forthcoming. This is only an estimate. Hundreds of other Zanzibari students gained access in this same period to primary- through tertiary-level education in Cairo as a result of an arrangement worked out between Colonel Nasser and Ali Muhsin, representing the Zanzibar Nationalist Party.

2. James Scott discusses kultura in the USSR as an ethical code that defined appropriate social conduct, including "punctuality, cleanliness, businesslike directness, polite modesty, and good, but never showy, manners" (Scott 1998:195).

3. For the June 1961 election riots, see Lofchie 1965:203-210.

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4. The Youth League was open to individuals beginning at age 13 and extending even beyond

age 40.

5. Such as the Comorian Association, the Arab Association, and the Indian Association.

6. Accurate numbers for how many youths fled the islands after the revolution are hard to come

by. Ali Sultan estimates about 10,000 fled the islands, most of whom were young people.

Laura Fair also puts the number somewhere in the thousands (Fair 2002:71).

7. This was the official claim; see Afro-Shirazi Party 1974. In reality, the revolution was organized

and led by several leaders of the Youth League, such as Seif Bakari; see Burgess 2001.

8. Mussolini sometimes directly evoked the virtues of the parade. In April 1921, he said, "Our

march .. . imposes individual control on everyone[,] ... impresses on everyone order and

discipline. Because we want in fact to initiate a solid national discipline, because we think

that without this discipline Italy cannot become the Mediterranean and world nation of

which we dream." He wrote in 1938, "The passo [march] symbolizes the force, the will, the

energy of the young lictorial generations who are enthusiastic about it" (Falasca-Zamponi

1997:114-115, 116).

9. "Surrendering personal will to the command of another ... liberates the individual

concerned from the burden of making choices" (McNeill 1995:131).

10. Even ngoma was not exempt from interventions in the pursuit of socialism. Observing

performances on the Tanzanian mainland in the 1990s, Kelly Askew noted consistent efforts

to emphasize "uniformity of movement, uniformity of dress, synchronization, linear forma-

tions, and the repression of improvisation," all of which "contributed to a new aesthetic

premised upon Tanzanian socialism" (Askew 2002:278).

11. Jim Riordan observed that the Young Pioneers in the USSR appeared more effective and

popular than Komsomol, its parent. Restlessness and greater exposure to Western youth

culture tended to enervate enthusiasm for such regimented activities among older Soviet

youth (Riordan 1989:38).

12. For Young Pioneer rituals in the Soviet Union, see Kuebart 1989 and Lane 1981.

13. According to McNeill, the "revolutionary socialist tradition of muscular solidarity" began

to assume distinct form as early as the 1880s, when "the International Socialist Congress

proclaimed May Day to be a holiday," during which workers, at least in Vienna, paraded in

imitation of Roman Catholic Corpus Christi celebrations (McNeill 1995:147). Lenin and the

Bolsheviks did not, therefore, invent these disciplinary techniques out of thin air when, in the

early 1920s, under the authority of Komsomol, they established the Young Pioneers. Fascist

youth organizations were highly imitative of socialist precedents, and not the reverse. Mus-

solini organized the Opera Nazionale Balilla along the lines of Komsomol, and banned both

the Boy Scouts and Roman Catholic youth organizations as potential competitors (Murav-

chik 2002:157). Hitler was influenced by both socialist and Italian fascist spectacles, and was

deeply affected as a youth in Vienna by the sight of May Day parades (McNeill 1995:147).

14. Zanzibaris were not the only nationalists in Africa for whom socialism had appeal. Apter

observed that the "mobilization systems" of Ghana and Guinea contained "an implicit

assumption: that which divides men from one another is due to unnatural causes-colo-

nialism, neo-colonialism, classes which derive their differences from hostile relationships

centering around property. Men must be freed from these unnatural differences by both

acts of leadership and exceptional public will" (1963:78). One way to transcend these

unnatural differences was through the creation of a mass liturgy, which would celebrate

not democracy or individualism, but mass participation in nation building, often through

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youth associations (Apter 1963:66-67). For other accounts of nationalist youth organizations in Africa, see Englund 1996 and Riviere 1977.

REFERENCES

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Apter, David. 1963. Political Religion in the New Nations. In OldSocietiesandNewStates: TheQuestfor Modernity in Asia andAfrica, edited by Clifford Geertz. New York: Free Press.

