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Tanzanian newspaper poetry: political commentary in verse

By the 1910s, swahiliphone newspapers in what was then Deutsch-Ostafrika featured poetry as a mainstay of the newspaper form. Swahili poetry, mostly written by nonprofessional poets, remains a standard element of contemporary Swahili language newspapers throughout Tanzania today. This essay, featuring numerous newspaper poems translated by the author in collaboration with master Kenyan poet Abdilatif Abdalla, offers an overview of the genre from its emergence in the colonial era to the end of the twentieth century with an emphasis on praise poems about three political rulers: (1) German colonial-era poems about Kaiser Wilhelm II; (2) British colonial-era poems about King George V; and (3) post-independence poems about first president Julius Nyerere published at various points in his political career and following his death. By examining these poems within their political and historical contexts, I seek to construct a poetry-driven, citizens' narrative of Nyerere's political career and explore the poetics of popular expectations and assessments of governance.