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Charles G. Thomas, "Ujamaa's Army: The Creation and Evolution of the Tanzania People's Defence Force, 1964-1979" (Ohio UP, 2024)
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:07]
B
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Charles G. Thomas about his book titled Ujama's army, the Creation and Evolution of the Tanzania People's Defense Force, 1964-1979, published by Ohio University Press in 2024. Now, this book really does exactly what it suggests, which is really intriguing because the evolution of the Tanzanian People's Defense Force, the moment that the country becomes independent in 1964 is a bit of a roller coaster. There's a whole bunch of things going on in that process of becoming independent in terms of what's happening internally with diplomacy, with politics, with military, and of course, what's happening around the newly independent country of Tanzania too. Obviously, Moving into the 1970s, we've got conflicts happening with, for example, Uganda. So this book takes us really into the details of how all of these pieces come together to create this military force. Now, obviously that means it is an in depth case study of one country. But as those of us who study the evolution of military institutions will, I'm sure, be able to undersee immediately from our discussion, there's a lot that can be applied to other countries and processes too. So we clearly have a lot to discuss. Charlie, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [02:33]
C
Oh no, it is absolutely lovely to be here and honestly you would have to pay me to not talk about it.
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B
Fair enough. I think that does put us in a good position to move forward. But before both of us get too excited and go into the weeds of the book, can you introduce yourself a little bit and tell us big picture, why you even decided to write this in the first place?
- [02:55]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Well, my name is Charles G. Thomas, Charlie for short. I am a professor of Strategy and Security studies at the U.S. air Force's Global College at Maxwell Air Force Base. Now, immediately following that, I have to offer the disclaimer of our discussion from here on is going to be my opinions and my opinions alone and should not be taken to reflect US policy, US Air Force policy, Department of Defense policy, anything of the like. This is me, Charlie Thomas, simply speaking about my book and of course why did I write this book? This, like so many monographs, began as my dissertation because at least in my studies at the time, this was a really unique case of a reconstruction of an African military at independence which worked. Which looking at it at the time that I began writing it seemed a very vanishingly rare animal. The fact that through as we're going to talk about these variety of internal and external pressures, the Tanzanian state, its political leadership under Julius Nyeri, it's military leadership under Mauricio Sarakikia, Amin Kashmiri and many others manage to navigate these tides and create something that works. And considering how often the popular conception of African militaries are ones that are involved in mutinies and coups of that are causes of instability on the continent, the fact that I had found a case study of a very large scale experiment that really worked for its, for its independent state, just really seemed like something I needed to dig into.
- [04:46]
B
Yeah. Given that my PhD research was definitely on African militaries that don't work after independence goal in Mozambique, that is exactly why I found this book so intriguing and really hoped you'd say yes when I asked you to be interviewed because it is a pretty rare instance, so definitely worth investigating in depth. Is there anything further we need to understand then about the extent to which this is an exceptional case study or the ways in which focusing on the decolonisation process of the military and what becomes Tanzania is kind of an intriguing object of study?
- [05:21]
C
Well, to kind of expand a little bit on what we said that I think will sort of lead us down those roads as we just Talked about. This is really such a rare case study because the decolonization process involving the militaries on the continent just goes so badly in so many other places. The Belgian Congo has a mutiny within days of its independence. This is partially due to General Emile Johnson's. The Belgian commandant of the Force Publique basically tells all the military members, hey, there's going to be no advancement after independence, will be exactly the same as before independence. And this, this causes significant bad feelings. But even beyond that, in a very specific sense, in 1964, there are. What are the East African mutinies? They begin in Tanganyika, but they spread very quickly to Kenya and Uganda. These are the three states which had all been part of sort of, well, three of the four that had been part of the King's African Rifles construct. And it sort of creates this strange natural experiment after the mutinies are put down, where Kenya effectively says as okay, this is bad that the military did this. This is a longer term transition that needs to happen. And they effectively ask Britain for further aid and Britain provides it. The work of Dr. Poppy Cullen is exceptional to explore this. She really goes into how effectively British officers even stay in significant positions in the Kenyan military into essentially the, the late 80s, early 90s. This effectively sort of gives them a bit of a bolster to continue this, this lengthier transition in Uganda. They, they ask for the same help and are denied it effectively. And this leaves Milton Obote, the sort of embattled president already or prime Minister, with very few options except to turn to the military and effectively accede to their demands and essentially continue acceding to whatever the military thinks it needs to sort of keep them onside, to keep them as part of his political project. And as we'll discuss, this eventually leads to the coup of IDI Amin and his rise to power in Uganda, which is a significant part of this larger story for Tanganyika, soon to be Tanzania. Because Nary effectively looks at this and says, okay, look, he recognizes very, very early on that this colonial construct, the way even that it's recruited, the way it's organized, even sort of its outlook on what its job is, is not suitable for essentially the nation building or the. That he sees kind of needs to happen, or at least that he believes needs to happen. He sees it almost as this external force. And so he actually sort of tears it down to its foundations. There's about 50 officers and non commissioned officers that haven't taken part in these mutinies. And he says, okay, great, everybody, let's get together and talk about what a military is supposed to be and what this nation is supposed to be, and let's build something from here. And so not only is it sort of this exceptional case study of, hey, it's the thing that works. It is the fact that it, starting from this very unique experimental concept of, hey, okay, what we had doesn't work. It is colonial in nature. Tear it down. Okay, what does an independent military look like and how do we achieve that? And especially looking at case studies that have happened since then, this is a really important question that often is not asked at the heart of these immediate post colonial militaries.
