THE POLITICAL COVER THAT WASN'T

by Martin Walsh

A street scene in Forodhani, Zanzibar, July 2006 (photo: Martin Walsh)

My last post, ‘An orange seller in Zanzibar’, was about an image I’d suggested for the cover of Ahmad Kipacha’s Journal of Humanities, when I was helping him format the first issue so that it could be published online by the University of Dodoma. At the same time, I also proposed a second image: a photograph of what I thought was a fairly typical street scene in Stone Town, Zanzibar. I’d taken this in July 2006 in Forodhani, walking the route that I’d followed countless times in the mid-1990s when I worked in the Ministry of Agriculture offices nearby.

Mock-up of a cover for the first issue

The photo is dominated by the beautiful façade of a building that had clearly seen better days, as had most of those in the surrounding area. The crumbling plaster on its lower walls boasts a few fading political posters that look equally ancient, though they must have been pasted up during a recent election campaign. One of the posters depicts Professor Ibrahim Lipumba, national chairman of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) and regular candidate for the Tanzanian presidency. Others are graced by the face of Seif Sharif Hamad, his then counterpart and perennial presidential hopeful in Zanzibar. Seif was the darling of CUF-supporting denizens of Stone Town, who had evidently strung up the bunting in party colours that criss-crosses the square in the foreground.
 
I was quite fond of this photograph, and not just because of its allusion to events discussed in my paper on ‘The politicisation of Popobawa’, which was appearing in the journal. But I was naïve to think that it would be a perfect cover for the first issue. Quite the opposite: it was obviously impolitic to associate the new journal, and so the university, with an image of opposition to the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM), which dominated the national assembly down the road. But no harm was done. My photo was deleted, leaving the journal with a cover that was naked but for a swirl of colour. Ironically, it then transpired that for technical reasons the university was unable to post the issue online. Instead I offered to upload it to my Scribd account, where it’s now been viewed more than 4,500 times.

Acknowledgement
Hats off to the multi-talented Ahmad Kipacha, who had the bright idea and put all the hard work into developing the Journal of Humanities, which was unfortunately short-lived. He had nothing at all to do with my daft choice of image, or indeed anything that I’ve written here.

References

Kipacha, Ahmad (ed.) 2009. Journal of Humanities (Dodoma) 1 (1).

Walsh, Martin 2009. The politicisation of Popobawa: changing explanations of a collective panic in Zanzibar. Journal of Humanities (Dodoma) 1 (1): 23-33.