Rethinking the Interpretative Limits of Theatre for Development and the Politics of Nation-Building in Post-Socialist Tanzania
Stanley ELIAS. “Rethinking the Interpretative Limits of Theatre for Development and the Politics of Nation-Building in Post-Socialist Tanzania” Mambo! No. 111, 2026.
| This article rethinks the interpretation of Theatre for Development (TfD) in Tanzania, particularly in relation to its role in nation-building during what I term the “post-socialist” period. Whereas dominant frameworks have positioned TfD as simply a form of resistance to the state or collaboration with it, this article explores the more complex and negotiated ways in which TfD has operated in practice. Drawing on the historical trajectory of University TfD initiatives, interviews, and performances, this article examines how practitioners navigated state power, paternalistic agendas, and grassroots participation. The article introduces the concept of a poetics of negotiation to describe indirect and largely non-confrontational modes of political engagement. Through strategies such as nostalgia, satire, and symbolic ambiguity, TfD reflected on the disappointments of socialism and the promises of neoliberalism, while also articulating alternative, everyday imaginings of the nation. Foregrounding conviviality as an analytical lens, the article highlights everyday negotiations shaped by unequal power relations. It particularly argues that while convivial engagement enabled limited forms of agency, it also constrained overt political critique, repositioning University TfD as a negotiated and politically bounded cultural practice in “post-socialist” Tanzania. |
Introduction
Since independence, Tanzania has pursued various ideological and cultural projects aimed at nation-building within a plural society, most notably through early nationalist and socialist initiatives (Ivaska, 2011; Askew, 2002). Within this broader nation-building discourse, the theatre industry has played a significant role in helping us understand power dynamics among key actors in nation-building across the early nationalist, socialist, and “post-socialist” periods ( Mlama, 1991). Early theatre initiatives from above—led by the state and its affiliated institutions—such as the establishment of the National Ngoma Troupe (1963), the Travelling Theatre movement in the late 1960s, the National Acrobatic Group (1969), and the National Drama Group (1972), alongside later initiatives from below—led by former members and artists of the National Arts Groups, including the Muungano Cultural Troupe, the Mandela Theatre Troupe, and the Parapanda Arts Company in the late 1970s, to mention a few—have collectively informed our understanding of how theatre has engaged with, resisted, and negotiated state power within the nation-building project.
Scholarly interpretations of these theatre initiatives have largely been dominated by common frameworks of resistance, domination, appropriation, and co-option and collaboration to explain power relations among actors of nation-building in both the early nationalist, socialist, and “post-socialist” Tanzania. While these frameworks are useful, they do not fully capture the complexity and ambiguity that characterize the intricate route TfD took in mobilising nation-building “post-socialist” in Tanzania.
Binary interpretations of the TfD praxis in Tanzania
Recent scholarship on TfD practice in Tanzania has advanced two additional dominant frameworks that seek to more fully account for TfD practice and the politics of nation-building in “post-socialist” Tanzania.
The first dominant interpretative framework frames the TfD movement as a top-down initiative shaped by intellectuals coming down from the “ivory tower” to engage grassroots communities in the process of nation-building (Lihamba, 1985). Emerging in the late 1970s at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), this study refers to the initiative as University Theatre for Development (University TfD, hereafter), which functioned as both a discursive and performative space for inclusive nation-building, defining who is and who is not an actor in nation-building on the one hand, and, on the other hand, exploring power dynamics, contradictions, and tensions embedded in its praxis. This framework emphasizes power hierarchies and inherent contradictions in the practice of University TfD, where the University, as a derivative of the state, granted University elites authority over the structure, ideology, and discourses of performance. However, if we accept this framework, it falls short of fully explaining instances in which grassroots communities and even artists exercise active agency in negotiating with the state, thereby reshaping the very logic of collective nation-building from below.
