Table Of ContentNavigating Socialist Encounters
Africa in Global History
Edited by
Joël Glasman, Omar Gueye, Alexander Keese and
Christine Whyte
Advisory Board:
Joe Alie, Felicitas Becker, William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Lynda Day,
Scholastique Diazinga, Andreas Eckert, Babacar Fall, Toyin Falola, Matt Graham,
Emma Hunter, Erin Jessee, Isabella Kentridge, Colleen Kriger, Kristin Mann,
Patrick Manning, Conceição Neto, Vanessa S. Oliveira, Lorelle Semley,
Ibrahim Sundiata
Volume 2
Navigating Socialist
Encounters
Moorings and (Dis)Entanglements between Africa and
East Germany during the Cold War
Edited by
Eric Burton, Anne Dietrich, Immanuel R. Harisch,
and Marcia C. Schenck
Gedruckt mit der freundlichen Unterstützung der Potsdam Graduate School, der Zentralen
Forschungsförderung der Universität Potsdam, ,UP - Innovative Ideen fördern‘ und der
Philosophisch-Historischen Fakultät der Universität Innsbruck.
ISBN: 978-3-11-062231-7
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ISSN 2628-1767
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detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2021 Eric Burton et al., Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: An East German diplomat welcomes three Tanzanian journalists at Dar es Salaam
airport on their return from a seminar in Berlin, ca. 1974
(courtesy of Norbert Böhme).
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Table of Contents
Marcia C. Schenck, Immanuel R. Harisch, Anne Dietrich, and Eric Burton
1 Introduction: Moorings and (Dis)Entanglements between Africa and
East Germany during the Cold War 1
I Shaping Pioneering Institutions
Jörg Depta and Anne-Kristin Hartmetz
2 Herder vs. Goethe in Egypt: East and West German Language Courses
in Cairo and the Evolution of “German as a Foreign Language”
(DaF) 61
Christian Alvarado
3 “In the Spirit of Harambee!” Kenyan Student Unions in the German
Democratic Republic and Yugoslavia, 1964–68 87
Eric Angermann
4 Agency and Its Limits: African Unionists as Africa’s “Vanguard” at
the FDGB College in Bernau 115
Franziska Rantzsch
5 The Negotiations of the Contract Labor Accordbetween the GDR and
Mozambique 139
II Navigating the GDR: Moorings and (Dis)Entanglements
G. Thomas Burgess
6 The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Future: Ambivalent Encounters
Between Zanzibar and East Germany in the Cold War 169
J. A. Osei, with an annotation by Immanuel R. Harisch
7 My Impression of the German Democratic Republic [Life Itself
Exposes Lies] 193
VI TableofContents
Fernando Agostinho Machava
8 Echoes of the Past: The Social Impact of the Returned Labor Migrants
from East Germany on the City of Maputo 207
Marcia C. Schenck and Francisca Raposo
9 Socialist Encounters at the School of Friendship 235
Ibraimo Alberto and Marcia C. Schenck
10 Paths Are Made by Walking: Memories of Being a Mozambican
Contract Worker in the GDR 247
III Sourcing Visions of Solidarity
George Bodie
11 So Close, Yet So Far: Ulrich Makosch and the GDR’s Afrikabild on
Screen and in Text 265
Paul Sprute
12 Diaries of Solidarity in the Global Cold War: The East German
Friendship Brigades and their Experience in ‘Modernizing’
Angola 293
Katrin Bahr
13 Between State Mission and Everyday Life: Private Photographs of
East Germans in Mozambique in the 1980s 319
Alexandra Piepiorka and Eduardo F. Buanaissa
14 A (Post)Socialist Memory Space? East German and Mozambican
Memories of Cooperation in Education 351
List of Contributors 387
Index 393
Marcia C. Schenck, Immanuel R. Harisch, Anne Dietrich,
and Eric Burton¹
1 Introduction: Moorings and
(Dis)Entanglements between Africa and
East Germany during the Cold War
TheArushaDeclarationofFebruary5,1967confirmedtheintentionofTanzania’s
ruling party TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) to “build a socialist
state.”²ThedeclarationaffirmedthatTANUplannedtopursueapolicyofnation-
alization of major industries, banks, and insurance companies.³ Two months
after the declaration, the Tanzanian trade unionist Salvatory Kaindoah wrote
an enthusiastic letter to share the news of developments in his country with
the Fritz Heckert Trade Union College, in the East German town of Bernau
where Kaindoah had studied:
DearDirectoroftheCollege,Dr.Kampfert,
IamverygladwhenIamwritingthislettertoyounow,beinginacountrywhichisinaway
liquidatingtheexploitationofmanbymanandonthewaytoSocialism.Welldonewith
your daily work. Howglad were you,when you heard that our country nationalized all
thebanksandotherbigindustries?⁴
Kaindoah,atthattimeemployedattheTanzanianNationalInstituteforProduc-
tivityinDaresSalaam,seemedtosuggestthattheArushaDeclarationmeantthe
Thisintroductionistheresultofacollectivethinkingandwritingprocessofallfoureditors.
