Remembering Work on the Tazara Railway in Africa and China, 1965-2011: When "New Men" Grow Old

Abstract: In China, Tanzania, and Zambia, state officials participate in an ongoing articulation of official memory of the TAZARA railway project of the 1970s. In high-level diplomatic relations, the TAZARA project and its construction workers are continually held up as a foundational legacy for China-African development cooperation and friendship. However, the now-retired workers who built the railway tell very different kinds of stories about their experiences. In the context of recent economic liberalization policies, retired TAZARA workers draw on individual and collective memories of railway building to achieve both recognition and material security in a world in which they feel forgotten. They seek resolution of their grievances in old age through the telling and retelling of narratives of their youth. By doing so, they claim their own right to remember in the face of ongoing official efforts to reinvent heroic pasts.Resume: En Chine, en Tanzanie et en Gambie, les responsables politiques participent a un projet de commemoration de la construction des chemins de fer TAZARA dans les annees 70. Pour les relations diplomatiques de haut niveau, le projet TAZARA et ses ouvriers representent continuellement un modele fondateur pour la cooperation et l'amitie entre la Chine et l'Afrique. Les ouvriers a present retraites qui ont construit le chemin de fer ont de leur cote des histoires bien differentes a raconter sur leur experience de la construction. Dans le contexte des politiques recentes de liberalisation economique, les ouvriers retraites du projet TAZARA utilisent des souvenirs collectifs et individuels de la construction pour rechercher a la fois une reconnaissance une securite materielle dans un monde ou ils se sentent oublies. Ils font appel a la prise en compte de leurs doleances dans leur vieil âge en racontant sans relâche les histoires de leur jeunesse sur le chantier. Ce faisant, ils reclament leur droit de commemoration face aux efforts politiques en cours de reinventer un passe heroique.IntroductionIn April 2011 China released a new "white paper" on its policy of foreign aid to Africa. At a conference held on April 26, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Fu Ziying was invited to brief the press on the contents and significance of the paper. As he opened his remarks, he used the example of the TAZARA railway to recall the historical relationship between China and Africa. His comments on the significance of TAZARA are worth quoting in their entirety.A few days ago when I was paying respect to the Chinese workers who sacrificed their lives for the construction of Tanzania-Zambia Railway at a public cemetery in Tanzania, I could not help bursting into tears. What did they come here for? Along the more-than-1800-km-long Tanzania-Zambia railway surrounded by rugged mountains and turbulent rivers, there was no electricity, no clean drinking water, and no sufficient food. It was in such poor circumstances when the western countries literally abandoned the newly independent African countries that the Chinese people came to help out. To build the Tanzania-Zambia Railway we lost 69 lives. Tens of thousands of Chinese workers labored side by side with the Tanzanian and Zambian people to build the railway successfully. Why did they do this? The Chinese people did this purely for friendship. Some media people, academics, politicians today are skeptical towards China's activities in Africa. Though I think that is just normal, friendship is of paramount importance in China-Africa cooperation and there is no doubt about it, nonetheless. (News.china.com.cn 2011)Five years earlier, in 2006, the late Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa had made a public address in Lusaka in which he also used the example of TAZARA to praise the historical relationship between China and Zambia. It was a sensitive moment for Zambia-China diplomacy because Mwanawasa's political rival, Michael Sata (now president of Zambia), had been using anti-Chinese rhetoric in his campaign. …