The second interpretative framework, foundational to the conceptualization of University TfD, positions it as a form of “people’s theatre,” in which grassroots communities are co-creators and collaborators in the nation-building process. From this perspective, grassroots actors are not passive recipients but active agents reshaping dominant discourses of nation-building. This interpretation aligns with Penina Mlama’s central proposition that University TfD served as a form of resistance against dominant forces whose positions are often threatened by the awakening of popular consciousness (Mlama, 1991, p. 94; Edmondson, 2007).
Ideally, University TfD initiatives aimed to teach and empower rural communities to define and pursue their own development agendas, both locally and nationally. University TfD experts provided training in methodologies for identifying issues, conducting investigations, formulating questions, gathering data, and performing analyses (Riccio, 2001). They also offered instruction in interviewing techniques and helped communities recognize the resources and potential within their own environments. Once these strategies were established, University TfD practitioners collaborated with local participants to test the material through improvisation, blending traditional, contemporary, and popular dance styles with poetry, drumming, masking, and role-playing drama (Riccio, 2001).
In a detailed interview with Tomas Riccio on December 2–3, 1999, in Dar es Salaam, Mgunga Mwa Mnyenyelwa, former director of Parapanda Theatre Lab and a TfD practitioner, emphasized that the entire community was encouraged to attend the final performance and remain engaged in the ongoing process, regardless of the method employed (personal interview, 1999). Active participation in this theatrical process was therefore crucial in defining the transformative potential of University TfD, enabling grassroots initiatives to reshape narratives of development and nation-building from below.
However, if we also accept this interpretation, we also acknowledge diverse roles assumed by “the people” and other actors at the grassroots level, not simply as passive actors in the process, but as active collaborators in the shaping of narratives of nation-building. Yet this framework, too, has its limitations as it tends to valorize grassroots participation in overly simplistic and optimistic terms and often overlooks uneven power dynamics among and between actors of nation-building. It risks romanticising participation without critically engaging the political and institutional limits of such engagements. Grassroots communities often lacked self-confidence to continue working in the same way once the experts’ dominant influence has faded,”(Bakari, 1998, p.115). “Community members were often at a loss at knowing how to carry forward the process in the absence of the experts”.” He emphasized that “Because of this reliance on experts’ influence, people were being deprived of their opportunity to voice their own concerns and engage in independent thinking”(Bakari, 1998, p. 115).
Although Bakari’s reflection suggests problems in the facilitation of the University TfD initiatives, it also speaks of the inherent power dynamics among actors of nation-building within the University TfD praxis in “post-socialist” Tanzania. As pointed out earlier, the University of TfD was born out of the idea of the University intellectuals “coming down from their ivory towers” and engaging with the masses who had long been starved of such a theatre (Lihamba, 1985). In essence, university theatre experts were expected to remain as a catalyst group in the practice of the University TfD. As Ricco (2001) notes, during the period when University TfD was widespread in Tanzania, the ideal TfD practice required a catalyst group of theatre professionals to conduct a one- to three-week residency in a village.” During this time, theatre experts could engage with the local community, facilitating theatre activities, workshops, or performances that aim to address socio-political or developmental issues on one hand. On the other hand, the residency served as an opportunity for the theatre professionals to collaborate with the villagers and support their independent thinking in matters of their interests and of the nation through theatre. Kerr (1995) observes, the beginnings of the University TfD in Tanzania were driven by noble aspirations. Beginning with the inaugural University TfD workshop held in Malya village in the Mwanza region in 1982, followed by sessions in Bagamoyo in 1983 and Msoga village in 1985, both located in the Coast region, as well as Mkambalani in 1986 in the Morogoro region, and extending to various subsequent University TfD initiatives up until the mid-1990s, theatre experts both from within and outside UDSM advocated for active community participation and encouraged critical reflection on issues related to their development and the nation as a whole (Sanga, 2023, p. 245).
However, by the mid 1980s concerns began to rise both within and outside UDSM that the University TfD pioneers were exerting an insidious control over the university’s TfD. Juma Bakari (personal interview, May 17, 2024) observes that university intellectuals “came down from the ivory towers” with a sense of intellectual power, exerting significant influence over the University TfD and shaping their vision of nation-building. This intellectual dominance established a clear hierarchy, granting elite intellectuals from UDSM—particularly the pioneers of the TfD movement—substantial authority over development narratives for both the people and the nation. Furthermore, the University TfD faced the challenge of paternalistic agendas and, at times, regressive government hegemonies that undermined the effectiveness of its professed participatory, democratic, and bottom-up approaches to nation-building(Kerr, 1995).
