THE STATE OF THE UNION The United Republic of Tanzania (URT) is unique for being the only surviving pan-Africanist project involving the union of two independent African countries, through the adoption of a federal or quasi-federal constitution, which shares sovereignty between the countries involved in the union in a way that enables them to act directly on the citizens of the Union. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it has proved to be the only surviving union or coming together by aggregation of two hitherto independent countries in Africa. Similar experiments elsewhere in former colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean failed, notably: (i) the Ghana-GuineaMali Union [23 November 1958 to 1963]; (ii) the Mali Federation, bringing the French Sudan and Senegal together [4 April 1959 to 20 June 1960 ]; (iii) the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, bringing the Rhodesias and Nyasaland together [1 August 1953 to 31 December 1963]; (iv) the previous failed East African Community (bringing Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika together); (v)The Senegambia Confederation, bringing Senegal and Gambia together [1 February 1982 to 30 September 1989]; (vi) the West Indies Federation, consisting of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago [3 January 1958 to 31 May 1962]; and, (vii) Malaysia, bringing together Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore [16 September 1963 to 1965], with the exit of Singapore from the Federation. It is the pragmatic division of sovereignty within the dual-government United Republic between the Union and Zanzibar, involving the transfer of some of their powers and functions by both Tanganyika and Zanzibar to a new central government - the URT; and, the fact that the Union survived since its establishment in 1964 that offer the URT as a commendable practice for attaining the Pan-African vision of African union - the United States of Africa. This was the vision that fired the imagination of the first generation of post-independence African leaders - Modibo Keita (Mali), Abdel Gamal Nasser (Egypt), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Leopold Sedar Senghor (Senegal), and Sekou Toure (Guinea-Conakry) - despite their differing views about how to achieve that vision. A great deal of credit must be given to President Julius Nyerere, whose strategic vision of a gradualist approach to Pan African unity, and whose passionate commitment to a successful URT as a model for that approach, played a key role in nurturing, driving and sustaining the Union. He overcame the teething problems and serious misgivings in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar about this birthing process. He was adroit in using his combined role and authority as the leader of the CCM in a one-party or single-dominant party state, and as President of the URT, to neutralise autonomist tendencies in the form of demands for more self-government in both Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. President Nyerere remains an incomparably national iconic figure whose picture - alongside that of the current President - is prominently displayed in public buildings in the URT and who is popularly and affectionately referred to as “the person who cared for us.” Whether his enduring legacy will transcend his vision and persona, to include a more durable union in practice will depend on the current political leadership’s treatment of, and response to the ongoing national debate on the state and future of the Union. The challenge for the current political leadership in the URT, in the absence of the towering figure of President Nyerere, is, therefore, the democratic management of diversity within the Union, given the historical and inherited significant diversities within each of the parties in the Union. The push and pull of unity and diversity, of containing forces of separateness, while strengthening forces of unity, remains a recurring feature of the Union. The return to a multi-party state has underscored this challenge even more dramatically by amplifying the voices of silent or intimidated groups who, in the hitherto single-party state, harboured or entertained serious questions about the state and nature of the Union. A significant source of disquiet, especially in Mainland Tanzania, is the constitutional asymmetry granting Zanzibar a large measure of self-determination while denying the same to Mainland Tanzania, under the URT Constitution. On the other hand, Zanzibar expresses equally strong disquiet about the internal political asymmetry between the Union and Mainland Tanzania, from the dual perspective of population and geography, and the looming influence of Mainland Tanzania over the Union Government’s economic and political institutions. On-going national constitutional review processes offer, where necessary, an opportunity to re-structure the URT political architecture. Other important matters arising from the state of the Union, such as political and constitutional asymmetry, xiii