- [09:25]
B
Yeah, that's definitely very interesting and helpful context to keep in mind in terms of the approach here and also kind of how easily it can go wrong given what's happening in nearby countries around the same time. But of course, when one is trying to transition from a colonial state to an independent one, it's not just the military that kind of doesn't quite work in that transition. You can't just rename a whole bunch of things. So in this moment, in this process of leading up to the day of independence, where was this experiment of reforming the military kind of on the to do list? Was it at the top? Was it sort of in the middle? Like, where was it in that wider context?
- [10:04]
C
I would say that assuming the list of what needs to be reformed is on the executive desk, the where reforming the military was was in a separate envelope, probably across the country. This is not something that was on their checklist at the time for a number of reasons. Number one, there sort of was the assumption that the military was this professional and apolitical institution that, yes, had been sort of part of the larger opposition to decolonization to a degree, socially, culturally, at the very least. There were no real, like sort of violent clashes. But beyond that, there also just sort of was the idea that there was just so many other things that needed to be attended to, that this, the military just didn't quite rate. Number one, there was the, the belief that there would be British officers that would continue on and that they could essentially steward this military and how it existed into, into independence. The other part of it, interestingly enough, tends to be a bit of the utopian vision of, of sort of the Tanu Tanganyikan African National Union government as it sort of was coming into being and assuming power, which was essentially the idea that maybe they didn't need a military at all for internal security. There already was a paramilitary police field force that had done you know quite well as a gendarmerie and was seen as more than enough for any sort of internal issues. And in terms of external issues, they thought well, what do we need defense from? There's no African state that's going to invade us. If, if there is any sort of external threat or, or, or aggression towards our trade or the like, then the international community will, will see this and hear our cry and come help settle this. There was the belief that the United nations might intervene or that perhaps the Commonwealth or even just, you know, the, the larger international community as an amorphous force would prevent any sort of aggression against the, against the Tanganykan state. So with that being said, what do we need a military for at all? Internally we've got it settled. Externally will be taken care of. And so actually in 1961, after the first sort of Tanu government is brought in, they begin asking the question in Parliament, do we even need a military? This carries forth into 1962 and throughout this period. They're very neglectful of the military. They don't really raise their pay from what had already been a very lagging colonial sort of pay structure. Their facilities are falling apart and very little if any money is essentially given over to those Amin Kashmiri who at the time is one of the few native born Teng and Yikin officers of South Asian descent who's gone to Sandhurst talks about sleeping effectively on two boards on a cinder block. The military just is, you know, essentially living in, living in the backyard if you will. While other parts of the government are really getting a lot of attention. There's what's called the Maswania Africanization Committee which really begins accelerating the placement and advancement of Tanganyikan candidates in the civil service, in the police, in the prisons. But this doesn't happen in the military. And so for the most part they're through these early years of independence. They're just sort of left at the whim of the remaining British leadership who don't really see a need to advance a lot of Tanganyikan candidates either. And so ultimately this, this legacy military which is, had been the 6th King's African Rifles becomes the Tanganyika Rifles really doesn't get any attention, resources or status from anywhere until about 1963, in this case, the, the. Well two major things have happened. The Congo crisis has, has kicked off. It has now sort of spilled its way over to the eastern Congo and to a degree the area is concerned about what's happening there. He sees both his western border and honestly he begins seeing developments in the Congo that he does not think are necessarily right and begins trying to figure out ways to intervene to perhaps help some of the rebels that he's more sympathetic to. And they begin realizing that the military simply isn't necessarily a defensive mechanism, although it can be, but it also is a tool of foreign policy and one that can be very important in achieving regional goals. This comes into even starker contrast with the formation of the Organization of African Unity, which then, shortly after its creation, creates its liberation committee focused towards essentially the liberation of the territories that are not decolonizing. The Portuguese empire, Rhodesia, South Africa, Mozambique in particular, is right on the southern border of Tanzania, or shares the southern border with Tanzania. Shares a border with Tanzania. And very quickly, nary both lobbies for and achieves the placement of the OAU Liberation Committee's