In Tanzania, the CEAA was acknowledged as an important agency linking the country’s new arts and cultural development programmes in the East African region. The birth of CEAA in 1964 was to some extent inspired by the Pan-Africanist movements at the Makerere University College in Kampala in the 1940s. African students studying abroad and within Africa were forerunners of Pan-African movements through various approaches. The CEAA found its roots in Tanzania through early fine art students, who became its members while studying at Makerere from the 1940s onwards. When East African countries such as Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania achieved independence in the early 1960s and later formed the East African Community in 1967, CEAA was already in place, with artists working in collaboration across their national frontiers FIG 01.

During the first CEAA meeting, Sam Ntiro was elected chairperson, Elimo Njau as its Secretary-General and Eli Kyeyune as its treasurer (Miller 1975:73). The School of Fine Arts at Makerere University in Kampala, apart from its continued tradition of providing art education to East African students, also provided space for visual art societies and group activities. CEAA chose Makerere as its regional headquarters, while creating branches for its members in their respective countries. In Tanzania, the CEAA branch office was situated in the Division of National and Antiquities at the Ministry of Education premises in Dar es Salaam. The CEAA was known from 1969 as the Society of East African Artists (SEAA), while Francis Musango from Kenya replaced Elimo Njau as its new Secretary General (Miller 1975:97). 

Based on its founding objectives the CEAA intended to organise and coordinate projects to improve and promote visual arts activities in East African countries. The focus was to inspire young artists and join forces to localize visual art practices by incorporating a form and content style based on indigenous traditions within the East African region and Africa as a continent. Closer reviews of CEAA activities indicate that in many instances this organisation pioneered cultural decolonisation campaigns in the visual arts field. The Community in Tanzania significantly inspired and promoted the visual arts through training, exhibitions and conferences. Member artists volunteered to teach visual arts in secondary schools, teachers’ training colleges and later, when established, at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Elimo Njau lectured in the Department of Theatre Arts of the Dar es Salaam University College between 1965 and 1969 (Miller 1975). Other Tanzanian artists who did the same were Elias Jengo and Louis Mbughuni, who volunteered to teach Fine Arts and Stage Design at the Institute of Adult Education and at the UDSM before the Fine Arts Department (now repackaged as the Creative Arts Department) was established on campus [FIG 02]. Kiure Francis Msangi, as Assistant Headmaster and Art Master at the Iyunga Secondary School in the Mbeya region, volunteered as a visiting tutor in arts and crafts classes at the Loleza Girls School and Mbeya Secondary School, which were adjacent to his workplace (Miller 1975).

Tanzanian members of CEAA or SEAA participated in numerous conferences advocating for the visual arts and cultural development in independent African countries. Among these conferences, include the Universities of Eastern Africa Social Science Conference on Cultural Imperialism and Artistic Underdevelopment in East Africa organised in Dar es Salaam in 1977 and the FESTAC ’77 in Lagos, where Elias Jengo, Sam Ntiro and Louis Mbughuni presented papers. 

The CEAA Tanzania branch participated in many exhibitions organised by partner societies and government institutions in Tanzania as well as in Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Europe and America. In 1964, Tanzanian artists mounted their works in a group show at the opening of the Chem-Chemi Cultural Centre in Nairobi. In the following year, the CEAA-only show involving members from the East African region was mounted at the Kibo Art Gallery in Moshi and a few months later at the National Museum of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam. These were followed by the biggest show, titled “Africa Creates” at the Union Carbide Building in New York in 1969.

 For this exhibition, Tanzania sent 102 paintings and sold most of the works (Miller 1975:73). The shows that involved only Tanzanian SEAA members included a paintings and Makonde sculpture exhibition at Madurodam, Holland, in 1968 (Ntiro,1963:115) and the one-man show by Kiure Msangi in Frankfurt, Hannover and Düsseldorf, Germany in 1970.  Regular exhibitions of this group have been hosted by the Goethe Institute in Dar es Salaam since 1968 (Miller 1975) [FIGs 04 and 05].

Through its activities, this group demonstrated that visual artists were capable of providing significant contributions to many development aspects within and outside their countries socially, culturally, economically and politically. A thematic analysis of four masterpieces produced and exhibited by its three Tanzanian members from the early 1960s to the late 1970s revealed the CEAA artists’ interests as Pan-Africanists. 

Artworks based on topics such as liberation struggles, political oppression and the sufferings of refugees fleeing still-colonised African countries were produced and highly encouraged. In Tanzania, one of the issues addressed by the independent government included the inevitable participation in the non-violent liberation of all African countries to achieve their independence. Tanzania also provided political, material and moral support until independence and majority rule were achieved through armed conflict in 1975 in Mozambique and Angola, Zimbabwe 1980, Namibia 1990 and finally in South Africa in 1994 (Nyrere Centre for Peace Resesarch).

