Voluntarism, virtuous citizenship and nation-building in late colonial and early post-colonial Tanzania

This paper offers a historical perspective on the concept of voluntarism in modern Africa. It does so by exploring the ways in which post-colonial states grappled with the legacies of colonial-era concepts of voluntarism, using Tanzania as a case study. It argues that the post-colonial state sought to combine two strands of colonial thinking about voluntarism in a new conception of what I term here “virtuous citizenship”. But this was a fragile construction, and the language of voluntarism could bring to light divisions in society which many would have preferred to keep hidden.