headquarters in Dar es Salaam. There's. There had already been various liberation groups, leaderships in Dar es Salaam. More flock there. And as these conflicts begin becoming more violent, and particularly along his southern border, again he realizes, maybe I. Maybe we need a military. The United nations is not intervening effectively in the Congo. We perhaps cannot expect them to come to our aid, especially against, say, the Portuguese, who are also a member of the United nations and various other power blocs. Okay, maybe we need an instrument to foreign policy. Here they begin drawing up plans to expand the old colonial military in 1963. The British attache and other officers are fairly cool at this prospect. They think it's too much too fast. They, in what will become sort of a familiar pattern, they sort of begin hemming and hawing. Well, do you really need this? We're not certain. We, you know, we should be doing this, really. You should think more about this. But before any of this happens, the mutinies happen in. Mutinies happen in 1964.
- [17:33]
B
Okay, so those are all reasons why we end up in a place where the military may not have started off high on the list. In fact, as you clarified, like, way off on some other list.
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C
Right.
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B
But now there's decision made about. Okay, we do have to make some prioritization here. This does need to be something we care about. That's obviously a change, but that kind of just changes the question being asked. It doesn't answer anything. And in fact, kind of opens up a whole new battery of questions that then have to be addressed. So in that moment of kind of the mutiny has happened elsewhere, we're coming up really on independence. The Congo's not looking great. What kind of is that? List of questions that has to be answered. It's like, okay, well, we can't not have a military. We have to have something. Then what?
- [18:22]
C
Yes. Oh, my goodness. And, and these are. They realize very quickly they have opened a very large can of worms at this point. Tanganyika's independence. There is a revolution on Zanzibar in 1964 that occurs right before the mutiny. And as part of sort of the, the solving of the mutiny and eventually the calming down of the revolution, an act of union effectively assigned partially to keep external intervention from happening on Zanzibar. And this is when Tanganyika becomes Tanzania. And along the way, this is when they also realize, oh, this is again another reason why we need the military. Well, okay, if we've decided we need a military, what big question, you know, what do we need to answer here? And you have the military advice coming from the legacy military officers. Alex Miranda, Mauricio Sadakya, who becomes the new chief of defense forces, Amin Kashmiri, who becomes his, his informal chief of staff. He gets other titles in there. And they begin immediately telling Nyere, okay, well, what we need is effectively the military sovereign nation would need. We need infantry, we need small arms to arm them with. We need technical branches that can help them with transport. Once we filled that out, we probably need things like tanks, jets, a navy, because now we have an archipelago in Zanzibar that we will need to be able to secure as well. Well, and they're very, they're very educated on sort of the organizational aspects of what a military, what an independent state would likely need its military to look like. But Nyere and the Tanu government are asking some other significant questions, which is effectively who, who should serve? How should they understand their service? Because for them, the critical failure of this military that is mutinied to a degree is that again, it was a colonial structure. But what Nyere and many of the Tanu cadre sort of conceive of that as is, number one, it's been recruiting. The old Tanganyika Rifles and King's African Rifles recruited along the ideas of the British colonial concept of martial races. There was a limited number of groups that were recruited from within the Tanganyika territory. These were generally then sort of welded to the colonial structure or bonded to the colonial structure through not only well paying jobs, but status under the colonial structure, education for their children, places to live, and even to a degree, tax incentives. In many cases, they either had lowered or were exempt from essentially the colonial taxes. But what that meant, as upon independence, these groups themselves were not only sort of their own sort of interest group within the nation, they formed sort of their own separate military caste. They weren't part of this independent government. And the simple idea of sort of lowering one flag, raising another, and then saluting it would not sort of bridge that gulf between essentially an external martial group and an internal political one. That makes sense. And so there Nary immediately begins essentially saying, well, how do we make certain that this military represents the nation we are trying to build? We have a state, we have boundaries. What you're suggesting is a military that can defend the sovereignty of that state and carry out its foreign policy. But how do we make a military that is part of the social and political life of this nation without essentially becoming an overbearing part of it or a threat to it? And so this, this led to these two big sort of separate transitions, but that consistently intersected of. Of Nary's