Therefore, relying solely on these two dominant interpretations that positions University TfD either as an intellectual project or as a grassroots, revolutionary, counter-hegemonic initiative reduces the University TfD movement into a binary logic of resistance versus collaboration. Thus the approach obscures a range of intentions, negotiations, and evolving positionalities that have characterized University TfD practice in post-socialist Tanzania.
Transgressing Binary Readings of University TfD in Post-socialist Tanzania
While many TfD initiatives across Africa were marked by overt resistance and state co-option, the University TfD in Tanzania tried to follow a different trajectory (Mlama, 1991). The University TfD’s engagement with the politics of nation-building and development narratives was not designed to challenge or subvert the existing political order directly.Transforming the grassroots masses and enabling them to shape narratives of nation-building could succeed through democratic engagement with political authorities and other hegemonies, not by confronting them directly but by interacting in a more intimate manner (Mlama,1991). By the late mid-1980s, (of course, until present), Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, Revolutionary Party) remained in control of the nation’s government and the public discourse of nation-building. Due to a political structure that required party and government overseers to participate in any University TfD initiative, University TfD continued to employ what I term poetics of negotiation—that is, aesthetic, symbolic, and narrative strategies that articulate indirect forms of political engagement, including mimicry, subversion, nostalgia, and satire—enabling it to navigate the ambivalences of nation-building in “spaces at the margin” in post-socialist Tanzania. Consequently, this praxis did not position the University either in opposition to the state or fully within it, but rather fostered an “intimate relationship” within the discourses of nation-building in post-socialist Tanzania.

Diagram showing the mediating role of University Theatre for Development in Tanzania, positioned between the state and grassroots communities. Source: Author’s conception.
While this positioning might suggest that University TfD acts as a collaborator in shaping narratives of nation-building, the growing legal, administrative, and party constraints in “post-socialist” Tanzania compel us to reconsider its role. In this context of increasing political limits, Achille Mbembe’s (2001) framework of conviviality becomes useful, as it allows us to appreciate the ambivalence, negotiation, and everyday forms of engagement that move beyond simplistic oppositional binaries in University TfD practice in “post-socialist” Tanzania.
As I have pointed out earlier, these binaries obscure our understanding of power dynamics shaping the evolving character of University TfD and its responses to administrative, legal, and ruling-party pressures in post-socialist Tanzania, on the one hand, and the shifting politics of nation-building, on the other. While these binaries have been influential in scholarship on University TfD in Tanzania, they remain inadequate for explaining the nuanced and shifting nature of power relations in post-socialist contexts.
It should also be pointed out that whereas Cameroon, as a primary context in Mbembe’s theorization of conviviality, differs significantly from that of Tanzania, conviviality still provides a productive framework for making sense of the ambivalences that define University TfD’s relationship with the state. Unlike frameworks that emphasize overt resistance or collaboration, as I have already alluded to, conviviality highlights the ‘intimate’ interactions between the state and grassroots community, where negotiation, compromise, mimicry, and accommodation coexist alongside indirect forms of critique and appropriation. For University TfD, conviviality reveals how non-state actors engage with the government without completely fighting with it. This daily negotiation, rather than direct resistance in spaces at the margins, which may appear as a spectacle of absurdity, serves as the site where we can understand how power is felt, challenged, and transformed.
In essence, conviviality suggests that our reading of University TfD should recognize that power is seldom singular but is woven into everyday practices—even in spaces we often overlook (spaces at the margins)—which are as much about co-presence and accommodation as they are about negotiation and control. In this regard, University TfD demonstrates that nation-building does not occur solely through state directives or grassroots resistance, but through the lived negotiations that unfold in the poetics of negotiation and the spectacles of absurdity. Within these contexts, through the poetics of negotiation and the spectacles of absurdity, the state and the grassroots community become intimately intertwined in the project of nation-building.