Giventheongoingbenchmarkizationofcurrentacademia,itisofincreasingimportancewhich
author’snamecomesfirst.Inordertomitigatetheeffectsofthisdevelopment,wehavedecided
touseanalphabeticalorderfortheeditedvolumeandanalphabeticallyreversedorderforthe
introduction.Theintroductionalsoowesmuchtothevaluablecomments,corrections,andad-
viceofanumberofpeople.Wewanttothankthetwoanonymousreviewers,NeleFabian,Inge-
borgGrau,andArnoSondereggerfortheircarefulreadingandhelpfulsuggestions.Wealsowant
tothankthemembersoftheGDRworkinggroupatLeipzigUniversityandInnocentRwehabura
fortheircomments.LastbutnotleastwearegratefultoPieterCordwellforskillfullyeditingthe
textandtoMalteKöppenforstreamliningthefootnotes,cleaningupthebibliography,andcre-
atingtheindex.
TanganyikaAfricanNationalUnion,“ArushaDeclaration,”February5,1967,accessedJanu-
ary29,2020,www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nyerere/1967/arusha-declaration.htm.
AndrewCoulson,Tanzania:APoliticalEconomy(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2013).
SalvatoryKaindoahtoKarlKampfert,DaresSalaam,April10,1967,StiftungArchivderPar-
teienundMassenorganisationenderDDRimBundesarchiv,Berlin(henceforth:SAPMOBArch),
DY79/619.
OpenAccess.©2021MarciaC.Schenck,ImmanuelR.Harisch,AnneDietrich,andEricBurton,publishedby
DeGruyter. ThisworkislicensedundertheCreativeCommonsAttribution4.0International
License.https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623543-001
2 MarciaC.Schenck,ImmanuelR.Harisch,AnneDietrich,andEricBurton
convergenceoftheUnitedRepublicofTanzaniawiththeGermanDemocraticRe-
public(GDR)inacohesiveandgrowingworldofsocialism.ThiswastobeSocial-
ism with a capital “S,” perhaps optimistically indicating that the policies of
TANU and the policies of the GDR’s ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische
EinheitsparteiDeutschlands,SED)ledtoasharedsocialistfuture.Kaindoah’scel-
ebratoryletterisoneofamyriadofexamplesofdialogueandentanglementsbe-
tweenAfricanproponentsofsocialism,withtheirmultiplevisionsofAfricanand
global futures, and East German individuals and institutions.