concern about, okay, how do we have a representative military that will be part of essentially the larger Tanzanian society, a part of the culture of this new nation we're creating, which is perhaps the most critical transition in his eyes, while at the same time, how do we acquire the education, the training, the organization, the arms, the uniforms, and all the things that would need to transform what was at that point, effectively, for lack of a better way of putting it, a small light infantry formation of three battalions of ultimately leading to a couple hundred men. How do we expand that into a national military that can defend itself and carry out its own independent foreign policy for a state roughly the size of Germany? And these two. It is sort of the answering of these two that sort of form the heart of the book and the heart of the argument of why this is ultimately a useful case study and a success.
- [23:51]
B
Yeah, that's very helpful to lay out kind of specifically what the questions are. And having you explain them makes it very clear why it's hard to answer them.
- [24:00]
C
Right.
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B
Why it would be very easy for kind of attempts to answer those questions not resulting in the sort of success we mentioned at the beginning. So definitely helpful to have that clarified. What were some of the ways that these leaders tried to then answer these questions, you know, through up to and through the moment of independence into those first few years, like by, say, 1968, kind of what had been tried? How had that worked? What was the status by then?
- [24:28]
C
Oh, absolutely. Well, so this initial question, just of manpower, of how do we grow from effectively 50 legacy troops into a. Into a. A full fledged military? The first question is where. Where do the Bodies come from, where does the manpower come from? And what Nyere was very certain was that it could not be through what had been called recruiting safaris to these four groups anymore. This needed to somehow be a representative and put bluntly, a, at the very least, politically reliable and politically educated cross section of the country to be involved here. At first, he turns to members of the Tanu Tanganyikan African National Union, his political party. They have a youth league that's full of. Of a lot of young firebrands that really are devoted to sort of this push towards Pan Africanism, transformation of the state, that sort of thing. And he calls for a thousand volunteers from that group. They're brought in. They are trained as sort of this initial intake by the legacy officers and NCOs. While there may have been a concern about the amount of sort of technical knowledge this group had of, you know, can they work on tanks, can they teach people to fly planes, that sort of thing, at the very least, they were very, very confident they could build young people into infantrymen, into the. A young man or woman with a rifle who could carry out a military mission. And so that's what they did with this first thousand. But quietly and on the side, they didn't find them very good recruits. A lot of them weren't necessarily even physically acculturated well enough to be able to undergo this sort of field training and the like. And so they very quickly, they decide this is not a permanent solution here, so where do we find our manpower from here on out? And what had been put into action in 1963 was the Tanzanian National Service, or Tanganyikan National Service, becomes the Tanzanian National Service, the Jeshila Kujenga Taifa, the Army for Building the Nation. And this is not that different from most national service organizations that are happening across the continent. There's the idea that young men and women will sign up. It sort of has a paramilitary cast to it where they get uniforms. They go to a camp somewhere out in sort of the hinterlands, and they undergo some education, some training. And while they're there, they also can help build some of the infrastructure the nation needs. There's a builder's brigade that builds, you know, communal residences that helps build essentially many of the camps that some of the liberation fronts will, will eventually be in. They build communal farms themselves where they essentially try to grow food and learn animal husbandry, all in the sort of communal effort to build the nation. But these efforts ultimately are sort of the secondary idea of what this national service is intended to do. Rashidi Kawawa specifically says he wants this to be the melting pot of the nation. The idea being that a young, you know, a young woman from the foothills of Kilimanjaro can meet a young Makonde man from right by the Mozambican border and they can come together, they can through education, through discussion, through sort of this communal exchange of, hey, you know, how do you understand our role in the nation? How do you know, how do we see this political project going? And then of course, admittedly, education through whatever effectively political education officers effectively sort of mold this singular sort of Tanzanian culture. And to a degree this works. There's a bit of a carrot and stick factor with it. Where there is paramilitary discipline, a lot of students get in trouble for drinking, there are some pregnancies which are seen as an issue, that sort of thing, and there are punishments for that. But the carrot to it effectively is if you go through national service now, you're eligible to serve in the police, to serve in the prison