It should be noted that, when viewed through the framework of conviviality, the seemingly contradictory aspects of University TfD emerge less as limitations and more as strategies of survival and creativity in a context of increasing legal, administrative, and party control. For instance, University TfD performances such as Chitandi and Walanguzi—performed in 1983 as part of the Bagamoyo Popular Theatre Project and in 1985 in the Malya project, respectively—which nostalgically recall the promises of socialism, alongside Kaputula la Marx, performed in 1988, offer critiques of both the disappointments of socialism and the aspirations of neoliberalism. In Chitandi performance for instance, the first storyline traced the historical arrival of Arab traders in Bagamoyo, highlighting how this encounter led to the erosion of indigenous culture and the rise of Arab-Islamic influences. More critically, the storyline exposed the emergence of exploitative economic relations in the fishing industry, showing how local fishermen were marginalized. In response, the fishermen organize a strike and form a cooperative, signaling collective resistance and grassroots economic empowerment.

University TfD Performance in Bagamoyo, 1983: Engaging Audiences in the Chitandi Narrative (Lihamba, 1985)
On the other hand, Walanguzi portrayed racketeers exploiting villagers by hoarding and overpricing essential goods through political patronage. Despite a government crackdown, corruption persists as elites manipulate power for personal gain. Cooperative systems fail, causing shortages and suffering. The play critiques the erosion of socialist ideals, revealing how systemic inequality undermines justice and collective welfare.

University TfD Performance in Malya, Mwanza, 1982: Staging Walanguzi and Community Engagement (Department of Art, Music, and Theatre, 1982)
These performances are not merely depoliticized spectacles. Rather, they can be interpreted as convivial acts that simultaneously accommodate state narratives while introducing alternative imaginaries resonant with grassroots frustrations and aspirations. This coexistence of affirmation and critique within a single performance exemplifies a convivial mode of politics—one that is nuanced, non-confrontational, and integrated into everyday life in Tanzania.
It should also be pointed out that conviviality is always optimistic and its promise lies in its ability to reframe University TfD not just as a tool of state ideology but as a vibrant contact zone where conflicting visions of Tanzania’s future are negotiated. As such, it enables us to make sense of University TfD agency even under increasing political limits, as I presented in Chapter Five. This interpretive framework creates opportunities for understanding power not solely as domination but as an ongoing, relational process that fosters spaces for ambivalence, humor, satire, and irony. From this viewpoint, University TfD possesses the potential to contribute to the shaping of narratives of nation-building in ways that are not apparent through the simplistic binaries of resistance and collaboration.
It is also important to note that while conviviality offers valuable insights into understanding power dynamics in the nation-building process within University TfD practice, it also has interpretive limitations. Whereas conviviality emphasizes creative negotiation in what I call a contact zone (University TfD), it risks exaggerating the potential for agency while underestimating the asymmetries of power relations that define the Tanzanian “post-socialist” state. In reality, the relationship between University TfD and the state is not one of equals. The legal, administrative, and political frameworks of the ruling party apparatus continue to influence, limit, and redirect the agenda and form of performances. In particular, when University TfD devolves into a “spectacle of social absurdity,” audiences may disengage, viewing the performances as mere entertainment rather than meaningful contributions to public discourse. In this sense, a convivial approach risks fostering complicity rather than critique, ultimately reinforcing state hegemony instead of challenging it.
Conclusion
While conviviality allows us to understand the optimism, creativity, and nuanced negotiations that define University TfD in post-socialist Tanzania, it is essential to balance this with an awareness of its limitations. Although it sheds light on how both actors navigate power dynamics closely, it also serves as a reminder that these negotiations occur within constraining structures that consistently threaten to depoliticise the very practices that initially aimed to empower.
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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Stanley Elias (25 mai 2026). Rethinking the Interpretative Limits of Theatre for Development and the Politics of Nation-Building in Post-Socialist Tanzania. Mambo ! Consulté le 10 juin 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/169o9
