Novel
Village in Uhuru
Gabriel Ruhumbika · 1969
Synopsis
A historical novel drawn from real events, following a village in Tanganyika during the struggle of the Tanganyika African National Union for sovereignty, then in the first years of uhuru, the freedom won. The villagers are divided between belonging to the clan and belonging to the nascent nation, up to the first village regroupings required by ujamaa socialism.
Context
The novel appeared in 1969 from Longmans, in the years when Nyerere's Tanzania was making Swahili the language of school and administration. It is the second Tanzanian novel written in English, a year after Peter Palangyo's, and its author's only one in that language. Critics have read in it one of the first literary representations of the ujamaa village policy, and of the relations between men and women that it claimed to remake.
Who it is for
A novel in English, little circulated. The context of ujamaa and of Tanzanian language policy sheds light on its subject.
Prizes and reception
The second Tanzanian novel in English, it is studied for its representation of ujamaa villages.