Rereading Ujamaa, Rethinking Freedom

Abstract

This article examines the compatibility of Ujamaa's conceptualization of freedom with the limits of the sovereign state. This is done by examining popular enactments of Ujamaa in Tanzania in the 1960s, which resulted in what, for a moment, was a quasi-utopian realization of post-colonial freedom. It analyses the ways in which Julius Nyerere, in turn, was inspired by these popular practices and attempted to codify and advance their spread. Viewing this back-and-forth communication as a multidirectional means of theorizing the ideals of Ujamaa, including its radical conceptions of freedom, the article examines how such imaginations were eventually interfered with and restricted by the state, and how they might be revisited today.