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‘We paid a heavy price for hosting them’: Villagers and Freedom Fighters in Mgagao, Tanzania

Abstract Analyses of Tanzania’s support for the national liberation struggles of Southern Africa often neglect to consider its impact on the government’s state-building strategy and socialist development vision. This article contributes to a re-examination of Tanzania’s policy towards the decolonisation of Southern Africa through the analysis of the relations between the inhabitants of Mgagao and the Southern African freedom fighters hosted in a training camp in the proximity of the village. Based on oral histories, this article shows that while on the one side the presence of the camp helped the villagers to overcome some of the material difficulties they faced during and after ujamaa, on the other side it made life harder for some members of the local community. The persistent poverty, the indiscipline of the guerrillas and the transformation of the camp into a state prison in the mid-1990s fostered the perception that Mgagao did not reap significant benefits from hosting the camp. Today the memory of the contribution of Mgagao to the decolonisation of Southern Africa, together with the solidarity links forged with the ANC of South Africa, play a relevant role in the villagers’ efforts to put pressure on the government to speed up development in Mgagao.