Emma Hunter

Revisiting Ujamaa: Political Legitimacy and the Construction of Community in Post-Colonial Tanzania

Abstract Tanzanias post-colonial social and economic policies, often referred to with the shorthand term of ujamaa and variously translated as ‘familyhood’ or ‘African socialism’, have attracted the attention of scholars since their inception. While the first analysts were interested in these policies primarily as strategies of development, historians have recently begun to focus on the importance of ujamaa and related political metaphors, particularly those of ujamaa na kujitegemea (ujamaa and self-reliance), wakupe (ticks) and mirija (straws) as a set of discursive strategies aimed at constructing state legitimacy in a post-colonial context. This article builds on these developments, but argues that focussing on discourse produced at the centre has its limitations. It is suggested here that attention to the use of ujamaa vocabulary on the periphery and by non-official actors in the months after the Arusha Declaration demonstrates that it could be employed to argue about social and economic morality in a way which necessarily engaged with a broader national discourse. It is also further argue, however, that there were limits to the power of nationalist discourses to construct political legitimacy rhetorically, and that discourse must be examined in interaction with the material challenges facing the post-colonial state. Methodologically, this approach has the potential to offer a richer view of political life in the post-colony.

Unique charge-dependent constraint on collagen recognition by integrin α10β1

The collagen-binding integrins recognise collagen through their inserted (I) domain, where co-ordination of a Mg2 + ion in the metal ion-dependent site is reorganised by ligation by a collagen glutamate residue found in specific collagen hexapeptide motifs. Here we show that GROGER, found in the N-terminal domain of collagens I and III, is only weakly recognised by α10β1, an important collagen receptor on chondrocytes, contrasting with the other collagen-binding integrins. Alignment of I domain sequence and molecular modelling revealed a clash between a unique arginine residue (R215) in α10β1 and the positively-charged GROGER. Replacement of R215 with glutamine restored binding. Substituting arginine at the equivalent locus (Q214) in integrins α1 and α2 I domains impaired their binding to GROGER. Collagen II, abundant in cartilage, lacks GROGER. GRSGET is uniquely expressed in the C-terminus of collagen II, but this motif is similarly not recognised by α10β1. These data suggest an evolutionary imperative to maintain accessibility of the terminal domains of collagen II in tissues such as cartilage, perhaps during endochondral ossification, where α10β1 is the main collagen-binding integrin.

‘Our common humanity’: print, power, and the colonial press in interwar Tanganyika and French Cameroun

If the concept of global civil society offers a way of thinking about the interwar period that does justice to the new linkages that were developing at the time, it also offers an opportunity to reflect on ‘the varied, contingent meanings of the global – and the limits to such globalist visions’, as this special issue makes clear. This article explores these themes in an African context in relation to two government periodicals, Mambo Leo and the Gazette du Cameroun , both of which first appeared in the early 1920s, and a settler-edited newspaper aimed at an African audience, L’Eveil des Camerouniens , published 1934–35. It argues that such official and semi-official publications serve to illustrate both the unexpected ways in which this period witnessed the birth of new forms of global connection and the limits of such connection.

Languages of freedom in decolonizing Africa

The ‘triumph of liberalism’ in the mid-twentieth-century west is well known and much studied. But what has it meant for the way the decolonisation of Africa has been viewed, both at the time and since? In this paper, I suggest that it has quietly but effectively shaped our understanding of African political thinking in the 1950s to 1960s. Although the nationalist framing that once led historians to neglect those aspects of the political thinking of the period which did not move in the direction of a territorial nation-state has now been challenged, we still struggle with those aspects of political thinking that were, for instance, suspicious of a focus on the individual and profoundly opposed to egalitarian visions of a post-colonial future. I argue that to understand better the history of decolonisation in the African continent, both before and after independence, while also enabling comparative work with other times and places, we need to think more carefully and sensitively about how freedom and equality were understood and argued over in local contexts.

