TANU’s Bombay Delegates: Stephen Mhando, Ali Mwinyi Tambwe, and the Global Itineraries of Tanganyikan Decolonisation

Abstract

Despite the recent move to understand African decolonisation in more global and transnational terms, the history of TANU’s struggle for independence remains understood primarily through a nationalist paradigm. Tanganyikans remain largely overlooked in the new historiography of ‘Afro-Asian’ connections in the 1950s. This article addresses this lacuna by sketching out the dual biographies of two less prominent TANU leaders, Stephen Mhando and Ali Mwinyi Tambwe. Using recently declassified colonial intelligence reports, it follows their journeys to the meeting of the Asian Socialist Conference in India in 1956 and subsequent travels around the Indian Ocean coastline. Through these life-stories, the article argues that activism under the auspices of African nationalism provided a platform for aspiring politicians to pursue their own projects in a decolonising world. These included the organisation of pan-African conferences, creating transoceanic solidarities between Muslim organisations, securing patronage from Cold War powers, and advancing anticolonial causes in Africa’s Indian Ocean basin. By stepping away from a narrative focused squarely on a struggle for national independence, the article argues for a more inclusive, globally connected and open-ended history of Tanganyikan anticolonialism.