Askew, Kelly. 2002. Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bakari, Seif. 1975a. [Speech.] Files of the ASP Youth League. Zanzibar Town.

.1975b. [Speech.] Files of the ASP Youth League. Zanzibar Town.

Bennett, Norman. 1978. A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar. Cambridge: Methuen.

Brooks, Jeffrey. 2000. Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Burgess, Thomas. 2001. Youth and the Revolution: Mobility and Discipline in Zanzibar, 1950-80. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University.

2002. Cinema, Bell Bottoms, and Miniskirts: Struggles over Youth and Citizenship in Revo- lutionary Zanzibar. InternationalJournal ofAfrican Historical Studies 2-3:287-313.

Cooper, Frederick. 1987. From Slaves to Squatters. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. .1997. Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the Development Concept. In Inter- national Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge, edited by Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Education Department. 1963. "Zanzibar Students Studying in the United Kingdom," 9 April. Zanzibar National Archives. AD 32/27. Zanzibar Town.

1969. Report, 15 July. Zanzibar National Archives. AD 5/57. Zanzibar Town.

Englund, Harri. 1996. Between God and Kamuzu: The Transition to Multi-Party Politics in Central Malawi. In Postcolonial Identities in Africa, edited by Richard Werbner and Terance Ranger. London: Zed Books.

Fair, Laura. 2002. "It's Just No Fun Anymore": Women's Experiences of Taarab before and after the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution. InternationalJournalofAfrican HistoricalStudies 1:61-82.

Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta. 1997. FascistSpectacle: TheAesthetics of Powerin Mussolini's Italy. Berke- ley: University of California Press.

Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books. German Democratic Republic. N.d. Statute of the Pioneer Organization 'Ernest Thalmann." Zanzibar

National Archives. AD 5/57. Zanzibar Town.

Gilson, Jerome. 1975. The Soviet Image of Utopia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harper, Samuel. 1929. Civic Training in Soviet Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Issa, Ali Sultan. Forthcoming. Walk on Two Legs: A Revolutionary's Memoir of Zanzibar, compiled and

edited by Thomas Burgess.

Jumbe, Aboud. 1975. Afisi Kuu ya ASP Habari Utangazaji na Televisheni, 1 March. Zanzibar National Archives. ED 1/6. Zanzibar Town.

Karume, Abeid. 1972. Speech, 27 January. Zanzibar National Archives. BA/11. Zanzibar Town. Kuebart, Friedrich. 1989. The Political Socialisation of Schoolchildren. In Soviet Youth Culture, edited

by Jim Riordan. London: Macmillan.

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Kweupe. 1965a. Young Pioneers "Twajitolea"! 2 January.

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. 1965c. Ujumbe wa Pioneers Maskuli. 23 November.

. 1967a. Pioneers Washerehekea Mwaka wa Tatu. 8 March.

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Lane, Christel. 1981. The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society-The Soviet Case. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Lofchie, Michael. 1965. Zanzibar: Background to Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.

McNeill, William. 1995. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridge:

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Mkude, Simon Pascal. 2004. Interview by author, 31 December. Zanzibar Town, Zanzibar.

Muravchik, Joshua. 2002. Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. San Francisco: Encounter

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Regional Commissioner's Office. 1964. Letter, 1 September. Zanzibar National Archives. AK 10/7,

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lan Press.

Riviere, Claude. 1977. Guinea: The Mobilization of a People, translated by V. Thompson and R. Adloff.

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Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Sudi, Jamila Swaleh. 2001. Interview by author, 13 July. Mangapwani, Zanzibar.

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1965b. Maendeleo ya Sirikali, Hii, 23 September. Zanzibar National Archives. AD 5/57.

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.1975. Nidhamu kwa Vijana Wadogo, 21 April. Zanzibar National Archives. AD 5/51. Zanzibar

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Zanzibar National Archives. AK 4/111. Zanzibar Town.

.1965b. Meeting minutes, January. Files of the ASP Youth League. Zanzibar Town.

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1 975c. Meeting minutes, 31 December. Files of the ASP Youth League. Zanzibar Town.

1976a. Work Report, 4 September. Files of the ASP Youth League. Zanzibar Town.

.1976b. Work Report, 25 February. Files of the ASP Youth League. Zanzibar Town. -I 0

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