system, to serve prison system, serve in the civil service. This is now a gateway to what are seen as very desirable jobs as an access to social mobility. And in fact this national service is compulsory for those that are going to university are Form 6 leavers. Effectively, you're told, look, you won't have to pay tuition, but at the end you owe service with the idea that this will create, at the very least this larger sort of governing class, an active in a class of young men and women active in building the nation that have all gone through this communal experience. And well, the military looks at that and says, wait, so they're, it's effectively paramilitary, they learn some very basic militia skills, they learn discipline, they'll all be able to read and write, which is something else taught there. If, if the, the volunteers or conscripts can't, can't read or write, they learn, they can do basic math, they've learned the, the history and politics of, of Tanganyika, soon to be Tanzania. Wow, those sound like the perfect recruits. And so this becomes essentially the pool of manpower for joining the military. If you've finished form six or the university, when you finish your national service, you can go for cadet training and become commissioned as an officer. If you haven't, you can become an enlisted or an nco. But at this point, the military now is a high status, relatively well paid job and a stable one, one you don't necessarily have to worry about. And so they don't necessarily have a challenge Suddenly using that reservoir of manpower. And that is for them sort of the perfect solution. These are those politically aware, educated, dedicated young men and women that understand the national project and now will be sort of devoted to the idea of the nation. Now, now in terms of this sort of the organizational transition, they don't really have internal answers to that. They can do basic infantry training, they can do sort of basic quarter mass and quartermaster courses and whatever any of these officers and NCOs did as a job as part of the colonial military. But that's again still fairly limited because the colonial military was limited. And so they go searching for external help. The area effectively says, hey, this is the Cold War. Military aid is always out there, but we want to stay non aligned. And so first he goes to Sweden, essentially saying, we, I've appreciated what you did in the Congo. Can you, can you help us here? You're a small nation but, but one that is very, you know, upstanding, moral, we'd love to have your help. And Sweden says, no, we, we don't really do that. We only go through UN missions and that's not going to happen here. At sort of the urging of his legacy officers, he approaches Canada and Australia, both of whom very quickly go, no, no, we don't really have the time or the energy to do that. And so sort of in extremists, he reaches out to China. We're more to the point. China's sort of been on the side waving its hand saying, hey, pick me, pick me. He gets Chinese aid, he gets small arms. Depending on the documents, six or seven trainers to come over to Tanzania and signs this agreement. This causes a firestorm of appropriation. The Western press is furious. Don't you understand how China is going to sort of corrupt your military from the inside? Don't you understand how these communists revolutionaries work? Neri effectively says, well, what's the worst that can happen? The military mutinies. The military you trained already did that, so what am I supposed to do here? No one else is saying, yes. This leads the United States and Britain to elbow Canada. And Canada agrees to send along what's called Caf act, the Canadian Armed Forces Advisory and Training Team, Tanzania. And they sort of in tandem with the Chinese who are doing sort of small arms instruction, really answer a lot of the big questions that the Tanzanians need answered. And they work with the Tanzanians to sort of come up with their answers. What is the legal basis for the military? How does it relate to parliament, to the president? They essentially draft the legal acts that found this new military. Beyond this, they help them out with staff training manuals with a lot of basically the bureau and bureaucratic and administrative tasks that really are. And training and education that are really needed to build a foundation to make certain that things can grow, that resources go where they need to go, that we know how many people are training in what we know where people are, and we know who's supposed to be doing what. This also then expands into several training programs. The Canadians help with bushcraft training, field exercises and the like, that really sort of help along the way. But really the key sort of critical piece here is this administrative foundation that allows them to build. Now, ironically, along the way, even though it's seen as this. This heated rivalry. And the Canadians are consistently worried about the Chinese having spoken with some members of cafat. As it turns out, many of the weapons that the Chinese brought over and had given to the Tanzanians, the manuals, were in Chinese, which the Tanzanians could not read. And so the Canadians had a few members who could read Chinese, and they translated the arms manuals into English and then trained the TPDF on the Chinese weaponry. In fact, the COVID image of the book is actually a member of Princess Patricia's light Infantry Training 2 members of the TPDF, Tanzania People's Defense Force, on a Chinese recoilless rifle.
