Book acquisition trip to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

During the summer of 2024, I spent three weeks in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, resulting in the acquisition of over 800 print publications and 250 periodicals and newspaper issues. Although not the primary goal of this field trip, it provides a useful snapshot of the current state of (book)publishing in Tanzania. By way of illustration three examples from the literary, Islamic and Christian parts of this industry, which still remain quite segregated.

In the current collection plan, the ASCL justifies the reasons of including for the first time in their history, publications written in Swahili, a major African lingua franca. Parts of this growing collection, dominated by literary fiction, are featured in separate web dossiers and highlights such as Tanzanian children's and youth literature  and East African literatures,  both compiled by Ursula Oberst, and the latter introduced by Ashleigh Harris.

Myself being a ‘digital immigrant’, born into a world dominated by print, I was struck (again) by the multi-modality of Swahili fiction. My stay coincided with the 3^rd annual celebration of the World Kiswahili Day (7 July), based onthe UNESCO resolution 41 C/61, and the university campus was brimming with all kinds of activities including the sale of (mostly) print publications in and on Swahili. Not just the large print houses but also individuals hired a booth to sell their own work. I was therefore able to purchase seventitles of the (unknown to me) author Goima Peter Mwamwingila. However, the traditional print version of these books is often at the last stage of a much longer process, in which different editions of the work can appear as serialised articles in newspapers, ‘nakala laini’ (soft copies sold through Whatsapp) or ‘improved’ editions by AI (see the two pictures from work of Carolas Bujimu to the right).

The seventh of July 2024 marked also the beginning of the lunar month of Muharram, one of the four holy months in Islam. Especially the first ten days are considered auspicious for all Muslims to fast, whereas for Shi’a Muslims the 10^th of Muharram marks the memorial day of the murder of Muhammad’s grandson Husayn. The boy scouts had created a large scale maquette of this historical event (see picture).  During this period, Dar es Salaam’s Indian quarter is dominated by people wearing black, there are black draperies and flags, the shops are closed, and pendants of ‘blood drops’ are available (see picture). Lots of material written and translated by Tanzanian Shi’a Muslims was available, often for very cheap or for free. Active players in this field are the Bilal Muslim Mission, the Iranian al-Mustafa University which now has a branch in Upanga, and the al-Itrah foundation which is now primarily active on the Internet and on radio/TV, after having published more than 200 Swahili titles.

I was glad to finally lay my hands on the official biography of Sayyid Saeed Akhtar Rizvi (1927-2002), published by his son in Toronto, whose impact on the Tanzanian Twelver shia can hardly be overestimated. Other publications such as serials (Samachar and Sauti ya Bilal), historical studies ('Ithna-Asheris in Zanzibar during 1930-1960' ; 'The Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheries of East Africa: Their Quest for a New Socio-Religious Identity (1860-1960)', and political pamphlets ('Marekibisho [sic] Ya Katiba Ya Jamhuri Ya Muungano Wa Tanzania’) provide a wealth of context but are still published in traditional formats (and often in English as well). In comparison with fictional works, hybrid media are much less present in the field of Islamic publications (see picture, a print book apparently based on a computer programme). Digital books are often just digitized versions of print books.

The third and final example is drawn from the field of Christian publishing. In an effort to get a subscription to the WAPO mission international weekly newspaper Msema Kweli, I visited their headquarters at Mbezi Beach. (After the COVID period, very few papers have survived in print format). Both the location (hard to find even for locals) and their physical presentation are quite unassuming (their bookshop for example was unattended). Print copies of the book about their founder Bishop Sylvester Gamanywa are very hard to find in bookshops in town, despite his importance in several religious and political domains. They have diverted most of their energy to disseminate their message through other channels; just like other Christian denominations such as the Lutheran, Anglican and Roman Catholic Church, WAPO has its own YouTube, radio, and TV channels. However, there is no website.

This large scale fragmentation in the publishing landscape of Swahili fiction, Islamic and Christian publications, although not unexpected, provide a serious challenge for academic collections in the near future.

Gerard van de Bruinhorst