Practicing pan-Africanism: an anthropological perspective on exile-host relations at Kongwa, Tanzania

Abstract

This paper explores exile-host relations at Kongwa, where southern Africa's first guerrilla soldiers lived alongside villagers in rural, central Tanzania between 1964 and 1978. Drawing from the author's previous research on SWAPO's exile camps, recent publications about the ANC in exile and fieldwork conducted at Kongwa, the paper argues that Kongwa became a “pan-African community” in which inhabitants originating from eastern and southern African countries developed complex and meaningful relationships across national borders. Nevertheless, this community was vulnerable to the narrow interests of national elites and the frameworks of national histories, which have undermined subsequent recognition of the international relations which formed at Kongwa. In highlighting these points, the paper identifies tensions inherent to Pan-Africanism as discourse and practice and models an ethnographic approach to studying southern Africa's liberation struggles and their aftermath.