- [35:40]
B
Those sorts of details are always such fun to come across in the archive and really speak to these questions, as you said, of kind of like, well, what are we supposed to do, right? Like we're asking around, what really are the options? And clearly it's to kind of make these sorts of strange combinations work, right? Very much embedded in these questions of the domestic. Right? What is the role of the military and what should they be able to do? And embedded in these questions of the international. You know, how does this fit into Cold War politics? What about the regional. There's obviously some things that happen kind of immediately around Tanzania that are influencing what the military is up to. Sort of. If we move away from the sort of mid to late 1960s into sort of the early 70s, how is what's happening regionally influencing what's going on with the development of the military?
- [36:30]
C
Oh, it is. Especially as Tanzania realizes the space around it really is. Is critical to sort of its larger political project, there's consistent sort of calls on the military to how will we address this sort of. The major pieces initially are, again, the, at this point now, a fairly steady stream of Frelimo, Mozambique and freedom fighter guerrillas traversing the southern border and essentially Clashing with Portuguese forces. Which sometimes brings home the firefight across the Tanzanian border. There is a. A good amount of friction along Lake Malawi, where Tanzania feels it has some territory there. There's a degree of their claiming that due to their Nyere's sort of dislike of President Banda of Malawi's sort of politics. He sees them as helping out sort of these apartheid forces. And so this leads to significant friction there. And this continues sort of building. But then the. The major piece that sort of causes a change. And really accelerates to a degree, this organizational transition that they're working on. Is the overthrow of Milton Obote in Uganda. Obote had already sort of been, if you will, jumping from one lily pad to the next. Trying to keep power in sort of an increasingly fractious state. He had defeated sort of the Kabaka of the Buganda. And his political power in the mid-1960s by using the military, which, with those efforts led by what was a staunch ally at the time, Colonel IDI Amin. Amin ends up being promoted. Involved in a variety of other Cold War skulduggery. Sometimes with Obote, sometimes not. But there's very clearly a break happening between those two. And finally, in 1971, when Obote leaves to go to the Commonwealth heads conference in Singapore. Amin essentially rolls the tanks in, proclaims Obote overthrown, says he and the military are establishing a caretaker government. And a transition will be swift into something better. This very much annoys, I think, is the nicest way to put it, Julius Nyere. For a variety of reasons. The first being that he and Obote are allies. He sees Obote as sort of this fellow independence leader. And that he could work with. That regional stability could be maintained with. Even though Obote was having his own internal troubles. The other part of it is that Amin is very bluff, is very aggressive. And very quickly sort of establishes himself as a military strongman. Which is sort of anathema to how Neere, who's in many cases trying to be seen as this sort of enlightened leader. Really doesn't like. Initially, a bote sort of faction comes across the border into Tanzania. A bote, upon returning very quickly from the Commonwealth heads of state meeting. Is greeted in Tanzania and given a large house and some property to live on by Nyere. And very quickly there's plans sort of being drawn up for, well, how do we take the state back? How do we take Uganda back over the next. Over the first couple months of Amin's reign. Other opposition figures are sort of forced out of the country into exile in Tanzania. And they sort of join these conversations. It is unclear how, how deeply any members of the TPDF were involved in these conversations. Some members that I spoke with more said this was sort of a bit of a brainchild of the national service and its sort of increasing paramilitary nature. But effectively the exiles hatch a plan saying, well, Amin's unpopular. If we stage an invasion from Tanzania, it will rally the people of the south and we can overthrow this very unpopular leader. This becomes omnishambles very quickly. Their first attempt, their first, their sort of aerial insertion falls apart. Their plans have been leaked. Amin very quickly defeats this attempted incursion and pursues them all the way to the Tanzanian border where shots are exchanged. I mean, this basically sours the relationship even further between Tanzania and Uganda. Amin even sends some of his bombers across the border and they bomb Bukoba and Mwanza along Lake Victoria. And he keeps sort of saber rattling and does so for the next six years, effectively. And so from this point on, there's very much this strong understanding that there is a military strongman right across the border who's consistently aggressive and consistently talks about his strength and military force and consistently kind of provokes nyere on the international stage. And so the TPDF is sort of