Language, Empire and the World: Karl Roehl and the History of the Swahili Bible in East Africa

While German colonialism as an imperial system was once neglected by historians, this neglect was less acute in the case of the histories of individual German colonies. Yet here too, new perspectives on German colonial and postcolonial history, informed by an attention to global and transnational entanglements, might offer new insights. In this article, I take the controversy over Karl Roehls translation of the Bible into Swahili as a case study. Viewed through the lens of a traditional imperial history, controversies during the interwar period over linguistics in general and Bible translation in particular between Britain and Germany replicated imperial rivalries; viewed from a global perspective, however, the Roehl Bible is revealing of the ways in which German colonial irredentism went alongside a continued German role in the transnational entanglements which helped to shape the modern world.

Coupling of a specific photoreactive triple-helical peptide to crosslinked collagen films restores binding and activation of DDR2 and VWF

Collagen-based scaffolds may require chemical crosslinking to achieve mechanical properties suitable for tissue engineering. Carbodiimide treatment, often used for this purpose, consumes amino acid side chains required for receptor recognition, thus reducing cell–collagen interaction. Here, we restore recognition and function of both von Willebrand Factor (VWF) and Discoidin Domain Receptor 2 (DDR2) to crosslinked collagen films by derivatisation with a specific triple-helical peptide (THP), an approach previously applied to integrin-mediated cellular adhesion. The THP contained the collagen III-derived active sequence, GPRGQOGVNleGFO, conjugated to a photoreactive moiety, diazirine, allowing UV-dependent covalent coupling to collagen films. Crosslinking of collagen films attenuated the binding of recombinant VWF A3 domain and of DDR2 (as the GST and Fc fusions, respectively), and coupling of the specific THP restored their attachment. These derivatised films supported activation of DDR2 expressed in either COS-7 or HEK293 cells, reflected by phosphorylation of tyrosine 740, and VWF-mediated platelet deposition from flowing blood was restored. Further, such films were able to increase low-density lipoprotein uptake in vascular endothelial cells, a marker for endothelial phenotype. Thus, covalent linkage of specific THPs to crosslinked collagen films i) restores their cognate protein binding, ii) triggers the corresponding cellular responses, and iii) demonstrates the broad applicability of the approach to a range of receptors for applications in regenerative medicine.

Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures, and the Struggle for Political Reform by Nic Cheeseman (review)

has rediscovered its penchant for authoritarianism and violence in order to stave off mounting opposition. During this period Mugabe’s ZANU-PF suffered multiple electoral defeats on several fronts: constitutional, legislative, and gubernatorial, only managing to sustain the executive presidency through heavy manipulation of the vote and deploying stateand militiasponsored violence. The brief 2008–2013 Global Political Agreement that was brokered after the disputed 2008 elections between ZANU-PF and the main opposition party, the MDC, finally unraveled with Mugabe’s quest to win back total political control through the abrupt announcement of the 2013 elections. Dorman consistently argues that for students of African politics (and history as well), the first task is to understand, before seeking to predict or explain. Explanation without understanding has been the major weakness of many analyses of Zimbabwe’s recent postcolonial history. Dorman is aware of her own limitations in this book—chiefly the exclusion of ordinary Zimbabwean voices in her data—but her close reading of formal sources and her political ethnography manage to compensate for that deficiency. I would highly recommend this book to all students of Zimbabwe’s recent political history and to anyone interested in postcolonial African politics in general. Munyaradzi B. Munochiveyi College of the Holy Cross Worcester, Massachusetts doi:10.1017/asr.2017.24 mmunochi@holycross.edu

Agency, Citizenship and Resistance in Africa

lesbians engaged in sex work with men to support themselves and their families, or had children, these experiences deviated from ideal-typical portraits of lesbians, leading these individuals to interrogate their gender and sexual identities. Chapter 4 addresses the contours of masculine domination and intimate-partner violence in same-sex relationships, particularly in relationships between men. Field research throughout the country familiarised Lorway with the intersections of ethnic group dynamics, poverty, and gay and bisexual men’s increased risk of HIV/AIDS. Chapter 5 elucidates the ‘foreigner fetish narratives’ of some black gay men and charts three black gay men’s relationships with white Namibian and foreign men, teasing out the complexity of black gay men’s self-fashioning amid LGBT rights discourses of freedom and authenticity (p. 120). Namibia’s Rainbow Project is a monograph that will captivate readers and help to dispel persisting misconceptions about queer Africans. This book is likely to interest students and scholars of social movements, gender, and sexuality in southern Africa and scholars who specialise in Namibia.