ManyEastGermans,however,werelessconfidentabouttheviabilityofTan-
zania’s policies and converging paths – including those who observed these
events from East Africa. Some weeks before Kaindoah’s letter was written,
East German experts and diplomats gathered at a meeting of the local party
branchoftheSEDinStoneTown,thecapitalofTanzania’sislandregionofZan-
zibar(ithadbeenaseparatecountryuntilitmergedwithTanganyikain1964to
createTanzania).Theirdiscussionsrevealedtheurgetoclassifyandevaluatethe
Arusha Declaration based on how it conformed to Marxist-Leninist dogma. Ac-
cordingtotheminutesofthepartymeeting,severalcomrades“immediatelyla-
beled the program as unscientific” and dismissed its usefulness tobuildingso-
cialism in Tanzania. Other members questioned the suitability of a socialist
programto Tanzania.TheysawTanzania asbeingcompletelydifferentin mate-
rial and cultural terms compared to European circumstances, and at least one
developmental stage away from being a “Workers’ and Peasants’ State,” like
the GDR.One member asserted that the Arusha Declaration was “based on the
levelofdevelopmentandthementalityofAfricans.CanAfricansevenbuildso-
cialismwiththeirideology?”HefurtheralludedtothefactthattheEastGermans
had not seen the declaration coming, despite their supposedly leading role in
guiding Tanzania to socialism: “Why were we surprised by the declaration?”⁵
The surprise felt by the East Germans in Zanzibar stemmed from the fact that
many of them took for granted the leading roles of the Soviet Union and the
GDR on the road to socialist development. Thus, many found it difficult to
come to terms with Tanzanian actors who were conceptualizing their own
road to socialist development.
InbothTanzaniaandtheGDR,socialismwouldremainofficialgovernment
policy for the next two decades and beyond. By 1967, both socialisms had al-
ContributionbyComradeO.,noplace[Zanzibar],nodate[March9,1967],SAPMO-BArch,DY
30/98149.ForadiscussionoftheroleofEastGermanadvisersinZanzibar,seeEricBurton,“Di-
vergingVisionsinRevolutionarySpaces:EastGermanAdvisersandRevolutionfromAbovein
Zanzibar,1964–1970,”inBetweenEastandSouth:SpacesofInteractionintheGlobalizingEcon-
omyoftheColdWar,ed.AnnaCalorietal.(Berlin:DeGruyter,2019).
1 Introduction 3
readybeenconnectedbynewlyestablishedmodesofintercontinentalexchange.
These included personal migrations, new institutions, and official initiatives.
Tanzanian trade unionists (such as Salvatory Kaindoah), students, and Swahili
language teachers ventured to the GDR, while East German teachers, skilled
workers, and technical experts were dispatched to build socialism in Tanzania.
Beneath the official rhetoric of cooperation, however, ideas of internationalism
andthebestpathtosocialismoftendiffered.Tanzaniabecame,intheEastGer-
man classification, not a“socialist country” but a countryof “socialist orienta-
tion” that was still at a remove from“scientific socialism.”⁶ Indeed,Tanzanian
president Julius Nyerere, one of the main architects of the Arusha Declaration,
always kept Marxism-Leninism at arm’s length and publicly chastised as “fail-
ures” the “so-called socialist countries” in which a small minority had seized
power and privilege.⁷
Therewasthusneverauniversallysharedorstableunderstandingofwhere
thesocialistworldbeganandwhereitended.Atleastnominally,governmentsin
no less than 35 out of 53 countries on the African continent used the term“so-
cialist” to characterize their politics and policies between the late 1950s and
the late 1980s.⁸ Many African socialisms in the 1960s and 1970s,though by no
means all, shared characteristics. Examples of these traits were nationalization
of key economic sectors for raw material exports, state-controlled marketing
boards for agricultural produce, and universal and free education and health-
care. Ghana, Guinea, Tanzania, and Zambia are good examples of countries
which followed this package of policies. Ethiopia,Tanzania, Mozambique, and
Burkina Faso were the countries which attemptedthe most wide-ranging trans-
formationsoftheall-importantruralsectorinthe1970sand1980s.Manyofthe
socialisms were also marked by “a doublingof the state into party and normal
stateadministration,theconcentrationofstrategicdecision-makingattheparty
EricBurton,“Tansanias‘AfrikanischerSozialismus’unddieEntwicklungspolitikderbeiden
deutschen Staaten: Akteure, Beziehungen und Handlungsspielräume,1961–1990” (PhD diss.,
UniversityofVienna,2017),134–135.
JuliusNyerere,“CapitalismorSocialism:TheRationalChoice,”NewBlackfriars55(1974):447.
