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.

AN ORANGE SELLER IN ZANZIBAR

by Martin Walsh

An orange seller at Darajani, Zanzibar, July 2006 (photo: Martin Walsh)

I’m no Javed Jafferji, but every now and then I manage to take a photograph that I like, whether for its subject, composition, colours, or some combination of all three. This snap of an orange seller was taken at Darajani in Zanzibar in July 2006. I offered a cropped version of it to Ahmad Kipacha for the cover of the first issue of the short-lived Journal of Humanities when he was launching it in the University of Dodoma in 2009. Alas, the photo didn’t make it – indeed none did – but I’ve still got the mock-ups that I made, one of which is shown below.

Mock-up of a cover for the first issue

I like this photo both for its colours and as an image of everyday marketing on one of Zanzibar Town’s busiest thoroughfares. Anyone who’s been shopping or sightseeing at Darajani will know that it’s usually a hive of activity, and you can see some of that in the background of the full shot, minus the movement, noise and pungent odours. The taste of those oranges is another memory that the photo can only remind me of.

A decade before taking this picture I led a study of The Development of Oranges as a Cash Crop in Ndijani, Unguja – Ndijani being the centre of orange production for the island’s urban market. The main harvesting season was June-September, and it’s quite likely that the oranges in the photo were sweet Ndijani oranges plucked from trees fertilised with the manure of cattle intentionally grazed between them. This was a feature of orange growing in Ndijani, together with a rotating marketing system designed to prevent oversupply in the town and wild fluctuations in income for the rural producers.

As the Holy Month of Ramadan begins in Zanzibar, this will be a busy time for the fruit sellers of Darajani, though it may be too early for the main Ndijani crop. Ramadhani karimu!

References

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

Kombo, Abdallah, Soud Hemed, Peter Oldham and Martin Walsh (ed.) 1995. The Development of Oranges as a Cash Crop in Ndijani, Unguja. ZCCFSP Working Paper WP 95/22, Zanzibar Cash Crops Farming Systems Project, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources, Zanzibar.