called upon of, well, okay, how would we deal with this? And this sort of, as I said, accelerates this attempted organizational build out. They had already been pursuing tanks, and the Chinese had Provided Some in 1966 after the British and Canadians said, no, they want combat aircraft. The Canadians have helped them build an air wing, but it's entirely cargo planes for sort of logistics and airlift capability. And what they find is, as they keep trying to build these, these capacities out, as they say, hey, Britain, you've sent an officer over who gave us this wonderful plan of the sort of navy we would need now help us build it. Britain, Canada, to a lesser degree, the United States, Holland, Germany, all keep effectively saying, no, no, we don't really want to take part in that, we don't want to be part of that, or we don't think you need that is sometimes the answer. The Canadians and British don't think the Tanzanians need tanks. They're very concerned that they keep asking for fighter jets and the like. But the one power that isn't, that isn't dismissive, that takes their fears and concerns and what they see as their needs seriously are the Chinese, who provide them initially with tanks and then bring a number of, I believe about 100 Tanzanians over to China for armor training and then send trainers back for sort of what becomes an armor course. Up near Arusha, the Chinese effectively lay out the money and labor and expertise and eventually ships to almost exactly build the navy the British plan called for. They bring a number of Tanzanians to China for training in jet interceptors, most of whom had been pilots that had learned on the transport aircraft. And then while those pilots are gone, they build the Ngarigeri Air base right outside Dar es Salaam. And so as Tanzania becomes increasingly worried about these incursions by the Portuguese, about friction with Malawi, about, you know, even essentially they're, they're still not fans of Mobutu. And now suddenly there's IDI Amin. They continually ask for these bigger organizational changes, for these capacities they will need to defend their nation. And the only one answering that that call is China. And this leads to some international ramifications, such as the Canadian training team leaving. And honestly, the perception of that Tanzania has fallen to the Chinese. And this has its own sort of, what's the word I'm looking for, Paul? It casts over their continuing relations.
- [45:15]
B
Yeah, but it's really interesting to understand, you know, if you just look at the end result of like, oh, look at this really close relationship with China and ignore the, well, how did it get here?
- [45:23]
C
Right.
- [45:23]
B
You end up with a very different picture. But of course, with that end result we have, as you said, right. There is a military that is built, there is, there are tanks that are going on. So, you know, if you took a checklist of a kind of quote unquote successful military, it looks like sort of by the end of the 1970s, like the TPDF is ticking those boxes, Right?
- [45:46]
C
Absolutely. I mean, even from the looking at, if you will, what sort of the political and military leadership have laid out as this idea of what do we want the military to be? Nyeri's concern about this sort of socially integrated military has happened. In fact, many of the military men, men and women, by 1972, women are back being part of the military and are actively courted to be parts of at least the non combatant branches they exist. Many of them will go on to political careers or even serve as regional commissioners while still in uniform and then back into the ranks. They are fully integrated and on board with sort of this national project of Tanzania. This is all they could hope for. There are occasional, if you will, like small civil military breaches. There's a treason trial in 1969 that a few TPDF officers are implicated in. They're very quickly removed and a few other sort of pieces like that. But there's no mass disturbance of the military is no longer necessarily a mass threat to the nation. And this is what they were hoping for. It's part of this nation building project. And then when we look at the organizational piece of how do we create something that not only can defend our borders, but facilitate an active foreign policy to try to support African liberation, to try to make certain that.
- [47:24]
B
To a.
- [47:24]
C
Degree, the parties that we want will win these liberation struggles. For example, FRELIMO is very strongly supported by the. By Tanzania. Well, they're able to do that too. And as you said, by the. By the end of the 1970s is, well, mid to late 1970s, they have effectively achieved their goals. They have achieved success.
- [47:48]
B
Which is pretty astonishing given where we started this conversation. Not that many years before the 1970s. Right. So really quite an interesting transformation there that you're documenting with all sorts of surprises along the way. I mean, we've already talked about the fun one around the translation of here you can have training material. Oh, wait, you can't read them. Right. That's a fun one. Were there any other sorts of intriguing surprises or unexpected things you came across in piecing all this together?
