Tanzania is a perfect synecdoche to understand the Portuguese ascendency in Africa beyond the close circle of the Lusophone countries: Tanzania lived on its own skin the birth and the death of the Portuguese presence in East Africa.
My paper aims to investigate how the Portuguese influence in Tanzania has been relevant on a historical, cultural and linguistic level, particularly since Tanzania has been conditioning the history of six centuries of Portuguese presence in this side of the continent.
In 1498 Vasco da Gama’s fleet consisted of the first European people to reach the coast of the country; for at least two centuries Portuguese presence was central all along the coast. All the overlooking islands - Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia - still show the traces of the past, but the best kept ruins are in Kilwa, currently hardly related to the Portuguese presence, even if once quoted in Milton’s Paradise Lost for its richness. Kilwa represents the most significant architectonical example in the east coast of Africa of an epochal crash: a Swahili city - born and raised in the meeting between the Arabic sailors and the indigenous population - fighting, but also being contaminated by the Portuguese culture.
These two centuries strongly marked the most important local language: the Swahili, even if there is still a lack of publications related to the subject. As in the west of the continent the Lingala use the word Poto (a derivation from Portuguese) to indicate Europe, the Swahili, still call Portugal by its historical name: ureno, o Reino, the kingdom. First of all because the language still shows clearly the Portuguese imprint: familia from família (family), meza from mesa (table), mvinho from vinho (wine), padri from padre (priest), bendara from bandiera (flag). The family that shares the meal around the table; the messenger of the word of Christ; the symbol of the state; Portuguese words - as Portuguese identity - are still hidden and almost unknown inside Swahili.
Tanzania’s recent history finally testifies a relationship with the Lusophone world that adds a new tile to this history, creating a unique link with Portugal: a link that has been interpreted so far as an isolated episode and not as the last chapter of this long relationship. Tanzania has been the base for the birth, the development and the training of Frelimo, the Mozambican movement that lead the country to independence. While the training centers for the rebels are still visible in Bagamoyo, the city of Dar es Salaam shows the most important places that were the protagonists of that season, such as Karimjee Hall, the building that held the first congress of Frelimo. Ryszard Kapuściński wrote in Christ With a Rifle on His Shoulder that the congress was not in Portuguese because the revolutionary youth - often raised abroad - did not know the language, witnessing a well known contradiction: Mozambique was and still is a Lusophone nation that ignores the Portuguese. The main speakers, including Eduardo Mondlane, were speaking in English, perhaps the future language of the country.
Hence, this paper will demonstrate how Tanzania has been witnessing and has been the direct protagonist of the long trajectory of a historical shift: the passage from an old reino to a new kingdom.