Anne M. Pitcher and Kelly M. Askew, “African Socialisms and Postsocialisms,” Africa 76
(2006):1.SeealsoEricBurton,“SocialismsinDevelopment:Revolution,DivergenceandCrisis,
1917–1991,”JournalfürEntwicklungspolitik33(2017):5;PriyaLal,AfricanSocialisminPostcolo-
nialTanzania:BetweentheVillageandtheWorld(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2015);
MarkNash,ed.,RedAfrica:AffectiveCommunitiesandtheColdWar(London:BlackDogPublish-
ing, 2016); Barry Munslow, ed., Africa: Problems in the Transition to Socialism (London: Zed,
1986);EdmondJ.KellerandDonaldS.Rothchild,ed.,Afro-MarxistRegimes:IdeologyandPublic
Policy(Boulder:LynneRienner,1987).
4 MarciaC.Schenck,ImmanuelR.Harisch,AnneDietrich,andEricBurton
leaderships, highly centralized decision-making processes and a subordination
of ‘mass organizations’ to the party line.”⁹
In view of the variety of socialisms in Africa, which often blended with
“Third World” anti-imperialism and diverse forms of African nationalism, Afri-
can socialist relationships with Soviet and East German Marxism-Leninism
werecomplex.They weremarkedbybothcooperation andtension,particularly
as the anti-imperialist strand grew and diversified further.¹⁰ The bipolar Cold
Warparadigmwasandisunabletoexplainthesealliancesandfrictions.¹¹Sim-
ilarly,thehistoriographyofglobalizationhasalsoignoredormarginalizedthese
connectionsuntilveryrecently.AsJamesMark,BogdanIacob,TobiasRupprecht,
and LjubicaSpaskovskapointout, “[t]he idea ofWesterncapitalism asthe sole
engine for modernity has left us with a distorted view of socialist states as in-
ward-looking,isolated,andcutofffromglobaltrendsuntilthetransitiontocap-
italism in the 1990s.”¹² In the globalization discourse of triumphant liberalism
which emerged in the early 1990s, and decisively shaped global history as an
academic discipline,¹³ both Africa and EasternEurope wereneglectedworldre-
gions.ToomanyanalysesconsideredglobalizationtobeaWestern-ledphenom-
enoninwhichneitherthecommunistworldnorAfricanstates–ofvaryingideo-
JoachimBecker,“AnatomiederSozialismen:Wirtschaft,StaatundGesellschaft,”inSozialis-
men:EntwicklungsmodellevonLeninbisNyerere,ed.JoachimBeckerandRudyWeissenbacher
(Wien:Promedia,2009),40.Ourtranslation.
WilliamH.FriedlandandCarlG.Rosberg,ed.,AfricanSocialism(Stanford:StanfordUniver-
sityPress,1964);AllisonDrew,“CommunisminAfrica,”inTheOxfordHandbookoftheHistory
ofCommunism,ed.S.A.Smith(Oxford,NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,2014).JodieYuzhou
Sunexplores the influences of the Cold War,the politicalculture of individual Africanstates
(KenyaandZambia), andtheirbilateralrelationswithcommunistcountries,aboveall China,
inJodieYuzhouSun,“HistoricizingAfricanSocialisms:KenyanAfricanSocialism,ZambianHu-
manism, and Communist China’s Entanglements,” International Journal of African Historical
Studies52(2019).
DanielSpeich,“TheKenyanStyleof‘AfricanSocialism’:DevelopmentalKnowledgeClaims
andtheExplanatoryLimitsoftheColdWar,”DiplomaticHistory33(2009);TonySmith,“New
BottlesforNewWine:APericentricFrameworkfortheStudyoftheColdWar,”DiplomaticHis-
tory24(2000).
JamesMarketal.,1989:AGlobalHistoryofEasternEurope(Cambridge:CambridgeUniver-
sityPress,2019),7.
SebastianConrad,WhatIsGlobalHistory?(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,2016),1–2.
SebastianConradmaintainsthat“oneofthecrucialtasksofglobalhistoryistoofferacritical
commentaryontheongoingglobalizationprocess.”Conrad,WhatIsGlobalHistory?,212.