In this context visual artists’ activities were highly commended as major communications media and inspiration aids in this struggle. A number of artworks are presented here as evidence showing visual artists’ participation in the liberation struggles of Africa through their artworks. The Society of East African Artists produced several works in Tanzania, which widely addressed issues the people faced in the early African independence days within and beyond their national frontiers.

Figures 06 and 07 depict refugees in misery due to unrest in their home countries. With these works the artists comment on the situation in the Tanzanian refugee camps at Newala district in the Mtwara region; Nachingwea district in the Lindi region; Likuyu Sekamaganga village in the Namtumbo district in the Ruvuma region and the Bagamoyo district in Pwani (Coast) regions, areas where Zimbabwean, Mozambican and South African freedom fighters were accommodated in the 1960s and the 1970s. The same is evident in Figure 05, in which the artist portrays the evils of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Kiure Msangi captures a most traumatising incident of murder by South Africa’s white supremacist policemen killing Africans at Sharpeville in March 1960, an event which led Tanzania to build a camp in the Mazimbu area in Morogoro region in order to shelter hundreds of South African refugees, particularly ANC fighters who freed South Africa, as from the mid-1970s until the end of the 1990s.

Chali Shogholo in his work depicts soldiers assisting their wounded comrade on the frontline [FIG 07]. Shogholo’s painting was possibly inspired by the camaraderie and heroic acts of the Tanzanian People’s Defence Forces. Generally, Tanzanian members of the Society of East African Artists worked as ambassadors in eliciting the interests and active support of Tanzanians and other parties by employing the visual arts as media for fostering African solidarity and expression of common humanity, as well as the Pan-African movements’ virtues among African national states.

Other works by Njau, Msangi, Shogholo and Elias Jengo tackle the refugees’ problems in the neighbouring countries of Mozambique and Angola, which waged armed struggles against Portuguese colonialism from the 1970s to the 1980s and death and bloodshed as sacrifices of the African independence fighters in South Africa and Mozambique during the independence struggles [FIG 08]. Judith von D. Miller did not review these works when she wrote her book Art in East Africa, hence her question:Perhaps the most striking omission in the art of East Africa is the Art of social comment. Where does an artist express feelings about African unity, African freedom fighters, African Socialism or protest of any sort? (Miller 1975:19)

Johanna Agthe, a German scholar, who published on East African art in the 1990s disapproved of Miller’s question. Unlike Judith von D. Miller (1975), Johanna Agthe (1990) came up with two subtitles in her research dedicated to exploring social commentaries in the visual art of East Africa: Social Criticism and Political Subjects, where she observes that “today, however, the social criticism implicit in artists’ treatment of many different subjects cannot be overlooked. The more foreign influence and drastic change make their presence in society felt, the more numerous are the artistic works that tackle such matters. Some of the subjects are of international relevance, such as drug abuse, unemployment or environmental pollution; others are specifically African for instance, abandoned children in the city or the problem of overpopulation” (Agthe 1990:121).

Agthe’s comments, which came 15 years after Miller’s, are certainly more realistic and positive with regard to the progress East African art had actually made. She was complimentary and highly appreciative of works by Tanzanian artists as legacies of visual arts in the East African region as a whole. Nevertheless, Agthe (1990) did not cover a big part of artists’ activities in Tanzania. Her research was based in Kenya and, therefore, she could not possibly look at the same art movements in societies and associations as Miller (1975) did. To this day, unfortunately, no proper records exist to account for when and how the CEAA or SEAA ceased its activities in Tanzania and the East African region. It is a field of inquiry, which needs more research going forward.

Reading

Nyerere Centre for Peace research:

http://www.juliusnyerere.org/index.php/resources/news/nyerere_the_father_of_southern_african_liberation

Agthe, J. (1990) WEGZEICHEN: Kunst aus Ostafrika 1974-89, Frankfurt am Main, Museum fur Volkerkunde 

Kariara, J. (1965) KIBO ART GALLERY, In Tanzania Notes and Records, No.64, March 1966, pp.147-48, Dar es Salaam, the Tanzania Society

Miller, J.D. (1975) ART IN EAST AFRICA: A Guide to Contemporary Art, London, Frederick Muller Ltd

Ntiro, S.J. (1963) East African Art, Tanganyika Notes and Records, No.61, pp.121-134, Dar es Salaam, the Tanzania Society