ABSTRACT
Introduction The night of January 19, 1964, was an unexpectedly momentous one for the history of Tanzania. On that night several senior enlisted men of the Tanganyika Rifles, the military of the newly independent state, rose up and imprisoned their officers, sparking a regional mutiny. The aggressive action by the military began at Colito Barracks outside of the capital of Dar es Salaam and within a day its effects extended all the way to the militaries of Uganda and Kenya. While the mutiny was quickly put down through an intervention by British forces it was nevertheless a flashpoint in the early history of Tanzania. The ease with which the soldiers seized power in the capital of Dar es Salaam and the confused response of Julius Nyerere’s Tanganyikan African National Union (TANU) government raised serious concerns about the viability of TANU’s ability to rule. Given the magnitude of the disturbance and its placement within a Cold War context, questions were immediately raised about the roots of this rebellion. Many Tanganyikans viewed it as a scheme by the British to allow a colonial incursion into their newly independent state. The British, for their part, were far more concerned that it was actually a coup attempt against Nyerere, either by outside agitators or by his ambitious and powerful Minister of Defense Oscar Kambona. However, despite these picturesque theories, at its heart the Tanganyikan Rifles mutiny was not about the reimposition of colonialism or ministers jockeying for power. The mutinies ultimately were protests by the soldiers of the Tanganyika Rifles expressing their frustration with their loss of colonial privileges and their ambitions in an independent Tanganyika.