- [48:17]
C
Well, I'll give a small one and sort of a larger one, if that's all right. The smaller one, interestingly enough, and it's something I had never even thought about, is that Tanzania, like most militaries in the world as it turns out, had created their own special forces, their own commandos. And I had never read anything about these men. I never knew anything about them. They were completely off my radar. But when my liaison officer, Major, then Lieutenant Colonel Muikabe, helped me find interviews, we found retired Brigadier General Paul Wilfred Kabunda, who had been one of the founding members of the Special Forces. And I had no idea this was a surprise. I knew. I did not know they existed. I did not know how they had trained, who had trained them. As it turns out, they were trained by Iraqis for a chunk of their time, which. Which also was a surprise, simply a black hole of knowledge for me suddenly patched over. The larger surprise, honestly, has been the creation of nuance in the narrative of sort of Tanzania and China because as noted, especially following say, the building of the naval base, the continued sort of nary visits to China and the like, there really is sort of this narrative that emerges that China has effectively won Tanzania, that from here on out, their systems of governance, of political thought, of. Of military organization and the like are now effectively Chinese, that they are an outpost of China, if you will. And there's a variety of books written in the 60s and 70s about it, but the narrative sort of continued in shorthand to the present day. But the amazing thing is when, when you actually taught, when I actually talked with many of these officers, they were very clear eyed about their relations. They were getting what they needed out of China, but they also understood sort of the limitations of it. There was quite a bit of complaint from Sarakikya, Kashmiri and others that the education and training they were getting in China was far more ideology than education and training. And they didn't really like it. When the naval crews came back, they had each been given a little Red Book and Sarakika and Kashmiri made certain that those were confiscated and they were replaced with a copy of Nyeri's Arusha Declaration, which is sort of the, if you will, the man, the baseline manifesto of his ujama philosophy. Even further on, while they saw China as a valuable ally and someone that helped them get where they were going, there never was a desire to be China or be a agent of China, if that's the proper way word. They saw themselves as friends, as allies, but still really believed in their own independent, well, independent path. And that's been fascinating. There still was a lot of positive attention towards Commonwealth structures. They still very much in the end wanted to be Tanzanian, not simply a small country that looked like China in East Africa and comes through in a variety of sort of personal remembrances, either from the archives or interviews, but really is often papered over.
- [52:08]
B
Well, that just proves why this kind of research is so important and so interesting. So thank you for sharing those surprises with us. Is there anything you're currently investigating in the archives you want to give us a brief sneak preview of?
- [52:21]
C
Absolutely. So this was actually part of. Of, if you will, this project ended up getting broken into two parts. So ujama's army ends with sort of its coda being the war against IDI Amin, where the tpdf, the Tanzania People's Defense Force, effectively is put through its paces. It is called upon to actually fight a conventional war against a strong opponent. And spoilers the, the structures that they've put in place, things like expansive militia formations, things like training in Mozambique, things like that, all sort of fire on all cylinders and they, they win the war quite decisively. But the war itself is really not covered that well. There's a 1982 book by Tony Avargan and Martha Honey, who are journalists who were in Tanzania at the time that followed along with the Tanzanian advance. This is perhaps one of the better primary sources. There are numerous sort of Tanzanian accounts coming out, including one that's just come out by Stephen Temihanda that are in Kiswahili. But as part of my interviews here and part of my archival stuff, archival research, I really pulled up a lot of testaments about the actual operational experiences of this war. What decisions were made, at what level, how did these young officers experience these battles? How did they understand their role here? How did this become sort of this great patriotic war for Tanzania? And so that's sort of the second half of what I brought back from Tanzania and my interviews and archival work there. And so what I'm working on now is GOBMA is going back to get some more interviews from officers that served in the war, because that generation is passing. And then I'm writing an expansive history of, depending on who's asking, the Uganda Tanzania War or the Kagero War.
- [54:35]
B
So in some sense, it's a sequel.
- [54:37]
C
Yes, absolutely.
- [54:39]
B
Well, that's always exciting to hear about. So best of luck with the project. And for anyone who wants to get in on part one. But while part two is still in progress, they can read the book titled Ujama's army the Creation and Evolution of the Tanzania People's Defense Force, 1964-1979, published by Ohio University Press in 2024. Charlie, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [55:03]
C
Oh, no, it's been absolutely lovely. I hope that this has been enlightening for a few, and if anyone's at all interested and can somehow dig up a way to contact me, I'm always happy to. Always happy to talk at even greater length about it.